A record store review and life examination.

At Amoeba records, down the street from where I live, there are a wonderful
collection of employees who would rather spit on you than look you in the
eye.  I like this.  I look for that in a music store.  I don't want to buy
music from a simpering teenager at the mall who fondles my credit card with
longing and makes me feel good about my Alanis Morisette obsession.  I want
a chain smoking, frowning, thirty-something, who hates everything about the
way I dress and the music that I probably like to listen to with friends I
don't have in vehicles that I don't drive.

Yes, I like to be trampled upon when I buy my music.  There are two good
reasons I  think of:  One-- I save money.  My self image simply can't afford
making two trips to Amoeba records in one day.  Once my ego is successfully
devoured by the aggressive scowls of one morning of music shopping, there is
no way I'm going to get up off the couch and repeat the masochistic behavior
in the afternoon. Two-- Clerks at Amoeba records keep me from buying albums
that I don't really like.  Because I know that the staff of Amoeba records
will stare accusingly at whatever I buy, and will try to intimidate me from
buying anything at all, I know that I must be fervently attached to an
artist or album in order to go through the arduous process of approaching
the record counter and attempting to purchase something.

What I like about the mentality of the clerks at Amoeba is the simple yet
vicious “indy” aesthetic that circulates around the American cult of new. 
The logic is this:  what is cool is new, and what is new is not yet
available in stores.  Therefore everyone in the store is buying something
un-cool.  I like that.  As a philosophical stance it cannot be beat.  It is
so simple and makes so much sense.

When I'm feeling lost or confused about life I got to the record store.  Not
to feel good about music, but to feel bad about myself.  By feeling
unsophisticated and dumb, I am released from the pressure of trying to be
productive and cool.  As my guidance counselor taught me in high school,
unhappiness comes from failure.  Failure, he said, comes from trying to do
something you are unable to do.

When I actually want music, I download it.  But when I want the planets of
my self-awareness to align I go to Amoeba records.  It isn't happiness that
I find there, but something easier than happiness.  It is proximity to
unhappy musicians.
 

-Kevin Peckham