The day the music died.

There is really no place where I feel more like a native foreigner than in Tallahassee. My second home. My old home. My home-in-law. I am not a native, but I married one. I am not a foreigner, but I visit just rarely enough to feel that way.

In my days of Tallahassee living, there was this one bright, shining, gritty moment in time where I was 19, wearing bell bottomed jeans and cords and flowing tops and washing my hair twice a week if I was lucky, spending a lot of time reading really good literature and listening to a lot of classic rock, and working at an independent record store.

[Goodbye yellow brick road.]

I can't really explain how I got the job to begin with. I'd never had a "real" job before. Of course, I had been holed away in my room at my dad's house working in "data management" [aka mail girl]. But, I think it was a combo of filling my application with the multitude of various instruments I had learned to play over the years [piano, violin, clarinet, drums, guitar, recorder - thank you very much] and Vinyl Fever needing someone for the holidays.

So, I got the call a month after dropping off my application. I had my interview. I said my one biggest weakness would be my laid back style. Ha. I took the music trivia quiz and bombed it. But I got the job. The manager's girlfriend was a red head and I think he had a thing for them. It must have worked in my favor.

Long story short... the manager told me I needed to brush up on my trivia skills. I told him I just didn't see music that way. [Wrong answer.] I made them listen to Shania Twain's Greatest Hits while sweeping the floors after closing. [Wrong idea. They could not appreciate the novel humor of it.] I had a boyfriend who was signed to Atlantic Records. [Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Definitely not fringe society enough.]

The manager yelled at me almost every other day for no apparent reason. He gave me one day off for the holidays. He made me work 68 hours in 8 days and claimed it didn't violate any labor laws [please]. He made me clean out the dust-filled cavernous regions underneath the counters, on my hands and knees, for days on end. And he changed the schedule without telling me.

Nor did he tell me that a "Spring Schedule" was different from a "Holiday Schedule". So, when I didn't show up for work when I didn't know I had to work, called in to discuss the schedule [because people who are skipping out on work do that kind of thing], and then asked if I could not come in when I realized I was supposed to be working because my boyfriend was leaving town in two days for six months and we were having dinner at his grandmother's and he had no phone so I had no way of reaching him to tell him I couldn't make it, and the boss said yes, which really meant no, he hired someone the next day to replace me without even telling me [again with the not telling]...

And I lost said bright, shiny, gritty, and painful job.

And now the store is closing.

 

[Nothing held back. Not even your dignity.]

 

["This is when you know you have an Emo problem." - Justin, holding

Joy Division - Martin Hannett's Personal Mixes]

 

 [Aerosmith - Done With Mirrors]

[Hiding.]

We purchased five records on vinyl from the discount bin [even in closing, they are overpriced]. I hid my camera in the turned on position inside my purse, taking each photo with stealth caution. I eyed the guys behind the counter and the nostalgia swarmed around me. In seven years, I had only been back in the store one time since showing up to talk the schedule over with my boss, only to be told I was "let go" and the new guy was already being trained, which then erupted into one of the most voracious arguments I have ever had in my life, resulting in being offered my job back, only to tell the worst boss on the planet that I would "never work for someone like him again in my entire life."

It was an experience that scarred me for years, but also molded me. It gave me strength. And the indefinable novelty of a now antiquated experience. I am not unhappy to see the store go by the wayside, in a unfortunate, vengeful sense. But it is a big loss to the community of Tallahassee. To all of Florida, really, and to the entire world for what it represents.

Those days are done. What next, music industry? Where are you taking us?