Tiny Music... Songs from the Last Record Store
11:00 AM
on a Saturday
Geneva, IL
Under the racks of records are large stacks of used albums, taken from what seems like a thousand dank basements. The smell of unburned incense permeates the store, and fluorescent light falls on purple walls. Tacked-up flyers flicker key words to a story you’ve heard in doorways like this for as long as you can remember: That rarest of drummers is needed—the type who is not a flake, is not a drug addict, and has his own transportation; a blues festival and barbecue is happening next month in a suburb just a few miles away; there’s a car for sale that runs great, and someone needs $1,100 or best offer in exchange for it.
As I sit in my car outside of the new weekend gig, I’m awash in memories of my first foray into rock n roll: wayyy back in 2010, freshly dropped out of college, and ready to make up for lost time on what I felt I had been missing. Seeing as my teenage years were dedicated to exploring the discographies of Stone Temple Pilots, The Strokes, Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Arctic Monkeys, & MGMT, it only made sense that I would one day finesse my way into concerts, touring, artist management, and live production. It sounded so perfect: Life on the road. Fresh air. New city every night. Hotels. Getting paid to see the world.
Only thing was that I didn’t know how to get into the industry. Having to start somewhere, I took a job working 10 x 10 booths at street festivals promoting Chevy cars and selling Illinois Lottery scratch tickets. This was surely going to be my in! I figured, “Hey, suck it up for a few years, prove that you can handle a physically-demanding life on the road, and leverage this into a job.”
I think about this while standing at the register. The store is slow, so I thumb through records, ultimately landing on the Pixies’ Doolittle, which is available on CD and cassette. The cassettes here are always in one of those long skinny theft-prevention cases that you hardly see anymore. I remember cashiers fumbling with those when I used to buy CDs at this music shop on 47th and Kedzie. The store had these over-ear headphones attached to the aisles and every Tuesday you could walk in and listen to snippets of that week’s new releases. I’d wear those store headphones for hours debating what I was going to spend my $20 on.
These days, the record store is only a nostalgia trip if, like me, you’re one of those people who one day stopped going. That music store at 47th and Kedzie I went to as a kid, and I’m blanking on the name, shut down over a decade ago. But in Geneva, Illinois, Kiss the Sky Records is still here. In this tiny town, thirty-five miles outside Chicago, the neighborhood record store still lives.
I’ve dedicated the next few weeks here to accomplish a few things: 1) I want to remember what things were like before I started stealing my music on a laptop; to remember what it’s like to kill a five-hour shift; to remember what it’s like to even be in a record store; to kill this writer’s block.
I’m standing in front of the register, awkwardly, for a good fifteen minutes before my first customer approaches the counter with a used copy of the Beatles’ Revolver. He’s got long hair and he’s wearing a weed leaf T shirt, torn jeans, and one of those belts that’s braided from thin leather strips. I haven’t seen this particular ensemble since I watched That 70’s Show. This guy dresses like a 40 year old who did a little too much acid in college and I’d like to think he spends his weekdays in a trance of ignoring unpaid parking tickets, developing minor respiratory infections, and not showing up for court dates.
“I’ll bet he’s lived a fuckin’ life, man,” I think to myself. Only thing is, the man standing in front of me in this getup is 14 years old at most.
“Hey, yeah, I’ll take this one please.”
The panic of being a clerk for the first time in fifteen years hits me. Should I say, ‘Can I help you?’ or ‘Welcome to Kiss the Sky’ or something? Jesus, I’m so much older than this kid. I wonder if he thinks I was placed at this job through some sort of prisoner-release program. I open my mouth to say hello, but what comes out is some strange World’s Greatest Dad monologue I didn’t know I was capable of.
“Okaaay, all set there, guy? So, is this a gift? No? Okay, you’re buying it for yourself? Well, that’s great. I first listened to this one when I was about your age, probably. Pretty cool, huh?!”
The kid is expressionless. He kind of nods yes but mostly looks away while Mike, co-founder of Kiss the Sky, reaches around me to ring him up, gently instructing me along the way.
“So, first you ask him if that will be cash or charge,” Mike tells me.
“Will that be cash or charge?” I parrot back.
“Okay, so you take the cash, put in the amount—$20—then hit your total button. Out of twenty…” It’s occurring to me that Mike thinks I might be mildly stupid. Maybe he himself suspects that I’m here through a prisoner-release program.
“Out of twenty…,” I slowly repeat, aiding in his suspicion.
“And it tells you that $1.80 is his change.…,” Mike says.
“Annnnd, $1.80 is your change,” I say, a little too proudly.
Mike has the record in a bag, but doesn’t hand it over right away.
“And I’ll usually tell them: We do have a return policy on used vinyl. If there’s anything wrong with that, you can just bring it back for store credit. But taking a look at it here, it looks like it’s in pretty good shape, so you should be all set.”
I just stand there smiling politely while Mike gives the record another look-see.
Mike says thank you.
The kid says thank you.
I say thank you.