Brad
7ish years of Employment
Rock Buyer

This is a special farewell installment of The Employee Interview.  Don't worry-- you are not going to lose Brad's insightful blogs, it's just that we, the SF store, are losing him to the LA store this week.  Just like in baseball, he's been recruited for their team and will be moving next week. It will be quite a loss for those of us up here in SF to suffer.  Brad, we salute you!  It won't be the same without you.  But at least we will probably still get to watch the Oscars together. (If they happen-- agh what an awards show season!)

ME: What was the first concert you remember going to?

BS: Depeche Mode...Even though my seats were so far away I could barely see them it was one of the highlights of my life. It was just exciting to see that all these other people actually liked the same band as me.

I loved that feeling when I first started going to shows.  I was thinking, "Who ARE all these people?"  I've actually met so many people who work here who were at shows I was also at in the late 90s/early 2000s!  I love it.  That's how I knew Amoeba was my home.  So who was the first artist that really got you into music and why?

I am sure it was probably Morrissey and The Smiths. He was for sure the first person I was obsessed with, other than maybe Michael Jackson or Cyndi Lauper. Morrissey was the first artist where I was actually reading all the liner notes and buying all the magazines with him in it. It was fantastic as a young kid to listen to music and lyrics that you could completely relate to even though they were coming out of a man from a totally different world and reality.

Jimmy
2 years Employment
Cashier/Behind the Scenes/All Around Rad Dude

ME: What music was playing around your house when you were a kid?

Jimmy: My parents weren't really into music, but I do remember listening to and watching The Wiz a lot. A LOT! I loved it. In my mom's car, it was the Pointer Sisters. In my dad's car it was talk radio, or Metallica's Black Album, which is really psychotic because my dad is hella Catholic, and it was one of the only albums he owned!

Do you remember the moment when you suddenly really really got into music?  What was it that made you GET IT?


As soon as I discovered punk, my life totally changed forever. It wasn't just the music: I began a love affair with extreme politics and aesthetics. It was the high of using art (music, zines) and politics to go somewhere unknown. It's super weird how important music is when you're a teen. Recently, I listened to Patti Smith's Horses again, which I hadn't heard since I was a freshman in high school. I kinda freaked in my head! I remembered listening to this album, thinking I might die like Johnny in the song at any moment and that seemed really normal. Basically everything was so literal then: the music was the same as real life. Anything could happen. ('Cause I was crazy and wasted and only fifteen!)

Yeah, when that intensity of youth starts to die out, it's such a strange feeling because by then you've lived with it for so long. You grew up in Alaska. What was the music scene like in Alaska when you were growing up?  What were people into? Did they form bands? What style of music did they play?  Were there any venues in Anchorage?

The music scene was very small, only a couple punk bands that would sound like either The Ramones or Crass. (There was an all ages club in Anchorage called, stupidly enough, "Gigs." Bands would sometimes come to Alaska to play and when they did it was a big deal! I mean a total fucking hootenanny!) In high school, I was reading Maximum Rock and Roll religiously so I knew we were way behind the times.

Joe Boyd's recently written autobiography, White Bicycles, is amazing.  I've previously professed my jealousy of Cameron Crowe's life, but I actually think Joe Boyd has overtaken Crowe in that race.  By far.


Although he never won an Oscar (like Crowe), Boyd has had an extraordinary run in the music biz. He was always in the right place at the right time.  It's hard to even hit on all the amazing things he has taken part in here-- there's just so many of them. He was one of the first to arrange and manage European Jazz and Blues tours.  He worked for Elektra and eventually formed his own production company called Witchseason.  He booked an extremely successful club night in London in the 60s that hosted Pink Floyd and The Move, among many others.  He went on to produce artists like Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.

In one of my favorite passages in the book, Boyd describes the night at The Newport Folk Festival when he was a stage manager and Dylan went electric.  Reading that portion of the book made my heart race!  If for nothing else, it's worth buying White Bicycles just to read about this momentous occasion in rock history from a fresh viewpoint.  Boyd was truly a part of that evening and remembers it all!  He really must have kept a journal.  It answers some questions about who exactly was in a physical fight that night, who started what and if Pete Seeger did indeed cut the electricity with an axe.  There really was an axe there that night, and that's all I'm gonna say!

Tonight if you are in San Francisco, come on over to Amoeba and check out a DJ set by two musical masters of all things obscure:  Zach Cowie and Andy Cabic!

Andy Cabic you know from his band Vetiver.



Zach Cowie is a member of the LA-based DJ crew Small Town Talk and he is also single handedly responsible for turning me on to so many crazy tunes I never would have heard otherwise. 



In other words, their DJ set is gonna be flawless-- these guys are highly skilled pro-fessionals-- so if you are around, come and listen.  They'll be spinning vinyl from 7-9 pm.

Jackson C. Frank has one of the more sad stories in music history.


The good news is the music he created is fantastic.

He was a part of the folk music scene in the early/mid 60s.  He only released one full length album in 1965, which is self titled and beautiful.  It's a melancholy collection of songs, but it's one of my favorite records.  Frank's voice is strong and deep.  I feel like it brings a lot of emotion to the songs he sings.  I like the fact also that the songs sound a little faraway, like the equipment they were recorded on was old and on the brink of death.  Oh yeah, and it was produced with said eloquence by Paul Simon-- yeah, the Paul Simon.

Although he was American, Frank was thick in the scene of musicians in London in the mid 60s, and that's also where Paul Simon happened to be.  Frank was also friends with Sandy Denny, even dated her for a while, Bert Jansch, who covered "Blues Run the Game," Al Stewart and more.  Nick Drake also covered several of his songs and Roy Harper is said to have written a song about him.