The Vinyl Princess (2 page)

My blog pops onto the screen. It looks a bit understated and a bit basic, as music blogs go (this coming from a girl who didn’t really know how a blog worked until six months ago). This morning’s blog is an insightful piece about glam rock. I explore the rise and fall of the New York Dolls and continue on with Lou Reed, Roxy Music, David Bowie, Queen and Mott the Hoople. Granted, I wrote this in twenty minutes but in the comments box below the blog is a big fat zero. No comments. I scroll down to the number of hits: twenty-two. Most of them are mine. Maybe there isn’t anyone out there. Maybe it’s just a barren, postapocalyptic plain of endless asphalt parking lots with empty Starbucks cups blowing around. Or maybe I need to write a better blog, get people thinking, write a mission statement. I flip through music magazines while I’m thinking about this. I favor the British ones like
MoJo
and
Q
; the reviews are better and they stay away from mainstream crap. I’m careful not to bend the pages back too far or spill anything on them because I put them back on the magazine rack when I’m done. I come across a
MoJo
interview with Elvis Costello, whom I adore. The interviewer asks him a question about playing live and Elvis talks about how he’ll never stop playing live and then he says something that grabs me by the throat: “I’m not of a mind to record anymore. The MP3 has dismantled the intended shape of an album.” That’s it! The MP3 has dismantled the intended shape of an album. I could never have come up with that on my own. I’ll quote him in my blog. He’ll inspire thousands.

Summer mornings are particularly quiet here on the avenue because in May, when the school year ends, the Cal students head back to whatever cultural vacuums they came from, leaving us blissfully student-free for two and a half months. The population shrinks down to roughly half its size. In the old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, students actually shopped at Bob & Bob’s for their music, but that was before downloading became de rigueur, effectively killing independent record stores. A lot (a
lot
) of the Cal students are expert downloaders. Bob points this out with increasing frequency. He says the word
downloaders
with extra emphasis, like he’s saying
freeloaders
. He’s more than a little annoyed that the students seem to have no idea what we’re selling here. Groups of earbud-wearing downloaders saunter past the dusty, eclectically decorated windows, oblivious to the treasures inside, searching like lost sheep for the Gap, which closed two years ago. They will never know the joy of flipping through a bin of records, being captivated by the cover art and reading the liner notes. Bob calls them the Lost Generation. He stands at the counter, arms crossed at his chest, watching them out the window, and seethes. He wants someone to blame. Some days he blames technology for tragically altering the way that people get their music with no regard for the music itself; some days he blames the record companies for being oblivious; some days it’s corporate America for killing the mom-and-pops, or suburban malls for obvious reasons; and then eventually it all comes back around to Richard Nixon. I’m a little fuzzy on this part of the equation. I’m not entirely sure how a dead president could be responsible for a kid buying an AC/DC CD at Wal-Mart instead of at Bob & Bob’s, but Bob’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist and he likes nothing more than to explain to unsuspecting customers the exact moment when this country started going to hell. Bob threatens to sell the store daily but the fact is no one would buy it even if he could sell it, which he can’t because it’s his life, and he also can’t because he doesn’t own; he leases.

Aidan, the only employee at Bob’s who never has to deal with the public, skulks past me. Aidan takes misanthropy to a whole new level. He turns his head slightly my way as acknowledgment (
I see you but I don’t want to talk to you
) and nods almost imperceptibly. Aidan prices and processes in a tiny room in the back affectionately known as the Cave. He’s tall and whisper thin with a sort of a bloodless look to him. He disappears into his environment like a chameleon. It seems that his only desire in life is not to be noticed. He also owns, I’ve heard, a pretty badass record collection that took most of his lifetime to accumulate.

“Good morning, Aidan,” I greet him enthusiastically. I’ve spent two years trying to pry him loose. Also, truthfully, I want to underline a contrast between us: I’m extra-effervescent around him because I see some of myself in him and sometimes it scares me.

“Morning,” he says quietly, and then he’s gone.

“Hey, what’s that Frank Zappa album with the song about frosting a cake?” asks my first customer, a kid dressed like a perp. He’s got a black baseball cap pulled down over his eyes and he’s wearing guyliner. Bits of oily dark hair poke out from underneath his cap, which matches his too-big black satin jacket with red trim. It’s zipped all the way up to his pale thin neck. He reeks of cheap cologne, meant to mask days of BO, and it’s not working.

“
Sheik Yerbouti
,” I tell him, and look back down at my magazine.

“You got a used copy of that?”

“I saw one out there yesterday. Did you check the section?”

“Nah. What’s that under?”

“Z.” I look at him like he must be kidding.

“Right. Z.” He wanders away.

Should I have taken him by the hand and led him over to the Zappa? No. I won’t spoon-feed the customers. If you don’t know your alphabet, you have no business leaving your house, let alone shopping for premium music.

The store slowly fills up with shoppers and I close my magazine. Blind Bill and his companion, Jeff, are still scouring the blues section. Jeff recites the songlists off the backs of CDs to Bill while Lucy sleeps next to them on the floor. They practically live here. Chet Baker’s sweet, sad voice fills the room singing “My Funny Valentine.” He sounds so hopeful that it’s hard to believe he eventually jumped out a window in Amsterdam. Some people say he was pushed. I know better.

Employees are no longer allowed to choose the music that plays in the store. Bob fills the six-CD carousel before he goes home every night, and if we touch anything other than the play button on the stereo we risk losing all Bob & Bob’s privileges, which include borrowing anything in the store for up to two weeks. This rule came about when certain employees started dominating the CD player and certain other employees got bent out of shape about it and one thing led to another and someone got hit in the head with the edge of a CD case and had to go to the emergency room and get eleven stitches. Just for the record, it was a Mötley Crüe CD. So now Bob has to make it in before the entire carousel has played or anarchy will undoubtedly ensue. Fortunately, my musical tastes often intersect with Bob’s. I like about half the stuff he loads into the carousel.

Bob appears at noon, disheveled and sleepy. He’s wearing a tissue-thin T-shirt advertising a Who concert (that he undoubtedly attended) over another T-shirt that I remember from yesterday. He’s not a man who makes complicated wardrobe decisions. His wife, Dao, follows him through the door. Dao and Bob met on one of Bob’s many trips to Thailand and they were married on the beach in Phuket six years ago. Dao is all sweetness and smiles until you cross her, and we all know better than that now. Her English isn’t very good despite the fact that she always seems to be taking an English class somewhere. I’ve suggested to Bob that maybe we should all take Thai lessons and make things a whole lot easier around here. Dao memorizes words she hears on television but she often confuses the definitions. She uses the word
runway
for
road
and
top
for
good
, and
guest
for
friend
and
pop
for
put
and
nation
for any sort of place. I like Dao a lot even though we have a tough time communicating. She’s informed me many times that I’m a “top guest” to her. Bob adores Dao but they fight like cats and dogs. Dao might be one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Her hair is about nine feet long and cascades down her back in a shiny blue-black river. Her features are small and delicate. She has a habit of turning her head to one side when she doesn’t quite understand you. This is usually followed by a wide smile, featuring perfectly straight white teeth. You can’t help but smile right back at her. She can even get Laz to smile. Dao is Bob’s third wife and the only one I’ve met. The veteran staff members say she’s the favorite so far by a long shot. There’s a rumor that the first two wives are buried in Bob’s backyard. Bob can be difficult.

Dao chirps a smiley “Hello” to everyone as she passes the counter on her way to the office in the back. She was an accountant back in Thailand and she works on the books here at Bob’s. Over her shoulder she’s carrying a large bright red handbag roughly half her size. It obscures her tiny body and makes her look like a tomato with legs.

Bob stops directly in front of me at the counter.

“Al? Who’s that in sound tracks?” He points backward over his shoulder. I follow his finger.

Shorty and Jam, two street people who are regularly ejected from the store, look like they’re reenacting a bar fight. Shorty is hanging on to Jam’s foot, which is up in the air.

“So I grabbed his foot like this and I stopped the kick. I stopped it dead,” says Shorty.

“No way. No goddamn way!” says Jam, his eyes wide in disbelief.

I look at Bob. “We let them back in, remember?”

“No.”

“You want me to throw them out?”

“No. I’ll talk to them.”

He walks over to sound tracks. Shorty and Jam start flipping through vinyl musicals when they see Bob approach. Shorty pulls out a vinyl copy of
The Sound of Music
and pretends to read the back of it.

“Guys. You need to chill or I’ll toss you out again, okay?”

“Yeah, okay, Bob, you bet,” says Shorty.

Jam stands at attention and salutes Bob. Bob walks back to the office, his shoulders slumped, sighing and shaking his head. Shorty and Jam are a good example of the type of street people who spend most of their time on the avenue. Their behavior ranges from harmless to annoying to extremely cantankerous. These two are unusual even for Telegraph Avenue, because in addition to abusing drugs and alcohol, they also dabble in cross-dressing; they like to wear women’s clothing. Not generally a whole outfit; usually just a flourish here and there. Like today, for instance, Jam is wearing a pale pink polyester blouse with a ruffle down the front and Shorty is carrying a beaded handbag.

Jennifer, our resident goth chick and my relief on the cash register, saunters in at twelve fifteen. She’s always late and she always has a great excuse. The expression she paints on her otherwise expressionless face daily is slightly smudged at the eyebrows. Jennifer is our least helpful employee unless you happen to be looking for Dead Can Dance or the Cure or Siouxsie and the Banshees.

“Sorry,” she says, but she’s not. “The damn bus breaks down and we all have to pile off like a bunch of refugees while they find another one for us, like there’s just going to be an extra bus sitting around somewhere that they can send right over, like we live in Mayberry or something.”

“So, did they find one?”

She shrugs. “I dunno, I took off, got a cab and blew ten bucks on the fare.” She yanks off her leather motorcycle jacket and throws it under the register. She checks her slash of red lipstick in a little mirror she keeps in a drawer at the counter and smooths her skirt over her fishnet stockings. She reties the laces on her knee-high Doc Martens and stands up.

“Well, I’m going to lunch.” I hate to rain on her rant but I’m late. Jennifer is a victim and lives to complain. She has twenty-seven ex-boyfriends who all did her wrong, parents who abused her, countless friends who abandoned her and an entire system working against her. She’ll still be ranting when I get back.

“Go, go. I’m here. Who said you had to wait?” she asks impatiently.

I walk out the front door into the glare and head up the street, past the head shops and two bookstores, to Swarma, a vegetarian Indian joint. I’m meeting my friend Kit for lunch. She works at a vintage-clothing store just up the avenue from Bob’s, and when we’re both on the street, we try to eat together. She’s seated at a table in the window when I arrive. She’s already spooning dal soup into her mouth. Kit wears vintage like no one else. Her outfits look like they were put together by a team of professional costume designers. Today she’s wearing an off-white silk blouse with a burgundy velvet fitted vest and a black pleated miniskirt with chunky Mary Jane heels. By contrast, I am wearing a Blondie T-shirt and skinny jeans in need of a wash. I look like the person who should be carrying her luggage.

“Man, are you late. I ordered. Got you the spinach paneer. I hope that’s okay.”

“Fine.” I pull out a chair across from her and sit down. “Jennifer was late again.”

“Bitch. What’s with that chick?”

I shrug and snap off a piece of papadam. I dip it into a small bowl of mango chutney. A waitress puts a fragrant metal bowl of dark green spinach paneer and a plate of fluffy Frisbee-size discs of naan bread on the table between us.

“Thanks.” I smile at her. I take a sip of my water and dig in.

I’ve known Kit since preschool. We’re very tight. We feel the same way about almost everything but we’re nothing alike. Kit gets a
lot
of attention from guys. She coyly pretends not to notice but she knows how to flirt and she does it shamelessly (I am the absolute worst at flirting unless you count blushing violently when a guy looks at me); she’s petite (oh, how the boys love that); and she’s got enough confidence for both of us. Kit has a sense of feminine adventure that I envy. One of her most admirable qualities is that she can change her mind about anything, unapologetically, at the last second. Somehow, even the nastiest of baristas and waiters don’t seem to mind. I have a habit of letting her sit in the driver’s seat in these matters. She chickened out of a tattoo a few months ago and I followed suit. We opted for piercings instead (hers is a navel ring and mine was a nose ring until three days later, when I got it caught on a cardigan, which turned out to be a blessing because it’s since occurred to me that the whole world, or at least my whole world, is either tattooed or pierced).