RECORD STORE DAY!!
April 19th, 2008 - San Francisco
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Reviewed by V. Vale
On Saturday, April 19th I went to Amoeba Music on Haight Street in San Francisco, to play a couple choice albums for Record Store Day. I hadn't been to Amoeba much as I live in North Beach, which is "far away" by my standards. I parked in the old Cala lot across the street where Toyota was doing a weird promotion: test-drive a new Scion and receive $15 in Amoeba store credit. I passed through a line of young people waiting for their test-drives, jaywalked across the street, and entered the doors of Amoeba.
Audra Wolfmann, whom I had seen perform at the Hypnodrome Theater and had actually met about ten years ago through my friend Paul Spinrad (The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids), took me right over to the stage and its two turntables. It was then that I realized the hugeness of Amoeba. I looked across the room and told Audra, "This is bigger than the Fillmore Auditorium!" She said, "You should go to the Hollywood store. It's almost twice as big!" I told her that I have never visited the Hollywood location but had been to the Berkeley store on Telegraph Avenue. It was smaller but, of course, totally jammed with good stuff.
As I'm lazy and wanted to meet and talk to people (not just spin discs on the deejay stage), I handed my RE/Search "Incredibly Strange Music #2" and Jean Jacques Perrey's "Circus of Life" CDs to Brett Stillo, guitarist of CRIME (one of the first 70's Punk Rock bands in San Francisco), who was there as my assistant deejay. I figured these two CDs would last for the allotted hour. That was the first time I had heard either CD at such a loud volume, and all this incredibly strange music sounded great! I heard happy, humorous textures, nuances, and contrasts in the Jean Jacques Perrey album that I'd never heard before.
A woman came rushing up and said, "What IS this? I want to buy it!" Audra immediately took her to the Jean Jacques Perrey section across the store, and I thought to myself, "How many stores have a J.J. Perrey SECTION?!" Most people have never heard of him. I remember when I had to hunt in record stores all over the world to assemble my collection of his LPs -- and I still haven't found his 10" "Mr Ondioline," but maybe someday.
Jello Biafra, the founder and vocalist for the Dead Kennedys, was booked for the same 4-5pm time slot to answer questions at the Information booth. There was an impressively long line of people holding records and waiting patiently to meet him. In between talking to people who had come to meet me, I went to eavesdrop at Biafra's booth and heard him on a rant against both McCain and Clinton as being unwilling to cut the military budget for Iraq. Hmm...Biafra knows a lot about the workings of politics and what really matters -- more than anyone else I know -- and I always try to go to his spoken word shows just to get updated on "the real deal."
Out of curiosity, I darted into the adjoining smaller DVD room which turned out to be crammed with films I wanted to see. In just a few seconds I spotted a documentary on Luis Bunuel, a Roger Corman boxed set, a John Waters boxed set, a Mario Bava boxed set…too much! When I entered the DVD room I was astounded to be suddenly immersed in very loud punk rock; by some trick of acoustics, you couldn't hear it at all until you entered the room. To check myself I went back to the main room and, sure enough, my incredibly strange music selections were still booming throughout the main room. It's amazing how each room self-contained its own music, even though there was no door between them.
At 5:15 pm the line for Biafra autographs and meet-and-greets was finally ending, so I went to talk to him. I haven't seen him for a couple months. Immediately he said, "You should do Incredibly Strange Music Volume Three and Incredibly Strange Films Volume Two. There's this person who has collected hundreds of these corporate promotion records. Corporations would hire groups to write and perform music promoting their company, and they're definitely incredibly strange." (Mental note to follow up on this.) We talked about Wesley Willis -- Biafra's Alternative Tentacles record company had put out four of his records -- and it turned out Willis had put out about FIFTY records, writing one every two weeks or so. Who knew that an inexpensive Casio keyboard could churn out that much music?
I asked Biafra, who is constantly crisscrossing the planet on spoken word tours, "You travel a lot; how many independent record stores do you think have gone out of business in the past ten years?" I was both shocked and not surprised when he said, "Two thousand! Awhile ago I read in the paper that 1,500 had gone under, and now it has to be about 2,000." Then he started naming the stores in San Francisco that had passed. I was glad that Amoeba was not only still here but thriving. The store was filled with hundreds of people browsing everywhere. If the world gets to the point where you can ONLY buy the obscure music you crave on the Internet, then there won't be any point in living in a city where there are beacons of music like Amoeba.
Personally, I think all independent book, record, and movie stores (as well as independent shoe repairmen) should be given free rent and subsidized just so we can still congregate at them in search of something rare and unexpected. How else can we make serendipitous finds? These stores should be viewed not as for-profit spaces but subsidized as educational.
The culture contained in less-mainstream books, records, and movies is the real-life education that ideally continues up to the bitter end. When society places education at the bottom of its priorities, then we know we're in big trouble. The passion for learning is identical to the passion for living. There are always those of us who want to know more and more, and who value art stemming from independence, eccentricity, and the wildest expressions of the unfettered imagination.
-- V. Vale, founder of RE/Search and Search & Destroy
www.researchpubs.com
On Saturday, April 19th I went to Amoeba Music on Haight Street in San Francisco, to play a couple choice albums for Record Store Day. I hadn't been to Amoeba much as I live in North Beach, which is "far away" by my standards. I parked in the old Cala lot across the street where Toyota was doing a weird promotion: test-drive a new Scion and receive $15 in Amoeba store credit. I passed through a line of young people waiting for their test-drives, jaywalked across the street, and entered the doors of Amoeba.
Audra Wolfmann, whom I had seen perform at the Hypnodrome Theater and had actually met about ten years ago through my friend Paul Spinrad (The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids), took me right over to the stage and its two turntables. It was then that I realized the hugeness of Amoeba. I looked across the room and told Audra, "This is bigger than the Fillmore Auditorium!" She said, "You should go to the Hollywood store. It's almost twice as big!" I told her that I have never visited the Hollywood location but had been to the Berkeley store on Telegraph Avenue. It was smaller but, of course, totally jammed with good stuff.
As I'm lazy and wanted to meet and talk to people (not just spin discs on the deejay stage), I handed my RE/Search "Incredibly Strange Music #2" and Jean Jacques Perrey's "Circus of Life" CDs to Brett Stillo, guitarist of CRIME (one of the first 70's Punk Rock bands in San Francisco), who was there as my assistant deejay. I figured these two CDs would last for the allotted hour. That was the first time I had heard either CD at such a loud volume, and all this incredibly strange music sounded great! I heard happy, humorous textures, nuances, and contrasts in the Jean Jacques Perrey album that I'd never heard before.
A woman came rushing up and said, "What IS this? I want to buy it!" Audra immediately took her to the Jean Jacques Perrey section across the store, and I thought to myself, "How many stores have a J.J. Perrey SECTION?!" Most people have never heard of him. I remember when I had to hunt in record stores all over the world to assemble my collection of his LPs -- and I still haven't found his 10" "Mr Ondioline," but maybe someday.
Jello Biafra, the founder and vocalist for the Dead Kennedys, was booked for the same 4-5pm time slot to answer questions at the Information booth. There was an impressively long line of people holding records and waiting patiently to meet him. In between talking to people who had come to meet me, I went to eavesdrop at Biafra's booth and heard him on a rant against both McCain and Clinton as being unwilling to cut the military budget for Iraq. Hmm...Biafra knows a lot about the workings of politics and what really matters -- more than anyone else I know -- and I always try to go to his spoken word shows just to get updated on "the real deal."
Out of curiosity, I darted into the adjoining smaller DVD room which turned out to be crammed with films I wanted to see. In just a few seconds I spotted a documentary on Luis Bunuel, a Roger Corman boxed set, a John Waters boxed set, a Mario Bava boxed set…too much! When I entered the DVD room I was astounded to be suddenly immersed in very loud punk rock; by some trick of acoustics, you couldn't hear it at all until you entered the room. To check myself I went back to the main room and, sure enough, my incredibly strange music selections were still booming throughout the main room. It's amazing how each room self-contained its own music, even though there was no door between them.
At 5:15 pm the line for Biafra autographs and meet-and-greets was finally ending, so I went to talk to him. I haven't seen him for a couple months. Immediately he said, "You should do Incredibly Strange Music Volume Three and Incredibly Strange Films Volume Two. There's this person who has collected hundreds of these corporate promotion records. Corporations would hire groups to write and perform music promoting their company, and they're definitely incredibly strange." (Mental note to follow up on this.) We talked about Wesley Willis -- Biafra's Alternative Tentacles record company had put out four of his records -- and it turned out Willis had put out about FIFTY records, writing one every two weeks or so. Who knew that an inexpensive Casio keyboard could churn out that much music?
I asked Biafra, who is constantly crisscrossing the planet on spoken word tours, "You travel a lot; how many independent record stores do you think have gone out of business in the past ten years?" I was both shocked and not surprised when he said, "Two thousand! Awhile ago I read in the paper that 1,500 had gone under, and now it has to be about 2,000." Then he started naming the stores in San Francisco that had passed. I was glad that Amoeba was not only still here but thriving. The store was filled with hundreds of people browsing everywhere. If the world gets to the point where you can ONLY buy the obscure music you crave on the Internet, then there won't be any point in living in a city where there are beacons of music like Amoeba.
Personally, I think all independent book, record, and movie stores (as well as independent shoe repairmen) should be given free rent and subsidized just so we can still congregate at them in search of something rare and unexpected. How else can we make serendipitous finds? These stores should be viewed not as for-profit spaces but subsidized as educational.
The culture contained in less-mainstream books, records, and movies is the real-life education that ideally continues up to the bitter end. When society places education at the bottom of its priorities, then we know we're in big trouble. The passion for learning is identical to the passion for living. There are always those of us who want to know more and more, and who value art stemming from independence, eccentricity, and the wildest expressions of the unfettered imagination.
-- V. Vale, founder of RE/Search and Search & Destroy
www.researchpubs.com
