Member-only story
Record Store Days
In my college years, I worked at Music Plus Records in Westwood. The store was a retail chain specializing in top-selling commercial music. CD’s were a new thing and we were told to emphasize language not yet accepted into common parlance like “megabyte,” “digital quality” and “bit rate.” When customers asked how CD music compared to vinyl, we used a stock answer written by our corporate bosses. “CD’s are superior due to greater signal-to-noise ratio, less turntable hissing and better stereo channel separation.”
It was all bullshit of course. But we repeated the mantra to keep our jobs.
The staff was a collection of misfits and musicophiles. There was Ricky, a Vietnam Vet who played in a Thin Lizzy cover band. Alejandro was a cross-dressing pre-med student who loved singing Prince songs at Karaoke bars. Suzie was a hippy-ish Deadhead who practiced taxidermy on the side. “Bad Luck” Benjy was a punk rocker with a drug problem.
The store manager was an ex-metal guitarist named Dave Selznick. After struggling through a failed music career in the 70s, he cut his hair, bought a few suits and supplicated himself to the world of corporate ass kissing. His oft-stated goal was to lift the store’s profit margin over 30%. If he could sustain this for three consecutive months, he’d be promoted to corporate and kiss the retail world goodbye.
