Record Stores (#atozchallenge)

I miss my record browsing days.  Flipping through the bins of vinyl albums was an adventure that could absorb hours of my time.---Arlee Bird.

J&R on Park Row, in New York City  (Wikipedia)

 Record Stores

         When I asked "What Does Manhattan Say to You?" I wasn't too surprised by the answer I got from Larry at DiscConnected:

      Having grown up so close to NYC (Philly), a lot of images come to mind.

      However, my most vivid images are of St. Mark's Place in the east village, where I would venture four of five times each year for a CD buying excursion. The stores are gone now, but the block had about eight different stores that would usually yield more treasures than I had any business spending money on.

       The day would usually start at J & R Music World on Park Row, across from the World Trade Center.

      My last trip there was on Friday, September 8, 2001, I believe the same day Ryan Adams filmed his "New York" music video. Sadly, the lower triangle's landscape changed forever a few days later, and that was my last trip to J & R. The village stores closed over the next few years, and now I find my CD's on the internet.

     But I miss those days spent browsing. I had a good friend (Kent) who was also an avid collector, although my collection eclipsed his when his priorities got screwed up and he had offspring.

     I had a job offer in Manhattan at the same time as I took the transfer to Arizona, and I still do not regret it. In my twenties, I would have loved the city life, but by that time, I'd spent ten years on the road (as an auditor) and was ready for a quieter life.

     Still a great place to visit, though.

My Own Music Sprees

         Larry's story is one to which I can totally relate except for the locale.  I would have loved to have shopped those record stores in Manhattan.  I call them record stores even though most of my purchases eventually became cassettes and then later CD's.  My earliest buying excursions would mostly have been shopping the cut-out bins for record albums when I still lived in Tennessee.  If they were cheap then I might buy a number of them in one visit.  However when I was paying full price I'd usually only be able to afford one or two at a time.

        Later on when I began touring with a road show I spent my free time in whatever city I happened to be in scouring the record stores for cassette tapes.   I guess I bought a few thousand cassettes during the 80's.  My favorite place to go cassette shopping was on Younge Street in downtown Toronto.  Since we were paid in Canadian money when we worked in that country I wanted to spend as much money as I could so I didn't have to lose money exchanging to U.S. currency when we returned to the states.   I'd load up on the latest cassettes as well as older music that I had been wanting.  On my off days--we usually had about a week off in Toronto--I'd spend hours in those music stores which were huge.  

       I can easily see myself in Manhattan shopping those same stores that Larry describes.  That is if it were back in the 70's, 80's, or 90's.   Now I very rarely buy any recorded music.  In the nineties I started buying CD's and now have a huge collection that I rarely listen to.  In one sense it's sad to think of all that money I spent on vinyl, cassettes, and CD's.  On the other hand I can think of the hours and hours I spent listening to and enjoying that music.  My hours driving during my road years would have been much less enjoyable had I not had my music to entertain me.

        Have you spent a lot of time in stores browsing for something that you enjoyed?   Do you own much recorded music now?   Can you recall some of your old favorite haunts for buying recorded music?  

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Ask Arlee: Vacation Locations

Photo in or around Grand Teton National Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         This past summer I spent over a month in traveling.  Vacation I guess you might say.  My wife was on her vacation time, but since I haven't been working I guess it's almost like I'm almost always on vacation.  And for me staying home makes for a pretty good vacation location.   But let's talk about vacations away from home.

       In one of my recent calls for Ask Arlee questions, Susan Kane asked: 

Where is your favorite vacation spot? 

        This summer found my wife and I in Ecuador and on a cross country road trip that took us to New Jersey, Tennessee, and something like thirteen other states as we drove the highways of this wonderful country.   All the travel was great fun.   I love traveling as much as I like staying at home.  Okay, call me easy to please.

        So far I've been able to find something positive about everywhere I've been.  I may not always be jumping at the opportunity to go someplace, but if I'm there I try to make the best of it.   Stick me in Odessa, Texas or Williston, North Dakota or whatever out of the way place and I'll try to seek out the points of interest that are there.  I'm not saying I'd want to live just any old place, but if other people are living there and seem to be relatively content in doing so, then there must be something worthwhile about the place.

        A lot of my adaptability comes from my years touring one-nighters with a theatrical company.  We played some towns that most people wouldn't think of going to unless they had a specific reason to be there.  Since we usually had at least a few off hours in these towns I'd try to find something to do there that might interest me.  Sometimes it was just going to the local mall or whatever they had there in the way of shopping.  A meal at a local restaurant was almost always part of the schedule since we had to eat.  And whenever we could we'd visit the birthplace of some famous person, a fort, a natural attraction, or some other point of interest.  There are some fascinating places in the United States as there are throughout the world.

        My ideal vacation would not be in just one place, but traveling on a road trip to see many places.  For example, I'd like to be able to take two or three week tours that were thematic in nature.  A tour of Civil War battlefields would be very interesting I think.   Or maybe picking a famous person and visiting the places they'd visited and lived.   A journey of this nature would be educational and fun.

        National parks are wonderful places where one can just settle in and see the sights.  I'm not so much for camping like I used to do and I know my wife would have none of that, but settling in at a lodge in a park like Yellowstone or Glacier would be enjoyable. The National Parks of the United States are some the best places to go for relaxation mixed with awe-inspiring sightseeing.

         On the other hand, cities and tourist destinations both have a lot to offer.  I've always enjoyed spending time in Toronto, Ontario.   Washington, DC and the surrounding area has enough attractions to keep one busy for a few weeks, as do many cities around the world.  Then there are the places like Orlando, Florida.  I don't like being in crowded places and having to wait in lines, but Disney certainly offers some cool attractions if you're willing to pay the price.

         There are so many places to go that it's kind of difficult to pick just one.   However one place stands above all others for me--East Tennessee.  That's where most of my vacation times have been spent.  Staying at my mother's house--the house where I lived while attending high school and college--feels almost as much like home as the house where I live.  

           Spending time with my mother and brothers and sisters is time that takes me back to days of my youth.   I enjoy being with my family.  Then there are longtime friends who I rarely get to see anymore.  When in Tennessee I usually have some time to catch up with at least a few of those old friends.  

            Places exotic or somewhat mundane but different for me are all fun, fascinating, and curiosity inducing.   I feel excited and adventurous when I'm traveling in places where I am but a passing stranger. But there's no replacing any of these places with home.  I feel like I've got two homes.  Those are my favorite vacation spots.

           Thank you, Susan, for the questions.  Anyone else have a question they'd like me to answer in a future Ask Arlee post?    Where is your favorite vacation spot?    Do you enjoy traveling?   What is your favorite mode of travel?   If you could settle down in any place in the world where would it be?

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Toronto Oratorio

          When I think of Easter, I think of Toronto, Ontario. It's not because of the o's that are kind of like eggs or the t's that are similar to crosses.  It's not because Ontario is almost like oratorio and when I think of oratorios I think of Handel's Messiah which is frequently performed at Easter.  It's just my weird personal connection.

         Foremost I think of Jesus Christ and what He did for us.  That is what Easter is all about.  But today I am not talking about the meaning of the day, I'm talking about some of the memories Easter evokes for me.  Of course I think of the traditional popular images of bunnies, colored eggs, candies, fancy clothes, and ham dinners--those are images many of us grew up with.  Then, as we grow older, other memories begin to take the place of the childhood memories.  These are memories of times and places and the experiences that went with them.

         So what's with Toronto.  During most of the 1980s I managed a touring show and for some reason our schedule used to always find us in Ontario during the Easter break.  I'm not sure about the reasoning behind this.  It may have had something to do with the fact that the week prior to Easter may have not been a good time for booking our show, but the weeks prior to Easter break week and afterwards were good times.  This was one of my theories.  Also since the Canadian dollar was not very strong against the U.S. dollar maybe the off week worked better in Canada so they could pay the performers and the expenses in Canadian funds to avoid having to exchange too  much currency into U.S. and lose money.  All theories and really it didn't matter that much.  I liked being in Ontario.

             For the off week,  Toronto seemed the logical place to go.  There was a lot to do to there to keep us all entertained.  Toronto's a great city -- one of my favorite places.  Eventually I started arranging accommodations at one of the Marriotts or Holiday Day Inns on the north side of the city right close to the 401 expressway which runs across lower Ontario.  That way we would have easy access to the freeway on the days we were traveling out of town to work.  Also, truck parking was easier and we got better hotel rates.  One day I'd like to talk more about our times in Ontario and Toronto, but today's post focuses on Easter since this coming Sunday is Easter.

          On Easter day, it seemed like almost everything was closed in Toronto.  There were no stores that we could ever find open on that day and even open restaurants were scarce.  It was a day to sleep late.  I recall attending church--a mass at a catholic church--one time in all of those years.  Living on the road is a peculiar life.  When you're not driving or working, you feel essentially homeless, but able to stay in nice hotels and eat in restaurants.  In our time off we might stay in the hotel room for a while, but especially when you have children like we did,  you have to get out some.  In Toronto around Easter this often meant going to shopping malls.  Some years it was warm enough to go to parks and other outdoor environments, but not usually. So on Easter Day we might take the kids and walk around shopping malls, which were open, to look at the stores, which were closed.  Then we'd look for an open restaurant at the mall or drive to someplace where we would find a restaurant open.  There was never a home to go to, just a room. 

          In 1986, the night before Easter, we had tickets to go see Canadian singer-songwriter Murray Maclaughlin in concert.   We were always on the lookout for concerts during the days we were off.  This particular year I noted in some Toronto entertainment publication that Murray would be playing Easter Eve at a college near to where we were staying.  Murray Maclaughlin was an acquired taste--I didn't care for his country style music at first, but then it really grew on me and I began buying all of the cassettes I could find by him.   I was anxious to see him in concert.

           That Saturday evening, when we arrived at the venue, we discovered that the concert was being held in some sort of large classroom or lecture hall.  There were probably about 300 seats with those little flip up desk tops between them.  This was the first odd thing that struck me.  The second odd thing was that there was only a grand piano and a guitar on the stage.  There were no drums, banks of amplifiers, other instruments, or any kind of stage lighting.  It was a simple stage area where a professor would stand behind a podium and occasionally go over to a blackboard and perhaps write something to illustrate what he was talking about.  I realized why the tickets had been so inexpensive.  I was disappointed.

         The concert started precisely on schedule.  Maclaughlin came out onto the stage with no fanfare and picked up his guitar.  For the next two hours we were treated to one of the finer evenings of entertainment that I've ever experienced.  He played most of his most popular songs, switching between guitar and piano accompaniment, and told wonderful stories.  The audience was totally engaged by this talented and affable fellow.  One of the most unexpected surprises of his performance was an extraordinarily beautiful rendition of "On the Strreet Where You Live"  from the musical MY FAIR LADY.  It was a song I would have never expected to hear by an artist like that.

          I don't why I think of Toronto at Easter, but I suppose it is like any other set routine or tradition to which you become adapted.  Even though I watched the 90s pass and I established certain traditions for my children to make their Easters special and then later got married to my present wife and we have made the tradition of attending our church not just on Easter, but every Sunday; the memory of Toronto stays with me.  There is noone there that I know, I have nothing there that is mine, and yet that city strangely draws me and to me it's really just a place, a time, a memory.

The Blogging From A to Z April Challenge

I want to thank everybody who has joined up so far.  This was such a last minute thing with no real planning involved.   Please make sure the link to your blogsite is listed in my sidebar if you are a participant or a supporter.  I've been trying to carefully keep up with this, but I may have missed someone and I certainly don't want to do that.

Also, if there are other things you can think of to make this a better experience for all of us, please let me know.  I am not real computer savvy so there may be some tricks that I am missing.  For example someone mentioned a Mclinky thing-- seen 'em but don't know much about 'em.   So if you have a suggestion for poor ol' computer challenged me let me hear it and if I don't know what your talking about please forgive me.

I encourage all participants to jump over to each other's blogs and get to know one another and become followers.  And definitely leave some comments.  The comments make the blogging experience more fun, satisfying, and even educational-- but I'm sure I don't have to tell you that.

I'll continue to add new participants until Monday April 5.   If it looks like we're just having more fun than you can stand and you want to jump in a little late, well, I think that would be okay.  So tell your friends, family, or whoever you think might like what we're doing (and who in their right mind wouldn't?) so they can join us as we go Blogging From A to Z in April.