Old Records Never Die (9 page)

“It is, yes.”

“You just have to know who to call.”

“I'll see what I can do, Mom.”

My mother paused. “I'm sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I'll get you that MasterCard number as soon as I can. It's in your father's front pocket, and I just haven't been able to roll him over yet.”

The reality of what had happened—what was still happening—came crashing into my brain. I could see it all so clearly now—my mom on the floor in a dark kitchen, kneeling next to my father's body, right where she had found him, or maybe sitting Indian-style because one of her legs had started to fall asleep, a finger nervously winding and unwinding the phone cord because she didn't know what to do with her hands. All this time, she'd probably been trying to slide the wallet out of his pocket, trying to do it without moving him, without touching him too much, because touching him would just confirm that, yes, she was really sitting in a dark kitchen with her dead husband, talking to her son in California, a million miles away.

She finally retrieved the credit card, and we didn't speak of wallets or dead bodies again. We bickered over airline connections and why my brother was so difficult to track down because he's been so busy lately.

We were an aurora borealis.

And then I heard footsteps in the kitchen and she told me that the paramedics had arrived and she had to go but she'd call me later.

I dropped the phone like it had suddenly gotten very hot, and I looked at Kelly and told her, “My dad's dead.” And then I just tuned everything out. She was crying and I wondered why I still wasn't and my body went numb. At some point I wandered into the living room and collapsed onto the couch, trying not to think, unwilling or unable to make sense of what had just happened, and listening as Kelly made the necessary calls, telling the people who needed to know, and yelling at whatever poor sap happened to be working the late shift at the airline reservations hotline.

The pain was closing in fast. I could see it surrounding me. I could smell it in the air. It was circling me like a shark, searching for a way in. If I just sat there, it'd find a way to burrow into my chest sooner or later. I had to do something, find a way to keep my brain occupied and distracted. So I went looking for my
Let It Be
record. It wasn't in the usual spots, so I widened the search. I went through our shelves, pulled out boxes, dug through every closet, practically tore the house apart trying to find it.

Kelly watched me, looking worried, but she didn't ask any questions. I couldn't make another move before sitting and listening to at least a few songs from that album. Not any album, it had to be that one. And it had to be something loud. None of the emotional shit like “Answering Machine” or “Unsatisfied.” I needed something I could scream along to, like “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out.” Or “Seen Your Video,” so I could belt out “Your phony rock and rooooolll” over and over.

I never found it. Because it was gone. I'd sold it months earlier—the last of my record collection—for utility money. Or maybe something else, I don't even remember. Maybe I spent it on tacos and Trader Joe's wine.

My record player was gone too. I'd thrown it away not long after I'd sold my
Let It Be.
Which seemed like an obvious choice at the time. Why did I need a record player without records? And why was I looking for a record now, when I knew, even if I found it, I didn't possess a device capable of playing it?

I was not thinking clearly.

Getting rid of my records and record player was something I'd done without hesitation. But on that night, as I wandered through my Burbank apartment in a haze, knocking things off shelves like a thief looking for jewels, I would have given anything to get my
Let It Be
back.

I didn't even really need to hear it. I just needed to hold the sleeve, and stare at that photo, and feel that security again, that illusion of being stronger than I actually was. That's what the album gave me as a teenager, and that kind of power doesn't just evaporate with the years. I knew if I could just be alone with that record again, for a few gloriously inconsequential minutes, I'd be able to make it through whatever was going to happen next.

But it was gone. So I listened to the CD instead. It wasn't the same. The album cover—if you could call it that—was like the delivery menu from a local Chinese place, shoved under an apartment door. The music had been digitized, and by all accounts was vastly superior. It was 44.1 kHz! That's, well . . . a lot more kHz! And the dynamic range was sixteen bits. That's so many more bits than whatever I was getting from the vinyl. At least a dozen, right? So why wasn't it as satisfying? I recognized the notes, the lyrics—everything about it was the same, maybe even more vibrant and cleaner. But sitting next to my computer, listening to songs come out of tiny speakers no bigger than my pinkie nail, it was like hearing an echo from very, very far away.

My dad was dead, and the music wouldn't be able to save me this time.

There's something humbling about being underneath a table, butt sticking out like a raccoon in a trash can, scouring old boxes for elusive treasure. The only difference between me and a homeless guy was that the homeless guy is driven by a survival instinct. He needs food or shelter so he won't die. My driving force wasn't so noble. I was down there because everything was listed at under a dollar, and the guy selling them said he'd pulled everything from his shed, and he wasn't 100 percent sure what was in there.

The guy with the shed yammered on about his collection, and how none of it really mattered to him. “I was watching the Bears game, and I just started pricing 'em,” I heard him say. “Didn't even pay attention to what I have. It's all been in the shed for as long as I can remember. It took me about six hours to drag out everything.”

Most of the sellers here were like him; just everyday guys with too many records that had been gathering dust in their sheds/attics/mothers' houses for too many years. They weren't expecting big profits, just getting rid of all the junk they'd accumulated. The bartering had probably been more dramatic earlier in the day. But at 4:00 p.m., it was like a Moroccan street market, with vendors in wool caps shouting at anybody with even the most remote interest in their wares, “You've got a nice face. Everything's half price!”

“I have so many boxes in my house,” the faceless voice above me continued, as I flipped through his records. “I just buy and buy and buy. And then it just gets stored and stored and stored. When Suzie went down to the basement and saw what I'd taken out, she got so excited. She was like, ‘What happened down there? I love you.'”

He may have said more, but I stopped paying attention. I pulled something out of one of his fifty-cent boxes that made my heart stop. It was like a vision from a dream, where you're visited by people who
you used to know a long, long time ago, and they're still as young and beautiful and perfect as you remember them, but there's something a little off about them—they've got gills, or their eyes are nothing but pupils, because it's a dream and dreams are all about fucking with your head.

It was a Bon Jovi record.
The
Bon Jovi record.
Slippery When Wet
. And I was pretty sure it was mine.

There was no way to hold it without feeling like it might crumble in my hands. The sleeve was dry but mushy, like the flesh of a dried apple. It had obviously been submerged in water at some point, and then left out to dry somewhere too hot, like the top of a radiator. It wasn't just warped and wrinkled; its entire chemical structure had been altered. It curved at geometrically improbable angles. It was a record cover reimagined as Dadaist art.

It was the first time I'd held this record, the first time I'd even seen the cover image, since the eighties. And I still had the same visceral reaction: that is an absolutely terrible attempt at sexiness. I mean, just really, really awful. Slippery is a Michigan road in February, not the correct adjective for describing aroused lady parts. I imagine Charlie Chaplin trying to run away but repeatedly slipping on vagina juices. “My god, this floor is slippery when wet!”

I stayed under the table a little longer, just put the Bon Jovi to the side and kept flipping through records, trying to look casual. No big deal. But inside, I was a mess. My head was buzzing, my heart was pounding like a Tito Puente mambo beat. My poker face was shit, and I knew it. The more I tried to look relaxed and breezy, the more I looked like an amateur art collector who'd just found a Rembrandt at a garage sale.

It couldn't be this easy, could it? How could I have found The One when my search had barely gotten started? I knew the math; I was well aware that the odds were against me. According to the
Recording Industry Association of America, the entire net shipments of vinyl LPs and EPs between the years 1983 and 1985—the time frame in which I purchased at least one hundred records that are truly important to me—are 581.2 million units. That's how many records are out there, produced and distributed during my vinyl golden years. Of those hundred records I want back, I'm pretty sure I could identify five of them from that period, assuming I'm ever in the same room with them.

So, let's break down those odds. I'm looking for five records among 581.2 million. But that number is for the entire country. The number of records shipped to the Midwest is probably more like 200 million. And specifically to Chicago and its surrounding suburbs? That's got to be, what, half a million at most? So that narrows down my numbers. Now I'm looking for five records out of a pool of potentially 500,000. That's . . . okay, pretty daunting. But it's doable. For every record I want back, I just need to sift through about 100,000 records. Not that the record I want will be number 99,999. But, you know, you have to be ready for a little crate-digging carpal tunnel.

At this record show, I've maybe looked through . . . I don't know, a thousand? That might be generous. But after four hours, with my finger in almost constant motion, sure, it's possible. I expected some close calls. I expected a record or two that required closer scrutiny. But I didn't expect to find one of the Holy Grails with 99,000 records still waiting in the wings.

How did I know it was mine?

1) My copy of Bon Jovi's
Slippery When Wet
narrowly survived a car accident—the worst and (as of this writing) only major car accident I've ever been involved in. It was the summer of 1990, and I was on a highway in Michigan, driving from my family's cottage up in the Leelanau Peninsula—near the
pinkie finger of the Michigan mitten—back to our home in the Chicago suburbs. Somewhere around the middle of the trip, my car went off the road. It's difficult to tell you where exactly without using Michigan hand-based cartography.

The accident happened right around here:

I was driving too fast, and my car was too overloaded. I'd bought a chair from a flea market, and somehow jammed it into the passenger seat. One of the chair's legs was jutting at an angle dangerously near to my temple, and all it took was a small overcorrection on the steering wheel. I was knocked unconscious. The car flipped, according to the police report, head over end seven times before landing in a swamp.

I woke up in the hospital, just as I was being wheeled into a CAT scan. I was fine. Walked away with a few scratches. Not even a broken bone. My car, however, was totaled.

When I came to claim the car, it still had swamp water on it. It looked like something from a murder mystery.

Everything inside was ruined. My clothes, my books, that fucking chair that coldcocked me. All of it was waterlogged and ripped to shreds. The only thing I pulled from the car that wasn't destroyed was
Slippery When Wet
. I hadn't even remembered it was in there. It was shoved under the driver's seat, wrapped in a blanket. God knows how long I'd been driving around with Bon Jovi hiding under my butt.