This record store was around from the 70's, so from the time I was in Jr. Hi. It was one of only a coupla places you could go and browse records. For you youngsters, it was like the comic book store in Big Bang Theory. But bigger, with good music playing (clerk's choice) and bongs and Zig Zag papers at the counter.
I remember the day that the meaning on the logo dawned on me - I remember it CLEARLY. I was like
"OH! LICORICE PIZZA! hey did you guys know...?" and the people I was with did this
the end.
I didn't get it at first either. I worked at the Lakewood mall up by Long Beach and like you I was sitting there eating lunch one day and it hit me like a tsunami. oooooooooooo! Licorice Pizza..I get it.
ReplyDeletelol - I'm all into NUANCE and behind-the-scenes and under-current, but sitting right in front of my face? nah, too obvious...
ReplyDeleteIt's probably a function of the pretzel logic we have to use to live with the personality disordered.
ReplyDeleteI'm jealous! By the time I was thirteen we lived way out in the country and I occasionally got to see the grocery store with my mum and dad. Having to take the school bus to get home meant no after school activities and I certainly wouldn't have been driven to a dance. No dates allowed but didn't get many invites because I was so weird! Because I was a girl, I wasn't allowed to learn to drive until I was about to leave home. The year I taught my baby brother to drive I also taught my mum who was 48 by then.
ReplyDeleteThis shit suddenly comes back to me and I realize, control, control, control, was the story of my life!
To make a long story short, even if I saw that cool record store sign, I wouldn't have known what it meant either, Gladys.
I could easily waste a few hrs. in a record store in the '60's especially if the clerk was playing good music. I could also find replacement needles for the record player there and since Psychob was always playing music she always needed new needles. Opera always sounded like a cat in severe distress (and she said she couldn't understand the words to the music I listened to!), Broadway Show or movie tunes (West Side Story wasn't bad) and the great Americana, like Aaron Copland. She said she was hard of hearing in one ear, so she blasted HER music. Somehow, mine played at half her volume resulted in a rage of "Turn that shit DOWN NOW!"
ReplyDeleteShe'd crank her music at all hrs. of the night. Gawd forbid I ask her to turn it down so I could sleep. Phone calls were always monitored if she was home from another extension somewhere in the house.
Anyway, music was such a great escape...
TW
In '66 we bought a brand new T-Bird. It came with an easy listening 8-track with Things like an orchestral treatment of the Yellow Rose of Texas. MY father never saw the need to expand his horizons from there.
ReplyDeleteMy dad loved Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis - when I got the photo albums I also took every. single. record. I could find in the house. When I got home I took a picture of one of the Brubeck covers and sent it to my step-son Aaron. He came over the next day and took 'em all!
ReplyDeleteI was so happy to get them to someone who would appreciate them (Aaron is a musician and a freaking smart guy) and ALSO I was glad to get rid of them.
I cannot listen to 'messy jazz' as I call it - it bothers me on a fundamental level with it's lack of melodic happiness... but I can't listen to those in particular because YOU KNOW WHY. Eeesh - right back to being in THAT house.
Where does Charley Parker fall in that?
ReplyDeleteI still have most of those licorice pizzas. I think I traded away the early Beatles stuff, but I still have all the albums from 1968 on (like Hendrix and Led Zeppelin). The 45s got burned up in a fire one time because my friend's crazy mother said 45's were the work of the devil. (no kidding!).
ReplyDeleteQ's Sis
Country music on AM radio was my mother's absolute favorite. That and early country music network. We got basic cable when I was about 12. She didn't like the message that shows meant for my age group sent (while she was boning boyfriends when dad was away), but she listened the shit out of the most depressing crap in the world. My room was off the living room and I didn't have a proper door, so it could be late on a night I was trying to get to sleep, and she would have that shit blaring so loud it rattled my fake door. I remember one time poking my head out and telling her I couldn't sleep, and her retort was something along the lines of, "You get to do what you want all the time," which was untrue, by the way, and also one of her signature immature comebacks, and she turned away from me looking out my doorway, signaling that there would be no more conversation. I still attribute songs like "I'd be better off in a pine box on a slow train back to Georgia" to the hideous depressive stuff that I have to consciously work on every day.
ReplyDelete