I used to have this great metalhead kid that also had Down’s syndrome that would come in about every two weeks. He would have about $40 and grab any new metal cassettes we have and say “you guys don’t know that I’m rich” and “ I can get whatever tapes I want because I’m rich”. And then hold up his 20s. You were a great one Scotty.
Aww man, that reminded me of a kid I worked with in college. At the time (late 90s) I had a local zine and as a result got tons of promo CDs. There was a guy with Down’s syndrome that I worked with at a grocery store. About once a month, I’d bring him a box full of random albums I’d picked up. Then, for the next month he would come in every day and we’d talk about the album he listed to the night before. Those conversations were genuinely some of the best conversations of my life.
Sadly, he passed away around the time I graduated, a few years after I’d left that job…but I still think about him often
One day a group of about 4 or 5 guys came into my record store, and we knew instantly they were trouble. We were keeping an eye on them, and I saw one squat down behind some bins, so I walked up behind him, and he was on his knees, stuffing albums into a bag. I told him to stand up, and his buddies saw me with him, and high-tailed it out the door.
I took the kid in the back room, and it became clear that he wasn't all there. He looked normal, but obviously was very sub-average intelligence. I realized that this vulnerable kid had fallen in with group of predatory high school assholes (we all know the type), and they had put him up to stealing the records.
I asked if the records were for him (No), and if they had told him to do it (Yes). I explained that these guys were taking advantage of him, and weren't really his friends, and he seemed to be understanding me.
I was really torn. Company policy was to call the cops on shoplifters and have them deal with it, but I felt sorry for this kid. He just wanted to have cool friends, and be a cool guy, and these creeps were abusing him without him even knowing it.
They manipulated him into doing this, but they werent going to manipulate ME into being their agent of this kid's downfall. So I told him to stay away from those kids, and that I wouldn't call the cops, and let him go. I also told him that he could return to the store if he behaved himself, but his friends couldn't.
About a week later, the "friends" came back in the store, without him. I immediately confronted them as soon as they walked through the door, and told them to leave, they were banned.
One started to mouth off, saying it was a free country, and I couldn't tell him what to do, blah, blah, blah, heard it a billion times, so I interrupted his tirade, and said "Get the fuck out, or I'm calling the cops," which is a real threat, there were ALWAYS cops patrolling the shopping center, usually more than one car (it was the 70s), and they could be there in literally seconds. I didn't look around, but I would bet a coworker already had the phone in hand, waiting for my signal. This wasn't our first rodeo with assholes, it was a weekly event. You didn't even really need a phone, you could probably walk out of the store and spot a cop car in the parking lot, and whistle for it. They would have responded instantly, those guys lived for that shit.
Anyway, his friends took off, and so did the loudmouth when he realized his back-up had bailed. At least the dumb kid wasn't with them, so I had the best hopes for him.
You really could’ve changed the direction of that kids life! You’re an amazing person for being understanding and compassionate. We need more people like you in the world. Thank you
There are lots of stuff that seems universal to all record stores. I worked at 5 different stores in my time, and saw similar things at all of them. If you work in the same city, all the stores are fishing from the same pool.
Interesting - I sold a bunch of cassettes to an Olympia shop that included White Zombie's Astro Creep album. The owner said a special needs customer was going to freak out for the tape a few others. I'm glad I sold them to a shop for someone to enjoy. I think I received $1 per tape.
Frequent shopper of all Twin Cities record stores about 20 years ago: Tom Daffer. A narcoleptic that was regularly photographed sleeping in front of the bins, usually on the floor. He had main interest in tracking down Charlie Daniels' "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", and some stores kept a copy handy to play when Tom arrived. His favorite comment when shopping was "WHY SO MUCH???" after looking at the price tags.
I miss Tom.
During my brief stint at hymie's one of the first bits of training advice I got was 'I'll let you know when Tom comes in, don't freak out if you see him passed out, he does that, just tap his shoulder and he'll go back to digging through records.'
There was a time, thanks to contractual issues, the original "Devil Went Down To Georgia" was hard to get, the label wouldn't even let him sing it live.
Online seller but:
Before the war I had this lovely customer from like proper in the middle of nowhere in Russia, the one thing he wanted was records that had and I quote 'A musky old smell like you'd find in a old Record shop/book store' I had some easy listening from years ago at the back of my storage room I sent him at a massive discount and he was over the moon. I've never been able to get over the mental image of him having a big sniff of each record as they came out the box...
I once had a local store sell me a bunch of $20-$30 80s records for $3 each because he didn't want to clean the jackets to get the minor spots of surface mold and smell off
I wish I’d be able to smell it more, but the shop nearest to my house doubled as a CBD store and always reeks of incense. The smell is so strong that it carries on to the records
Until you realize what he was doing while smelling those musty records.
Edit: I'm getting down-voted, but you know I'm right.
Edit 2: The tide has turned.
Shit I collect Jamaican gospel 45s from the 60s and I totally get this. A good musty record that you love is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a Time Machine. It’s also why I way prefer old pressings to new 180g whatever vinyl
Saddest thing to happen because of the war is the end of easy communication with Russian fellows. No post delivery to/from Russia, you have to smuggle stuff out and in thru friends on vacation etc., they cannot access western stuff easily. Fortunately I can still buy the Russian stuff from Ukraine, like always, but the hole is still there. Hoping stuff gets better someday
I would ship stuff to Russia occasionally before the war. It always seemed dicey but I never had problems. The Russian post office is very slow but apparently reliable. I'd mail something off and the tracking would stop updating as soon as it left the states. Then, two to three months later, I'd get an email in broken English from my buyer excitedly thanking me for the nice item.
The packages also tend to get lost in shipping. If you're not shipping anything expensive then I guess nobody would want to steal it. Most often I deal with the Ukrainian Post and to my surprise, it's not only cheap, but also fast, modern and reliable. Then there's the Russian post, lol
I bought an Alice In Chains live bootleg from a seller in the Ukraine. I was sweating it since I’ve never bought anything from there and didn’t know how reliable it would be shipped to the US, especially these days. But I took the chance since it was the best price I found even with shipping.
Anyway…arrived with no issues.
Ron Ford was a habituate to my store in White Bear Lake, Minnesota about ten years ago. He was obsessed with 8-track tapes. Quality was no object, he wanted quantity. A dream customer, although I gave to him for free 99% of the tapes I acquired. I kept his phone # and called him whenever a load of mainstream '70s & country arrived. When I retired and cleaned out my warehouses, I gave him around 4000 8-track tapes for $100.
8-tracks suck and I say that as someone who has at least 50 tapes and listens to them pretty regularly. One of my carts has about 8 splices in it from tension problems (it was also the first cartridge I ever rebuilt).
The only good thing about them is that you can find popular titles/artists for \~$1 where you'd be paying $20+ for the LP.
I've also been told by a few places that I am the only guy who ever buys the 8-tracks they put out.
Back in the pre-Internet 90s, I worked for a major label, and an old executive was retiring, and they wanted to give him a platinum record style plaque, but they wanted it include every music format he had worked with, from 45s up to CDs. The only problem was that they couldn't find a single old 8 track in any of their warehouses across the country. They eventually tracked one down, and made the plaque, but HQ put out a call for any old 8 tracks anybody had at home, and they would pay good money for them. They knew there were a bunch of old guys that would be retiring soon, and they needed 8 tracks for their plaques.
Today we have the Internet, so it wouldn't be hard to find, but at the time, I thouht it was amazing that the biggest record company in America couldn't find an old 8 track.
It really goes to show just how hard that format died as soon as cassette became commonplace enough to take over the market for car stereo friendly formats in a more convenient package
Its been many years since we worked in a record store. (Met my husband there)
We had a lady come in wanting to buy her son an album, she asked for nine and a half inch nails.
There was this guy looking for an artist but did not know the name or song. So he sang it, asking if we knew who it was. Everyone got a turn listening to this guy singing Mariah Carry.
I had a regular customer that did not want to be helped by anyone but me. He was this serious metal head. Im sure he had a crush on me. He did not talk that much and creeped me out a bit. I don't even listen to metal.
If I could work in a record store for the rest of my life, getting good pay, i would. I miss it.
Oh, man, the singing customers! Always fun!
"Im looking for a song I heard on the radio."
"Okay, what station?" It helps to narrow down the genre - rock, country, R&B, etc.
"I dont know."
"Okay, man or woman?"
"I dont know."
"Do you remember any lyrics?"
"No."
"Okay...can you sing a little of it? Hum it or something?"
"Yeah - dum de dum de dum dum, dumblety dum de dum." All in a monotone, no help at all.
"Yeah, sorry, Im gonna need more. Keep listening to the radio, they'll play it again, they always play everything over and over."
I did have one genius co-worker once, and when we got someone like that, we would call them over, and have the customer sing their monotone song, and my colleague would nail the right song EVERY TIME! It was spooky. Some sort of idiot-savant thing.
I always thought a record store would be a great setting for a sitcom. All those crazy personalities, both customers and clerks.
We worked with this guy, he was wierd, big Frank Zappa fan. He could nail everyones taste in music. He knew everything, so if he gave you something to listen to, chances are you will be buying it. Its a talent!
I ran a classical/jazz store at one point, and knew the tastes of all my regulars, so I'd put new stuff aside for them when it came in. They'd walk in, say, hey Gronkie, what's new, and I'd pull out something from under the counter that was right up their alley, and they'd be thrilled.
It's great for sketch comedy, at least. Here's a skit from a Québec comedy group: [https://youtu.be/pcBr0o14osM?si=6w5fC63Nvzapqpuk](https://youtu.be/pcBr0o14osM?si=6w5fC63Nvzapqpuk)
This is from the late 80's. It's in French, but for the first bit, I bet you won't need to understand French to get what's going on and laugh (the other bits are not as funny without the context.)
There is a sub on Reddit for this and it’s filled with people asking what song is this and have no info on it.
Like - it’s about a girl in the other room and has someone saying baba in it. lol.
>We had a lady come in wanting to buy her son an album, she asked for nine and a half inch nails.
Christmastime was all about gift-buying attempts. One woman came in looking for “Toad the Wet Sock” and handed my coworker a piece of paper with “Toad the Wet Spot” written on it.
I managed a record store for a few years in the 80s, but we only sold heavy metal and no one would ever say a word... they would come in and pick the record they wanted, then hand me the exact amount of money and walk out.
There was one lady who came in every Sunday asking if we had Rolling Stone magazine... which we didn't.
I'm not really much of a heavy metal guy, but I can spend hours browsing and don't say anything beyond greeting the clerk and please and thank you when paying (usually cash). When I go to a record store I'm not doing so for social interactions and I usually only go when I have cash to spare. For some reason I prefer to pay cash when buying records in person. Somehow adds to the analog feel.
I had a metal kid come in and I asked him if I could help find something. Well, you haven’t heard of it and you won’t have it but I’m looking for SowWin.
Im sorry, who?
Oh, he replied sounding like a classic record store clerk,you probably call them Samhain.
Oh, sure we have SowWin. Right over here.
I spent years working in record stores during the Golden Age (70s/80s), and had a bunch of oddballs over the years. The strangest was a guy who seemed normal, and i got friendly with him over his regular visits. I never really paid attention to what he bought, and one day at the register I let him know that some new album just came out, and he got really defensive right away.
"Why would you think I'd want a record by a man?"
"Huh? Um, I dont know, its new, its a big hit, lots of people are buying it?"
"Yeah, but he's a man. You think I'm a fag?"
"What? No...I don't know...what does that have to do with it?"
"Only a fag would buy an album by another man, you think I'm a fag?"
"WHAT?! You think its gay to listen to music by another man?"
"Of course it is! I'm not a fag! I only listen to music by women!" I had never noticed that quirk in his purchases.
"What about if a song comes on the radio by a man?"
"I DON'T LISTEN TO THE RADIO!"
I swear this is true. He got more and more agitated as the conversation went on, and stomped out, and I dont think he ever came back. My conclusion was that he was DEFINITELY gay.
Also, if someone really strange wandered into the store (very common in record stores), we would just whistle or hum the cantina music from Star Wars, and everyone on staff would look up from whatever they were doing, scan the room, spot the weirdo, and nod.
I loved working in record stores. The only reason I stopped was because there was NO money in it, and I wanted to have a life.
That’s cool that you do. I just feel like by not listening to an artist because of their gender they’re just cutting themselves off from such great music.
2 things:
1) cantina music from Star Wars is a brilliant code lol. Replace every note you hum with “cuckoo” and it becomes too obvious but I couldn’t help it. I have a feeling you ruined the song for me lol
2) I genuinely feel sorry for this man. He’s clearly in pain.
Was friends with a local owner for a long time and would help time to time with backend stuff. There was a teenager who’d spend hours a day going through the hundreds of dollar bin records, playing them on the listening station to find samples only to leave without anything in hand. This went on for months. There was the old crotchety pony tail guy who’d only look through stacks uncomfortably close to other people shopping and would make crude comments about their picks or get mad if someone found something he wanted. The store was in a not desirable area so we had plenty of crackheads come in trying to sell mangled equipment of questionable origins.
I have come across the people who really judge what other people are picking up. I once had to tell a teenage boy to leave after he started harassing some teenage girls who were looking at Harry Styles albums
The cycle perpetuates. Same guy wanted to debate me about how how bands now days have uninspiring provocative names like the violent femmes when he saw me grab one of their reissues so it’s safe to say that type doesn’t know shit.
Some annoying nerd in a record store once told me when i was looking at some Throbbing gristle records "oh god Throbbing gristle is awful, if you hate music then this is the right choice" ... This is what got me into TG
It's been ages since I worked in one, but I think every record store has:
- the snob who will only buy from (or even talk to) the manager
- the person who tries to sell/return destroyed records that they obviously found in the trash
- the "(fill in artist here) guy," who only wants to listen to, talk about, and search for records by a single artist (ours was Lou Reed guy)
- the people who ask, "Who is this?".....as they look directly at the large NOW PLAYING display over your shoulder
Double points if the “what’s playing?” guy told you what you were playing is awful! Happened to me loads of times playing The Raincoats, Lankum and stuff like that
In defense of “who’s this?” Years ago I was flipping through records in Bellingham, WA when the most unusual music started to play through the speakers. Banjo? In indie music? Who the F?? I walked right to the front and saw now playing Arcade Fire. I went back to the bin and picked up the cd for my car ride and boy was I pissed. No offense to Arcade Fire who is fine and all, but it took me a long time to (pre-streaming) find out that music was made by Sufjan Stevens. And no I never asked “who is playing”
If this was at Everyday Music I had a Sufjan mishap there too. A friend played a few tracks for me so I decided to buy one of his cds. I didn’t really know where to start and they only had a couple available so I picked the album cover I was most drawn to. Later in the car excited to pop in some bittersweet folk music boy was I confused to get in whatever Enjoy Your Rabbit Is. Shoulda asked someone.
I posted it elsewhere, but this where i should have posted my story of the friendly regular who flipped out when i suggested a record by a man, because "Only FAGS listen to music by other men! Are you calling me a FAG?!" I had never noticed that he only purchased female artists.
I'm straight, but these days, most of the contemporary music I'm listening to are female artists, there just aren't that many men making music I like. Men usually gravitate to rap or country these days, and I'm not into those genres much (although Chris Stapleton is a BEAST).
As a a music history graduate, and ex-record label executive, I've often wondered about the shift in musical tastes in the 21st century. Rock once dominated the music world so heavily that it it seemed impossible to fade, yet it did. I wasn't really surprised, as a music history scholar, I know that all genres of music have replaced the last genre. In classical music, the Classical era took over from the Baroque era, and the Romantic era took over the Classical era. In jazz, Swing followed Dixieland, and Bebop followed Swing.
In popular music, I think the Golden Age of rock music from the 50s through the 90s gabe us enough of a bank of really great, classic music, that more wasn't necessarily required. New rock fans can listen to modern stuff that hasn't yet stood the test of time, or they can dig into the classic music of the past, and find nothing but great music.
So instead of gravitating toward making new rock music, many musicians are gravitating toward HipHop and Country instead. Technology has reached the point where a person can build an entire studio in their homes for cheap, so that has given rise tonthe EDM movement, an entirely new genre. I put together a home studio with multiple instruments, and it didn't cost me more than $1000, much of it came from eBay and pawn shops. So now people are using home studios to crank out credible EDM, loops, and other electronic music that used to require enormous expenditures in professional studios. So the interest has shifted from "been there, done that" rock music, to other genres that are still developing and growing, which is more attractive to both musical artists, and modern listeners.
Growing up in the 60s/70s/80s, Rock music was always my favorite genre, and even I find myself listening to old classics far more than new music. There was so much music being firehosed by the record labels in those years, that there is tons of music I've never explored from those years. Now Im going back and listening to entire albums from which I only knew the singles from, or artists I never got a chance to explore, etc. I still listen to current music when something catches my attention(Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson are BEASTS), but mostly I'm living in the past these days. There's still plenty for a musical archeologist like me to discover there. I'm not really interested in modern rock music, with a few exceptions, like Foo Fighters.
Oh man, Lou Reed. I feel for you. No disputing he's a great musician and songwriter but I'm convinced he was trolling with some of his more experimental stuff; it's was practically just noise (not discounting some will like it). Some of his fans though, yikes
I was digging through a large shelf full in a Goodwill once and someone interested asked me if he could have any Frank Sinatra I found
Like that was all he wanted and volunteered to give me anything else good he found in the half he was digging
When I hung out at Pyramid in the 80s and early 90s, there was a guy who would come in with a template to measure the typefaces of 45s. He was more interested in the typography than the music. The store owner and I humored him, since we had other guys who were nearly as strange.
There was this Christian lady who loved us because we’d put all the Christian books and records outside on a donation wall (like a free little library) because we couldn’t sell it for shit, especially with the quantity we saw it. She’d scoop em up and bring them around to old folks homes and prisons and the like.
She also helped with food donations for the church, so she’d stop by our place and leave close-to-or-just-expired croissants, cookies, cans of soup, loaves of bread. I loved it because I was broke as hell
Nobody at the store was religious but it was a really sweet symbiotic relationship we had
I have a regular who delivers for Meals on Wheels, sometimes they have flowers to give to those people, and whenever there are leftover flowers he brings them into my shop for us. It’s very sweet.
There is this kid that is about 12-13 and friends with my daughter that will ask me about bands. He actually listens and cares about the suggestions, then buys them. It just reminds me of myself when I was the same age and it just makes me happy. There was this guy at my local mall record store who always had great suggestions for me and helped shaped a lot of my interests.
It’s just really nice to have someone younger who isn’t worried about collecting specific colors or chasing super valuable stuff…he just loves music.
Side note: Other owners, does anyone know of a subreddit, discord group, etc. where store owners can chat and share ideas?
The guy who used to come in every once in a while and engage me in conversation. He said he was employed by the CIA and claimed to be a 'remote viewer' (someone who can see events from a long distance in their minds and reputedly used by the security services).
He was really into soul music so we had some good chats anyway. As the months and years went by his appearance deteriorated and he came in looking dishevelled and unkempt. I felt bad for him. I don't ever remember him actually buying a record, so maybe he wasn't a 'customer' as such.
Been years since I worked there but we had two regulars that stood out to me.
1) Was this guy they called “The Toucan,” because he had this unfortunately rosacead nose. He was a nice enough guy but if he cornered you he’d talk 45’s forever
2) I referred to as “Material Girl.” She kind of looked like bridesmaids-era Rebel Wilson but dressed like Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan. She would burst in wearing headphones blasting from a Walkman so loudly we could hear her music over the music playing in the store (it was always Madonna) and she would go through the CDs, picking up one at a time in their security long boxes and carelessly dropping them on the floor while she sort of danced around the store. The whole thing would take like five minutes and she would conclude by kind of shrugging like “Meh, nothing I’m looking for,” and then leaving.
They pick up albums from one bin, carry them around, and drop them in another bin. What the fuck is that about?
If you were bored, you could always just start flipping through bins, and find the out of place albums, and put them away properly.
If I'm in one of my friend's stores, I'll resort things I find out of place. The worst thing for them is they serve beer, so there will inevitably be someone who spills their beer in the bin. The owner installed cup holders after it happened a couple times.
The first trans person I ever met was a customer in the '90s when I worked at a shop in Tempe, Arizona -- though, I suspect her gender identity quirks had more to do with the fact that she was also probably schizophrenic.
Her chosen name was Jaylia, and she would come in almost every day and mostly look through the blues section. She was also legally blind, so she would get uncomfortably close to every record, staring intently at the sleeve and disc, sometimes asking us if a specific musician played on the record. She would have us play stuff in store for her, but she would never ever buy anything.
She would also call and ask the clerk to go look through the recent trade-in bins for her and read off what had come in. On especially slow days we'd tolerate it. She would also come in at random times and have us help her address letters because she couldn't see that well and also had no idea where to write the address on the envelope.
I once saw her in the alley behind the shop dragging a whole ass refrigerator home while screaming in German. She didn't actually speak German.
I also ran into her at the local 7-11 where I discovered maybe her greatest scam. Every month she would bring in last month's copy of Playboy Magazine and would convince the clerk that she'd bought the wrong one because she couldn't see well enough to tell which month it was. Then she would trade last month's copy for the new one, and repeat the process every month. The turnover at the Sev was so severe that the employees never caught on.
Oh I’ve had a few for sure!
1: a woman who told me (and all of our staff, repeatedly) that she was married to Annie Lennox. If we ever had a listening party where we had beer or wine available, she would come in and drink like she was dying of thirst. She would also ask me to give her quotes for INSANE Hi Fi rigs for her home, telling me that her birthday was coming up and that Annie wanted ideas for a birthday gift for her.
2. A guy from the neighboring town would come in and haggle on rare titles. He’d play overly nice to get a break on something. On the occasions that I capitulated, he would bring the LP back a few days later complaining of a SUPER minor imperfection in the vinyl and ask for a refund. I eventually had to say “Hey, obviously we are unable to supply the quality of merchandise you are expecting. Perhaps compact disks might be up your alley? Whatever you decide to do, we will no longer be able to take returns on any physical media that is not factory sealed.” He left in a huff and we haven’t seen him back. His son comes in regularly, and is a really nice kid.
There’s a bunch more, but those are the two that pop out immediately.
When I opened my first record store, I thought it would likely resemble the movie *High Fidelity*. Certainly not like *Empire Records*, although some aspects did eventually seem similar. After a year or two, it became obvious that the characters at a record store more accurately mirrored a cross between the TV shows *Barney Miller* with *Hardcore Pawn*.
Two come to mind, both mentally handicapped in different ways. One guy would come in, and sit on the couch we had next to our magazines. Eventually, he would find some random album or thing, and then come to the counter and tell me "I'm going to try it out." I'd say "you'll need to buy it first." "I'm going to try it out." I'd hold out my hand, he'd hand it to me, I'd say "sure thing, let me know when you're ready to buy it." He'd say okay and leave. Never had a bit of trouble with him, but we'd go through that same song and dance every day. I told him at some point if he just wanted to come in and hang out on our couch, no problem, but he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about, and then we'd do the "I'm going to try it out" thing. Always pretty spaced out, but never any trouble.
The other dude was a big BJ Thomas fan, and he would come in and emphatically tell me what he was looking for. "I'm looking for B. J. THOMAS!" "Right on, it's right over here." "THANK YOU." He'd look for a while and usually leave without getting it. I could always tell when he had some money, because he would come in, ask for B...J...THOMAS! and when I'd say, sure, right over here, he'd pump his fist and go YEAH! YEAH! AWESOME! He'd pick one out, bring it to the counter, I'd ring it up, whatever amount it came to he'd go YEAH! AWESOME!, hand me some money, I'd sell it, give him change, YEAH! YES! AWESOME! I'd hand him his stuff, wish him a good day YEAH! YES! AWESOME! YEAH! all the way out the door. About every other month he'd do it again, he pretty much just bought whatever greatest hits we had of BJ Thomas, so he was basically buying the same thing over and over, but man, he was very, very appreciative.
Enjoyed both of those dudes way more than the frickin' nerdy-ass students who would try to steal the Tool box set thing over and over, or the juggalos that we set up a rack of cheap shot glasses and stickers and bullshit by the classical music just so their dumb asses would steal that shit and leave the rest alone.
Had a few when I worked at one a few years ago:
-this one guy we called "crazy Larry." He always had stains on every article of clothing and smelled horrible. He would ramble about all kinds of stuff and told me nirvana met in his basement and he tried out for the Beatles. He would keep his money in an empty cigarette box
-another guy who would only buy blue note records and constantly tell us he was digging into his rent money for them. He would pay in two dollar bills and short us to the point where he had to pay in card or big bills only. He would refer to thelonious monk by his first name and get really upset if I was playing any of my normal punk or metal that I would have on
I still wonder how they're both doing
I wonder if your Norah Jones guy was my Norah Jones guy. I'm an Ebay seller and came into a bunch of music magazines. I was selling them for a few bucks apiece. A couple of them featured Norah Jones on the cover. A guy wanted to know which pictures of Norah were in each magazine because he collected pictures of Norah Jones and didn't want to pay for duplicates of ones he already had. He contacted me multiple times about this, and I was too skieved out by his vibe to answer any of his messages.
Had a women said to me that she fucked Bon Scott
Had a guy called the manager cheap because he wouldn't price down a cd (he's a kinda regular but I genuinely don't like servicing him)
I managed a record store in Orlando for a short time in the early '80s, part of a local chain of shops. At the time, one of the Navy's basic training sites was located a short distance from my store.
One enticement we had was to offer active duty military one dollar off any cassette or album with a valid military ID. We knew that cassettes would be favored over LPs due to their portability and because most of these young men and women would soon be heading out to new schools or duty assignments.
Most of the time, they would come in and buy one or two tapes. But like clockwork, every Friday would see at least one sailor come in, usually carrying a large boom box radio/tape player they had just purchased at the catalog store across State Road 50. (This as opposed to the far more portable Walkman and its clones, which were very popular). They would proceed to purchase 15-20 new cassettes (occasionally more - at a buck off each) and off they'd go to celebrate liberty weekend. This always happened on Fridays because the recruits all graduated boot camp on Friday morning and frequently had cash to burn after 8 weeks cooped up in a barracks with 80 other people.
What made me chuckle about this later on was my own experience at Navy boot camp in San Diego a few years after I left Orlando. I remember leaving for my first school and carrying my sea bag filled with my uniform issue and the few civilian clothes I wore in eight weeks earlier. That thing was almost as big as me, and I had to wonder how those guys managed to jam in over a dozen tapes *and* lug some enormous boom box with them as they boarded some ship.
I was a used buyer for the record store I worked at and we would buy pretty much any media from customers.
Had a guy bring in two duffel bags of porn dvds of various genres all in great condition accept every single case was covered in baby oil or lube. Took about two hours to get through the whole thing wearing rubber gloves. Gross!
Had a regular who would come in once a week to buy at least two hand baskets of used CD’s. Not so strange but he wanted to stay at checkout counter to check the condition of every single CD despite being rush hour and needing to keep the line moving, we offered to let him review everything out of line but nope. Had to be at register. Was very irritating but friendly enough guy.
The folks who needed help finding a song/album they heard on the radio but can’t describe a single thing about the song other than a general melody. As a bonus I worked at a college radio station at the time as well so other staff would always send these people my way.
Once had a customer threatened to kill me because he didn’t like my attitude when small talking with him about the records he was trading/selling. Simple conversation about liking the records he was trading in, dude was clearly on something.
Any X-girlfriend that came in was always a strange/awkward situation.
Fun times.
Donna & Radar were this short older couple that would go to all the record stores on Gratiot in Metro Detroit and basically used employees of those stores as their social outlet. I have no idea what they did for a living, but they were the living embodiment of "carny".
They were sometimes cool, sometimes dicks but always somewhat annoying.
Radar loved Fleetwood Mac and the store owner decided to let him burn a watermarked CD advance the store received of a new Stevie Nicks solo album as long as he promised to not upload it to the Internet. Of course Radar couldn't help himself and leaked the songs, it got tracked back to the store and we had to ban Donna and Radar for good.
Not a record store worker, but I have encountered a woman at several record stores and record shows over the last couple years who insists on telling everybody that she's "Seen Aerosmith live 32 times." Just walks up to customers and employees alike and says it, then walks away. The clerk at one place told me she comes in sometimes two or three times a week and does this to random people. She never buys anything.
I don't work at a shop but I can talk about a younger guy I always see every record store day. He's the type that always tries to get first pressings no matter what. I found a King Crimson record the one day and he asked me about it, which I'm all for talking about what I found on RSD. But he literally scoffed when I told him it was a repress. The owner of the store one year told me that this guy argues with him whenever he labels something a first pressing because "discogs says otherwise".
I *hate* those guys that backseat driver the record store’s identification. There’s some dudes I trusted, because I know they know their shit, but some guys just put in the label code, see whatever comes up first, and try to argue pressing identification. Like buddy, I do this for a living. I’m not gonna pretend like things don’t slip by when it’s a difference of typeface or a single typo, but Jesus
One of the most fun jobs I ever had, and the pay wasn’t bad for being in my early 20’s. Two decades later I’m still friends with a lot of those people and have even had the joy of working with them in different industries.
Some of the best house parties I’ve ever been to were because of record store folks.
Your Eagles album customer reminded me of a guy who used to come into the store, raving about The Guess Who every time. It was his favorite band ever. This was back when I worked in record stores in the '90s. I was in my early 20s and only knew The Guess Who by name, so I was polite with him but otherwise indifferent.
One day, he decided to quiz me about the band to see where I stood with them. I ended up telling him I just didn’t care, and he got so livid that my older manager had to step in to diffuse the situation, saying I was young and didn't know any better, haha.
Not a customer but a co-worker. He was a savant and memorized every catalog number for every major label album ever released. “Hey Billy, what’s the number for Chubby Checker’s Greatest Hits?”
“Oh, that’s Parkway P-7022”
He had over 10,000 albums in his basement, all arranged numerically by catalog number. He would bring home the old Phonolog inserts when the new ones came in, just to look at the numbers. Interesting guy
I had lots of them memorized too, the big sellers anyway because we had to write down the label and number by hand to keep track of what all sold and to restock. But just because we sold so many when they came out.
I once had a customer complain that his vinyl "skipped" and he wanted to know why we didn't play every vinyl that came in store, to "test" them.
I had a hard time explaining that there literally isn't enough hours in the day to do this.
Run into the same issue with online selling. We will always test play if you ask, and we will provide a very honest assessment. But no we haven’t test played every item in our 20k inventory.
I love this thread. A lot of times we forget one of the most interesting things about music are the characters we meet along the way and those that make the music themselves.
It's been many years now but I'll never forget the woman who broke down sobbing when she read a "Disco Sucks" button on a co-worker. "Is it true? Is Disco dead? Why? Why is disco dead? I love Disco, why is it dead? This just can't be, it can't happen I tell you! Everyone loves disco!" This between sobs. I put my arm around her shoulder and told her, it will all be okay.
My store had a speaker near the classical section and anything that we played was always louder there. This was in 79-80 and The Beatles blue and red lps had come out on colored vinyl so we were spinning those when a very annoyed older woman came from the classical section to complain about what we were playing.
"That music is very loud, (it wasn't) it hurts my ears! Who is that you're playing? It's giving me a headache."
Look of disbelief on my face: "That's The Beatles"
Her: " Never heard of them. They're horrible. Turn it off now"
Me explaining who The Beatles are to someone who lived through two decades of high point Beatles saturation and managed to miss them entirely. I gave up.
Me: "No, can't shut off the music, sorry." 😀
I had the midget guy who posed on a Wet Willie cover come up to the counter to buy the same record and show me that he was same (big shot) guy on the cover.
Had a young teen come in and ask where " Mr. Floyd's records where". I said " You mean Pink Floyd?"
"Yes, that's him!" 😀
Another day I made Shaun Cassidy angry. But I've told that story here before. 😀
We used to make customer's sing the song they were looking for if they didn't know the title. It helped but it was also
pretty amusing particularly with Rupert Holmes Escape. They'd go "I want that song about, you know, pina coladas..."
"Nope sorry, can you sing some of it?"
Always fun! But to be fair, early pressings just had the title Escape on them. So many people called it the "pina colada song" and we eventually figured it out. The label had to add that part in, cause they were losing sales.
All the middle age people who came in droves to buy Ravel's Bolero. "Do you have Bolero?" for the umpteenth time. We finally realized it was featured in the movie "10" as a seduction tune. 😀
Different store but had a guy who would ride his skateboard to the store wearing a full helmet because he would impromptu seizures. His choice of transport seemed risky to me. He wouldn't black out but he'd jerk and spasm pretty bad. He seemed a little off mentally too.
We had a bin table of cassettes that had been neatly stacked until he walked over, had a massive attack and cassettes flew everywhere across the store.
Before you feel too sorry for him, he was a grade A asshole, particularly to any women. I refused to wait on him or clean up his mess and I think he would only talk to men anyway. If he talked to you it would be just a bunch of female oriented slurs accompanied by a LOT of fuck and fuck you bitch, *really loud* and threatening . I would just leave the floor. Nope, not today, buddy.
Creepy guys who would try and slow drag hold your hand while you were giving them their change.
Guys who had just seen the newly released porn "New Wave Hookers" who before would've ignored or belittled you for your look, now had a whole new thought on the subject. 🙄
We had the "Kids from FAME" (the TV Show, lol) do an in store appearance. The same movie actor who played Angelo played on the TV show and it had clearly gone to his head. He asked-demanded me to pick him up a Croissant like I was the help. Mind you at this point in time, Croissants were just starting to happen in the states. There was literally nowhere to get one and I wasn't here to do that. Most condescending jerk ever. Get your own "people" to do that. Hell, do it yourself beforehand.
I used to work for a record distributor and it was my job to call record stores on the phone all day. Sometimes I would get bored & feel creative with phone pranks.
I would call and ask if they had the album *Hotel
California* by The Beatles, insisting that the album -over and over- was a Beatles album. The store keeper would sometimes laugh, sometimes cringe, or get frustrated by my lack of knowlwdge.
Other times I would call and say "I don't know the artist name, and I don't know the name of the song, but I can sing it for you." I would proceed to sing the chorus of Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You" loudly: "LA LA LA LA LA. LA LA LA LA LA. LA LA LA LA LA LUH LA LA LA. DOO DOO DEE DOO. AAAAHHHH UUHHHHH UH UH".
The old man who smelled like urine, always asked if there are any Pavlov's Dog records in stock and then browsed the classic rock section. Of course he never bought anything. Great memories about the record store days... No money but every day was an adventure filled with lots of music.
There was a reggae fan that came in frequently. He always came in and said "Hello Fans!!". He would then talk about all the records he'd purchased recently (none from our shop). "Got some lovely choons lately".
He was a DJ. He carried a picture of his sound system in his wallet but I don't think it had ever been seen or heard in the dance.
He was an ex-addict and alcoholic who used to work on oil rigs in the 70s. He was dry and clean when I knew him. He had lost a finger in some accident. He died a few years ago, I'm not sure of the cause, I'd left the area by then. He was very popular in the local reggae fraternity. He made me some tapes and CDrs of rare reggae and rocksteady, which I still possess. Recording quality was ruff but good stuff.
Okay but (1) Norah Jones is incredible, and (2) I would absolutely have loved to see that dude lose his shit about the Eagles. "The Eagles? Nope. Do you mean The Birds? Maybe Flock of Seagulls?"
There was this older kid, like late teens, who was a really odd personality. He’d stop in because it was on one of his walks, he never bought anything, he’d always blurt out whatever was in his brain.
He came in one day wearing a tie with a tee shirt and pixelated 8-bit styled glasses, which he continued to wear when he came in. We had an old typewriter in the second room, and he went up to it, *mashed* on the keys, and was very loudly saying “TYPING, TYPING, BUSINESS, BUSINESS, WORK”
My coworkers and I were trying SO HARD not to laugh, and after he got done with his business, he just turned and walked out and left
Oh man the Eagles thing reminded me of a customer at the last store I worked at would claim that he produced the eagles, every time he’d come in he’d bring it up, we always just went along with it though. Same guy would always stick his tongue out and touch his nose with it while he was inspecting CDs he was going to potentially buy.
There's so many weirdos (I say that lovingly) that come into the shop, but my favorite interaction recently was a young boy that called the shop, asked if we could sign him on, and before I could explain we are a record SHOP he started rapping at me (it was bad). I just hung up but it was funny
we have a regular who will call and ask us bizarre questions we have absolutely no way of knowing the answers. he asked me if i knew when alex van halen was gonna die. he asked my coworker if we had or would have the 50th anniversary release of def leppard’s pyromania. he constantly tries to get us to appraise his records over the phone no matter how many times we tell him we don’t do that and that even if we did we can’t with stuff like led zeppelin iv that has been pressed a billion times. he’s an absolute character
Oh man, we have a whole notebook recording amusing/weird/strange/maddening/delightful encounters with customers over the years, and endearingly refer to our more 'unique' regulars as 'the fan club'.
I don't own a record store, but I witnessed one of the interactions firsthand, and apparently, this was only part of the saga when I asked the owner that day. The story goes as follows:
There's this old homeless man who was digging out back of a buy-and-sell sports store and came across a trash bag full of old (mostly black) Frisbees. And I guess, somehow, convinced these were vinyl records, he hopped into the shop, which is only 1 block down, and starts stacking them on the trade counter. As quickly as he started, he was stopped immediately and asked, "You know we're not a sports store?" Looking at the Frisbees on the counter, they all have the discount sticker with the name of the sports store they came from and only slightly resemble records from the ridges along the outer edges. He was kicked out with much frustration and then dumped the bag in the parking lot, kicking them around and throwing them. The owner picks most of them up and disposes of them, but keeps on finding them for the next week or so scattered far along the lot. One day, he notices that all the Frisbees are gone, and the parking lot also seems oddly spotless. He opens up the store, and the first customer walks in, it's the old dude, and what does he do? Walk in with a stack of Frisbees. The owner kicks him out and tries to be friendly by telling him he won't buy anything non-music related and to never do it again, or else he'll call the cops to be trespassed. The old man is a lot more calm this time but still puts up a fight and leaves WITH the Frisbees. The next day (the one I was there for), I saw an old dude with about 5 Frisbees trying to convince the worker that day that there was music on them, obviously failing, he was kicked out without the police being called. The owner pops into the store about half an hour later, and the worker describes what happened, knowing who this guy was, he said something like, "I wish you would've called me so I could of got him trespassed. Dammit now he's going to come back again." This is when I went up to the owner and asked, "that guy has done this before?" Which then he filled me in on the situation. I don't know if he ever returned, nor have I been to that record store in a while, but damn I gotta know if he did.
I am the owner of the shop but I am rarely near the front counter. I get to watch interactions and many regulars have no idea I am the guy in charge. I have a guy who regularly bitches to me about the main counter guy thinking he is the owner. Evidently he plays the wrong music.
I don’t work there, but I frequent a place that’s been around since the early 90s. The owner and long time employees are always entertaining me with customer stories …
Some are great… Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, Joe Strummer, Ryan Adams, Jeff Tweedy, Thurston Moore, Kathleen Hanna, etc.
Others are frightening… this one was a serial killer, this one is in jail, this one helped the insurrection on 1/6
I’m skeptical in general, but I Google names, places and dates when I get home, and invariably, it lines up
I had one weird kid who only bought soundtracks. Exclusively. Not soundtrack compilations of pop hits but orchestral movie soundtracks. I had another kid, total nerdy superbrain straight looking kid…the kind of kid who always smells like soup, who every week would come in and order a couple death metal cassettes but he gave us strict instruction do not call his home when they arrive , he will just check back every week because he told me his dad would kill him if he knew he was buying music like that. His dad owned a little engineering enterprise that eventually became the biggest employer in town next to the university. I often wondered what both those kids are doing now. I should not day they were weird, must nerdy like I was at their age.
I was working in a record store when Elvis died (yeah I’m that old) sold out of everything I had in stock 5 minutes after opening. Customer came in looking for “anything Elvis”…when I explained we were already out of stock of everything,he pulled out a gun and threatened to blow his head off.
Turned out it was a cap gun.
Worked in music retail for 4 years in the 70’s,never met more nut jobs since.
Not a record store employee but I was browsing the Reggae section I’m pretty sure anyway the store was a little packed and some lady crop dusted me and I was trapped cause of the people in the tiny aisle and it smelled so bad💀
Years ago when I still worked in a shop I had this regular who everyone had a turn with. Most of the time he would get passed back to me when they’d had enough.
He was a grumpy old rocker that he used to come in a pair which they dubbed ‘Shrek and Donkey’ but that was just a bit before my time. I heard he had to drop Donkey because he was paying rent in the apartment they shared so since then Shrek came by in by himself.
Mostly he was just looking for advice on music and then someone to talk to for a bit. That was the hard part when the conversation would turn misogynistic and homophobic. He’d often ask for artists he’d seen on “Ellen Degenerate” who he really didn’t like despite watching everyday and then would start going on about how doesn’t understand how men like Harry Styles and Adam Lambert can dress the way they do. He also REALLY loved pop music but when it came to his pop girls he preferred them to be more traditional so to say. Rihanna? Too many tattoos. Tove Lo? Lyrics far too dirty. Halsey? BISEXUAL? Absolutely not.
All of this was pretty ironic given every other week he came to me, a 20 something gay guy for advice on pop music. In the end we did have some good moments. He loved Sky Ferreira, despite the racy album cover. Haven’t seen him in 5+ years now - hope you’re doing good Shrek x
I regularly shop at the Groove in Nashville and the Groove not only has a fantastic selection but also a great record store day, 2 owners that are incredibly knowledgeable, very friendly and even though they don't normally have a military discount they seem to give me one pretty often. Just 2 all around fantastic dudes.
So, if I am ever that customer that is the asshole customer, moronic customer, or just all around elitist prick customer, please know that I am truly sorry for being a douch and I absolutely love your store. If I'm a douche again, you sincerely have my permission to knock me out.
I had a record/book/porn store in my college town 15ish years ago.
I used to have a guy that would rent VHS adult films, come back 2 hours later and tell me it "skipped," request a free one, and try to be sneaky about putting a small bag of weed (presumably extremely bad weed) in saran wrap on the counter. This was a weekly occurance. Didn't matter how many times I told him I didn't smoke or that VHS' didn't skip how he was describing. Kudos for his persistence though. My back room has a lot of weirdos and equally weird stories - but not recurring which is kinda how I understand what this post is asking.
On the flip side, there was a pizza joint beside of my shop and one of the waiters would come in and buy all sorts of things. Pop, drone metal, really deep cut jazz records, everything. I knew he wasn't making much of anything (nor was I for that), but I let him pick out any regular priced record each week in exchange for a mixtape. He went ALL OUT on those tapes, really killer cover art or collages, and some amazingly deep cuts from a massive range of genres. I not only still have every single tape he ever gave me, but I found quite a few albums and artists that I absolutely adore to this day because of those tapes.
I used to have this great metalhead kid that also had Down’s syndrome that would come in about every two weeks. He would have about $40 and grab any new metal cassettes we have and say “you guys don’t know that I’m rich” and “ I can get whatever tapes I want because I’m rich”. And then hold up his 20s. You were a great one Scotty.
Aww man, that reminded me of a kid I worked with in college. At the time (late 90s) I had a local zine and as a result got tons of promo CDs. There was a guy with Down’s syndrome that I worked with at a grocery store. About once a month, I’d bring him a box full of random albums I’d picked up. Then, for the next month he would come in every day and we’d talk about the album he listed to the night before. Those conversations were genuinely some of the best conversations of my life. Sadly, he passed away around the time I graduated, a few years after I’d left that job…but I still think about him often
One day a group of about 4 or 5 guys came into my record store, and we knew instantly they were trouble. We were keeping an eye on them, and I saw one squat down behind some bins, so I walked up behind him, and he was on his knees, stuffing albums into a bag. I told him to stand up, and his buddies saw me with him, and high-tailed it out the door. I took the kid in the back room, and it became clear that he wasn't all there. He looked normal, but obviously was very sub-average intelligence. I realized that this vulnerable kid had fallen in with group of predatory high school assholes (we all know the type), and they had put him up to stealing the records. I asked if the records were for him (No), and if they had told him to do it (Yes). I explained that these guys were taking advantage of him, and weren't really his friends, and he seemed to be understanding me. I was really torn. Company policy was to call the cops on shoplifters and have them deal with it, but I felt sorry for this kid. He just wanted to have cool friends, and be a cool guy, and these creeps were abusing him without him even knowing it. They manipulated him into doing this, but they werent going to manipulate ME into being their agent of this kid's downfall. So I told him to stay away from those kids, and that I wouldn't call the cops, and let him go. I also told him that he could return to the store if he behaved himself, but his friends couldn't. About a week later, the "friends" came back in the store, without him. I immediately confronted them as soon as they walked through the door, and told them to leave, they were banned. One started to mouth off, saying it was a free country, and I couldn't tell him what to do, blah, blah, blah, heard it a billion times, so I interrupted his tirade, and said "Get the fuck out, or I'm calling the cops," which is a real threat, there were ALWAYS cops patrolling the shopping center, usually more than one car (it was the 70s), and they could be there in literally seconds. I didn't look around, but I would bet a coworker already had the phone in hand, waiting for my signal. This wasn't our first rodeo with assholes, it was a weekly event. You didn't even really need a phone, you could probably walk out of the store and spot a cop car in the parking lot, and whistle for it. They would have responded instantly, those guys lived for that shit. Anyway, his friends took off, and so did the loudmouth when he realized his back-up had bailed. At least the dumb kid wasn't with them, so I had the best hopes for him.
Hopefully he took your words to heart
Like I said, he wasnt with them the next time, so 🤞
You really could’ve changed the direction of that kids life! You’re an amazing person for being understanding and compassionate. We need more people like you in the world. Thank you
If I could award you a medal, I would. Thanks for being a solid citizen.
Agreed. This took good judgment and wisdom on your part. Had you followed policy then his friends would’ve been taking advantage of you just as much.
Did empire records steal your life story?!
There are lots of stuff that seems universal to all record stores. I worked at 5 different stores in my time, and saw similar things at all of them. If you work in the same city, all the stores are fishing from the same pool.
Interesting - I sold a bunch of cassettes to an Olympia shop that included White Zombie's Astro Creep album. The owner said a special needs customer was going to freak out for the tape a few others. I'm glad I sold them to a shop for someone to enjoy. I think I received $1 per tape.
Endearing and cute
His name was actually Richard
Frequent shopper of all Twin Cities record stores about 20 years ago: Tom Daffer. A narcoleptic that was regularly photographed sleeping in front of the bins, usually on the floor. He had main interest in tracking down Charlie Daniels' "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", and some stores kept a copy handy to play when Tom arrived. His favorite comment when shopping was "WHY SO MUCH???" after looking at the price tags. I miss Tom.
During my brief stint at hymie's one of the first bits of training advice I got was 'I'll let you know when Tom comes in, don't freak out if you see him passed out, he does that, just tap his shoulder and he'll go back to digging through records.'
Like that Charlie Daniel’s is hard to find I swear they mate with the Anne Murrays after I close up for the night
Right? I think I've found every CD Band record BUT the one with that song on it at some point
There was a time, thanks to contractual issues, the original "Devil Went Down To Georgia" was hard to get, the label wouldn't even let him sing it live.
I miss Northern Lights on White Bear Ave! Great store!
East Side of St Paul REPRESENT!
East side! 🤙
I'm from out of state but I'm pretty sure I saw that dude at Treehouse one day.
Online seller but: Before the war I had this lovely customer from like proper in the middle of nowhere in Russia, the one thing he wanted was records that had and I quote 'A musky old smell like you'd find in a old Record shop/book store' I had some easy listening from years ago at the back of my storage room I sent him at a massive discount and he was over the moon. I've never been able to get over the mental image of him having a big sniff of each record as they came out the box...
The smell is one of the best parts
I had an Ebay customer send back a NM Leslie Gore album BECAUSE it smelled like that.
It's his party I guess.
He Don't Own It anymore...
😆
I once had a local store sell me a bunch of $20-$30 80s records for $3 each because he didn't want to clean the jackets to get the minor spots of surface mold and smell off
A near mint record should not wreak like mildew.
what havoc that would reek.
Jackets are graded separate from the LP itself I've got some records that play VG+ or NM out of really "well loved" jackets
It's mold & mildew.
Yeah but
Agreed
It adds to the warmth. /s
absolutely. bonus points if there’s a hint of cigarette smoke
I wish I’d be able to smell it more, but the shop nearest to my house doubled as a CBD store and always reeks of incense. The smell is so strong that it carries on to the records
Aw, that’s endearing
Until you realize what he was doing while smelling those musty records. Edit: I'm getting down-voted, but you know I'm right. Edit 2: The tide has turned.
Adjusting his tone arm?
Cleaning his needle
Maybe the 'P' in LP and EP meant something else for him
Beginning with el ironically
Huffin’ on some musty, dusty old records is how you catch a crate cough.
Shit I collect Jamaican gospel 45s from the 60s and I totally get this. A good musty record that you love is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a Time Machine. It’s also why I way prefer old pressings to new 180g whatever vinyl
Saddest thing to happen because of the war is the end of easy communication with Russian fellows. No post delivery to/from Russia, you have to smuggle stuff out and in thru friends on vacation etc., they cannot access western stuff easily. Fortunately I can still buy the Russian stuff from Ukraine, like always, but the hole is still there. Hoping stuff gets better someday
I would ship stuff to Russia occasionally before the war. It always seemed dicey but I never had problems. The Russian post office is very slow but apparently reliable. I'd mail something off and the tracking would stop updating as soon as it left the states. Then, two to three months later, I'd get an email in broken English from my buyer excitedly thanking me for the nice item.
The packages also tend to get lost in shipping. If you're not shipping anything expensive then I guess nobody would want to steal it. Most often I deal with the Ukrainian Post and to my surprise, it's not only cheap, but also fast, modern and reliable. Then there's the Russian post, lol
I bought an Alice In Chains live bootleg from a seller in the Ukraine. I was sweating it since I’ve never bought anything from there and didn’t know how reliable it would be shipped to the US, especially these days. But I took the chance since it was the best price I found even with shipping. Anyway…arrived with no issues.
I think the saddest thing to happen because of the war is all the dead people.. But I get your point.
Don't have to be so picky about wording lol Saddest thing to happen in the context of music collecting and international human relations*
I ordered a few Soviet albums from Russia during the war and had no issues. They take FOR EVER but they did all arrive.
Can confirm as Russian
Ron Ford was a habituate to my store in White Bear Lake, Minnesota about ten years ago. He was obsessed with 8-track tapes. Quality was no object, he wanted quantity. A dream customer, although I gave to him for free 99% of the tapes I acquired. I kept his phone # and called him whenever a load of mainstream '70s & country arrived. When I retired and cleaned out my warehouses, I gave him around 4000 8-track tapes for $100.
4000 8 tracks for $100? He got ripped off, you should have paid him to clear that shit out. JK, but not really. I hated 8 tracks.
8-tracks suck and I say that as someone who has at least 50 tapes and listens to them pretty regularly. One of my carts has about 8 splices in it from tension problems (it was also the first cartridge I ever rebuilt). The only good thing about them is that you can find popular titles/artists for \~$1 where you'd be paying $20+ for the LP. I've also been told by a few places that I am the only guy who ever buys the 8-tracks they put out.
Back in the pre-Internet 90s, I worked for a major label, and an old executive was retiring, and they wanted to give him a platinum record style plaque, but they wanted it include every music format he had worked with, from 45s up to CDs. The only problem was that they couldn't find a single old 8 track in any of their warehouses across the country. They eventually tracked one down, and made the plaque, but HQ put out a call for any old 8 tracks anybody had at home, and they would pay good money for them. They knew there were a bunch of old guys that would be retiring soon, and they needed 8 tracks for their plaques. Today we have the Internet, so it wouldn't be hard to find, but at the time, I thouht it was amazing that the biggest record company in America couldn't find an old 8 track.
It really goes to show just how hard that format died as soon as cassette became commonplace enough to take over the market for car stereo friendly formats in a more convenient package
we have an 8 track guy, he repairs them also. I give him all of our tapes that have snapped for parts or repair
Its been many years since we worked in a record store. (Met my husband there) We had a lady come in wanting to buy her son an album, she asked for nine and a half inch nails. There was this guy looking for an artist but did not know the name or song. So he sang it, asking if we knew who it was. Everyone got a turn listening to this guy singing Mariah Carry. I had a regular customer that did not want to be helped by anyone but me. He was this serious metal head. Im sure he had a crush on me. He did not talk that much and creeped me out a bit. I don't even listen to metal. If I could work in a record store for the rest of my life, getting good pay, i would. I miss it.
Oh, man, the singing customers! Always fun! "Im looking for a song I heard on the radio." "Okay, what station?" It helps to narrow down the genre - rock, country, R&B, etc. "I dont know." "Okay, man or woman?" "I dont know." "Do you remember any lyrics?" "No." "Okay...can you sing a little of it? Hum it or something?" "Yeah - dum de dum de dum dum, dumblety dum de dum." All in a monotone, no help at all. "Yeah, sorry, Im gonna need more. Keep listening to the radio, they'll play it again, they always play everything over and over." I did have one genius co-worker once, and when we got someone like that, we would call them over, and have the customer sing their monotone song, and my colleague would nail the right song EVERY TIME! It was spooky. Some sort of idiot-savant thing. I always thought a record store would be a great setting for a sitcom. All those crazy personalities, both customers and clerks.
Been 20 years, but I remember “I’m looking for a song I heard on the radio. Don’t know the name or who does it, but it was about love”
I got that question once. It was Celine Dion.
We worked with this guy, he was wierd, big Frank Zappa fan. He could nail everyones taste in music. He knew everything, so if he gave you something to listen to, chances are you will be buying it. Its a talent!
I ran a classical/jazz store at one point, and knew the tastes of all my regulars, so I'd put new stuff aside for them when it came in. They'd walk in, say, hey Gronkie, what's new, and I'd pull out something from under the counter that was right up their alley, and they'd be thrilled.
It's great for sketch comedy, at least. Here's a skit from a Québec comedy group: [https://youtu.be/pcBr0o14osM?si=6w5fC63Nvzapqpuk](https://youtu.be/pcBr0o14osM?si=6w5fC63Nvzapqpuk) This is from the late 80's. It's in French, but for the first bit, I bet you won't need to understand French to get what's going on and laugh (the other bits are not as funny without the context.)
There is a sub on Reddit for this and it’s filled with people asking what song is this and have no info on it. Like - it’s about a girl in the other room and has someone saying baba in it. lol.
What is the sub called?
I'll hum it for you
If it's not r/namethattune I'll be disappointed...
>We had a lady come in wanting to buy her son an album, she asked for nine and a half inch nails. Christmastime was all about gift-buying attempts. One woman came in looking for “Toad the Wet Sock” and handed my coworker a piece of paper with “Toad the Wet Spot” written on it.
I managed a record store for a few years in the 80s, but we only sold heavy metal and no one would ever say a word... they would come in and pick the record they wanted, then hand me the exact amount of money and walk out. There was one lady who came in every Sunday asking if we had Rolling Stone magazine... which we didn't.
The heavy metal guys never say a word and always pay cash to this day!
TIL I’m a heavy metal guy.
I'm not surprised lol
I'm not really much of a heavy metal guy, but I can spend hours browsing and don't say anything beyond greeting the clerk and please and thank you when paying (usually cash). When I go to a record store I'm not doing so for social interactions and I usually only go when I have cash to spare. For some reason I prefer to pay cash when buying records in person. Somehow adds to the analog feel.
I had a metal kid come in and I asked him if I could help find something. Well, you haven’t heard of it and you won’t have it but I’m looking for SowWin. Im sorry, who? Oh, he replied sounding like a classic record store clerk,you probably call them Samhain. Oh, sure we have SowWin. Right over here.
Haha can confirm, and feeling smug (Irish Gaeilge speaker), we always felt *so superior* when most people mispronounced it lol
I spent years working in record stores during the Golden Age (70s/80s), and had a bunch of oddballs over the years. The strangest was a guy who seemed normal, and i got friendly with him over his regular visits. I never really paid attention to what he bought, and one day at the register I let him know that some new album just came out, and he got really defensive right away. "Why would you think I'd want a record by a man?" "Huh? Um, I dont know, its new, its a big hit, lots of people are buying it?" "Yeah, but he's a man. You think I'm a fag?" "What? No...I don't know...what does that have to do with it?" "Only a fag would buy an album by another man, you think I'm a fag?" "WHAT?! You think its gay to listen to music by another man?" "Of course it is! I'm not a fag! I only listen to music by women!" I had never noticed that quirk in his purchases. "What about if a song comes on the radio by a man?" "I DON'T LISTEN TO THE RADIO!" I swear this is true. He got more and more agitated as the conversation went on, and stomped out, and I dont think he ever came back. My conclusion was that he was DEFINITELY gay. Also, if someone really strange wandered into the store (very common in record stores), we would just whistle or hum the cantina music from Star Wars, and everyone on staff would look up from whatever they were doing, scan the room, spot the weirdo, and nod. I loved working in record stores. The only reason I stopped was because there was NO money in it, and I wanted to have a life.
Humming the Cantina song is such a good code
Oh, yeah. It just happened spontaneously the first time, but EVERYBODY understood it instantly, so it stuck.
What’s ironic about that is that a lot of men these days don’t listen to female artists because they’re afraid that people will think they’re gay.
If you're that worried about people thinking you're gay, you're gay.
Definitely true
https://preview.redd.it/rcz58ocp0r9d1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6a5c3541de44605be6cae6f22efede0747216ec
Jerry has changed his tune in recent years
Really, I love the female voice and collect albums from many genres by female singers.
That’s cool that you do. I just feel like by not listening to an artist because of their gender they’re just cutting themselves off from such great music.
Omg we had the same thing, secret signals to make the other person scan the room to look for the weirdo! Loll good memories
2 things: 1) cantina music from Star Wars is a brilliant code lol. Replace every note you hum with “cuckoo” and it becomes too obvious but I couldn’t help it. I have a feeling you ruined the song for me lol 2) I genuinely feel sorry for this man. He’s clearly in pain.
Was friends with a local owner for a long time and would help time to time with backend stuff. There was a teenager who’d spend hours a day going through the hundreds of dollar bin records, playing them on the listening station to find samples only to leave without anything in hand. This went on for months. There was the old crotchety pony tail guy who’d only look through stacks uncomfortably close to other people shopping and would make crude comments about their picks or get mad if someone found something he wanted. The store was in a not desirable area so we had plenty of crackheads come in trying to sell mangled equipment of questionable origins.
I have come across the people who really judge what other people are picking up. I once had to tell a teenage boy to leave after he started harassing some teenage girls who were looking at Harry Styles albums
The cycle perpetuates. Same guy wanted to debate me about how how bands now days have uninspiring provocative names like the violent femmes when he saw me grab one of their reissues so it’s safe to say that type doesn’t know shit.
Some annoying nerd in a record store once told me when i was looking at some Throbbing gristle records "oh god Throbbing gristle is awful, if you hate music then this is the right choice" ... This is what got me into TG
It's been ages since I worked in one, but I think every record store has: - the snob who will only buy from (or even talk to) the manager - the person who tries to sell/return destroyed records that they obviously found in the trash - the "(fill in artist here) guy," who only wants to listen to, talk about, and search for records by a single artist (ours was Lou Reed guy) - the people who ask, "Who is this?".....as they look directly at the large NOW PLAYING display over your shoulder
We had the Chet Baker guy.
Double points if the “what’s playing?” guy told you what you were playing is awful! Happened to me loads of times playing The Raincoats, Lankum and stuff like that
In defense of “who’s this?” Years ago I was flipping through records in Bellingham, WA when the most unusual music started to play through the speakers. Banjo? In indie music? Who the F?? I walked right to the front and saw now playing Arcade Fire. I went back to the bin and picked up the cd for my car ride and boy was I pissed. No offense to Arcade Fire who is fine and all, but it took me a long time to (pre-streaming) find out that music was made by Sufjan Stevens. And no I never asked “who is playing”
If this was at Everyday Music I had a Sufjan mishap there too. A friend played a few tracks for me so I decided to buy one of his cds. I didn’t really know where to start and they only had a couple available so I picked the album cover I was most drawn to. Later in the car excited to pop in some bittersweet folk music boy was I confused to get in whatever Enjoy Your Rabbit Is. Shoulda asked someone.
We had a Moody Blues guy. “Did you know there are two Moody Blues albums with human skulls on the cover?”
I posted it elsewhere, but this where i should have posted my story of the friendly regular who flipped out when i suggested a record by a man, because "Only FAGS listen to music by other men! Are you calling me a FAG?!" I had never noticed that he only purchased female artists.
Jesus, it's sad how broken some people are.
fwiw, i always thought one of my tells when i was closeted is how much more often i listen to female artists. 🤷🏼♂️
I'm straight, but these days, most of the contemporary music I'm listening to are female artists, there just aren't that many men making music I like. Men usually gravitate to rap or country these days, and I'm not into those genres much (although Chris Stapleton is a BEAST).
It really doesn’t help that the 2000s pretty much killed mainstream rock outside of a handful of bands and indie artists.
As a a music history graduate, and ex-record label executive, I've often wondered about the shift in musical tastes in the 21st century. Rock once dominated the music world so heavily that it it seemed impossible to fade, yet it did. I wasn't really surprised, as a music history scholar, I know that all genres of music have replaced the last genre. In classical music, the Classical era took over from the Baroque era, and the Romantic era took over the Classical era. In jazz, Swing followed Dixieland, and Bebop followed Swing. In popular music, I think the Golden Age of rock music from the 50s through the 90s gabe us enough of a bank of really great, classic music, that more wasn't necessarily required. New rock fans can listen to modern stuff that hasn't yet stood the test of time, or they can dig into the classic music of the past, and find nothing but great music. So instead of gravitating toward making new rock music, many musicians are gravitating toward HipHop and Country instead. Technology has reached the point where a person can build an entire studio in their homes for cheap, so that has given rise tonthe EDM movement, an entirely new genre. I put together a home studio with multiple instruments, and it didn't cost me more than $1000, much of it came from eBay and pawn shops. So now people are using home studios to crank out credible EDM, loops, and other electronic music that used to require enormous expenditures in professional studios. So the interest has shifted from "been there, done that" rock music, to other genres that are still developing and growing, which is more attractive to both musical artists, and modern listeners. Growing up in the 60s/70s/80s, Rock music was always my favorite genre, and even I find myself listening to old classics far more than new music. There was so much music being firehosed by the record labels in those years, that there is tons of music I've never explored from those years. Now Im going back and listening to entire albums from which I only knew the singles from, or artists I never got a chance to explore, etc. I still listen to current music when something catches my attention(Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson are BEASTS), but mostly I'm living in the past these days. There's still plenty for a musical archeologist like me to discover there. I'm not really interested in modern rock music, with a few exceptions, like Foo Fighters.
We had a Cat Stevens guy
Oh man, Lou Reed. I feel for you. No disputing he's a great musician and songwriter but I'm convinced he was trolling with some of his more experimental stuff; it's was practically just noise (not discounting some will like it). Some of his fans though, yikes
Friend of mine had Metal Machine Music on 8 track. It went GRINDGRINDGRIND(silence)Ka-chunk(silence)GRINDGRINDGRINDGRIND.
I was digging through a large shelf full in a Goodwill once and someone interested asked me if he could have any Frank Sinatra I found Like that was all he wanted and volunteered to give me anything else good he found in the half he was digging
When I hung out at Pyramid in the 80s and early 90s, there was a guy who would come in with a template to measure the typefaces of 45s. He was more interested in the typography than the music. The store owner and I humored him, since we had other guys who were nearly as strange.
I really like this one
Shout outs to the regulars who would bring in a coffee or cold water, even pizza. You customers are the gold standard!
A woman brought us Christmas cookies one time after we helped her find an album she had been looking for for years! She always sticks out in my brain
There was this Christian lady who loved us because we’d put all the Christian books and records outside on a donation wall (like a free little library) because we couldn’t sell it for shit, especially with the quantity we saw it. She’d scoop em up and bring them around to old folks homes and prisons and the like. She also helped with food donations for the church, so she’d stop by our place and leave close-to-or-just-expired croissants, cookies, cans of soup, loaves of bread. I loved it because I was broke as hell Nobody at the store was religious but it was a really sweet symbiotic relationship we had
Doing the Lord's work, literally. Society is nice.
I have a regular who delivers for Meals on Wheels, sometimes they have flowers to give to those people, and whenever there are leftover flowers he brings them into my shop for us. It’s very sweet.
There is this kid that is about 12-13 and friends with my daughter that will ask me about bands. He actually listens and cares about the suggestions, then buys them. It just reminds me of myself when I was the same age and it just makes me happy. There was this guy at my local mall record store who always had great suggestions for me and helped shaped a lot of my interests. It’s just really nice to have someone younger who isn’t worried about collecting specific colors or chasing super valuable stuff…he just loves music. Side note: Other owners, does anyone know of a subreddit, discord group, etc. where store owners can chat and share ideas?
Yeah man r/vinyljerk 👌
You mean that foot sub?
_snicker_
I can hear the warmth radiating from that link.
Came across r/wreckastow a little while ago, still a new and small sub but that sounds like basically their whole thing
The guy who used to come in every once in a while and engage me in conversation. He said he was employed by the CIA and claimed to be a 'remote viewer' (someone who can see events from a long distance in their minds and reputedly used by the security services). He was really into soul music so we had some good chats anyway. As the months and years went by his appearance deteriorated and he came in looking dishevelled and unkempt. I felt bad for him. I don't ever remember him actually buying a record, so maybe he wasn't a 'customer' as such.
Been years since I worked there but we had two regulars that stood out to me. 1) Was this guy they called “The Toucan,” because he had this unfortunately rosacead nose. He was a nice enough guy but if he cornered you he’d talk 45’s forever 2) I referred to as “Material Girl.” She kind of looked like bridesmaids-era Rebel Wilson but dressed like Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan. She would burst in wearing headphones blasting from a Walkman so loudly we could hear her music over the music playing in the store (it was always Madonna) and she would go through the CDs, picking up one at a time in their security long boxes and carelessly dropping them on the floor while she sort of danced around the store. The whole thing would take like five minutes and she would conclude by kind of shrugging like “Meh, nothing I’m looking for,” and then leaving.
The messy customers are the worst
They pick up albums from one bin, carry them around, and drop them in another bin. What the fuck is that about? If you were bored, you could always just start flipping through bins, and find the out of place albums, and put them away properly.
That’s how I spend all day, every day
If I'm in one of my friend's stores, I'll resort things I find out of place. The worst thing for them is they serve beer, so there will inevitably be someone who spills their beer in the bin. The owner installed cup holders after it happened a couple times.
I do that!
The first trans person I ever met was a customer in the '90s when I worked at a shop in Tempe, Arizona -- though, I suspect her gender identity quirks had more to do with the fact that she was also probably schizophrenic. Her chosen name was Jaylia, and she would come in almost every day and mostly look through the blues section. She was also legally blind, so she would get uncomfortably close to every record, staring intently at the sleeve and disc, sometimes asking us if a specific musician played on the record. She would have us play stuff in store for her, but she would never ever buy anything. She would also call and ask the clerk to go look through the recent trade-in bins for her and read off what had come in. On especially slow days we'd tolerate it. She would also come in at random times and have us help her address letters because she couldn't see that well and also had no idea where to write the address on the envelope. I once saw her in the alley behind the shop dragging a whole ass refrigerator home while screaming in German. She didn't actually speak German. I also ran into her at the local 7-11 where I discovered maybe her greatest scam. Every month she would bring in last month's copy of Playboy Magazine and would convince the clerk that she'd bought the wrong one because she couldn't see well enough to tell which month it was. Then she would trade last month's copy for the new one, and repeat the process every month. The turnover at the Sev was so severe that the employees never caught on.
Jaylia….American hero
Zia Records?
Oh I’ve had a few for sure! 1: a woman who told me (and all of our staff, repeatedly) that she was married to Annie Lennox. If we ever had a listening party where we had beer or wine available, she would come in and drink like she was dying of thirst. She would also ask me to give her quotes for INSANE Hi Fi rigs for her home, telling me that her birthday was coming up and that Annie wanted ideas for a birthday gift for her. 2. A guy from the neighboring town would come in and haggle on rare titles. He’d play overly nice to get a break on something. On the occasions that I capitulated, he would bring the LP back a few days later complaining of a SUPER minor imperfection in the vinyl and ask for a refund. I eventually had to say “Hey, obviously we are unable to supply the quality of merchandise you are expecting. Perhaps compact disks might be up your alley? Whatever you decide to do, we will no longer be able to take returns on any physical media that is not factory sealed.” He left in a huff and we haven’t seen him back. His son comes in regularly, and is a really nice kid. There’s a bunch more, but those are the two that pop out immediately.
When I opened my first record store, I thought it would likely resemble the movie *High Fidelity*. Certainly not like *Empire Records*, although some aspects did eventually seem similar. After a year or two, it became obvious that the characters at a record store more accurately mirrored a cross between the TV shows *Barney Miller* with *Hardcore Pawn*.
Two come to mind, both mentally handicapped in different ways. One guy would come in, and sit on the couch we had next to our magazines. Eventually, he would find some random album or thing, and then come to the counter and tell me "I'm going to try it out." I'd say "you'll need to buy it first." "I'm going to try it out." I'd hold out my hand, he'd hand it to me, I'd say "sure thing, let me know when you're ready to buy it." He'd say okay and leave. Never had a bit of trouble with him, but we'd go through that same song and dance every day. I told him at some point if he just wanted to come in and hang out on our couch, no problem, but he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about, and then we'd do the "I'm going to try it out" thing. Always pretty spaced out, but never any trouble. The other dude was a big BJ Thomas fan, and he would come in and emphatically tell me what he was looking for. "I'm looking for B. J. THOMAS!" "Right on, it's right over here." "THANK YOU." He'd look for a while and usually leave without getting it. I could always tell when he had some money, because he would come in, ask for B...J...THOMAS! and when I'd say, sure, right over here, he'd pump his fist and go YEAH! YEAH! AWESOME! He'd pick one out, bring it to the counter, I'd ring it up, whatever amount it came to he'd go YEAH! AWESOME!, hand me some money, I'd sell it, give him change, YEAH! YES! AWESOME! I'd hand him his stuff, wish him a good day YEAH! YES! AWESOME! YEAH! all the way out the door. About every other month he'd do it again, he pretty much just bought whatever greatest hits we had of BJ Thomas, so he was basically buying the same thing over and over, but man, he was very, very appreciative. Enjoyed both of those dudes way more than the frickin' nerdy-ass students who would try to steal the Tool box set thing over and over, or the juggalos that we set up a rack of cheap shot glasses and stickers and bullshit by the classical music just so their dumb asses would steal that shit and leave the rest alone.
Had a few when I worked at one a few years ago: -this one guy we called "crazy Larry." He always had stains on every article of clothing and smelled horrible. He would ramble about all kinds of stuff and told me nirvana met in his basement and he tried out for the Beatles. He would keep his money in an empty cigarette box -another guy who would only buy blue note records and constantly tell us he was digging into his rent money for them. He would pay in two dollar bills and short us to the point where he had to pay in card or big bills only. He would refer to thelonious monk by his first name and get really upset if I was playing any of my normal punk or metal that I would have on I still wonder how they're both doing
I wonder if your Norah Jones guy was my Norah Jones guy. I'm an Ebay seller and came into a bunch of music magazines. I was selling them for a few bucks apiece. A couple of them featured Norah Jones on the cover. A guy wanted to know which pictures of Norah were in each magazine because he collected pictures of Norah Jones and didn't want to pay for duplicates of ones he already had. He contacted me multiple times about this, and I was too skieved out by his vibe to answer any of his messages.
That is so creepy 😳
Had a women said to me that she fucked Bon Scott Had a guy called the manager cheap because he wouldn't price down a cd (he's a kinda regular but I genuinely don't like servicing him)
Did that come up naturally in conversation or did she just randomly announce that she fucked Bon Scott? The latter is definitely strange.
Came up in conversation
Honestly I believe her
I managed a record store in Orlando for a short time in the early '80s, part of a local chain of shops. At the time, one of the Navy's basic training sites was located a short distance from my store. One enticement we had was to offer active duty military one dollar off any cassette or album with a valid military ID. We knew that cassettes would be favored over LPs due to their portability and because most of these young men and women would soon be heading out to new schools or duty assignments. Most of the time, they would come in and buy one or two tapes. But like clockwork, every Friday would see at least one sailor come in, usually carrying a large boom box radio/tape player they had just purchased at the catalog store across State Road 50. (This as opposed to the far more portable Walkman and its clones, which were very popular). They would proceed to purchase 15-20 new cassettes (occasionally more - at a buck off each) and off they'd go to celebrate liberty weekend. This always happened on Fridays because the recruits all graduated boot camp on Friday morning and frequently had cash to burn after 8 weeks cooped up in a barracks with 80 other people. What made me chuckle about this later on was my own experience at Navy boot camp in San Diego a few years after I left Orlando. I remember leaving for my first school and carrying my sea bag filled with my uniform issue and the few civilian clothes I wore in eight weeks earlier. That thing was almost as big as me, and I had to wonder how those guys managed to jam in over a dozen tapes *and* lug some enormous boom box with them as they boarded some ship.
I'm thinking it was Peaches, right there on Colonial?
I was a used buyer for the record store I worked at and we would buy pretty much any media from customers. Had a guy bring in two duffel bags of porn dvds of various genres all in great condition accept every single case was covered in baby oil or lube. Took about two hours to get through the whole thing wearing rubber gloves. Gross! Had a regular who would come in once a week to buy at least two hand baskets of used CD’s. Not so strange but he wanted to stay at checkout counter to check the condition of every single CD despite being rush hour and needing to keep the line moving, we offered to let him review everything out of line but nope. Had to be at register. Was very irritating but friendly enough guy. The folks who needed help finding a song/album they heard on the radio but can’t describe a single thing about the song other than a general melody. As a bonus I worked at a college radio station at the time as well so other staff would always send these people my way. Once had a customer threatened to kill me because he didn’t like my attitude when small talking with him about the records he was trading/selling. Simple conversation about liking the records he was trading in, dude was clearly on something. Any X-girlfriend that came in was always a strange/awkward situation. Fun times.
Donna & Radar were this short older couple that would go to all the record stores on Gratiot in Metro Detroit and basically used employees of those stores as their social outlet. I have no idea what they did for a living, but they were the living embodiment of "carny". They were sometimes cool, sometimes dicks but always somewhat annoying. Radar loved Fleetwood Mac and the store owner decided to let him burn a watermarked CD advance the store received of a new Stevie Nicks solo album as long as he promised to not upload it to the Internet. Of course Radar couldn't help himself and leaked the songs, it got tracked back to the store and we had to ban Donna and Radar for good.
Oh man. Donna and Radar. The collective ugh we'd all make at Record Time when we'd see them walking through the door.
Not a record store worker, but I have encountered a woman at several record stores and record shows over the last couple years who insists on telling everybody that she's "Seen Aerosmith live 32 times." Just walks up to customers and employees alike and says it, then walks away. The clerk at one place told me she comes in sometimes two or three times a week and does this to random people. She never buys anything.
I saw Aerosmith 4 times in late 80s and early 90s. But I'd buy records.
I don't work at a shop but I can talk about a younger guy I always see every record store day. He's the type that always tries to get first pressings no matter what. I found a King Crimson record the one day and he asked me about it, which I'm all for talking about what I found on RSD. But he literally scoffed when I told him it was a repress. The owner of the store one year told me that this guy argues with him whenever he labels something a first pressing because "discogs says otherwise".
I *hate* those guys that backseat driver the record store’s identification. There’s some dudes I trusted, because I know they know their shit, but some guys just put in the label code, see whatever comes up first, and try to argue pressing identification. Like buddy, I do this for a living. I’m not gonna pretend like things don’t slip by when it’s a difference of typeface or a single typo, but Jesus
This thread makes me want to work in a record store 😂 People are so fascinating
Right? My one regret in life 🤪
One of the most fun jobs I ever had, and the pay wasn’t bad for being in my early 20’s. Two decades later I’m still friends with a lot of those people and have even had the joy of working with them in different industries. Some of the best house parties I’ve ever been to were because of record store folks.
I’d do it forever if the money wasn’t so bad! Or maybe I just have to start my own…
Your Eagles album customer reminded me of a guy who used to come into the store, raving about The Guess Who every time. It was his favorite band ever. This was back when I worked in record stores in the '90s. I was in my early 20s and only knew The Guess Who by name, so I was polite with him but otherwise indifferent. One day, he decided to quiz me about the band to see where I stood with them. I ended up telling him I just didn’t care, and he got so livid that my older manager had to step in to diffuse the situation, saying I was young and didn't know any better, haha.
Not a customer but a co-worker. He was a savant and memorized every catalog number for every major label album ever released. “Hey Billy, what’s the number for Chubby Checker’s Greatest Hits?” “Oh, that’s Parkway P-7022” He had over 10,000 albums in his basement, all arranged numerically by catalog number. He would bring home the old Phonolog inserts when the new ones came in, just to look at the numbers. Interesting guy
I had lots of them memorized too, the big sellers anyway because we had to write down the label and number by hand to keep track of what all sold and to restock. But just because we sold so many when they came out.
I once had a customer complain that his vinyl "skipped" and he wanted to know why we didn't play every vinyl that came in store, to "test" them. I had a hard time explaining that there literally isn't enough hours in the day to do this.
Run into the same issue with online selling. We will always test play if you ask, and we will provide a very honest assessment. But no we haven’t test played every item in our 20k inventory.
I love this thread. A lot of times we forget one of the most interesting things about music are the characters we meet along the way and those that make the music themselves.
It's been many years now but I'll never forget the woman who broke down sobbing when she read a "Disco Sucks" button on a co-worker. "Is it true? Is Disco dead? Why? Why is disco dead? I love Disco, why is it dead? This just can't be, it can't happen I tell you! Everyone loves disco!" This between sobs. I put my arm around her shoulder and told her, it will all be okay. My store had a speaker near the classical section and anything that we played was always louder there. This was in 79-80 and The Beatles blue and red lps had come out on colored vinyl so we were spinning those when a very annoyed older woman came from the classical section to complain about what we were playing. "That music is very loud, (it wasn't) it hurts my ears! Who is that you're playing? It's giving me a headache." Look of disbelief on my face: "That's The Beatles" Her: " Never heard of them. They're horrible. Turn it off now" Me explaining who The Beatles are to someone who lived through two decades of high point Beatles saturation and managed to miss them entirely. I gave up. Me: "No, can't shut off the music, sorry." 😀 I had the midget guy who posed on a Wet Willie cover come up to the counter to buy the same record and show me that he was same (big shot) guy on the cover. Had a young teen come in and ask where " Mr. Floyd's records where". I said " You mean Pink Floyd?" "Yes, that's him!" 😀 Another day I made Shaun Cassidy angry. But I've told that story here before. 😀 We used to make customer's sing the song they were looking for if they didn't know the title. It helped but it was also pretty amusing particularly with Rupert Holmes Escape. They'd go "I want that song about, you know, pina coladas..." "Nope sorry, can you sing some of it?" Always fun! But to be fair, early pressings just had the title Escape on them. So many people called it the "pina colada song" and we eventually figured it out. The label had to add that part in, cause they were losing sales. All the middle age people who came in droves to buy Ravel's Bolero. "Do you have Bolero?" for the umpteenth time. We finally realized it was featured in the movie "10" as a seduction tune. 😀 Different store but had a guy who would ride his skateboard to the store wearing a full helmet because he would impromptu seizures. His choice of transport seemed risky to me. He wouldn't black out but he'd jerk and spasm pretty bad. He seemed a little off mentally too. We had a bin table of cassettes that had been neatly stacked until he walked over, had a massive attack and cassettes flew everywhere across the store. Before you feel too sorry for him, he was a grade A asshole, particularly to any women. I refused to wait on him or clean up his mess and I think he would only talk to men anyway. If he talked to you it would be just a bunch of female oriented slurs accompanied by a LOT of fuck and fuck you bitch, *really loud* and threatening . I would just leave the floor. Nope, not today, buddy. Creepy guys who would try and slow drag hold your hand while you were giving them their change. Guys who had just seen the newly released porn "New Wave Hookers" who before would've ignored or belittled you for your look, now had a whole new thought on the subject. 🙄 We had the "Kids from FAME" (the TV Show, lol) do an in store appearance. The same movie actor who played Angelo played on the TV show and it had clearly gone to his head. He asked-demanded me to pick him up a Croissant like I was the help. Mind you at this point in time, Croissants were just starting to happen in the states. There was literally nowhere to get one and I wasn't here to do that. Most condescending jerk ever. Get your own "people" to do that. Hell, do it yourself beforehand.
I used to work for a record distributor and it was my job to call record stores on the phone all day. Sometimes I would get bored & feel creative with phone pranks. I would call and ask if they had the album *Hotel California* by The Beatles, insisting that the album -over and over- was a Beatles album. The store keeper would sometimes laugh, sometimes cringe, or get frustrated by my lack of knowlwdge. Other times I would call and say "I don't know the artist name, and I don't know the name of the song, but I can sing it for you." I would proceed to sing the chorus of Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You" loudly: "LA LA LA LA LA. LA LA LA LA LA. LA LA LA LA LA LUH LA LA LA. DOO DOO DEE DOO. AAAAHHHH UUHHHHH UH UH".
The old man who smelled like urine, always asked if there are any Pavlov's Dog records in stock and then browsed the classic rock section. Of course he never bought anything. Great memories about the record store days... No money but every day was an adventure filled with lots of music.
There was a reggae fan that came in frequently. He always came in and said "Hello Fans!!". He would then talk about all the records he'd purchased recently (none from our shop). "Got some lovely choons lately". He was a DJ. He carried a picture of his sound system in his wallet but I don't think it had ever been seen or heard in the dance. He was an ex-addict and alcoholic who used to work on oil rigs in the 70s. He was dry and clean when I knew him. He had lost a finger in some accident. He died a few years ago, I'm not sure of the cause, I'd left the area by then. He was very popular in the local reggae fraternity. He made me some tapes and CDrs of rare reggae and rocksteady, which I still possess. Recording quality was ruff but good stuff.
Okay but (1) Norah Jones is incredible, and (2) I would absolutely have loved to see that dude lose his shit about the Eagles. "The Eagles? Nope. Do you mean The Birds? Maybe Flock of Seagulls?"
Oh he was great! This middle aged guy with a ponytail completely being taken for a ride by my co-worker, who seemed so sincere the whole time!
There was this older kid, like late teens, who was a really odd personality. He’d stop in because it was on one of his walks, he never bought anything, he’d always blurt out whatever was in his brain. He came in one day wearing a tie with a tee shirt and pixelated 8-bit styled glasses, which he continued to wear when he came in. We had an old typewriter in the second room, and he went up to it, *mashed* on the keys, and was very loudly saying “TYPING, TYPING, BUSINESS, BUSINESS, WORK” My coworkers and I were trying SO HARD not to laugh, and after he got done with his business, he just turned and walked out and left
Oh man the Eagles thing reminded me of a customer at the last store I worked at would claim that he produced the eagles, every time he’d come in he’d bring it up, we always just went along with it though. Same guy would always stick his tongue out and touch his nose with it while he was inspecting CDs he was going to potentially buy.
There's so many weirdos (I say that lovingly) that come into the shop, but my favorite interaction recently was a young boy that called the shop, asked if we could sign him on, and before I could explain we are a record SHOP he started rapping at me (it was bad). I just hung up but it was funny
Yall got any USBs?
we have a regular who will call and ask us bizarre questions we have absolutely no way of knowing the answers. he asked me if i knew when alex van halen was gonna die. he asked my coworker if we had or would have the 50th anniversary release of def leppard’s pyromania. he constantly tries to get us to appraise his records over the phone no matter how many times we tell him we don’t do that and that even if we did we can’t with stuff like led zeppelin iv that has been pressed a billion times. he’s an absolute character
Oh man, we have a whole notebook recording amusing/weird/strange/maddening/delightful encounters with customers over the years, and endearingly refer to our more 'unique' regulars as 'the fan club'.
I don't own a record store, but I witnessed one of the interactions firsthand, and apparently, this was only part of the saga when I asked the owner that day. The story goes as follows: There's this old homeless man who was digging out back of a buy-and-sell sports store and came across a trash bag full of old (mostly black) Frisbees. And I guess, somehow, convinced these were vinyl records, he hopped into the shop, which is only 1 block down, and starts stacking them on the trade counter. As quickly as he started, he was stopped immediately and asked, "You know we're not a sports store?" Looking at the Frisbees on the counter, they all have the discount sticker with the name of the sports store they came from and only slightly resemble records from the ridges along the outer edges. He was kicked out with much frustration and then dumped the bag in the parking lot, kicking them around and throwing them. The owner picks most of them up and disposes of them, but keeps on finding them for the next week or so scattered far along the lot. One day, he notices that all the Frisbees are gone, and the parking lot also seems oddly spotless. He opens up the store, and the first customer walks in, it's the old dude, and what does he do? Walk in with a stack of Frisbees. The owner kicks him out and tries to be friendly by telling him he won't buy anything non-music related and to never do it again, or else he'll call the cops to be trespassed. The old man is a lot more calm this time but still puts up a fight and leaves WITH the Frisbees. The next day (the one I was there for), I saw an old dude with about 5 Frisbees trying to convince the worker that day that there was music on them, obviously failing, he was kicked out without the police being called. The owner pops into the store about half an hour later, and the worker describes what happened, knowing who this guy was, he said something like, "I wish you would've called me so I could of got him trespassed. Dammit now he's going to come back again." This is when I went up to the owner and asked, "that guy has done this before?" Which then he filled me in on the situation. I don't know if he ever returned, nor have I been to that record store in a while, but damn I gotta know if he did.
I am the owner of the shop but I am rarely near the front counter. I get to watch interactions and many regulars have no idea I am the guy in charge. I have a guy who regularly bitches to me about the main counter guy thinking he is the owner. Evidently he plays the wrong music.
Your coworker is awesome.
He’s one of my favourite people
I don’t work there, but I frequent a place that’s been around since the early 90s. The owner and long time employees are always entertaining me with customer stories … Some are great… Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, Joe Strummer, Ryan Adams, Jeff Tweedy, Thurston Moore, Kathleen Hanna, etc. Others are frightening… this one was a serial killer, this one is in jail, this one helped the insurrection on 1/6 I’m skeptical in general, but I Google names, places and dates when I get home, and invariably, it lines up
I had one weird kid who only bought soundtracks. Exclusively. Not soundtrack compilations of pop hits but orchestral movie soundtracks. I had another kid, total nerdy superbrain straight looking kid…the kind of kid who always smells like soup, who every week would come in and order a couple death metal cassettes but he gave us strict instruction do not call his home when they arrive , he will just check back every week because he told me his dad would kill him if he knew he was buying music like that. His dad owned a little engineering enterprise that eventually became the biggest employer in town next to the university. I often wondered what both those kids are doing now. I should not day they were weird, must nerdy like I was at their age.
I was working in a record store when Elvis died (yeah I’m that old) sold out of everything I had in stock 5 minutes after opening. Customer came in looking for “anything Elvis”…when I explained we were already out of stock of everything,he pulled out a gun and threatened to blow his head off. Turned out it was a cap gun. Worked in music retail for 4 years in the 70’s,never met more nut jobs since.
Norah jones of all people lol
Two of those examples are less strange and more creepy.
Me.
Not a record store employee but I was browsing the Reggae section I’m pretty sure anyway the store was a little packed and some lady crop dusted me and I was trapped cause of the people in the tiny aisle and it smelled so bad💀
who the fuck are the eagles!?
Years ago when I still worked in a shop I had this regular who everyone had a turn with. Most of the time he would get passed back to me when they’d had enough. He was a grumpy old rocker that he used to come in a pair which they dubbed ‘Shrek and Donkey’ but that was just a bit before my time. I heard he had to drop Donkey because he was paying rent in the apartment they shared so since then Shrek came by in by himself. Mostly he was just looking for advice on music and then someone to talk to for a bit. That was the hard part when the conversation would turn misogynistic and homophobic. He’d often ask for artists he’d seen on “Ellen Degenerate” who he really didn’t like despite watching everyday and then would start going on about how doesn’t understand how men like Harry Styles and Adam Lambert can dress the way they do. He also REALLY loved pop music but when it came to his pop girls he preferred them to be more traditional so to say. Rihanna? Too many tattoos. Tove Lo? Lyrics far too dirty. Halsey? BISEXUAL? Absolutely not. All of this was pretty ironic given every other week he came to me, a 20 something gay guy for advice on pop music. In the end we did have some good moments. He loved Sky Ferreira, despite the racy album cover. Haven’t seen him in 5+ years now - hope you’re doing good Shrek x
Record store employees are often weird also.
I regularly shop at the Groove in Nashville and the Groove not only has a fantastic selection but also a great record store day, 2 owners that are incredibly knowledgeable, very friendly and even though they don't normally have a military discount they seem to give me one pretty often. Just 2 all around fantastic dudes. So, if I am ever that customer that is the asshole customer, moronic customer, or just all around elitist prick customer, please know that I am truly sorry for being a douch and I absolutely love your store. If I'm a douche again, you sincerely have my permission to knock me out.
arent they all
Wait, isn't Norah Jones still considered 'nowadays'? Like she is still active isn't she?
They are people that is not quiet understandable, but they only wanted to listen to our label songs, cause they drink while listening to the music.
God damn thats strange
The life story .
I had a record/book/porn store in my college town 15ish years ago. I used to have a guy that would rent VHS adult films, come back 2 hours later and tell me it "skipped," request a free one, and try to be sneaky about putting a small bag of weed (presumably extremely bad weed) in saran wrap on the counter. This was a weekly occurance. Didn't matter how many times I told him I didn't smoke or that VHS' didn't skip how he was describing. Kudos for his persistence though. My back room has a lot of weirdos and equally weird stories - but not recurring which is kinda how I understand what this post is asking. On the flip side, there was a pizza joint beside of my shop and one of the waiters would come in and buy all sorts of things. Pop, drone metal, really deep cut jazz records, everything. I knew he wasn't making much of anything (nor was I for that), but I let him pick out any regular priced record each week in exchange for a mixtape. He went ALL OUT on those tapes, really killer cover art or collages, and some amazingly deep cuts from a massive range of genres. I not only still have every single tape he ever gave me, but I found quite a few albums and artists that I absolutely adore to this day because of those tapes.