The ideas that prompted me to start this blog came all at once; surely they’d been bubbling under for quite sometime, but all in a chain, instances and ideas began to knot themselves together. In a matter of weeks, I had jotted down some beautiful moments that occurred in my life relating to or dependent upon music in one way or another. I took my scribblings and prettied them up for the internet (added hyperlinks and retrospective musings). And then I felt a lull: a sort of ‘Huh… What now?’. I became worried that I’d have nothing to write about. I really wanted to focus on moments of uncontrolled serendipity and avoid writing about a  self-indulgent scenario. I wanted to avoid posting the equivalent of ‘Last night, I put on the perfect song. It’s the best. I’m the best. I get it.’ or a similar fit of narcissism. Well, skeptics beware, I’m afraid I can avoid it no longer. This post flirts with that sentiment:

Today was a beautiful, crisp, blue winter’s day. The sun shone and the air was cold enough to feel like winter, but warm enough to warrant smiles from a handful of strangers as I strolled to work this morning (for those unawares, I wait tables at a restaurant). The positive vibrations carried on through the day, into the lunch rush and swiftly followed me back home. I think everyone felt grateful for such bliss in early February.

The restaurant opens at 11am. Setting up this morning, I was listening to the cheerful, bouncy sounds of Sir Victor Uwaifo, a Nigerian guitar superstar. At about quarter after, the first few tables trickled in. The music had stopped as they came in and I felt obliged to greet the customers, pour them water and finish writing the daily special sign before I got a chance to put something else on.

I should say that, for most of my working life, I’ve been fortunate enough to work at jobs that allow me freedom of the stereo and this job is no exception. I work the floor mostly by myself and therefor, have reign over the ears of our valued patrons. That being said, quite a low percentage of the general public ever comment on the music that gets played in restaurants or cafes (even working in a record shop, the acknowledgement is nearly non-existant), unless it is the dreaded ‘Can you turn that down?’.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Jim O’Rourke and decided to put on his album Eureka, a record that took me a few listens over several years to really appreciate, aside from the opening track, an epically inverted feminist anthem, and his snappy Burt Bacharach cover:

As O’Rourke’s deceptively lite-pop seeped into the room, a woman who was out dining with her parents piped up asked “Hey, what’s this music? I really like it.” I had a hard time pronouncing his last name and opted to write it down, and then handed her the paper. “Oh, O’Rooork” she said. “I’m going to pick this up.”

I was so pleased that someone took notice and appreciated. I also had an afterthought about the inevitable moment when she discovered the relatively unpleasant album cover. I imagined a look of genuine surprise come across her face when she found the hot pink strangeness (pictured in the Youtube video above) that dons the record of accessible pop songs. It’s a pairing I’ve always really admired O’Rourke for, regardless of what I thought of his music.

As the restaurant began to fill and the music ran out again, I decided I needed something to keep me moving and put on the only hip-hop album I would ever play in the restaurant: the under-appreciated, 2008 album The Renaisance by one of the greatest MCs ever, Q-Tip.

Lo and Behold:

“What is this album?” asked a young woman out dining with her husband.

“It’s a Q-Tip album from a few years ago.” I replied from over the counter.

“I’m really enjoying it. I’m so bad at keeping up on new music. What’s it called?” she asked.

“The Renaissance” I said.

“Oh, that’s perfect.” her husband interjected. “We love the Renaissance.”

Two inquiries in one day suggests to me that I had gotten it right today. The public’s ears were wide open and I had hit some kind of stride. I held the second woman to her offering to bring in a list of recommendations upon her return, and await it with great curiosity.

I’ve been home sick for the last few days, reading fiendishly. Right now, I’m plowing through Herzog On Herzog which is one of three Herzog books on my ‘To Read’ stack currently. The straight interview format is perfect for my less-than-sparkling mindstate: I don’t feel well enough to dig deeply into poetry and feel like starting a new novel in this state would be akin to trying to make fists upon waking.

As a big fan of his work, having the director himself meditate on the details surrounding his films (often having to set the story straight against the plethora of myths surrounding them) make it a compelling read. It’s offered great insight into where his films come from, as well as totally changed how I see Herzog. I’ve always imagined him, at least in some part, as an artful prankster purposely playing with people’s perceptions of reality and their sense of what films should be. It turns out he is just a totally earnest individual with a strange way of perceiving the world. He comes across as entirely refined in a very specific, unique manner.

Previously, I was completely enthralled in Michael Ondaatje‘s Coming Through Slaughter (In fact, it was one of three Ondaatje books I’ve read and adored recently). Coming Through Slaughter is a re-imagining of the life of jazz legend Buddy Bolden:

It is a masterful piece of literature that embodies very much the spirit of jazz, particularly all of it’s self-destructive tendancies. Fragmented, free and experimental, Ondaatje’s narrative weaves between the personal and the public, the heartwarming and the profane; it offers a kaleidoscopic view of New Orleans and the partially fictitious Bolden character, revealing all their respective grime and glory. Much of my time spent reading it, I was listening to Miles Davis’ Filles De Kilimanjaro (on recommendation, thanks N!). With it’s textures in turn smooth and prickly, this late 60′s Davis record offered a well-suited, jangly backdrop to Ondaatje’s addictive prose.

I thought I’d post an excerpt (itself a testament to the musically serendipitous) in an attempt to pique some curiosities. It is one of the more moving passages I’ve read relating to music. It’s a passage from the midpoint of the novel that depicts a scene in which Bolden, having pretty much quit life, has just witnessed a performance in Lincoln Park by a young successor and, down-and-out, retreats to the barber shop he once worked at to wallow in solitude. He’s been trailed in secret by Dude Botley. The following is Botley’s account of what transpired:

“He steps out of the park like a rooster ignoring everybody, everything and goes up Canal. I trail him back to the barber shop. There’s wood planks all over the broken glass window and he just rips one out and climbs in, steps off the ice-shelf onto the floor and paces around his arms out to the side like he’s doing a cakewalk. I watch from across the street and soon he’s just sitting there in one of the chairs looking into a mirror. Pretty dark there, not much light. There’s light in the back of the shop and it pours in all over the floor of the shaving parlour and Bolden is restless as a dog in the chair. He shouldn’t be there because he don’t work there any more. This is about eight at night and I’m on the other side of the road shuffling to keep warm because it’s cold and I should be dancing. I can even hear Lincoln Park over the streets.

I see him walk to the back of the parlor where the light is and he come back with a bottle and the cornet. He try first to drink but he begin crying and he put the bottle in the sink. The tears came to my eyes too. I got to thinking of all the men that dance to him and the women that idolize him as he used to strut up and down the streets. Where are they now I say to myself. Then I hear Bolden’s cornet, very quiet, and I move across the street, closer. There he is, relaxed back in the chair blowing that silver softly, just above a whisper and I see he’s got the hat over the bell of the horn… Thought I knew his blues before, and the hymns at funerals, but what he is playing now is real strange and I listen careful for he’s playing something that sounds like both. I cannot make out the tune and then I catch on. He’s mixing them up. He’s playing the blues and the hymn sadder than the blues and then the blues sadder than the hymn. That is the first time I ever heard hymns and blues cooked up together.

There’s about three of us at the window now and a strange feeling comes over me. I’m sort of scared because I know the Lord don’t like that mixing the Devil’s music with His music. But I still listen because the music sounds so strange and I guess I’m hypnotized. When he blows blues I can see Lincoln Park with all the sinners and whores shaking and belly rubbing and the chicks getting way down and slapping themselves on the cheeks of their behind. Then when he blows the hymn I’m in my mother’s church with everybody humming. The picture kept changing with the music. It sounded like a battle between the Good Lord and the Devil. Something tells me to listen and see who wins. If Bolden stops on the hymn, the Good Lord wins. If he stops on the blues, the Devil wins.”

Yesterday was my first day of work after a week of repose and relaxation. My shifted ended at 3:30pm. The sky was blue and the sun was bright. On my walk home, I stopped to pick up some beets to add to a less-than-satisfying borscht I had made the night before. I was determined to make that soup a deep purple, rather than a fleshy, dark pink. Determined to make it ooze with beet sweetness, rather than subtly remind one of what beets tasted like (I made it with golden and candystripe beets, which just aren’t strong enough to make a serious borscht), I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some extras to add to it.

Purple beetroot in my fist, I arrived home. Marching up the stairs, I met my roommate, D, at the landing in our front hallway.

“I’ve come to make things right” I said triumphantly, hoisting the beets above my head.

“I’m going for a skate” said D.

“Ooh, maybe I’ll go for a skate” I replied, immediately letting slip away any resolve regarding my soup.

I left the beets laid across the kitchen table, grabbed my sunglasses and toque and headed for The Oval.

For those unfamiliar, The Oval is a recent addition to The Halifax Commons: a public ice skating oval open most hours of the day, where skates are loaned out by the city with nothing more than a piece of ID necessary as collateral. No admission. No typical municipal fussiness. You just show up and get on the ice. A beautiful thing. On my last visit, I spoke with someone at the offices about programming an evening of music at The Oval. The woman behind the desk was skeptical, citing possible contractual obligations to sponsoring radio stations, but handed me an e-mail address and said “Good luck”.

Since, I have been in e-mail correspondence with one of the staff members who was, surprisingly, open to the possibility. I explained who I was and that I wanted to offer more appropriate programming for an evening, rather than having to hear top 40 dance music while I skated. She was eager to meet and discuss. Unfortunately, our schedules have not allowed that to happen yet. My (and maybe your?) dreams of hearing Ella Fitzgerald and/or Willie Tee blaring from loudspeakers across the Halifax Commons are on hold for the time being.

After my trip there yesterday, the realization of this dream seems all the more essential:

D and I arrived, I borrowed some skates from the skate trailer and we laced up. On our first or second go round, we saw some of our pals at the other side. We stopped to chat briefly while they laced up and then the five of us took to the ice. All with different skating abilities, we weaved in and out of crowds, partnered intermittently with each other and then pushed off to explore the crisp surface by ourselves.

Skating around, I saw plenty of kids ambling awkwardly towards their parents, arms outstretched, words of encouragement being shouted back to them. I saw teens teasing each other and ‘hot dogin”. I saw middle-aged folks, arms clasped gently behind their back, with a lightness in their stride and earnest contentment on their face. The sun was slowly setting over the apartment buildings to the far west.

As D and I rounded the end of The Oval back towards speaker system, I heard an unbelievable thing. It was funny and sad all at the same time.

If you recall the post I made about The Midway Fair in the fall, and you’ve caught on to the title of this post, then you know what I’m talking about:

Really HRM?

Maybe it’s just me, but Ginuwine is just too damn sexy for that scenario. It’s weird. It’s weird and it’s wrong.

The first time I heard Arthur Rusell was in 2008 when Rough Trade issued the posthumous compilation Love Is Overtaking Me. B, my close friend and musical confidant of many years, was listening to the rather soft folk-rock found on the first half of the record. I teased him (as is my way) and mistook it for something akin to James Taylor. Little did I realize, Russell’s diverse musical output and humble persona would have a profound affect on the way I understand artistic identity in the coming years. Here are three distinct instances to which Arthur Russell’s songs have served as the perfect accompaniment:

A Summer Evening On The Northwest Arm:

A popular spot in the summer for locals and tourists alike in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When the sun is shining in the daytime, sailboats from the various yatch clubs cut seams through the still water. Paddle boats dock and depart at regular intervals from the Waegwaltic Club, a private club and “place of history with the luxuries of today” in the South End of Halifax. . Walkers can be seen on the long paths winding around the Dingle Tower (seen above).

At night these spaces transform: the Waeg’s security lights are left on and their pool decks emptied. As a teenager, when the mood struck and the weather was right, we’d hop it’s fences and take short-lived midnight swims. The arm on the water turns to glass. The Dingle darkends and it’s walking paths become a typical spot for less socially acceptable socializing (which also began in High School, but carried on much later in life; even still).

And so it was a typical, quiet summer’s night on the arm: B and I relaxing in the warmth of the evening at the edges of the Dingle Park; legs dangling off a stone wall, looking down the North West Arm towards the city lights. The water emptied of it’s recreations, the park speckled with shadowy figures speaking quietly, crunching pebbles on the paths underfoot, and cars pulling in and out of the parking lot thirty feet inland.

After smoking a bit of pot, B insisted: “You’ve gotta hear this song.”

I obliged by half-grunting, half-humming, in a daze.

Out of a decidedly less than flattering speaker, this song creeps into my ears:

Something about the slight percussion in the background, the warped vocals and the expanse of urban quietude made it sound as if the song were coming from across the water (or maybe beaming in from outer space). It prompted me to say: “Wait, but… listen.. is it?…” really trying to clamp my brain around the bizarre classic.

An Early Afternoon Outside Saint John, New Brunswick:

Late in August, my band headed out on a brief tour of the Maritimes with the short-lived, Sebadoh-steeped Bloodsport. We had booked two shows in one night: the first, a bar show in Saint John, New Brunswick and the second at a friends house/barn outside of Saint John. We opted to open the night at the bar so we could make it to the second show on time. We played at 10pm to a bar of about ten people: the bartenders, my extended family ( aunts, uncles, a few cousins, who were mostly horrified or confused), our singer’s parents, and a man named Jordan (who would later to be known as our “Jordanager”). After the set, we packed up as fast as we could, chatted with the families briefly, wished farewell to our touring mates and began loading our gear back into our truck.

Outside the bar, we were approached by Jordan, a very fabulous and beautiful man, who was really excited about our band. We were flattered, but eager to leave. We explained to him that we had another show to play and had to be on our way. As it turned out, Jordan had traveled from Montreal to see his parents and was looking for a ride to the same neck of the woods the following day. He had grown up near where our show was and offered to tag along, buy us coffees and pitch on gas. After deciding that such a sparkling individual couldn’t be all that harmful, we agreed to take him along with us; not really knowing what to expect when we got there.

We drove out through the city, where the promised caffeine was purchased and consumed. We refueled the truck and disappeared down an off-ramp. We followed a series of very dark back roads at a hectic pace (concerned we’d miss our opportunity to play). Weaving chaotically through the country, Jordan asked us all sorts of surprisingly probing questions and repeatedly insisted that myself and C, our bass player, should hitch our wagon to the star power that was our singer, P.

We pulled up to the only house I recall seeing for a good half an hour. The scene was mostly black and dark green, but at the sides of the houses lighters were being flicked, people were ambling down the long driveway in our headlights and chair circles were populated in the expansive backyard. We met the owner, an old friend of P’s, and he immediately directed us to a cooler of drinks on the back deck.

“Help yourselves” he said, emphatically.

That night flew by: we got set up, helped ourselves, played a raucous set in a jam packed living room, wandered down to the river by flashlight in the wee hours, talked with strangers, discovered uneaten hamburgers in the kitchen and devoured them, and finally passed out on the floor (with pillows generously provided).

Throughout the night, Jordan likened the scene at the barn to a beer commercial. I had to agree. In the morning, his parents arrived to pick him up. In parting, he told us that the party was “the most heterosexual thing he’d ever experienced” and that we had a place to play and sleep should we ever find ourselves in Montreal.

We loaded back into the truck with tongues stuck to the roof of our mouths, the beaming country sun on our backs and a few extra stragglers in the backseat; we headed towards a fry truck ten minutes down the road for breakfast. When I turned my iPod on, Arthur Russell’s “Nobody Wants A Lonely Heart” was cued up (after some forgotten listening session from the night before, no doubt):

Heading towards fried food with strangers in my backseat, looking out into the New Brunswick countryside and hearing this song was one of those indulgent moments that make you feel accomplished or proud about the previous night’s indulgences.

The Pee Wee Theatre Party In Edmonton, Alberta:

I was attending a show at the Wunderbar in Edmonton with my sister, who I was staying with at the time. She decided to leave the show and head to a house party. I wanted to catch the next set, so I decided to stay by myself. She gave me the address which, thanks to Edmonton’s fabulous number system, was all I needed to find my way to this party in a relatively unfamiliar city. It was blisteringly cold that night, and once the show was done, I zipped up my parka and headed out in search of the party.

Some thespians had just taken over a house in a low-key, residential neighborhood. The story, as I recall it, was that it was the home of a wealthy doctor who wasn’t using it and offered it out to the theatre community for a reasonable rent. The folks who secured the spot decided to throw a party to celebrate the newly minted community space.

I wondered up a snow-laden street that looked like all the rest. With minimal coordinates scrawled on a piece of paper in my pocket, I followed the vague thump of dance music in the distance. When I found the house, people were drunkenly spilling out onto the deck, couples left arm in arm. They passed me as the walkway turned to sidewalk and giggled. Surely, this was the place.

Stepping inside, it was total bedlam; a bedlam familiar to those who’ve been at an open house party in the late hours (though it’s always surprisingly to arrive at that hour in media res). There is no natural progression you can imagine, just pure unbridled celebration: shirtless guys with silver hair and gold-dusted torsos, women skulking on the stairwell with hair in their face, cheers and syncopated claps emitting from the kitchen, a chaotic mass of shoes being trampled upon in the front hall, people falling over.  I knew no one there, save for my sister, who was no where to be found.

I wondered the ecstasy of the party, seeing incredible displays of affection, occasionally locking eyes with strangers. There were several TVs set up around the house playing episodes of Pee Wee’s Playhouse on loop. The vibrant madness of the playhouse reflected very much the scene around me: strangers turned and smiled at me in slow motion, streamers hung from the roof, lamps were knocked to the ground, cigarettes were left unattended in ashtrays. At the very back of the house was a raging dance party.

Approaching, I stood briefly at the edges of the darkened dancing room. More shirtless, gold-dusted boys appeared. A few drag queens were grinding near the DJ table. At the center, from the roof hung what looked like a dentist’s light fixture that was being shone all different directions by a myriad of hands. I spotted my sister with a few of her friends in the far corner. Seamlessly, the DJ mixed in the opening of ‘Go Bang’ by Dinosaur L (an alias of Arthur Russell):

I began tapping my fingers against the door frame and, by the time I heard the understated “I wanna see all my friends at once”, I was lost to the party.

* * * * *

Seeing as last year is now last year, I think this will be my final post about it. As a nice final thought on the year, I was asked to submit my favorite Canadian songs from 2011 to Southern Souls. Looking at the list, it’s leaning pretty heavy towards Halifax.

Fair enough: it’s where I live and there is so much good music coming from Halifax right now that it’s hard enough keeping up with it, let alone the rest of the country. That being said, I’m sure if I’d spent less time watching John Maus interviews, I might be more up on what was happening elsewhere in Canada.

But really, the album title We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves alone is enough to inspire a certain curiosity, non?

April brought my empty wallet and I back to the North End of Halifax. I moved into a dreamy home of lovely ladies. I worked my first contract job for the Halifax Jazz Festival, writing program blurbs and eating sweets from the cafe downstairs. It gave me enough money to coast through the summer unemployed (I did work a few odd jobs, including unloading a massive transport truck full of dusty, gawdy, ‘sexy’, Halloween gear into one of those heinous pop-up shops).

I spent most of my early afternoons alone, cooking myself elaborate breakfasts, listening to a lot of reggae. I took up smoking again, and would spend afternoons on my back deck drinking black tea with a cigarette , or, if I felt ambitious enough, I’d bike to the lake.

At night, my roommates would return (often with a straggler or two from the neighborhood) and we’d cook wonderful meals: local sausage, chard, roasted veggies, fresh basil pasta. Afterwards, as 20-somethings are wont to do, we’d have a drink or two. I can recall the sun setting over the alley behind our house, someone doing dishes, the door to the deck being opened to let the cool evening air in, little white tea cups with rings of red wine at the bottoms, the kitchen table populating with paper ephemera.

That was about the time West Coast veteran DJ Quik‘s The Book Of David came out; it was my quintessential 2011 summer album. An album so stuck in the late 90′s, that it had come around again. Easy, breeze-blown hip-hop with stellar beats and one of the crispiest secret tracks I’ve ever heard. It was perfect for transitioning from dinner tunes to party time.

Our house had a secret collection of hip-hop and R&B singles from around the turn of the century. They’d been left there by an old tenant’s boyfriend, who was the superlative Halifax DJ in his day (and is now apparently touring with Azealia Banks). Amidst Destiny’s Child, Kanye West and Dr. Dre singles, we unearthed a baby blue gem that became our jump-off jam; a hilariously/seriously awesome Can-Con classic from our teenage years spent watching Much Music:

Surprisingly, I never burnt out on it. Even though it seemed like we’d listen to it every Friday or Saturday night for the duration of the summer, it was always exciting. I am proud to have it in my collection now, and hope that someday we’ll all be in the same city, so that we might relive those summer nights.

(Image at the top courtesy of ex-tenant, and DJ extraordinaire Mackay For An Eye)

In late February/early March, I was passing through Toronto; watching Deadwood (the greatest television show ever made) with my pal J, swigging whiskey backstage with Makeout Videotape at CMW, visiting beautiful bookstores with A.C., spending some quality time with D (listening to the mighty Orchestre Poly-Rythmo) and telling no one it was my birthday.

On my non-birthday, my favorite artist of the year, Julianna Barwick, was making magic in Paris:

How to understand a whole year?

Piece by piece.

If you’d like to see what albums I thought were really great this year, click here. Otherwise, stayed tuned for a smattering of short-winded posts about things that excited me this year. Firstly…

A video that inspired me to dedicate a lot of my time this year trying to make fun shows happen:

(Camembert drummer/doodle wizard/all-around gem Josh Holinaty is responsible for that fine mural seen at the top of this post which I had the pleasure of seeing waaaaay back in January of 2011 in Edmonton, Alberta.)

Last night, I went to my friend S’s to watch a film. We hadn’t spent much time together in the last month, so before we got to watching, we played catch up. As usual, this means talking as much about listening habits as it does personal life (what other form of life is there?).

We’d been corresponding via e-mail and S had expressed a concern for a stagnation in his musical interests, particularly for 2011, with year-end lists looming on the annual horizon. For him, nothing was ‘new’. Understandably; he was listening to The Fall and  This Heat when I was in tiny trousers. I sent him some links to records that I thought sounded new and exciting this year (which I’ll get to in my year-end round up) and a really enthusiastic message about Nap Eyes, a four-piece from Halifax that just put their first recordings up on Bandcamp. I’d asked S if he’d listened to them yet, but he said he hadn’t gotten around to it.

It’s not often that I become totally hooked on a record, but listening to Nap Eyes has become as essential as eating to me these past few weeks; at least twice daily. Their playing is perfectly loose and jangly, like the first Modern Lovers record. The real addiction, however, lies in the words. Singer Nigel Chapman’s surreal poetry flows out of him as if uncontrolled; at times sharply acerbic, at times tender and earnest. He’s a rare sight around town, so I thought I’d e-mail him to thank him for his beautiful work. I also asked if he would clarify the one phrase that, to my ears, was not discernible on the tape.

Along with a very heartfelt response, Nigel confirmed my suspicions that the first line of “Every Game Is A Game Of Stalemate” ended with the name ‘Rilke’.

I became curious about Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

Being unfamiliar with his work, and with my desk already stacked with reading material, I vowed to spend time with his work in the near future.

And so… I feel I’m loosing focus: S and I watched a film.

We watched Wim Wenders’ absolutely stunning Wings Of Desire. I’d never seen it before, but the opening monologue struck me as familiar. Throughout the film, these phrases return in various forms:

“When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions.

Why am I me, and why not you?

Why am I here, and why not there?

When did time begin, and where does space end?

Isn’t life under the sun just a dream?

Isn’t what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world?

Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil?

How can it be that I, who am I, wasn’t before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?”

These meditations are the fodder for one of the best singles from 2009, Dirty Projectors‘ ‘Stillness Is The Move’:

Still we go deeper…

When I got home after the film, I looked up the lyrics to the Dirty Projectors’ lyrics and e-mailed them to S. With the film still so fresh in my brain, I decided to get some context to it.

A cursory glance at the Wikipedia article told me that Wenders used the works of Rilke as a fodder for Wings Of Desire.

And at this point, we come kinda-sorta full circle in a strange way.

It seems that, as I want the world to know about Nap Eyes, so the world wants me to know about Rilke.

( I am not a huge fan of Nick Cave but Wenders’ use of his music in relation to the theme of serendipity in the film was of great fascination to me.)

Not so long ago, I got (what was, at the time) my dream job: I was hired at a record store. I assume it’s every music geek’s dream to work at a record store. It certainly was mine from the time I paid upwards of $20 for a cassette copy of Me First And The Gimme Gimme’s Have A Ball at the Moncton Radioland in my early teens, through to when I was 17 and saw High Fidelity for the first time, and up to when I was 22 and I started working at this shop, where I scored a mint condition 7” copy of one of my all-time favorite songs when some fool sold it to me for $3.

I have so many fond memories of my two-year stint there: I met all kinds of wonderful music lovers, was hassled by plenty of downtown crazies, worked with some of the coolest people (who turned out to be geeks just like me) and even had a jam space that we all shared above the shop.

Here are some things I learned at the record store:

1. The first two Bee Gees records are really, really good.
2. The more you listen to Paul Stanley’s rants from Kiss Alive on repeat, the funnier they get.
3. One of the best records to ever come out of Halifax is Sixtoo‘s Duration.
4. Too many people care about The Allman Brothers.
5. Not enough people care about David Grubbs:

*   *   *

Recently, I recounted an anecdote from my time working at the shop to a friend, who responded by saying:

“When you start working at a record store, those are the things you hope for. That’s what you’re in it for”.

Here is that anecdote:

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon which meant there were three or four clerks working and hardly anyone coming in the store. Usually we’d spend those days criticizing whatever records got put on or jokingly mistaking the sound of one of us vacuuming as the new Merzbow record. However, this afternoon we had a visitor.

He was disheveled, off-kilter, giving off a pretty intense odour and rambling to himself. He was grey-haired and red-faced; clearly he was a little hard up and, rather than being annoyed as we often were by stragglers of a younger and more obnoxious kind, I think we all felt a little sad for this guy. He came up to the cash and incoherently accused one of us of murdering someone dear to him and proceeded to wander to the back end of the store, half-dancing and half-falling over.

There were no other customers in the store and, along with feelings of pity, we were all a little freaked out by his jerky motions: over the in-store speakers The Replacements‘ Let It Be played, and this man laughed to himself, jumped up and down, twirled about, while intermittently resting on the DVD racks or sitting on the floor. He seemed unpredictable.

After asking him to leave a few times (without any sign of acknowledgement), the manager decided to call the cops. Within about five minutes, two police officers arrived. As soon as the walked in the door, a look of slight relief and familiarity came over their faces.

“Gary” the taller one said sternly. “Okay Gary, it’s time to get out of here.”

The other one turned to us and said “He’s alright. He’s just been acting up lately.”

As they ushered him out in a friendly, almost loving way (the way a parent might help their drunken teenager into the backseat of a car after a first-drunk) the nostalgia-tinged, confusion-focused ‘Sixteen Blue’ played in the store.

Gary rambled quietly under the arm of one of the policemen.

“I know Gary, I know” said the shorter cop in consolation.

After Gary and his escorts left, there was a silence amongst us. Usually we’d make fun of someone, or tease one another about being scared, but something was humbling about this experience. Feeling humbled wore off quickly, though, as it always did at that place:

“Kinda funny,” I piped up “Gary dancing to ‘Gary’s Got A Boner‘.”