Totally Wired JotW

“I drank a jar of coffee and I took some of these.”

It was my first apartment. It didn’t matter that there was carpet on the kitchen floor or that the phone had been shut off or that the three of us were sharing one bedroom. We had a stereo that was connected to the TV. This meant that you could tape something off the TV onto an audio cassette. Perfect for little samples between songs on a mixtape. 

It also meant that I could tape my friends' VHS copy of The Fall. It was a mix of live performances and promo videos. Fall records were hard to come by and expensive if you did find them. This was an easy way to have a mix of some of their best work. The song on that tape that I hit rewind to hear again and again, that I needed to hear again and again, was a live version of “Totally Wired.” 

I was still a teenager and just discovering worlds of great music that had been waiting there for me. I had never heard anyone sing like Marky Smith and I had never heard lyrics so dense with references yet catchy. But on that song, what hit me the most were the background vocals. They were being delivered by people that seemed like such awkward weirdos. Being an awkward weirdo myself,  I felt a real connection with them. But there was something else. The way they responded “Can’t you see” to Smith’s “I’m totally wired” made me feel like they knew something I didn’t.  It was as if they were quoting some reference I didn’t know.  

It’s like when you become friends with a group of people who’ve already been friends for a while. They have their inside jokes and maybe quote a movie you’ve never seen. But their pronunciation of the quote has changed over time and now they are actually quoting themselves. You start to think it is funny without ever seeing the movie. Can’t you see? The band doesn’t phrase it the same way each time and I can’t figure out if that was intentional or from lack of polished talent. The band seem to revel in their lack of polished talent. The song starts off with the drummer dropping the beat, but that just makes the whole performance better.

As with all Fall songs what really sticks with you is the bass lines. Simple, hypnotic, brilliant. There is a short run of notes that might be my favorite moment in all of music. When people ask me what my favorite song is, I tell them I don’t have favorites. That’s a lie. This is my favorite song. But I can see how someone might not get it. I’d rather not tell them and see the puzzled look in their eye when they listen to it. 

At some point during some move I lost my Fall tape. It would be an understatement to say The Fall has a lot of records. There are albums, live albums, single collections, greatest hits. There are several records with Totally Wired on them, but not the version I needed. For a long time I could only hear it in my head. Once Youtube was around I was able to find my version and figure out, besides being on that VHS, it appears on a live record A Part of America Therein. Of course it was out of print, incredibly rare, and expensive. I came to accept the fact that I probably wasn’t going to be able to pull it off my shelf and play it on my stereo.    

That’s when she walked through the door of the record store I was working at.

You should never judge a book by its cover but working at a record store you sometimes can judge someone’s records by the boxes they are bringing in. She was pushing a two wheel dolly stacked with old UHaul boxes that were practically falling apart. It had all the tell tale signs of someone helping to clean out a grandparent’s attic. I assumed they would be full of Benny Goodman, classical box sets from Time/Life books, and maybe JFK’s inaugural address. But to my utter surprise it was full of nothing but the best punk, post punk, and goth records of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. I told her this was going to take a while. She wrote her name and phone number on the side of the box and left. 

There is this cliche: it must be fun to work at a record store because you get to listen to records all day. This is what people who’ve never worked at a record store think. People who’ve worked at record stores will tell you the best part of working at a record store is flipping through someone’s collection. Especially when they have tastes similar to your own. 

My boss had just left for a month-long trip to South America. I had volunteered to work extra and for the next two days, when I wasn’t being annoyed by customers, I was swimming with glee through this collection. Everything in perfect shape. All first pressings. I entered each record into a spreadsheet with the amount we were going to pay. When I was done the number looked huge and small at the same time. It can get uncomfortable when you put a dollar amount on someone’s collection of memories and their musical taste. I felt like we were offering more than she would get anywhere else in town, but I was still a little nervous when I called the number on the box. When she showed up and I told her the amount, she was taken aback. It was way more than she had expected. 

Except for video gaming culture, there is no space where a woman’s tastes are questioned more than with music. A guy has good taste in music and it’s a reflection of his personality. If a woman has good taste she is often quizzed on how she learned about something or it is just assumed that a boyfriend or maybe older brother is responsible. While buying or selling records I try not to question people. But my gut was telling me this maybe wasn’t her collection. It wasn’t because of her gender, it was because of her age. All the records were from a specific time that ended before she was born. I hesitated a little, but I had to ask. It didn’t take much prodding for her to tell me the whole story.  

She had been kind of a weird kid and didn’t get along with most of her family. Except for an uncle. He always encouraged her, especially with her creativity and art. They had a bond that meant a lot to her during some difficult times. When he died, who would get his records wasn’t even discussed. Everyone in the family knew she deserved them. She had lugged them around for years but was about to make a big move and couldn’t do it anymore.    

Standing behind the counter listening to this story made me teary eyed. Every kid that is a little off of the mainstream dreams of the cool older relative. Every record nerd dreams of a younger kid to pass on their musical knowledge to. It was heartwarming to hear this story. I told her as much as I counted out a large stack of bills. That’s when she said it was only half the collection and she’d bring the rest tomorrow. 

When she was gone I went to the box that had over a dozen rare Fall records. I found A Part of America Therein and put a post-it note that read, “Danny doesn’t want this record, he needs this record.”