Michelle
2 years employment
Floor Gal

Miss Ess: I know you are quite the artist. Whose music inspires your visual art? What do you like to listen to while you draw/paint?

Michelle: I have to listen to music when I draw or paint or am making something. What works best for me at the moment is drone-y, abstract, experimental sounds/different noises. I'm really into Philip Jeck's Surf album this week for sure. 
 
ME: What song describes your life perfectly right now?

Michelle: [What] describes my life perfectly right now is Reverend Al Green! Wooo hoooo! Of course! I'm in love and Al Green pops up wherever I go. One time we went to our favorite breakfast diner and they played Al Green songs the whole time we were there. Fancy beer plus fancy chocolate plus fancy Al Green equals good quality couple time.
 
ME: How did you arrive at Amoeba?

Michelle: When I graduated and got my bachelor of fine arts I quit my job at Borders that I'd [had] for my whole 5 years of college; [I was] in charge of the music department. 

Then, I applied to both the Berkeley and Haight [Street] Amoebas; I love music, it fit my schedule, and [there are] creative people all over the place. [That] is what led me to the store. I'd cut high school just to go to shop at Amoeba; I always admired the people working there too.
 
I wanted to work at the Haight [Street] store but Berkeley hired me first. I was there for about half a year and transferred over to the Haight [Street] store and here I am now.
 
ME: What was it like to meet Mick Jones when he came in the store?

I remember a while back, one of the gossip sites was giving Beyonce Knowles a bunch of crap for posing in numerous photos with her arms up behind her head. She always looks great, so I guess it was a very slow news week or something to that effect.  Anyhow, here's a batch of covers with people also showing off their pits-- some au naturel, some shorn, some covered up.

BTW, Nugent is the king of said pose; there's almost always at least one pic of him doing it on his album covers or inner sleeve.

Well, here they come...The men in the white suits...and sweaters and horses bodies and whatever the hell Menudo is wearing. Kinda looks like a karate uniform mixed with PJ's. Maybe that's what they had to wear for the band slumber parties...

"This Amoeba thing is getting to be very catchy," said Houston from the stage of her SF in-store appearance. (She was referring to her other appearance earlier in the year at the Hollywood store.)



The 61-year-old daughter of a Southern cotton farmer turned disco diva is touring in support of her new CD, A Woman's Touch, which is a mix of covers from people like Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye, and Sting. Houston explained to the crowd why all of the songs that she sang were originally done by men, and not women, considering the name of her record: "Once Gladys, Chaka, or Aretha record a song," she said, "you don't need to go there!"




The audience was loaded with old queens (this being SF, after all), all there to pay homage to the woman who sang one of the top ten disco songs of all time, "Don't Leave Me This Way."


But besides being a disco icon, Houston is also an accomplished stage actress, and it showed in her delivery. She came out to the platform dressed like Tina Turner, in a tight tunic and leggings, with a shock of neatly dredded hair in a ponytail cascading around her. She placed a top hat upon her head, which had gigantic feathers dripping off of it. "This is my good luck thing," she joked, "my good voodoo spirit."


Accompanied only by a backing track and a microphone, she lit into her first song, "Wake Up," and then into an Al Green cover, "Love and Happiness." Before she sang it, she told the crowd a story about Al Green, and how she and a certain male friend of hers both had a crush on him in the '70s. "[This was] before the grits," she joked, referring to Green's run in with the law, a hot pot of porridge, and his woman's back.