By Working at a record store taught me a tragic truth; no matter how much you love your favorite albums, they’ll never be as popular as they deserve to be. Each month at Merry-Go-Round Magazine, I dust off some long-overlooked records, revisit my pretentious past, and explore how this music forever etched itself into my history. Eventually, all your memories get marked down and thrown into The Bargain Bin.
It was the kind of balmy summer night in St. Louis where the air felt thick enough to swim through. I was drenched with sweat, though not just from the humidity. My second date with Daria was bombing. We sat on the porch so I could smoke cigarettes since I had to burn through at least a pack a day. You’d think this might have been a red flag for her, but she didn’t seem to care. Her face sat still and blank, impossible to read beyond the freckles that ran across the top of her cheeks like constellations in the sky.
The week before, we met for the first time outside of work at a bar, only a few blocks from the house I shared with four other friends. Neither of us was into drinking, but meeting for the first time in public at a bar seemed like the right move while dating in our twenties: neutral ground and all. We sat there talking for two hours, ignoring the shouting and noise from the bar’s weekly trivia night.
She told me how her aspirations for working in the music industry drove her to pursue a Music Business degree. I told her I’d dropped out of college the year before because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and working in the record store was more appealing. She seemed to have her shit together, which was appealing to me because I thought the stability would do wonders for my life.
But now we were silently swatting at bugs and sweating it out on the porch.
I’d first noticed Daria from across the venue where I worked as a bouncer, carrying two 32-packs of water bottles on her shoulders. She had glasses, which is always a plus, and a single tattoo of the outline of a star on the back of her arm, which told me she was probably a pop-punk or emo gal at some point.
Her job was what they call a “runner;” she was in charge of compiling the items on a band’s rider, taking them anywhere they needed to go, and generally being available to pick up any slack on show days. I would see her zooming back and forth through the venue while we set up tables and chairs before the show, but she always clocked out before the encore, so I never had a chance to introduce myself. I asked some of the guys on the janitorial crew if they knew anything about her since they were at the venue much earlier than I ever had to be. The most they could give me was her name and that she was reticent for someone who worked around loud music all day.
The only saving face on our silent humidity date was when I handed her a mix CD filled with songs that hinted at how I felt. Like so many emotionally damaged record store folks, a mix was the only way I knew how to tell someone I was crushin’. After some recent attempts to romance fizzled out, I was excited about this new blossoming relationship, which felt ripe enough for a mix.
I threw “In Your Line” from Telepathe’s debut, DANCE MOTHER, an experimental electroclash record produced by TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek, which harkened back to the minimal production on DESPERATE YOUTH, BLOODTHIRST BABES. It was the most accessible track on DANCE MOTHER, which I picked so as not to throw too much weirdness at her this early in dating. I had a vague idea of what she listened to, and this being the first mix, I tried to avoid any songs that might come off as too annoying or too horny—I’m a modest dude.
I twisted the batty deep into the chamber of my dugout, scraping the bottom for any weed remnants that would collect. I took a long drag, blowing the smoke out my bedroom window, then splayed myself out on my mattress that sat bed frameless against the wall. Headphones hugged my ears, and I drifted in and out, thinking of Daria, wondering when I would see her again or if I had utterly blown my chance at romance. I spiraled for a bit until the weed kicked in.
—
I only ever DJ’d to entertain myself and make some easy cash. I invited Daria to hang out with me in the booth, since it was a Wednesday night and the crowd at the bar would be sparse. Instead, she brought a few friends, and they huddled around a table, sipping drinks and laughing away. I tried to get Daria’s attention, but she never looked up.
I wanted to hear this Telepathe weirdness on a booming sound system. I bought the “Chrome’s On It” 12-inch single online, and it arrived just in time for my next record spin at the venue’s bar. I didn’t take a moment to inspect it before I threw it on the turntable halfway through the night. The already wobbly intro came across even worse as I watched the needle travel straight up into the air and back down. The heat had turned the wax of this summer jam into actual jam.
To cope with the stress from this warped issue, it was time to throw on a 12-minute track from The Juan MacLean and hit the bathrooms for a weed break. The bathroom door busted open as I cupped my hand around a Bic to light up. I thought it was one of the bartenders looking to rat me out to management, but instead, I found Daria with determination in her eyes. She grabbed the batty out of my hand and pretended to take a long inhale of absolutely nothing. Then she pushed me against the wall, kissing me deep, with boozy breath. The only thing I could think of was what would happen if we got caught, so I pulled away from her and ran back to the booth.
—
Not long after we didn’t lose our jobs, we agreed it would be a good idea financially for us to try to live in the same space. Daria had a stable career path, or at the very least, had a degree under her belt that she could take to the corporate world. And I just needed a new place to live after some shake-ups in the roommate lineup in the house where I stayed. It was a match made out of convenience.
We moved into the shotgun apartment in South St. Louis only a few months after our first date. I helped unpack her modest CD collection and noticed DANCE MOTHER in the pile, yet the copy I had ordered for my store collected dust on the shelf.
“So, where’d you pick up this one?” I asked. “I don’t even own my own copy.”
Her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. “Um, I bought a bunch of albums from your first mix at Vintage Vinyl.”
“Our rival? You know I work at a different record store, right?”
And that’s where all our troubles began.
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