Prime Minister Belinda Stronach
Right?
Cabbie quote of the day:
"I have no problem with women; I just wish they'd do a little more."
This is by the same driver who laid down the deer hunter/car insurance rap.
The store has been fairly free of bizarre shenanigans over the last couple of weeks, but today there was some fun. I'm on the phone leaving messages for people whose special orders have come in when I catch movement at the door out of the corner of my eye.
For those of you who don't know, Backstreet Records is on the second floor of a building... you have to come up a flight of stairs and we're back and to the left at the top... just follow the clever indie music sounds.
Anyway, standing in the doorway are a woman with stringy grey/blonde hair cascading limply onto her faded powder blue ispo jacket. Her mouth is an open, puffing "O" denoting simultaneous astonishment and lack of breath. Standing with her is a slightly stooped 6+ foot man with a complimentary slack jaw beneath a thick unwatered -grass-brown tangle of moustache. He is wearing a toque in the peculiar way you sometime see... barely perched on the very top of his head with the bulk of it completely empty. I think maybe these people take to heart the assertion that 90% of the body's heat escapes through the top of the ol' noggin. Whatever.
I'm on the phone for about 30-40 seconds and they just stare at me from the doorway like I'm some sort've exhibit. When I finally put the phone down they lurch forward together as one and I can see they're each carrying grocery bags of records. I brace myself.
Woman [breathing heavily, for effect]: Hooo. Those stairs... hooo.
Me: Yeah there's more than a dozen of them.
Woman: Hooo. We have... hooo... these records to sell. We went into to the record store next door [note: there is no record store next door, so I figure she means either Tony's, a musical instrument store, or The Owl's Nest, a used book store] and they sent us over here. We took them into Digital World [pawn shop further uptown], but they only took 3 of 'em.
Me [already peaking inside the first bag]: If Digital World couldn't use these it's unlikely we'll be able to take them either. [Looking through the water and nicotine damaged offerings] I don't see anything we'd have much hope of selling here. They're in rotten shape, plus all the titles are either bad easy listening or country... we don't have anyone looking for stuff like that, ever.
Woman: So, nothing? We carried these all the way over from Fraser Ave
Directions from Fraser Ave to Backstreet Records:
Start address: Fraser Ave
Fredericton, NB
End address: Queen St
Fredericton, NB
Distance: 3.6 km (about 6 mins)
Head northeast from Fraser Ave - go 50 m
Turn right at Hickory Ave - go 0.1 km
Turn right at Fulton Ave - go 0.7 km
Turn left at Main St/Rue Main - go 0.8 km
Turn right at Devonshire Dr - go 0.2 km
Take the ramp to Fredericton Centre - go 0.4 km
Bear right at Westmorland Street Brg - go 0.5 km
Continue on Westmorland St/Rue Westmoreland - go 0.3 km
Turn left at King St/Rue King - go 0.4 km
Turn left at Carleton St/Rue Carleton - go 0.1 km
Me: Sorry. If you're just looking to get rid of them so you don't have to carry them back, you can drop them off at the library.
Woman: The LIBRARY?!?!
ME: On Carleton St.
Luckily just then someone came in I knew so I could strike up a conversation and not draw out the litany of huffing and whining that follows a full-on refusal of merchandise.
So.... That was that, right? No.
About half an hour later another tall, lurching, toqued and bearded man shambles into the store carrying three grocery bags. I recognize him as a fairly loud voiced panhandler from the greater downtown area.
Man [slurring]: I'll give you all these records for five dollars.
Me: Did a couple just give you those in the street? I told them I had no use for them... to take them to the library and get rid of them.
Man: Get rid of them? Oh.
So he stumbles back out, dropping the bags in the hallway, down the stairs and outdoors in search of other more lucrative ventures.
Here are two tracks to get you through the weekend. During the summer and fall of 1992 there were two album that seemed to get more play by me and mine than any of the others... Automatic for the People by R.E.M. and It's a Shame About Ray by The Lemonheads. It's not that they were the best albums of the time, though they were and are both fine albums, but both seemed to find their way onto the stereos of everyone I knew. R.E.M. was great for early evenings with a beer on the sun porch and The Lemonheads was great for... well, anytime really. R.E.M. continued their upward trajectory in the decade+ that followed, but Evan Dando and The Lemonheads burned brightly and briefly before slinking off into the wings of indie rock.
The track Into Your Arms was written by Tom Morgan of Australian band Smudge and first appeared as a B-side to the single, Mrs. Robinson from It's a Shame About Ray... that single is also, obviously, a cover... of the Simon and Garfunkel classic... though the cover was not originally on the Lemonheads album, only added later after it's appearence on a soundtrack. Another version of Into Your Arms was also included on the 1993 follow up to Ray, Come On Feel the Lemonheads.
The second track, Ride With Me, is also a CD B-side, this time to the double A-Side single Confetti/My Drug Buddy... two tracks also from Ray. This is a live version of the track that originally appeared on their 1990 album Lovey.
Evan Dando Where Are You?
Into Your Arms
Ride With Me
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