Trailer for a film "Hay Day" about First Ave. The film was made by Rick Fuller, a Minneapolis native who directed the Cinnamon Girl video for Prince. You'll see Husker Du, Soul Asylum, The Replacements, Babes In Toyland (the Minneapolis band Courtney Love was kicked out of) and a bunch of others.

squirrelgrease said:

unique said:

Wow. You've rubbed elbows with some interesting folks. Very cool. You also reminded me to watch High Fidelity again - great flick.

If I remember correctly, I saw the Lemonheads open for Dinosaur Jr or a solo J Mascis in the mid 1990s.

i love that book and film. when i went to chicago i went shopping off the beaten tourist track and found a street that had some cool clothes stores and stuff, and i went in a record store and it reminded me of the store i worked in and a second hand record store i used to spend most of sundays hanging out in, where i met a few people that became good friends, including the guy who worked there. there were so many references in that book that were so true. i had a customer who used to give me mixtapes of stuff i didn't want to listen to. the thing is, i was used to clothing retail where when a customer looks interested in something, you persuade them to buy it, and then they need a matching belt, shoes, socks, etc. people weren't use to that in record stores. i used my encyclopedic knowledge of music so that when someone took a record to the counter, i would say great record, have you heard ... and then mention a solo album by the bass player, or some other related type thing that they might like. the thing is, the folks in our store thought they were so fucking cool for their own good, and kinda looked to the store staff for acceptance, so if we were impressed by the purchases, they gained some streetcred. thus if you gave good recommendations they would buy them, and you get them hooked. so if you know your music you could give good recommendations, and they would want more and more. this was before the internet was popular, so people didn't have online references to stuff. you just had to know it, you learned it from reading magazines and books and the credits on records and discussing with friends. i became a great salesperson. record store staff were never sales people, they just bagged and rang up the sale. it would sometimes be a problem at busy times as people would only want to be served by me. we got a few dj's buying stuff, and i was djing myself at the time and knew most of the local dj's of all styles of music and i quickly got to know all the hottest tunes, which was a bit of a con really, as you learned certain names and labels were cool and just recommended based on that, without even hearing them. you would just say you had the latest record produced by x person and as most dj's had their head stuck up their arse they would buy it so they wouldn't be uncool. most dj's bought a pile of records at a time, so i would usually sneak in a copy of something they choose without ringing it up, so they got a small discount, and bought from me instead of other stores.

anways this store in chicago reminded me of all that, and i asked the guy if he knew where the store in the movie high fidelity was, and he said, yeah it's just down the block on the corner. well i'm a big cynic so didn't believe him, but i didn't let on and said thanks etc, and i asked again in the next store, and got the same answer, so they couldn't be winding me up! and i got to the corner and yeah, that was it. round the corner was the subway bridge. the store was closed and painted black outside. it was never a record store, i think they said it was a pizza place or hairdressers, but was closed for a long time, and just used as a set for the movie. i thought it was cool to find it and get my photo taken outside it. it just reminded me of all the stuff in the book. our store used to provide the indie charts for a music tv show that was on each week, and the girl who did it just made up the chart depending on what stock we had. the more stock, the higher the chart position, so stuff that was shit that didn't sell was number 1 to try and shift copies. they did this for years and no-one knew or cared. the whole music business was a right fucking lark. we got stacks of promos, and got any records we wanted at cost price, but deducted from pay before tax, we got free nights out with free bars and free gig tix from record companies. i remember a major album came out and we drove a thousand copies from southern ireland to avoid 15% tax, which made us an extra £1.50 a copy, and i think we sold out most copies in a week as we sold it for cheaper than everyone else. oh yeah, and we specialised in vinyl and told people it sounded better than cd, but we had a shit record deck. i asked the boss if he could tell the difference, and he said no, but it sells more records, and we had a deal where we bought the rights to vinyl pressings of a ton of CBS and other records, so we literally got our own copies pressed. the record companies thought vinyl was dead at the time, so weren't interested, and as no-one else was doing it, we made a fortune selling cheap vinyl to students and dj's, we even wholesaled some of it. mostly jazz stuff, a lot of miles davis and herbie hancock, so good stuff and £5 a pop was a great price, compared to £10 for a cd

^ Very interesting. Exclusive vinyl pressings? That's impressive. All of the local record shops around here have been dying slowly, but steadily. It's sad. I try to support them, but they seem to not even have the funds to get stock in on new CDs, so it's usually the used bin for me. I love to chat with the guys there and I try to eavesdrop on the conversations as well while I'm browsing.

When's the last time anyone wanted to hear what a Best Buy employee had to say? I'm going to miss those independent shops when they're gone.

from what i recall, the labels had stopped pressing vinyl so the store did a deal with sony or whoever had the rights, so that we had uk rights to press any of those titles with original covers etc. it was mostly jazz stuff, some soul and funk, mostly all 70s stuff, so the company let us do it as they didn't think they were profitable to press on vinly anymore. a few years later and they are doing the special 180gsm pressings at high prices, but we had pretty decent pressings for cheap prices

the store eventually bought a bigger store across the street and went all starbucks, and stopped playing music with swearing etc and then got another similar store elsewhere in town and expanded to a few other places, and then went bankrupt when mp3s fucked everything up. i left just before the new store opened, but whilst it took money, it was soulless and went through a lot more staff. it was a completely different thing. i later worked in a big chain for a short period, and that was just about shifting product and had fuck all to do with music. again i used the old sales technique, but someone buying a teeny bopper cd ended up buying a calendar instead of the bass players solo album

it's even more fucked up with ipods and the internet where people can google up any data they want and download the music for free. there must be very few impule buys these days. i remember buying new albums just because i wanted something new to listen to

squirrelgrease said:

djdaffy1227 said:

I'm sorry, yes, "Turn on the news".

This week on the show, in a segment I call "now and then", I'm playing "Cause and effect" and "When doves cry".

[Edited 6/5/10 22:32pm]

I guess posting a direct link would be a bad idea then. I'll check it out DJ.

Just put a www in front of flashbackradio.com

www.flashbackradio.com

The show schedule is on the main page.