Old Records Never Die (25 page)

One of the things I've noticed, as I've gotten older, is that some changes you're able to accept with grace, or at least a resigned sigh of acceptance. And some things, you just can't let go.

If you grew up someplace and then moved away, and then came back many years later to visit, you're in for at least a little heartbreak. But nothing is going to be exactly as you remember it. Houses will be torn down and replaced with new houses. Stores will have gone out of business, maybe replaced with something else or maybe just a parking lot. That corner store where you used to buy comic books and smoke bombs with your brother? It's a Starbucks now. Your summer camp? Gone. Replaced with condos. The restaurant where you could throw peanut shells on the floor, which gave every grown-up you knew such unmitigated bliss—“You can litter!” they told one another. “You just throw your shells on the ground and they don't care. They want you to do it.”—that had closed its doors, been replaced with a children's bookstore, and then a candle shop, and then a craft beer brewery, which was closed almost before anyone had learned it was open.

The sledding hill that hosted so many epic races between you and your peers? Torn down so they could build another wing on the hospital, which of course closed down. Can you believe that? We don't have a hospital anymore. A hospital! We're not talking about a restaurant where you can throw peanut shells on the floor. This is where you go if the bleeding doesn't stop, or if you notice that your spouse is much bluer than usual. The nearest hospital is now an hour to the south, but I'm told you can get medevaced during an emergency. In other words, you better be goddamn sure those chest pains
aren't just indigestion, because if you call 911, you're paying for a fucking helicopter.

But these were changes I could live with. I griped about them, and complained bitterly with friends and family who still remembered how things used to be, how they were supposed to be. But in the end, I learned to accept the changes. They just took some getting used to. After the fifth time of passing by the hardware store that's not a hardware store anymore, you stop doing a double take. You just accept how the structure of your world has shifted.

But some memories run deeper, and they don't ever go away.

During the six-hour drive up to Northport from Chicago, I had a lot of time to think. I thought about what could go wrong, as well as how it could just be a monumental waste of time and energy.

The backseat of my car rental looked like the inside of my brain. A record player, protected on all sides by pillows; a duffel bag full of clothes, only a few of which had been washed; and dozens of record sleeves scattered everywhere, flung at every corner of the backseat, like I'd left a window open during a tornado.

About twenty minutes outside of Northport, I drove across a stretch of road that I'd traveled countless times in my life. And like always, I waited for the bump.

But there was no bump.

During my youth, there was always a bump.

A month or so before my trip home, I'd gone to a Record Store Day in Chicago, the annual countrywide celebration of non–chain stores that still sell vinyl records. I'd never participated before, so I was excited to see what was involved. I'd heard about the inexplicable long lines, made up almost entirely of young people born after vinyl ceased to be a dominant medium, all waiting for the chance to buy limited-edition recordings that were utterly worthless outside of social circles where people waited in line on Record Store Day.

I came out, first and foremost, for the lines. I just wanted to see people standing outside of record stores again. The last time I'd seen something like that was in the late eighties, when I waited outside a record store in suburban Chicago to buy U2's
The Joshua Tree
. I actually almost got elbowed in the face by a guy at least twenty years older than me, who I guess was worried that I might get a copy of
The Joshua Tree
with a more desirable serial number.

I know people still wait in lines for things. When some new limited-edition technology comes out, there'll be lines stretching across city blocks. Any time there's a new iPod or smartphone or some new device that can carry more songs than I could even imagine existing when I was eighteen, there are lines. But that's different. It's stupid. We didn't wait in line to buy record players. If people were out there for some new amazing MP3 that they could get only at this store, that I could understand. But an iPod? What fucking moron waits in line for an iPod?

Nobody has ever cried or felt less alone because of an iPod. They've done it because of what was on the iPod.

I picked Dave's Records in Lincoln Park as my first stop on my hometown tour, mostly out of nostalgia. It's where I used to go when I was first dating Kelly. It was right down the street from her apartment. This place—this block, really—had special resonance for me.

“I've got a whole list of shit I want.”

The guy in front of me in line, who was wearing a knit cap despite the unseasonably warm weather, was getting snippy with whoever he'd decided to call during our hour-plus wait.

“Well it's my fucking money, I'll spend it on what I want.”

All around me was a sea of bleached hair and indie band T-shirts and scarfs. I counted at least two waxed handlebar mustaches, and that was just in my periphery.

There was a palpable anxiety among the gathered dozens
standing outside on Clark Street, checking their phones and trying not to look anxious. The air was thick with impatience. No, not impatience exactly. It was that horrible feeling that they might be missing something—that something better could be happening somewhere else.

There's even a word for it now. FOMO. “Fear of missing out.” That's what the kids today call it. They created an acronym for an anxiety that every generation of human beings in the history of human existence has experienced. I distinctly remember feeling it in the eighties and nineties. I'm sure my dad and my grandfathers felt it. Young people today are not unique in their FOMO. They're just the first to admit it.

Record Store Day was created to torment your FOMO. You could see it on everybody's face. Maybe they were waiting outside the wrong store, and a few miles across town, Wayne Coyne was at Reckless Records giving away super-rare Flaming Lips Japanese imports to the crowd. What if they had made the wrong choice?

I was certainly in no position to sneer at anybody's obsessive music-hoarding. I was the old pot calling the new kettle rusty. But I wondered if any of the kids, with their detailed lists of limited releases and special box sets and Bulgarian split EPs that they absolutely HAD TO BUY TODAY, would still feel the same way about these records in another ten years. When the Record Store Day–only special editions lost some of their special newness, and started gathering dust on their shelves, and got replaced with something else, something newer and more rare and collectible, would they forget? Or would it still be something they needed, literally needed to stay alive, like oxygen?

If it wasn't, well, then what was the fucking point? It was too early on a weekend, they should go home and crawl back into bed.

A homeless guy strolled past the line, carrying—inexplicably—a
twelve-pack of paper towels. Seeing the unexpected crowd, he paused for a moment, stopped right in his tracks, and just stared at us, trying to figure out what we were doing, aimed toward a record store of all places. He looked at the store, and then the crowd, and then back at the store. His face contorted as he tried to make sense of what was happening.

“What are you guys, DJs?” he asked.

Nobody looked at him. They stared at their phones, or at their feet. I smiled, but I don't think he noticed.

“You're all damn fools,” he said, getting legitimately upset. “This is not living. This is not living!”

So . . . the bump.

It was on M-22, the only road out of Northport—the town where I grew up—that would take you toward the rest of the world. If you lived up at the tippy-top of Michigan's little finger, and you wanted to get the hell out of there, you had to drive on M-22. And somewhere on the road between Peshawbestown, the Native American settlement, and Suttons Bay, the next big town south of Northport, was a stretch of road with a slight concave, like an asphalt bubble, that if you hit perfectly—going at, say, twenty or so miles over the speed limit—would cause your automobile to become momentarily airborne.

For an adult, with concerns about things like auto suspension and tire pressure and the resale value of your car, this wouldn't be all that fun. But for a kid between the ages of seven and ten, who has decided that
The Dukes of Hazzard
was not just a great television program but also a lifestyle choice, the pavement irregularity was proof, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Our parents ignored us when we shouted from the backseat, “The bump! The bump! Speed up for the bump!” They did the exact
opposite, slowing down so that the car's tires didn't rattle menacingly, and it didn't levitate alarmingly for several seconds before making a hard landing. But sometimes, you might be getting a ride from a friend's older brother, and you'd be squeezed in the back of an old Chevelle—oh man, I can still visualize it so clearly, those leather seats, sticky with cola and sweat, like an adhesive against your bare legs, trapping you like flies on a glue trap—and the brother could be coaxed, with very little chanting, to hit that bump in the road with just the right velocity.

“Faster,” we'd yell from the backseat. “Faster! Faster!”

He wouldn't say anything, but we'd hear the growling engine, we'd feel the seats trembling under us. We'd hold on to each other, cling to the little silver ashtrays in the armrests, ready for liftoff. And then he'd hit it, and it was exhilarating. Sometimes we'd float, hovering in the air for lack of any seat belts holding us down, and hit our heads against the soft rooftop.

“Again!” we'd shout through tears of laughter. “Turn around and do it again!”

I don't know when they fixed it. It happened long after my family moved away. When we returned for visits, I didn't notice it at first. But driving on that familiar road, I had an uneasy feeling, something didn't seem right. It wasn't until many years later that I realized what was missing.

I eventually gave up on the Dave's Records line. The homeless guy with the paper towels had made a convincing argument. Having your life choices doubted by a guy without shoes didn't seem to bother any of the other Record Store Day patrons, but it got under my skin. I went looking for a more accessible venue.

Reckless was just as overcrowded. As was Logan Hardware and Laurie's Planet of Sound and Groovin High. I thought I'd enjoy the throngs of people who cared about the same things I did. Like being
in the audience of a
Star Wars
sequel on opening night. But it felt more like being on a subway in rush hour.

I took the L to uptown, to the one place I could be reasonably sure wouldn't have much traffic. Shake Rattle & Read, a small storefront located a few doors from the Green Mill, a one-time haunt for Al Capone. (There are still bullet holes in one of the booths.) Not only was there no line, there were only three other people in the store. The only indication that today was special were the six multicolored balloons hanging near the entrance, and a handwritten sign reading
25% OFF
ALL
RECORD
LP
S!

Ric Addy was there, the legendary owner who I'd heard about from many a vinyl-loving friend. He was short and plump, with a gray goatee and a weathered leather jacket. He moved around the store, full of busywork, answering questions from customers. One young kid, who looked no older than twenty, asked about some exclusive Record Day Store–only release, and Ric looked at him like he'd just asked for child porn.

“I don't have any of that rare shit,” he spat. “You sell maybe ten percent of it, and they won't buy the rest of it back from you. It's a racket. I want no part of it.”

I wanted to stay here and live in this store and be around Ric every day and his delicious, wonderful grumpiness.

I started flipping, and it gave me a rush of excitement like I hadn't felt in months. Maybe it was because the front doors were propped open, and the warm spring breezes came rushing in, filling the small store with the sweet smells of a city waking up from winter. Maybe it was because the handful of customers weren't as panicky or pushy as I'd seen everywhere else. They would've been here even if Record Store Day didn't exist. I overheard them say things like, “At two dollars, you can't afford not to buy the Outfield,” and I knew this was the only place in the universe I wanted to be.

Somewhere between the Ss and the U-V-Ws, my arm brushed against a guy as we reached for adjoining boxes. I mumbled an apology, but he took it as an excuse to strike up a conversation. He told me, apropos of nothing, that he was trying to replace an entire record collection.

“Say again?” I asked.

“Oh, you know how it is,” he said. “Your brother steals all your records, sells 'em for drug money, and you spend the rest of your life trying to replace everything.”

“Brother-in-law,” a woman standing a few boxes away corrected him.

His wife wandered over to join him. She was carrying a stack of records almost an inch thick, which she dropped next to him with a surprisingly loud thud.

We continued flipping, and they both kept talking, weaving in and out of each other's sentences, telling me all the details that I hadn't actually asked for.

“My brother has light fingers,” the wife explained. “He's cheap as hell.”

“Of all the things to steal,” the guy said, shaking his head. “Who steals records to buy drugs? Why not steal our TV? Or a laptop.”

“He's set in his ways,” the wife explained. “It's how he did it in the eighties, so it's all he knows.”