Ah, first dates. They’re often awkward, tedious evenings—a well-mannered exercise in bestowing a cool and lasting impression on a potential suitor.
But they’re often quite revealing. For instance, how often have you found yourself thumbing through a new friend’s record collection to divine who they are via their taste in music? Even the most cursory glance reveals far more than a polite conversation masked as a dinner date.
Such is the crux of our weekly First Date feature where the bands spill it themselves, all first-person like. Be it first records, first musical impressions, or the unabashed love for a good record store, they’re all revealed without having to ply our new pals with drinks. Well, sometimes anyway.
We thought we’d go on four First Dates this week—because we’re just that easy. So let’s head off… (how’s my hair?)
Hi, I’m Sam. I play guitar in the Parson Red Heads. I thought I’d write a little tidbit for The Vinyl District. (Thanks for the invitation to do so.)
I want to tell you a little bit about my experience working at a record store called Amoeba Music. There are 3 of these stores in California, and for 3 years I worked at the one in Hollywood.
Record stores employ some of the most interesting, caring, and creative individuals I’ve ever met. Ever. Record store employees are so underemployed—most of the ones I worked with had degrees and were extremely intelligent and ambitious. But they just don’t care about money—they care about music and art and people. (I can’t speak for all record stores when I say this, but I know Amoeba isn’t the only one that’s this way. I’ve worked at 2 other record stores and both were similar.)
When Broken Social Scene played at Amoeba Music and we reached capacity and had to turn people away from the show, my boss Karen ran to the registers and back to the front doors about three times, getting armloads of t-shirts to give to people as they got turned away. My bosses there had incredible patience and professionalism, and my coworkers were great—their sense of humor, unique and indie art projects, amazing patience when taking a customer around the entire store and answering each of their questions and even summoning impromptu descriptions of whatever music that customer might ask about—is just the tip of the iceberg.
Even our security guards who dealt with Hollywood addicts and tweakers and thieves were incredibly patient and kind before they had to use force. I was really humbled when I worked with these people and I bet you would have been too.
You can meet some of them—go to Amoeba Music in Hollywood.
The Parson Red Heads – Burning Up The Sky
Another thing that happened at Amoeba is that I learned about a ton of great music from my coworkers. If you ask them they will tell you about some amazing album you won’t believe isn’t more popular. Most of them will also be glad to recommend music to you if you give them the names of a few bands you like, even if the employee you’re talking to doesn’t like the bands you mentioned (which they’re unlikely to let on about.)
I don’t work for Amoeba anymore so I can say the following statement without bias: if you go to Hollywood and you can only do one thing, I promise you that if you choose spending an hour at Amoeba over going to Mann’s Chinese Theater or the wax museum or a bar, you’ll be happy with your decision.
There is a real magic that hangs in record stores. I think it’s simply people getting together and forming a community around their common interest in music. Anyone can join and get involved to a degree they’re comfortable with. That doesn’t sound like a store that sells a product, does it? The record store experience is something more than that, something much better than that.
We’re entering a time when young people who are buying music will have been buying it online their whole lives. I believe we’d be doing ourselves a favor if we preserved the record store experience. And to do that is easy—just go out and buy music there.
