Platinum Tour

Flashing back on my first visit to a used record store

A few words before we begin:

First, I would like to thank everyone who has subscribed to Jagged Time Lapse so far, both as free and paid subscribers. This month has seen a significant jump in subscriber numbers, which is quite wonderful and inspiring. As the late, great Tom Petty once drolly proclaimed from the Rosemont Horizon stage, thank YEW — yer makin’ us feel… RE-AL GOOD.

Second, this is gonna be the last JTL entry for about a week. My birthday’s this coming Tuesday, and in celebration I’m giving myself a few days off from writing of any kind, in order to smell the roses, see some old friends and generally recharge my batteries. (And hey, no pressure — but if you want to give me something for my birthday, a month’s paid JTL subscription is basically like buying me a beer!)

But in the meantime, don’t be afraid to poke around in the JTL archives, where you’ll find older pieces about things like the time David Lee Roth invaded my brain, the epic 1970s soul battle between Budweiser and Lowenbrau, or (for you paid subscriber types) Bobby Womack’s encounter with the dreaded “Gonga-Rea”. We’ll get this party started again soon, I promise. And now, on to our regularly scheduled programming…

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“Are you sure this is legal?” I asked Devin as we walked east on Melrose. It was the middle of May 1979, just a few weeks after my thirteenth birthday.

Devin looked at me as if I’d suddenly grown a second head. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know, man — it just seems weird to me that you can just go out and buy used records. Like, don’t the record companies get mad?”

“Who cares if they get mad?” he laughed. “I buy most of my albums at this place. It’s cheaper, and sometimes they have records you can’t find at Tower.”

We arrived at our destination — Rene’s All Ears Records, on the corner of Melrose and Spaulding, right across from Fairfax High School. The outside of the place looked funky and rundown, a far cry from the glitzy retail beacon that was Tower Records on Sunset. Welp, no turning back now, I thought to myself; I just hope we don’t somehow get in trouble for this…