The vaguely menacing charm of vintage postcards.

When on vacation, I am a social snob. It breaks down this way: If you are a resident of where I’m vacationing or its surrounding area, I’ll love to talk with you. Whether banal chit-chat, deep, psychological explorations, or wildly unfounded and ignorant political positioning, I love hob-knobbing with a local of Anytown, Planet Earth.

However, if you are a tourist like me, every second I spend in your presence is like chalk being scrapped down my gutted and exposed spine. Ever seen the movie Somewhere in Time? There’s a moment where the hero discovers a reminder of where he comes from, and it shatters the paradise he’s discovered. That’s what another tourist’s face is to me: a shinny penny sucking me into a loveless present where the only escape is death.

“What do I do for a living? Apparently, I suffer fools gladly. And you?”

Make no mistake: I am not proud of this. It doesn’t come from a sense of elitism, rather, a jealous and desperate need for freedom from the burden of self-identification. I am often exhausted being me, and vacationing offers a rare moment where I get to be a different fellow. If I’m constantly having to re-establish myself to others as “a writer from Los Angeles,” etcetera, it won’t matter that I’m fiendishly clever and dashingly handsome – I’ll still be sick of my effing face.

The boyfriend doesn’t have this problem. Though technically an introvert, according to the Keirsey Temperament Scale, he can navigate most any social situation with aplomb. A master at multi-tasking, he’s capable of satisfying endless rounds of small talk by using them as an opportunity to gather useful information and think about what he needs to do at the office the next day. I, on the other hand, am locked into whatever conversation I’m having, heart and soul – so if it’s small talk, I start to suffer from claustrophobia.

There is a tradition in the Latin section that doesn’t exist in the rest of the store. It’s the autographed bin cards. The bin cards are the separators between the CDS, DVD, and LPS that help you find your favorite releases. When I started working at Amoeba Hollywood several years ago, there was only one autograph bin card. It was from Alex Lora from El Tri. Legend had it he came into the store before a show and some fans recognized him and started a mini-ruckus in the Latin Rock and Pop section. A former co-worker and Amoeba favorite, Joyanne Troutman, decided to get Alex to autograph the bin card. Although being mobbed, he thought it was funny to be asked to autograph his bin card, so he did. That’s how it started.

We now have over two-dozen autograph bin cards throughout the Latin section, most of them, acquired by Paul Vasquez, World Music employee since 2006. I asked him a few questions about why and how this happened.

What was the first autograph bin that you had signed?

It was Rodrigo Y Gabriela. They did an in-store performance and I thought they were so cool that I wanted an excuse to talk to them. By then we had a few autograph bins that Joyanne and other World Music employees have gotten so I told them it was a tradition, which it is now.

How do you get the autographs? Are they all from in-store performances?

Some are, but most of them come from the artists themselves shopping at the store or people they are with introduce us to them. For instance, a friend of Los Tres Reyes introduced the members to me while they were shopping at the store. I love their music but I wouldn’t have recognized them.

Was there anyone that refused to autograph the bin card?

UPDATE - July 1 - Unfortunately, all our free passes for the advance screening of Beats, Rhymes & Life are gone. But you can still catch the film when it opens in LA and NY on July 8.


Special advance screening event for Amoeba fans! Visit Amoeba Hollywood starting Thursday, June 30 to get a ticket to a special advance screening of Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, a new feature documentary about one of the most influential and groundbreaking musical groups in Hip-Hop history. Limit 1 pass per person please (each pass admits you + guest).

In 2008, director, actor, and longtime Tribe fan Michael Rapaport went on tour with A Tribe Called Quest when they reunited for the first time in the almost ten years since their last album, The Love Movement (Jive). Rapaport wanted to create a film that documented the tour and explored the group's journey, successes, interpersonal differences, and their influence on the Hip-Hop community and music in general. The film also features interviews and stories from Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, Common, Beastie Boys, Pharrell, Mos Def, Kanye West, Pete Rock, and many more. Plus, Madlib provided original music for the film and Peanut Butter Wolf was its music supervisor.

Amoeba is pleased to present an advance screening and special Q&A with Michael Rapaport and Peanut Butter Wolf at the Los Angeles Film School on Thursday, July 7 at 7pm. Tickets to this event are free & available starting Thursday June 30 at Amoeba Hollywood. Just ask for them at the info counter. Limit 1 pass per person (each pass admits you + guest).

This week our Hollywood store will unleash a massive collection of rare library LPs. For those of you who might be a little confused as to what exactly library/production records are, these LPs contain music produced and owned by production music companies, who licensed the music to film, television, radio, record producers and other composers. The music was produced with the most accurate attention to a generic style or context, so that it would fit with any precise musical needs of the user.  This is a rare opportunity to browse bin after bin of obscurities from all the famous and sought-after production library companies including but not limited to De Wolfe, KPM, Colorsound, Sonoton, Hibou, Spectrum, CREA, Valentino, Intersound, Telemusic, Boosey & Hawkes, Bruton, Intl. SFX, Chappell.  This collection consists of all genres and styles of music, from psychedelic rock and jazz to electronic and symphonic background scores, ethnic styles are represented and there are plenty of LPs featuring solo instruments such as drums, synths, bass, guitars & more. Please check out the buy stuff section on our website for more of these titles.

Last Saturday marked the end of my nearly eight years of employment at Amoeba Music Hollywood.

Okay – right away I can hear your breathing start to quicken and your heart-rate speed, so let me say right off that I will still be contributing to the Amoeblog. I struck a deal with management that, in exchange for writing my thoroughly researched and factually accurate lies and nonsense as I have been, I will be permitted access to the Amoeba Music break-room for all the free coffee I can drink from the hours of 4:30 pm to 5:45 pm, every Tuesday. Jealous?!?

A lot of people have been asking me what I’ll be doing now that I’ll no longer be working retail. My answer is simple.

Anyway, I want to share some of the sounds that have been weakening my knees for a while now; specifically, harmonizing vocal groups. (To be clear, I’m going to focus on more “popular vocal” groups of yesteryear – doo wop delights like The Flamingos and modern… err… marvels such as Color Me Badd will not be included.)

To start, let’s listen to one of my favorite harmonizing vocal groups of all time, The Ravens.

The Ravens
(...well, actually, it's just a picture of them on your computer)