I Want You To Want Them

I have purchased a lot of music in the course of my life. So much so that it has taken on ritualistic status. Tuesday night, after work. That's when the new records are sitting there, waiting to be perused. The sea of wooden bins at Rocky Mountain Records and Tapes that had that certain rustic smell that provided me with that sense of hunting and gathering, even when I was merely looking for the latest release from one of my favorite bands. This was, by no means, survival. This was pleasure. This was recreation. This was how I spent my down time.
Those shopping trips were a habit I developed in my college years, and after. Being able to drive allowed me to check multiple locations, making certain that that one copy of Klark Kent's EP didn't somehow slip through the cracks of this store and that and their ordering patterns. I did not want to be the one who missed the next big thing because I failed to go through the entire new releases section and genre specific sections that might have had that DEVO single I had been missing up until that point.
Before that, I used to buy my music at K-Mart. I write this not as a confession, but rather as a hard-wired visceral memory. I bought my first Cheap Trick album at the K-Mart store in Boulder. It was a bike ride away from my house, thus I was able to get there and back in relative safety, with one hand to do the steering and one hand to hold on to my new bag, slung over the handlebars. The first Cheap Trick album I bought wasn't their first release. It was "Heaven Tonight," the band's third studio album, and I rode down to pick it up because of the recommendation I had received from a friend of mine, a junior named Nick Bates, who seemed impossibly clever and mature from my sophomore standing. I was buying into what he called the "cartoon version of rock and roll" that these guys from Rockford, Illinois had to offer.
I found it in the Rock section, which filled most of the twelve foot aisle that contained all the vinyl that K-Mart had to offer, stuck between Housewares and Notions. The record itself seemed impossibly light given the gravity of what I had been told was inside. I was tempted, briefly, to pick up another record just in case this turned out to be some sort of practical joke on an underclassmen. This was 1978, and debut albums by The Police, The Cars, as well as new material from the Rolling Stones and another little California band named for the brothers Van Halen were awaiting my aural attention.
This all came flooding back to me when I read the headline that read: "Janet Jackson, The Cars, Cheap Trick Receive First Nominations For Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame." This, of course, means nothing, since even if the boys from Rockford make it through the nomination process to be inducted next year, the only true validation of art comes from those of us who appreciate it. Little did I know back in the late seventies that I would eventually be sitting in front of my computer in a different century, a different state, and clicking on the "buy" tab to purchase the latest Cheap Trick album. It has been an enduring love affair that has spanned more than thirty-five years, moving from vinyl to CD to mp3. I will be just as pleased and happy as all the Rush fans were when, at last, Canada's power trio landed in Cleveland to take their spot in The Hall. And I will maintain my respectful distance, since I remember my roots: K-Mart.