Phonoluxe Part 2

 

By popular demand, well at least one person demanded it; here is part two of Phonoluxe - Brushes With Greatness.

 

First off: some more about working at Phonoluxe Records located at 2609 Nolensville Road in Nashville, Tennessee - It was a dream job, but there's drudgery and annoyances in dream too. In any kind of retail job, there's a constant infusion of goods and somebody has to buy those goods and then put them out for the public. I got to do both. I was proud when Mike, the owner, trusted me to be a buyer and while that was usually one of the best parts of the job since you got to see the newest arrivals first but it could be a chore. There were times when you couldn't offer anything to the customers or times when you only offer a trade which left me facing an angry person usually. Anger I could deal with however unpleasant. The worst customer (really a seller) to deal with was the person with an Elvis or Beatles record that wouldn't believe their record wasn't worth the thousands of dollars they had envisioned. Let's get this straight people: Elvis and the Beatles sold millions of records so only true rarities are worth big bucks. What's even funnier are the same people expecting ransom note type dough for their albums always had the most scratched up records too. I'd have to argue with these people for minutes that seemed like hours the end result usually being them calling me stupid and myself telling them to go sell their junk elsewhere. But at least they never threatened me like the gangster hip hop kids did one day when I had to run them out of our parking lot. Two little mini-gangsters had come into the store trying to sell us some goods we didn't want to buy. We couldn't prove the CD's were stolen, but we had our suspicions - often we would ask sellers about items that seemed odd for them to be selling and if the answers didn't seem right we'd just refuse to buy the stuff so if the goods were hot we were protected and if they weren't then it was just us losing a chance to add to our inventory - so we refused to buy their CD's. A few minutes later, the manager tells me they're trying to peddle the CD's in our parking lot so I had to go run them off. This led to a heated discussion which finally led to the smallest of the two small fry telling me he's got something is his car (which happened to be a brand new red sports car) that will take care of me. I told him to bring it out and luckily for me he chuckled at me and got in the car with his buddy (both kids looked 14) and drove off, before it finally hit me that he was obviously letting me know he had a gun in the car. My only other taste of anything violent was when I pushed a drunken bum out the front door using a baseball bat who had come into the store ranting and raving about some scaffolding outside the store. I thought I'd get in trouble for this, but when the owner heard about what I had done he told me, "good show."

 

The other big chore was just simply putting out the stock which is a never ending job of shuffling things around. CD's aren't that big of a deal, but I was the only one that stocked the record shelves then, most of which were $1 records. Of course I did spend lots of time shopping while I was working especially when I would get crazed over some maligned old genre or style, the most notable one I remember is when I started buying all of the early 70's CTI releases.

 

Some odd events that hit Phonoluxe during my history there were: The time a guy drove his car through the front window of the store and then asked us if we had any Parliament-Funkadelic records. One day a customer who drove a huge car and always parked out front opened his door to come in when a semi took the door off thankfully before the dude started to exit the car. People were always getting into fender benders outside the front door where the parallel parking spots are. One of our maddest customers was a famous country singer. He had brought up a huge stack of lounge records and when he was told we would have to call his check into the bank since it was over a hundred bucks he just went nuts. "Do you know who I am," he screamed. Sure, we knew who he was, but the hundred dollar policy was one we weren't about to break. When we called the check in, it was no good. The short but rather large front man then starting going on about his accountant screwing up (which was probably true) and that he'd make sure the check would be good to no avail. He stormed out of the store. A few minutes later an elderly couple came into the store and asked us where the records were their son had wanted. So the very nice parents of the country music star bought the records for him and also apologized for their son's behavior.

 

Before we get to the brush with greatness I'm sure you're waiting on I thought I'd mention a couple of the cool part time employees I worked with back in the day.

Louisa Reiss came onboard around the same time as Olivia, but she left to attend fashion school in San Francisco some years ago. She was neat since she was a customer long before she worked there. She lived up the street and she used to walk down to Phonoluxe with her brother both dressed in black with Army field jackets covering their waif bodies. She gave the store a much needed shot of youth when she started there. Of course we did have eternal youth John Hudson working part time there through my whole run and I believe he still does some moonlighting there. He is of course the famous musician from such classic bands like, The Popes, Dragula, Girls In Action, Trauma Team, The What 4, Igor & The Humps, and the Exotic One's. I still remember the first night I met the dude. He was stocking albums wearing his day job outfit of slacks and white dress shirt. He did not look like he should be working for Phonoluxe. He would have been called square back in the beatnik days, but I just thought he looked dorky. I was soon taught an important lesson as he proved to be one of the most interesting and coolest persons I've ever met. I was the true dork for basing my view on the surface only. I found out we shared many common interests and the next thing I knew he was playing guitar in my garage band for the next 3 years. One of these days I hope to get to play a show alongside him again just once more for old times sake.

 

John wasn't there at Phonoluxe the day that David Allan Coe strolled into the store. It was late in the day and I was just hanging out behind the counter killing time trying to tick co-worker John Dunneback off when he noticed Coe first. He whispered over if I knew who it was and I did. I always thought his cover of Steve Goodman's "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" is the quintessential country song. I wondered what he could be looking for so I asked him. He named some obscure punk band and said they had covered one of his songs. I couldn't help him there, but I did listen as he rambled on about the internet and how he liked it and spent quite a bit of time surfing the web. Maybe now he will come across this story here.