When I was just 17, and, yes, my young friends, that was some time before many of you were born, I used to pick up my equally young girlfriend on Friday nights, catch the bus and then the tube, and go downtown to the used vinyl record store on the main street up through the city. I believe that was a good time in my life.

Of course, the city was much different back then. That was when the street was still seedy, before it was cleaned up by the city. There were still hookers waltzing up and down the sidewalk and leaning seductively into the cruising vehicles that stopped. Men would stand outside the massage parlours and strip joints and try to get passing groups of guys to enter. I think there was only one big gay bar in the city at the time and we always crossed to the other side to avoid the flamboyant or leather-clad queers hanging out on the sidewalk. That was long before the devastation of HIV, too. It’s funny how so many things have changed.

The used record store, however, was a little world to itself. Corey, the twenty-something guy on the front desk, was always spinning records and ready to have a lengthy discussion on the merits of this or that album by somebody I had never heard of. He would hold a record up to reflect the light of the overhead fluorescent and inform you there was a ‘skip’ in the third track of side two. Corey knew his stuff.

But almost better than Corey were the characters who came into the store at all hours. I remember meeting fringe-jacketed metal heads who stank of beer and pot. They would stomp into the shop with their long hair, handlebar moustaches and heavy black boots looking for the latest or rare releases by bands whose very names were frightening. Then they would stomp out, heading over the two blocks to the metal bar, ready to drink quart bottles of beer, fight and play billiards while waiting for the 11 o’clock opening band to appear; then they would become united as though with a single head banging back and forth to the music. Those metal guys were always nice to us and told us stories about the bands they liked. I don’t remember seeing any metal girls back then but I’m sure there must have been some. I still listen to some of those bands and the names still frighten me.

There were also the jazz fans. These ones all wore long tan overcoats and sported blue berets – I’m serious. They were quiet and secretive, slipping into the shop almost unnoticed with a bag full of ancient discs under their arm. Then there would the debate about the album version of the trumpet solo over the live recording from New York in 1938. It was here that I was introduced to Davis and Marsalis, Nat "King" Cole and so many others. Then, quietly reaching under the counter or rifling through some hidden bin, Corey would produce the sought after disk, the jazz fan would pay and slip silently out into the night, heading uptown to some jam session or hole-in-the-wall club – or at least, that is what I imagined.

Upstairs, the shop was even more exotic. It was here that the classical and foreign disks were filed. I remember walking among the overflowing rows of bins with the wooden plank floor creaking so much beneath my feet I was sure I would fall through at any moment. The clients here ranged from the older, professorial looking men to young music students to immigrants, at a time when the city was not the multicultural place that it is now.

All the while, Corey would sit at his desk, sipping cold coffee, chatting and spinning records. If it weren’t for him, maybe I would never have known Sam Cooke, or Patsy Cline, Jackie Wilson, the Platters, Hank Williams or so many of the great vocal groups of the 50’s. The first time I heard Billie Holiday was on an original 78rpm record from 1947. She’s been with me ever since, even though she was already gone five years before I was born.

Finally, perhaps with some new-found treasure, and warm thanks to Corey, my girlfriend and I would make the walk down the block through the crowds of night creatures to the tube station and the trip back home.

Not long after, my girlfriend and I broke up. I don’t know what ever became of her. I was only 17 and I don’t think I treated her very well. I’m sorry about that.

And some years later, the record store too closed its doors to be transformed into a shoe store or one of those places that sells cheap imported electronic junk.

I still wonder what became of those dusty bins of memories and think that maybe they are just closed up in a warehouse somewhere. And I think of all of those magical voices that I heard and which I still carry with me. So many of the singers are gone, but if I want to, I can still hear Sam Cooke singing ‘You send me’ above the scratches and pops of the old vinyl record on my turntable.

xoxo

peace

:o)