Daytrippin' in G'boro

This next entry will be about, yes you guessed it, once again, no escaping it…music. Actually it’s about the short road trip to Greensboro I took with Kevin and Chris, the guys I play in Dante’s Roadhouse with. We also had a friend of Chris’ from work with us whose name is also Chris. So it was me and Kevin and the two Chrises, but not the ones with the syndicated radio show. We piled into Kevin’s low rider, a late model Honda Accord, and hit the long and winding road. Well, it’s not so long and winding, it’s actually a short straight highway that takes about twenty minutes. The objective was to hit the used record stores and possibly a pawn shop with a side trip to a legit musical instrument outlet with the southern boy friendly moniker of The Music Barn.
But first, as usual, food became the main objective. So we rolled around Lee Street looking out for the Beef Burger. This wasn’t where we were planning to eat, but it is a landmark for me because as a flunky freshman at UNCG we used to walk there from our dorm and get cheap burgers made out of some kind of meat-by-product that would compost your stomach contents if you added enough Black Label Beer to the mix. I kind of have a gastric pavlovian response when ever I lay eyes on the place, kind of a gagging/retching reflex. From the Beef Burger I can always get my bearings around the UNCG area. Take a right and you can see the building where I flunked out of geography, or, over there, was a row of bushes where I threw up, or over there is the statue of the founder whose neck we hung a tire around, and of which a full page photo ended up in that year’s yearbook. Ah, those early accomplishments of youth.
But back to last Saturday. We pulled up to the First Carolina Deli, and according to our usual eating schedule, it was about three-fifty-two in the afternoon and a guy peeling a fifty pound bag of carrots, another guy, and a waitress were the only other souls in the place. We had a pretty good lunch though, no one made coke come out of their nose or anything and we were pretty adult-like during a meal for once. I guess we just hadn’t gotten going yet.
So we took this responsible attitude down Spring garden street, listening to a Dead show from December ’77—Winterland—and then we—December 27th I believe it was—pulled up to—second set, smokin’ Bertha…Jerry rips the solo—The Music Barn and strolled around looking at the overpriced off-brand guitars. I bought a set of strings from a snide clerk who helped me find a better medium-light gauge string, but who had editorial comments about things. I got the feeling he was the kind of nut-job who turns his nose up at you if you can’t recite the serial number of your guitar and who speaks in acronyms and numerals about everything. “The GBK on this unit gets 30 mega hertz if you dial the SR-TZXX4 over to the low frequency driveshaft alternator quasar shifter on the BBKING. What’s your guitar’s serial number?” Or something like that. I disengaged from the conversation.
The Music Barn was closing anyway so we headed back toward campus to Collectables Records. This is where, as a student who found records more important than books when planning a budget, I would buy things like the soundtrack to Easy Rider and Moby Grape’s first album. I remember buying White Light/White Heat here long before I knew who Lester Bangs was. My roommate Joey would often guide me on these expeditions, shaking his head disapprovingly when I gazed at a cheap copy of Billy Squire’s record. I owe some of my better navigations through popular music to Joey’s guidance. The guy has a great ear.
On this Saturday, Collectables was experiencing a calamity of pretty disastrous proportions. The ceiling had collapsed. Half of the store was covered in heavy plastic, and a quick glance upward revealed soundproof tile and insulation hanging precariously low over the stacks and boxes of thousands of vinyl records. We were not deterred, but the owner looked pretty dismayed. Looking through the stacks was surreal in this setting. The smell of mildew mixed with the realization that a band such as Pablo Cruise actually existed was very bizarre. Bands that I had never heard of, who had had their one shot at fame, or recognition, or even a back-stage blow job, were represented in these rows of cardboard and vinyl. Bands with eighties promotional packaging that was as fleeting and insubstantial as the vessels for their message were soon to become. I wasn’t tempted to buy a thing, not because I didn’t see anything interesting, but because I haven’t owned a turntable in fifteen years. It was kind of like exploring a house that no one lives in any more and the last tenants had really let the place go—but at one time, man it was the place.
We set off from Collectables to find another record store that I’d remembered around the Guilford College area. On the way down Spring Garden Street, one of the Chrises noticed that we had passed another store called Collectables Too so we jerked it around and screeched up to the parking lot. The other Chris was driving and he has a NASCAR fixation and drives accordingly. This place smelled a lot better, and also had a great deal of vinyl albums, but also had a very good CD selection. Every store that we entered seemed to be closing in a few minutes, so we hurried to find something to buy. I found an Elvis Sun Sessions CD for seven bucks and a CD by a group called the Rising Sons which was Taj Mahal’s and Ry Cooder’s first major band. The Music Hound CD guide calls the Rising Sons—and I’m paraphrasing here—short lived but influential. It’s a pretty good CD, with a few strange cuts but also with a lot of different arrangements of Taj Mahal songs such as “Corrina” and “Take a Giant Step.” The Elvis is a hunka hunka burnin’ early stuff. I’m pleased with both purchases. The Elvis I knew would be good, but I took a chance with the Rising Sons. It turns out to be a very good CD.
We made a quick detour to a pawn shop where a bald white supremacist looking guy with a skinny worried kid with him was buying a shot gun. We looked at a couple of dubious appearing guitars that were hanging up and, not seeing anything else worth a damn we left before the shot gun buying guy had finished his purchase. Wonder what he wants that thing for. Target practice I guess.
So our last stop was BB’s music across from the Guilford College campus. Here we found import DVD’s of Talking Heads, Grateful Dead, an Alice Cooper concert from 1973—before he gave up what was reportedly a forty can a day beer habit for golf—a Led Zeppelin concert, also from 73 in Australia, and tons of other tempting footage. I declined to get anything though because you really don’t know what the quality is going to be like; many of these shows look like they were filmed from out of an overcoat from the third level of a soccer arena in Hamburg or something. But, the store is right across from campus and the temptation will be there until I break down and buy one of DVDs for twenty bucks. I’ve blown twenty bucks on worthless crap many times before so I’m not that apprehensive. I almost bought Warren Zevon’s first record for six bucks but declined that as well, although it’s hard to admit that I don’t have this in my collection. I may break down and get this one day when I’m supposed to be writing a paper at the library.
So that’s it. I’m going to see Bob Dylan on Friday night so I expect that will be the next topic for the blog. Seems we’re going with a music theme for a while. Oh well, it hasn’t gotten boring writing about it yet, although I can’t comment on how reading it is.