Vinyl Cafe Unplugged

by Stuart McLean

  It was on such an afternoon that Dave was sitting behind the counter with half of a cheese sandwich beside him and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity propped open on the cash register. He had Blossom Dearie on the turntable, and a cup of tea at hand. If anyone had walked into the store at that precise moment and asked how business was, Dave would have looked up in surprise. He would have set his book upside down on the counter, surveyed the empty aisles and said, Business is fine, thank you. Although he would have been thinking, It was better before you came in.

  Dave shares a trait with many people who run second-hand stores, which is not widely seen elsewhere in retail. It is a characteristic that sometimes surfaces in librarians. Dave resents his customers. It’s not that he doesn’t like them. He likes the people who come into his store. What irks him is when the people insist on buying stuff, insist on leaving his store with records that Dave views as part of a private collection—his. If people came into his store looking for conversation rather than records, Dave would be a lot happier.

  And so it was on that rainy Tuesday afternoon when Dave was lost in the Nick Hornby book that he didn’t hear the front door open, or see the young man in the trench coat step in. Didn’t notice him, that is, until he was standing in front of the counter, awkwardly clearing his throat.

  Dave looked up.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Under his coat the young man was wearing a blue suit, a white shirt and a bright yellow tie. If Dave could have seen the young man’s feet he would have seen brown leather brogues, carefully polished. Not the typical customer who comes into the Vinyl Cafe, especially on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. He looked more like a corporate lawyer than a record collector, which, in fact, he was. The kind of man who might drive a small red car and own CDs, not vinyl, which was, in fact, the truth.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” said the young man.

  Dave closed his book reluctantly, stood up and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  The young man, who Dave thought looked maybe thirty-five years old, leaned on the counter.

  “Geechie Wiley,” he said. “‘The Last Kind Word Blues.’”

  Dave stared at the young face blankly. He squinted and cocked his head to the side. He said, “My God.”

  The young man grinned self-consciously and looked down at his feet. “I guess I’ve changed a bit since I saw you last.”

  Dave nodded.

  “Kevin Burnett,” said the young man holding out his hand.

  “I remember,” said Dave.

  The two men stared at each other silently, both thinking about the last time Kevin had stood where he was standing. It was also on a spring afternoon, a spring five, maybe six, years ago, thought Dave.

  “Seven,” said the young man. “I had just graduated. Lisa and I were engaged. I was on my way to Kingston . . . to article.”

  It was no wonder Dave hadn’t recognized Kevin. He was still a boy seven years ago. In those days his soft brown hair brushed his shoulders. He wore an earring in one ear and three silver rings on various fingers of both hands. He favored plaid shirts, blue jeans and work boots.

  During the five years he lived in Toronto getting his law degree, Kevin Burnett had worked at a variety of jobs and spent a healthy proportion of his disposable income on music. He lacked the imagination of Dave’s favorite customers: young men who pursued whimsical record collections—a football player who specialized in girl groups from the 1960s, an accountancy student who obsessed on Hawaiian surf guitar, a sociology drop-out who worked in a bookstore and was trying to assemble the complete K-Tel library from 1972 to 1976 and his very favorite, a history major named Derek who would only buy compilation records by “not the original artist.”

  Kevin just bought music he liked: folk, pop, a lot of rock and roll. But his enthusiasm for the music overcame his ordinary taste. He became a regular at the store, if not a respected member of the inner circle.

  Until, that is, the April afternoon seven years ago, when Kevin walked in the front door of the Vinyl Cafe, carrying his entire record collection in four cardboard boxes. He lugged the boxes in, one by one, and lined them up by the cash register.

  “Lisa and I are moving in together,” he said. “We’re getting married next spring.” He motioned at the boxes of records on the floor and said, “I want to sell them.”

  Dave remembered this clearly. Remembered Kevin waving at his record collection dismissively. Remembered him saying, “It’s time to move on. Time to grow up.”

  It wasn’t enough that Kevin expected Dave to buy back every record he had sold him over the past few years, he was standing there implying—wait a minute, he wasn’t implying anything—he had stated it. He thought there was something juvenile, something inherently immature about collecting records. As if he was the adult, and Dave was someone who had never . . . well, in his words, got going, moved on. As if you couldn’t own vinyl records and at the same time be . . . grown up.

  “Lisa has a CD player,” said Kevin. “Soon there are going to be CDs in cars.”

  Dave smirked.

  “I’m serious,” said Kevin.

  Dave was thinking, What about me? Am I not serious? Am I not an adult? Have I not moved on? Then he settled on the most dangerous thought of all: Is this what they all think of me?

  Kevin lifted the first of the cardboard boxes onto the counter. Dave reached for his calculator and began to flip through the records. He had done this so often that he could price them as rapidly as he could flip, which is what he was doing until he was halfway through the third box, and his hand suddenly hesitated. He looked up abruptly. Kevin was behind the counter pouring himself a cup of coffee. He hadn’t noticed the hesitation, or the look on Dave’s face.

  It was the look of astonishment. Dave couldn’t believe his eyes. He was staring at a record he thought he would never see. Ever. “The Last Kind Word Blues” by Geechie Wiley. Dave had been looking for this record for twenty-four years, ever since the night he last heard it—the only time he had heard it—on a jukebox in a beery roadhouse in the smoky hours before an Alabama dawn. Dave was driving the bus for a long-forgotten rock group touring the American South. They had a night between gigs and Dave had spent it feeding nickels into the bar’s scratched and foggy jukebox. It was the only time in his life he had seen one that played 78s. He played the Geechie Wiley tune over and over and over until the bartender, a large sweaty, tattooed man wearing an undershirt, walked over and wordlessly yanked the plug out of the wall. He stared at Dave as he did it, daring him to say something.

  “The Last Kind Word Blues” by Geechie Wiley. Dave had talked to collectors about the record. Not much was known about it—or Ms. Wiley—just that she was probably from Mississippi and the song was probably recorded about 1930. Someone had said there were only five known copies of “The Last Kind Word Blues” in existence. If this was the sixth it would be worth, in this condition, hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars.

  Dave had long ago given up hope of ever finding Geechie Wiley’s record. He was sure he was dreaming. He closed his eyes. But when he opened them, he was still in his store, and “The Last Kind Word Blues” was still there on the counter. It was better than anything he could imagine. Better than a cheese sandwich.

  He said, “I didn’t sell you this record.”

  But when he spoke it didn’t sound like him speaking. It sounded like someone speaking from inside a tunnel.

  “I know,” said Kevin, putting his mug of coffee on the counter. “I don’t know where that record came from.”

  There were record collectors who followed the catalogues and would pay a lot of money for “The Last Kind Word Blues” by Geechie Wiley. But Dave wasn’t one of them. Dave had never paid more than ten dollars for an album. Never charged more than twenty-five. It was a point of principle. He despised the collectors who bought and sold records the same way speculators bought and sold stocks. They were the same obsessive types who
had stolen the world of hockey cards away from little boys, perverting an innocent schoolyard commerce with their greedy little catalogues. Most of them didn’t even like music.

  Dave totaled up the value of the records in the boxes in front of him; then he hesitated. What should he add for the Geechie Wiley record? He punched in twelve dollars. It was two dollars more than he had ever paid for an album in his life. He was breaking the ten-dollar barrier for the first time ever—a limit he had promised himself he would never exceed. But he had to make an exception. The dignity of the record demanded it.

  He looked at the total. Two hundred and seventy-eight dollars for the four boxes. He measured his words carefully. “You might,” he said, “be able to get more for some of these records at a collectors’ show.”

  “I don’t have time for that stuff,” said the boy. “I trust you.”

  Dave grimaced. “You’re sure?” he said.

  The boy nodded. If he had asked, Which record? If he had asked, How much more? Dave told himself he would have pointed out the Geechie Wiley. Would have told him the catalogue price. But the kid was in too much of a hurry to grow up.

  It wasn’t a lie, but it was an uncharacteristic deceit. Dave was too elated to dwell on it. He felt as if he had won the lottery. He was whistling as he walked home, the record in his briefcase. Clearly it belonged with him, with someone who hadn’t outgrown it. He would wait until everyone had gone to bed before he played it. So he could savor it, without distraction.

  Morley was cooking dinner. He began to tell her what had happened as soon as he got in the door. He began by telling her about the night in Alabama when he had first heard Geechie Wiley. It was a story she had heard before. She was distracted with her cooking and, Dave sensed, uninterested. He changed the subject before he had to tell her the details of his purchase.

  He didn’t play the record that night. He intended to. Before he went to bed he took it into the living room, but when he got to the turntable he decided he should wait until he was home alone, so he could crank up the volume and there would be no danger of anyone disturbing him, no one asking him to turn the music down. So, he told himself, it would be a perfect moment.

  Instead of playing the record, he played with it. It was a beautiful thing: ten wide inches of hardened shellac. He leaned it up against his turntable and sat down and stared at it. He looked around the room, trying to forget the record was there, glanced back and pretended to be surprised to see it.

  “My goodness,” he said to himself, as if he were someone else, a guest, a friend, a newspaper reporter writing a profile on record collectors. “You have a Geechie Wiley?” Dave nodded coyly. “Yes,” he said out loud.

  Then he frowned. It would be ostentatious to leave the record out like that for the reporter to see. As if it was on display. He tapped his fingers. Where did it belong?

  He jumped up. Halfway across the room, he turned around. “Did I ever play you my Geechie Wiley?” he asked the empty chair.

  He was doing the same thing he might have done with a pair of leather gloves left unclaimed at the end of a party, or with a cake plate abandoned after a potluck dinner or a book that had been on loan for too long to return. He was trying to work the record into his stuff.

  He dropped it on top of the pile of his favorite albums, and smiled. “Have you ever heard Geechie Wiley?” he said to the reporter who was sitting in the chair and had morphed into Joni Mitchell, looking at him with wonder.

  “You have a Geechie Wiley?” said Joni Mitchell, who was lighting a long, dark cigarette. “You certainly have one of the most incredible record collections I have ever seen.”

  “Dave?” It was Morley calling from upstairs. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Just a second,” said Dave to Joni Mitchell. “It’s my manager.”

  Dave files his records alphabetically. “This is where you are going to live,” he said to the Geechie Wiley as he dropped to his knees. “This is the Who and this is . . . my goodness . . . this is Weird Al Yankovic. Al, this is Geechie Wiley.” He slipped the record into place. He was gloating as he headed upstairs to bed, intoxicated by his own sophistication, wondering what Geechie Wiley was going to make of Weird Al.

  Halfway up the stairs he stopped and looked back.

  “See you later,” he said to Joni Mitchell.

  Kevin came back to the store two days later.

  “That record you asked about,” he said. “The blues record. By Geechie Wiley?”

  Dave’s mouth dropped. Kevin thought Dave was confused. “The one you asked about,” he said again. “‘The Last Kind Word Blues.’ It wasn’t mine. It belonged to Lisa’s father.”

  Dave reached for the counter. He felt as if he was going to faint. He stared dimly at the boy smiling at him.

  Kevin was saying, “That’s why I didn’t remember buying it. I never bought it. Lisa’s father bought it. He wants it back.”

  Dave’s eyes narrowed. He felt a flood of rage surge unexpectedly through his body. He hadn’t even played it yet. He wasn’t going to give the record up.

  He said, “I’ve already sold that record.”

  “They didn’t appreciate it the way I could,” he told Morley that night. “If the girl’s father understood what it was, the girl wouldn’t have been running around with it. They don’t deserve it.”

  Morley didn’t say anything.

  “What are you looking at me like that for?” said Dave. “I didn’t steal it. I paid for it. I bought it. A deal’s a deal. It belongs to me.”

  He no longer felt comfortable keeping the record at home. He took it back to the record store. And not knowing where else to put it, he took it upstairs to a storage room where he keeps odds and ends: boxes of old paper, piles of equipment, stacks of memorabilia from his days as a rock-and-roll roadie. But it was the only record up there. And it didn’t fit. It wasn’t memorabilia. It was music. And he still hadn’t played it.

  One lunch hour, Dave locked the front door of the Vinyl Cafe and put the Be Back in an Hour sign into the window. He went upstairs and fetched the record. When he came back he sat behind the counter where he couldn’t be seen from the street and dropped it on the turntable. The opening chords of the song filled his head for the first time in twenty-three years. When the song ended Dave lifted the tone arm and set it down at the beginning. And then again.

  The rhythms of Geechie Wiley’s voice uncorked the bottle of time. Dave was hit by the same wave of emotion that had washed over him on that night in Alabama so long ago. Only this time he recognized the wave. This time he was old enough to give it a name. It was the wave of loneliness.

  Once again the record had messed him up.

  There was someone knocking on the door. Dave looked at his watch. He had been playing the record for over forty minutes. He turned off the record player, walked to the front and unlocked the door. While the customer wandered around the store, Dave absentmindedly picked up a pencil and wrote “twelve dollars” on a little sticker and pressed it lightly on the top corner of the Geechie Wiley cover. It was the amount he had paid. He put an exclamation mark after it. He opened a drawer under the counter and dropped the record out of sight. It stayed there for eight months.

  On a Saturday eight months later, a young Ryerson University student who had been working in the Vinyl Cafe for a few months found the record when he was looking for a pen. His name was Ken, and he dressed as if he had stepped out of the old Leave It to Beaver television show. Ken is the only part-timer Dave has ever fired.

  It was many things. It was the records he played on the store’s sound system for one. He began with stereo sound-effects recordings. Next it was a spoken-word record called Two No Trump: Teach Yourself Bridge, featuring Charles Goren. Ken would lay a deck of cards on the counter and inch the volume up if the store got busy. When Dave told him he was restricted to music, a rule he had never had cause to invoke before, Ken nodded earnestly. His favorite group turned out to be the dwarfs from Snow White. He wou
ld crank up the Disney soundtrack and bustle around the store filing records, whistling while he worked.

  The Saturday morning Dave caught himself doing the same, at home—whistling while he washed the dishes—he vowed Ken would go.

  Two weeks later Ken sealed his fate. Dave left him alone for an afternoon and he reorganized the front of the store. He moved stock around and took down obscure signs that had hung over obscure boxes of records for years. He cleared a table and began to refile records alphabetically, by artist. Ken didn’t get it. Didn’t understand that the organic confusion that is at the heart of the Vinyl Cafe is the thing that makes it work. Ken didn’t understand that people don’t visit the Vinyl Cafe the way they visit Wal-Mart. Dropping by the Vinyl Cafe is a hobby more akin to metal detecting than shopping. Real collectors don’t want signs directing them to the Dusty Springfield section. They want to mooch around the aisles like treasure hunters. They don’t know they’re looking for Dusty Springfield until they see her, and begin to tingle.

  Ken found the Geechie Wiley record in the drawer under the counter when he was looking for a magic marker. He set it by the cash register. At the end of the afternoon he carried it to the back of the store and dropped it into a box with a bunch of other records.

  Dave didn’t notice the record was missing for months.

  One day he opened the drawer and it wasn’t there. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen it.

  He asked everyone who worked for him. They all swore they hadn’t seen it, hadn’t touched it. Dave didn’t think of Ken for two days. “I tried to forget about him,” he said to Brian.

  When he finally tracked Ken down by phone, another month had passed.

  “I remember that record,” said Ken. “I filed it under Country.”