“Music to Browse Books To”
The neighborhood had everything that one could want or need. Or at least everything I needed at the time. If I’m being honest, for large stretches of time I didn’t even need the whole neighborhood. Just a few blocks.
I drank enough coffee at that time to be a regular at three different coffee stands. One was known for their high quality pour. Another offered a reasonably priced twenty ounce cup when I needed something big. The third was the cheapest and, while tolerable, you get what you pay for.
There was a liquor store where the old guy that ran it remembered my spirit of choice. He was always ready to suggest something better when I had a bit more money and was never judgmental when I had to go cheaper. I’d often bump into him on the street. He used the opportunity to talk to me about his hobbies which included hoarding safes, buying iPods at pawn shops to get the music off of them, and collecting guns.
Walk around enough on those few blocks and you’d see just about everyone. You’d see the woman that worked at the video rental place in line for coffee. Your barista would be drinking at your favorite bar. Your bartender would be eating at the Tragic Dragon, a Chinese food place that wasn’t good but whose defenders justified it with a “they have such big portions.”
If those portions weren’t big enough you could go to El Aparador and load up at their all you can eat buffet. I wasn’t a fan but I did like walking all the way to the back of the restaurant to drink margaritas at the bar. People rarely sat back there so no matter what was going on in the restaurant you felt like you had a bit of privacy.
For those who didn’t need to overindulge on food there was Commedia Pizza that offered cheap slices. It seemed like everyone in the neighborhood had worked there at some point. Maybe I should have applied there when I moved to town. Instead, I applied and got a job at Vertiefung, the record store next door to the pizza shop.
To say it was a “record store” was a bit of a stretch. This was long before Vinyl is Back!!! headlines polluted publications. Vertiefung stocked CDs, video games, and DVDs, including a porn section in the back. There was a small amount of vinyl, but more space was devoted to the porn DVDs. Which was understandable, they brought in more money. I suspected that the store’s owner found records annoying. Or at least she found it annoying when I added LPs when we ordered from our distributors. The UPS driver would wheel in large boxes. She’d tear them open, anxious to check the invoice and make sure we got everything we ordered. Sometimes among the shiny shrink wrapped DVDs and CDs was a 12 inch by 12 inch cardboard box protecting the records I ordered. She’d pull it out looking at it like the cardboard box itself had passed gas. She’d look at me and although knowing the answer would ask “Is this yours?” My “Yes” always came off with a tone like I myself had just passed gas.
I didn’t just collect records. I had stacks of tapes and CDs too. I even had some burned CDs. Mostly mixes people had made me. I never had a computer so I never burned any CDs for myself. As part of my training at Vertiefung, I was shown how to operate the store’s computer’s CD/DVD burner. While some workplaces provide snacks or coffee our store had a bottomless spindle of blank discs. This wasn’t a perk of the job, but rather a calculated measure to prevent employee theft.
The ability to burn discs was also a bit of currency with other businesses on the block. I could trade a burned copy of Arular by M.I.A for a smoothie or get a haircut in exchange for a burned copy of Kanye West’s Late Registration. Once I had a long conversation about Hitchcock movies with a guy who was a cook at a nearby restaurant. A few weeks later a used copy of Rebecca came into the store. It was out of print and fetched quite a lot of money. I burned a copy, put it in an envelope and dropped it off at his restaurant. When dining at the restaurant surprise desserts were often delivered at the end of my meal.
The hookup wasn’t a one for one exchange. You burned someone a disc and if the conditions were right when you saw them at their job they hooked you up. Nothing could be expected and you never spoke openly about it.
One place that I never tried to exchange discs with was BC Books, the neighborhood bookstore. It’s not that the people at the bookstore didn’t listen to CDs or watch movies. The store and its employees seemed a bit more sophisticated. BC Books seemed to be the opposite of Vertiefung. They were clean and organized, while Vertiefung resembled a junk pile. The employees of the bookstore seemed to like their boss, while the record store employees worked under a haze of fear and repulsion.
Even people who didn’t come in could tell the difference by walking by the stores. Outside of Vertiefung were cardtables filled with VHS covers bleached by the sun. Outside of BC books was a sandwich board. Each day one of the employees would write a first line from a famous book. “I first saw Hundreds Hall when I was ten years old.” “It was a dark and stormy night.” “All this happened, more or less.” “They shoot the white girl first.” “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
If you knew it you could come in and get 20% off the books you bought. This was an era before most people had mobile devices connected to the internet. Walking by and knowing the answer was gratifying in a way that is hard to describe. The rush of remembering was better than any monetary discount. Not knowing it created a sense of wonder. It was also a bit of poetry injected into your daily walk around the neighborhood.
One of the employees picking out those first lines was Kate. Kate was a bit older than me both in years and maturity. While I had waited until my late 20s to go to college, Kate was already years into her career. She only worked at the bookstore part time, mostly because she always worked at bookstores. She loved bookstores and books and even looked like a character out of a book. Tall, skinny, bespectacled, well dressed, vaguely Edwarian. We chatted when I was in her bookstore and she was in my record store and soon we were closer to colleagues despite not actually working together. We knew each other’s schedules and would pop in even if we didn’t need to shop. When we did need to shop I got the discount even if I did know the first line that day and Katee miraculously only picked items from our dollar bin.
Like many work friendships, eventually ours transferred outside of work life. Coffees, dinners, seeing bands play shows. Once we went to a movie and while waiting for the trailers to start I pointed out a woman sitting by herself. “That’s one of my favorite customers.” Kate gave me a look and said “I was just about to tell you that’s one of my favorite customers.” We laughed. I secretly hoped that later on the woman told a friend “I went to the movies and saw the woman from the bookstore and the record store guy together.”
One day Kate stormed into Vertiefung and started furiously browsing the CDs. “Ugh, I’m bored with all the CDs we have at the bookstore. Do you have any suggestions?” My eyes lit up. The chance to curate the soundtrack to a bookstore. It was a dream come true.
I like lots of different types of music. I want to hear the sweet melodies of It’s Love by The Softies just as much as I want to feel the rush from the abrasive noise of Landed’s Everything's Happening. I can enjoy the absurdist avant garde satire of Men’s Recovery Project’s “Smoking that Magic Rock (Zionist remix)” or the sincerity of Poems, Prayers & Promises by John Denver. There are times when I just want to share the silence. Everything has its time and everything has its place. Every moment has the perfect soundtrack. Often I’m in situations where the experience is almost ruined by music that just doesn’t fit. I didn't ask Kate if I could make some mix CDs for the store, I just told her I was going to do it. I didn’t ask or expect anything in return.
People think that working in a record store is sitting around listening to music. It is certainly not. You have to deal with needy customers who often don’t know what they want, new stock being delivered that has to go out, and the endless and sometimes arduous chore of people trying to sell you their collections. There was never a time when there was nothing to do. Still, I ignored all the tasks that were expected of me and started assembling my three volume “Music to Browse Books To” series. When the mixes were completed I delivered them to Kate and waited. I needed to know what she thought of them. I had made plenty of mix tapes and CDs for people before, but for some reason I was more concerned about these. Maybe because I hadn’t made them for a person but for a type of person. The type of person browsing an independent bookstore.
Kate told me she liked them, but, as with most compliments people give me, I don’t trust it and assume they are just being nice. It wasn’t good enough for me to hear it, I had to see it. I started slipping into the bookstore when I knew Kate was working in hopes she was playing one of the mixes. I’d pull books off the shelf only to use as a ruse to peer at the people actually looking for books. It never worked out and I abandoned that plan. Not because it was creepy, I could deal with that. I stopped because I realized that if I did my job right then they would not react at all. The whole point of the mix was for people to be entertained without being distracted so they could find just the right book.
One day I popped into the bookstore and Red was at the counter. Red was a veteran bookstore worker who could count their time in the book business in decades rather than years. Red also looked like they would be more comfortable working as a mechanic than as a bookseller. Blue collar clothes and granny framed glasses. Without looking up from the stack of books they were pricing, Red said “Kate's in back.”
I had developed enough of a relationship that I had unspoken permission to ignore “Staff Only” signs on the doors of the bookstore. When I pushed through the door I found Kate standing at a desk tearing the covers off of a stack of magazines. The covers went into an envelope that was sent to the distributor so the bookstore could be credited for unsold magazines. People think that working at a bookstore is just sitting around reading. It is certainly not.
“Why aren't my CDs playing?!?” I griped sarcastically as I barged in.
Without making eye contact, Kate retorted, “I’ve already listened to them today!” and headed through the door back to the front of the store. I quickly followed her to the front counter. When you’re at work, even if you are talking to a friend, it feels more comfortable behind the counter.
Once she was in her safe zone Kate said, “You know the woman who works here with the glasses?”
I frowned a little bit before shifting my eyes at Red and back to Kate. “Doesn’t everyone who works here wear glasses?” I said.
“Ugh, yeah but the big glasses, her name is Abby.”
With the comic timing of a vaudeville act Red interjected, “Rhymes with crabby.”
Kate rolled her eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was because she had heard the joke too often or if she was mad at Red for letting an outsider overhear an inside joke. She continued, “Well, she has always been really snobby to me for no reason.”
“No reason at all?”
“Does insecurity count as a reason?”
“I think it is an explanation, not a reason.”
“Anyway, those CDs have given me some credibility with her. She still hates me, but maybe she loves me too. I don’t know, but she wants to make me some CDs too.”
“That’s nice.”
“Well, I think it is her way of competing with your CDs.”
“Ah, I see. Bookstore girl makes better mixes than record store boy.”
“Exactly.”
It was then I realized who the real audience for my CDs was, the staff of the bookstore. Even if you love your job, being in the same place everyday can be monotonous. The tunes need to be good. If my mixes inspired another music nerd to try and outdo them they must have done their job.
If you are wondering what was exactly on those CDs. Don’t ask me. I haven't the foggiest memory of what I put on them. The location of the CDs is also a mystery. The bookstore closed a few years after I made the mixes. It happened unexpectedly with a short time between when they announced they were closing and the door’s being locked for the last time. Big shelves were sold. Unsold books returned. There was an auction for the more important items like an autographed pair of David Sedaris underwear and the sign that had all the first line quotes.
I have a little fantasy that someone bought a box of miscellaneous items and my CDs were in there. Maybe my mixes were bundled up with other CDs, the stereo, and some speaker wire rolled up neatly. It took a while for this anonymous person to get around to listening to the CDRs labeled in Sharpie with bad handwriting. But when they finally did they found they liked them. After all, any songs that would be good for browsing in a bookstore would be even better as a soundtrack for reading. In my extended daydream the person that bought them is sitting in a comfortable chair, wearing an old cardigan, drinking a mug of tea, listening to my curated songs while getting lost in a book.