It should come as no surprise at this point for me to acknowledge that I might be a little OCD about things, obsessive about elements of pop culture or sports or what have you that, while not being unique to me (because we all want to feel some connection to our fellow man, at least enough to get references on "I Love the Eighties"), are alarming to me at the same time that they're comforting. What is this restless curiousity that dwells within me, to seek out obscure films, books, albums and the like, and does it lead away from the elusive happiness I might seek in these sacred objects? Am I spending so much time in antique stores because I'm looking for books, or am I looking for books because I spend so much time in antique stores? (By the way, "American Pickers" was my gateway drug on reconnecting with my desire to find secondhand books in places that are crammed full with otherwise useless junk).
Yesterday, I went to "Yesterdaze," a record store that is both new and familiar to me. It's new in its location, back in Seneca after a brief layover in downtown Clemson, after which that location's closing it became lost to me, but it's old in that I've been going to it, or places like it, for close to fifteen years. Long after my interest in popular rock music began to stray from the easy-access confines of the Walmart CD shelves (in a fit of youthful indulgence, I even went so far for a time to shun the very idea of buying music at Walmart, though in my defense they edited the naughty words out of rap albums and thus violated the First Amendment), I began to haunt the record stores that stocked all kinds of CDs that you couldn't find elsewhere. And there were quite a few, most of them fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants joints that catered to myself and fellow cast members from the movie High Fidelity (the film having given voice to the voiceless minority in our culture who obsessed over, as John Cusack put it "original, not re-release Zappa albums and rare Smiths singles"). One of the ones that sprang up around this time was Yesterdaze, which is exactly what you'd expect by its "playful" misspelling of the word.
Run by a nice enough guy who looked (and still looks, judging from seeing him yesterday) like he'd done one too many acid trips at Dead concerts back in the day, the store sold that rare and precious totemic object that all music junkies should at some point yearn to collect: old records on vinyl. It didn't matter if the pressings were original or re-issues, not to me anyway; I managed to get some nice Joy Division and Beatles LPs that would eventually look good on my wall or "man-cave," though when I'd get said dwelling was (and remains) hard to say. Plus he had bootlegs of current and past acts that I loved, though (and this is where the falling-out with Yesterdaze and other second-hand record stores began) bootlegs are often bootlegs for a reason: they weren't good enough to be released officially (though on rare occasions, it did turn out to be worth the purchase price). I lost contact with the store after one too many bootlegs that sounded bad on my stereo at home (hey, they sounded great at the shop, right?), and at what point Yesterdaze left the Clemson area I couldn't say.
Last June, after my computer died, it was hard for me to justify buying any new CDs, because the impetus for so much of my record collection over the previous four years (adding them to my iPod) was no longer there. No computer? Can't add the album to my iPod, so I can't just sit around listening to them at home (for I no longer have a home stereo to blast them on). But gradually I began purchasing CDs again, at intervals, at discount prices, and I became, once again, a lurker.
You know those people (guys, mostly) who go into a record store, or a book store, or (well, there aren't any Blockbusters anymore, but you'd see them in there too), and spend an hour or hours just looking through the collections, trying to find something, anything, to justify their coming in. Or maybe it's more about the looking than the finding, the journey being more important than the Journey Greatest Hits you end up with (just kidding, no self-respecting lurker would buy a Journey CD. They're much too mainstream for most lurkers). Anyway, my youthful passion for all things obscure had mellowed over the years, and now I could find equal satisfaction with a Simon and Garfunkel CD as I might once have over a rare Sex Pistols live show on CD (just for the record, live CDs are a gambler's proposition. It depends on the artist more than the recording equipment. Johnny Cash is great live; I'm guessing Nicki Minaj is not). I could still get excited over a new, under-the-radar act (I guess the Decemberists are no longer "under the radar," but I did get some joy out of "discovering" them last year), but there was nothing wrong with letting Phil Collins into my life again after a tumultuous over-saturation of his solo work and Genesis in the Eighties.
Yesterdaze, in short, would not appeal to me now, with its bootlegs of punk acts that never were and records of rock dinosaurs that, while worth listening to, weren't worth buying if I wasn't going to listen to the record or display it on my wall. But I went in anyway, just for old times sake. The smell (or stench) of incense was the first thing I noticed, as well as the predictable "young hipsters combing the racks of vinyl" (though surprisingly, these were females doing the hipster-ing. When did women start to be obsessive about music? This was new). And there was a bookshelve or two with some faded bios of your expected rock gods (the Beatles, the Stones, Lou Reed, and Springsteen), nothing that I couldn't live without. I was beginning to think that this was a waste of time until I started looking at his CD racks and found something I'd been looking for.
Belle and Sebastian are one of my favorite bands, and the one album of theirs that I'd wanted but hadn't been able to get was The Boy With the Arab Strap. I did buy the title song on iTunes (one of the last ones before my comptuer holocaust of late June) and had considered buying the entire album at one point, but finances weren't permitting for such a hefty iTunes purchase. And sometimes, when looking at CD racks at other stores, I'd entertained the idea that it could be waiting, there amongst the "B"s, if I just kept looking. To find it here, where I least expected (and truthfully, didn't want to) find it, was astounding, one of the rare "destination trumps the journey" experiences of my life thus far. The proprietor didn't quite recognize me (he asked if I had worked at a grocery store I never did work at, I'm guessing I could have lied and said that I did, and then we'd strike up a conversation about music which I didn't want to have, because I didn't want to remember how often I'd come away from the store with something I'd thought I wanted only to have it turn out to be a waste of my time and money), and I'm a little ashamed that I came away from there without really acknowledging that, once upon a time, he had been an important conduit in my fandom of old-timey punk and New Wave rock stars. But I might have to go back to Yesterdaze at some point, because the B&S CD wasn't the only one I saw that I'd want to get, and the prices are reasonable (they're used CDs, so you can't charge too much for them). Maybe then I'll let him know that I used to come in, that I was the arrogant kid who only wanted Joy Division bootlegs, and that I was that same kid who didn't realize that stores like his were a haven, a place to educate myself about much more than some moody Mancunian bastards with a death wish and a drum machine. Music has been and will probably my overwhelming obsession pop-culture-wise, because it has that hold on me. As long as I come away with something that enhances my life, it can't really be a waste of money, can it?
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