Friday, November 02, 2007

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND Current mood: sad Category: Music                                              "Music is my mistress…and she plays second fiddle to no one."                                                                                                  ~ Duke                                                                                                     Ellington      The first record I ever bought with my own hard earned allowance was DESTROYER by Kiss. I could make some shit up and try to tell you it was The Stooges FUNHOUSE or Patti Smith's HORSES but I was 11 for Chrissakes!      No, it was Kiss.      First of all, there's that cover. Four alien super-powered freaks apparently dancing on the scattered remains of some city (Detroit?) decimated by the havoc that Kiss has most surely wrought. Stan Lee could've conjured these guys in his sleep…in some Kirbian nightmare.      Then there are the songs. "Detroit Rock City", "Flaming Youth", and the raging hormone fantasy of "Do You Love Me?"  When you're eleven years old and you've liked girls since you could draw breath but you also collect comic books so girls just think you're a dork…well, you need Kiss!      I bought that record at a Licorice Pizza in Hawthorne, California. I think it's a Subway sandwich shop now. But then…holding that record…staring at the cover…riding home on my bike, album tucked under my arms…putting it on…I don't know. I've never been the same since.     That day I contracted my first addiction…records. An obsessive search for musical ecstasy and redemption began. How that search took me to the Ramones, The Germs, Bessie Smith, Minor Threat, Nina Simone, Fats Domino, PJ Harvey and a cast of thousands is better suited for a book rather than a blog.     The point of all this is, in case you haven't noticed, the record store, as a concept, as a dream, as a haven, as an endless sea of possibility, hell…as a fucking business, has died. All of it. Gone!     Music just doesn't mean much to people anymore. They don't care much about art at all. They don't care how it sounds. They don't want liner notes. They don't care who engineered Led Zeppelin II or who did that godawful mix of Raw Power. Just compress as much memory into some little chunk'o'plastic  as you can and be on your way. Which won't be far because…why would you leave the house?     My favorite record store ever was Soundsations in Culver City. It still exists in a lesser form in a different location, but in the late seventies on Sepulveda it was run by this really great guy who had very obvious…um, challenges in his life. The gossip was that he had done too much acid in the sixties and it attacked portions of his brain rendering certain physical functions problematic. That's believable. Here's the thing though, that guy knew everything there was to know about rock music. He knew it all. Blind Willie McTell? He'd tell you what kind of shoes he wore. It was sometimes hard to understand him and when you didn't, he would get royally pissed. I have a vague memory of him throwing something at me once. I loved that guy. He protected me. It was because of him, I first heard John Cale's "FEAR" album. I bought "Trout Mask Replica" from him.     I don't know where that guy is now but I'd bet he's unhappy. He didn't belong anywhere…except in a record store. It was the only place he was at home. In his room, surrounded by great art…that's where he was okay. He was just like me.     As soon as I left High School, I went to work at Tower Records (dead) in Westwood. You couldn't get me out of a record store. I worked at Music Plus (dead)…The Wherehouse (gasping for air)…Vinyl Fetish (the Cahuenga store isn't worthy to spit-shine the Doc Martin boot of the former Melrose location)…I even worked for that pathetic Mall canker sore Sam Goody (mercifully reduced from 1300 stores to 191). If you couldn't find me at work…you could find me at Go-Boy Records (gone)…or Moby Disc (being given life support by Djangos)…or Arons (one of the best, buried alive by napster).     In recent years, with my horizons fading to black, you could find me at Amoeba (very dangerous place that)…or Benway Records.     Benway was not the gargantuan monolith that Amoeba is, but Benway was everything a record store needs to be. You didn't go into Benway looking for any specific thing. On any given day, you could scour the bins and dig up some long forgotten jewel or some obscure critic fave you wanted to debunk, a misfits t-shirt,  and an Operation Ivy button. Whether it was Ron or Kelly at the front of the house, you had a fellow opinionated rock dork to commiserate with, rant with, inform and learn with. If I told Kelly that Ozzy's "Black Rain" album didn't entirely suck if you skipped the power ballad…she'd put it on and play it LOUD!!  I got all four of Camille Rose Garcia's dolls there. Sure, I could've gotten them at Wacko but I wouldn't have also come away with the Violent Femmes cover of the Tom Waits song "Step Right Up" like I did at Benway.     When  Arons had their going out of business sale, I took advantage of it but when Benway was closing, I couldn't do it. I couldn't pick over the bones of a friend like that.Not that this is the last we'll hear from Kelly. She'll kick ass and take names wherever she is. It'll just be a different format.     The record store as dream factory has died. My safe-haven is gone. There are a lot of reasons why this has happened. It goes deeper than technology. More than anything else I think we're just spoiled, fat, and lazy. Give me convenience or give me death! It's just too much trouble to pull the vinyl, clean the record, drop the needle, flip the record…and then there's all that listening you have to do. We have developed a ring tone attention span and are hurtling ourselves into an artless coma. Like Sleater Kinney said…"You're no rock-n-roll fun."     I defined myself in record stores and mosh pits. They were my church.    Amoeba will probably survive awhile what with all the neon and sheer girth but Benway's closing symbolizes for me the last clenched fist on the vinyl precipice opening up and letting go. I'm going to miss talking to Kelly in our natural habitat. I miss Benway already.      As I write this Joy Division is reaching the crescendo of  "Day Of The Lords" on my turntable.                        "This is the room, the start of it all                      Through childhood, through youth, I remember it all,                      Oh, Ive seen the nights filled with bloodsport and pain.                      And the bodies obtained, the bodies obtained, the bodies obtained.                      Where will it end? where will it end?                      Where will it end? where will it end?"       That means "Isolation" is next, so I should go get a lighter head for my heavy heart. Soon it'll be time to flip the record.   KrossD 11/01/2007     P.S. This one's for you Kelly! ..>..> Currently listening : Permanent Joy Division 1995 By Joy Division Release date: By 15 August, 1

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LA People 2007

(Photo by  Kevin Scanlon)

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..>..> Archive From Main News: ..>..> A Cup of Coffee with… Kelly Benway Steve Stajich, Mirror Contributing Writer Look closely to the left of Vidiots and you'll find Benway Records, a record store at 306 Pico that preserves the look and feel of all the great record stores that have been disappearing from LA.  Owner Kelly Benway had a cup of coffee with the Mirror's Steve Stajich to discuss her move from Venice to Santa Monica and the future of small, independent record stores.  Tell me about starting a record store… you started in Venice, right?  No, in Las Vegas.  In 1991.  Las Vegas is a really odd place.  It's very small, and it had one college radio station, and then they cut out their rock program there.  And when you're just one single little record store in the middle of the desert it's really hard to get the new releases and get the new music.  It was kind of going down in Las Vegas. Then you came to Venice…? I was from Venice and worked at Penny Lane records.  I started there, then went to Vegas. Then Steve [from Penny Lane] called me and said he was going out of Venice and said, "Hey, you want to come home?" And I wanted to come home.   How long were you in Venice?  Nine years.   And what changed? The music industry changed, downloading and things like that.  That changed things drastically.  Then the rent kept going up, so I had to find something more in my price range.  I looked around Venice, but everything was very steep and everything was taken!    Of course Venice is gentrifying, but… is Venice getting so "cool" that it can't support a great, funky little record store? Yeah.  The problem is, and I still live in Venice and can afford a little bit to live in Venice, but… they're Third Street "Promenade-ing" Venice.  The Coffee Bean is there now, Campos Tacos, Quiznos.  I mean, Subway was there and everybody accepted it. "Okay, Subway."  But there were no corporations.  And now it's hurting [a small Venice café], well I don't know if it is, but tourist season comes and a tourist is going to go "bam, I'm going to go to Coffee Bean."  Because they know the name.  And that's the way it seems to be going.  It's hurting the smaller businesses there a lot and the rents aren't getting any cheaper.   So you moved here. Yeah. And everybody said, "So Santa Monica's cheaper?" and it is.  And I couldn't have a better neighbor.  Vidiots, we just kind of go hand in hand.    Tell me more about what you are trying to do here. Well, right now I'm doing a lot of in-stores… performances. My daughter [a student at nearby Samohi] is doing what she calls "After School Specials" on the last Friday of the month.  And she has one of the bands from school come over and perform.  We move these bins [points to the back of the shop] and they play right there.   Then Izzy Cox, she's a local singer-songwriter; she has two Monday nights a month.  And she's getting bands from all over the place to come in and perform from 7 to 9.  I'm starting workshops too.  With silk screening and button making and starting fanzines.  Stuff like that. Getting that rolling. And on the first Sunday of the month we're having, in the back, we're having a swap meet.  It's a record swap meet, but also related items… posters and old collectibles and toys. People now seem less tied to the physical media itself… discs, LP's, tapes… and in that way at least seem a little less involved.  See, that's the whole thing.  We're a hands-on environment and it's tangible and, you know, you have something.  If you go online, and my daughter has an iPod, but…. she takes a CD home and then puts it on her computer and then puts it on her iPod.  Then she trades in the CD.  And that's what I'm pretty much doing.  I give a good trade value back, like 80% back.  So it's almost like a library with a small charge.  If the CD is in good condition and back within a week.  But it's more of a lifestyle.  People come in and hang out and talk about music and talk about the new stuff and talk about an entire record instead of downloading.  I find that people are just downloading a hit, like a song.  And they're not getting full – well, like concept records.   I'm a hundred years old, but… for example, the White Album.  How can you know what the Beatles were up to at that time from one song? Right.  Exactly. Or Pink Floyd The Wall.  How can you just grab one song off of that?    Downloading pulls a song out of context and lessens it… The new Killers.  I've listened to that and I think it's a concept record. I don't know, that's just my take on it, but I think it is. And the new Foo Fighters acoustic live record.  I went to the show and it was fantastic!  How could you pull just one song off that?   You have a lot of cassettes. I love cassettes. It's all my car will play. Mine too.  I have a pink '73 VW.  And a lot of people will buy cassette tapes.  Tapes sell well, vinyl…it flies out of here!  So I'm getting some turntables in here.    I personally don't like what happens to the music with digital files. A lot of people say that.  I agree. I cannot listen to an iPod.  Regardless of how great they might be, it just doesn't do it for me.  It's maybe the transfer, the download… it loses something for me.  It's so tinny. Sometimes it sounds like you're listening to music through broken headphones.  Something is so far in the back that I can't hear it.   Isn't something important lost if we lose record stores? Oh, yes.  To me, it's the culture. In here, people swap ideas.  And next door [Vidiots] the same thing.  Talking to them and being neighbors is fantastic, because we have the same concept. I just don't see that record stores are going away, completely, even with what happened to Tower. I think people want to get out of the house and have some… texture in their lives. And talk.  Talk about music, mainly in here, but all kinds of stuff.  And I do a lot of special orders because people want to give me their business.  They don't want to go all the way to some other [big retail] place and stand in line.  But basically I have to try and stay at their pricing.   Is there something kind of political about a store with this much individuality and taste?  Kind of anti-whatever…? My first job was at Tower in '78.  I did big shops, little shops on Melrose.  And it just seems like it's kind of going back to what it was before.  When you see Tower going down, Aron's, Rhino… we're losing so many great record stores.  And so many avenues for local bands.  I have a 10-CD listening station for CD's from local bands.  Local bands aren't going to get picked up right away by a major or get distribution. How are these people going to get their music heard?

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