you guys can read this if you want. i like you guys.

thought it might be entertaining to some. first thing i've written since i stopped writing. it's rant-y.

if it is NOT entertaining to you, though, don't sue me!

disclaimer: i do not hate all boomer. JUST most of the boomer who come in my store. haha!

https://medium.com/@scottseward68/open-for-business-confessions-of-a-used-record-dealer-in-new-england-42985dbca372

That’s great! Write more, I wanna hear more about your dad

really enjoying this scott

I appreciated the nuanced analysis of boomer cohorts and the specificity of the hateful examples, much more persuasive than undifferentiated boomer bashing

He says, “So, how does this work when you buy stuff?” “Do you plug into some database or something…” And I said, “Yes, I am a robot and I plug into my database.” And I said it in the voice of a robot!

LOL

I liked this, but I for one, actually miss Connecticut (for the proximity to more interesting places, haha).

I reposted this to FB and Discord. Good stuff.

nice little blog you have here

i used to have a blog! its still out there...i'd be afraid to look at it. though some of it is probably okay.

i have to say that i actually showed this weeks ago to an ilxor whose opinion i think highly of and they liked it and that's how i got the confidence to share. thank you to them if they read this. i do miss the outlet. of writing. i'm just glad you guys haven't gotten sick of my blab on here in general. i feel like i've been blabbing for months.

lovely piece, Scott. Thanks!

He says, “So, how does this work when you buy stuff?” “Do you plug into some database or something…” And I said, “Yes, I am a robot and I plug into my database.” And I said it in the voice of a robot!

I hope you made jerky robotic arm movements when you said it.

Nice piece Scott, I had two irl lols... you're a good writer...

This is greatness. I will share it out more properly tomorrow!

Keep on blabbing, that was great.

absolutely loved this

Very good. I like your writing style, with the runs of short sentences and the digressions you weave in and out of.

My feeling is that it’s a type of person, and it gets worse with age, so it peaks at the age of the men you have repeatedly run into, but I see the very same traits in people in their thirties and forties, and then it must be that they get amplified later.

But the particular reference points for men of that boomer age NOW – The Band, Eric Clapton and so on, maybe even playing the guitar themselves and owning a collection of guitars and amps, and all the fussing over hi-fi stereo equipment – make it especially annoying. I’m approaching that age myself, but I’ve never liked Eric Clapton or blues rock of any kind. I just don’t like it, perhaps because it was just before my time. I was once in various bands with someone about ten years older than me, and it was constant talk about the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Sorry, not interested, not then, not now. To be fair, he was a proper musician, not a dilettante with ten guitars, though he probably did own ten. I would also never go in a shop and start talking to the owner in that way. It wouldn’t occur to me to do something like that. I don’t like dogs either, or babies for that matter.

My wife is American, so I mentioned that I’d read your blog post and asked her if she’d ever been to Hartford, Connecticut. She said yes, and she doesn’t like it.

Great stuff bud. The struggle is real.

The bit about boomers and blues music just made me LOL on the train.

Omg a blog! In 2024!!

Very enjoyable, Scott.

"an LSD-soaked episode of Happy Days with an Eric Clapton soundtrack"!

Amazing. Thank you for sharing with us Scott.

First and last grafs esp. strong, catch a wave (oops boomer music ref), and as someone who worked in music product stores for many years, I know exactly where you're coming from (strike more boomer talk). Chuck Eddy, Frank Kogan, Lucy Sante (boomers all) are among those currently digging this on gmail thread, and Lucy knows your brother's store, is amazed, no maybe (oops).
Boomer rant is predictable, but there are a lot of people who are predictable in just that way, and yes every fucking one of them visits record stores.

Pickin' on the blues? Mr. Seward has been known to post favorable comments on I Love Music's renowned Do You Blues? thread.

Great essay Scott. It's being shared by about a dozen friends on social media right now lol.

Not even all of them ilxors!

great stuff scott, really enjoyable read! i encounter this variety of boomer at the farmers market where they try to break hundred dollar bills for a single bunch of cilantro and get the peach guy to deliver a sermon on fall growing patterns while buying zero peaches
HATE THEM

I'm happy you guys like it! It inspires me to continue. Old life in this gen X dog. And I don't hate dogs i promise! maybe just ask before you come in and let it run around everywhere. and please don't put your hot coffee cup on top of the records while you look at records. the records are not a table.

very happy, don, that you guys are enjoying it as well. tell frank i say hi and i hope he is well. that's awesome that lucy likes it. i am a big fan. cheers to all!

All this talk about the blues reminded me of this Onion classic https://www.theonion.com/affluent-white-man-enjoys-causes-the-blues-1819565488

Hurrah! Yes many friends on FB and elsewhere have all loved it. Rightly.

They are bemused by just about everything that regular people do. It’s as if they can’t believe that people still do things.

I can't tell you how often I bump into this attitude, scott. Thanks for writing and keep at it.

Enjoyed this! Sharing with a friend who has a record store in (removed identifying detail).

shared with a friend who is opening a store later this summer

I miss old people who were old, too. The other side of the generation chasm. Grandmas who liked Lawrence Welk and Liberace.

I was chatting with a boomer neighbor on the street, who is still actively working in the law. Had a trip to Philly, was sharing an Uber with "a job I never heard of before, an Influencer"

the influencer was super chatty British guy, asked the driver to take him to the best Philly Cheese Steak.

The driver, small talking, let it be known he was a member of the Stylistics. At which point the influencer went nuts and took all sorts of photos.

When my friend got out later, he said "I feel weird tipping you, you may have more money than me?"

The Stylistic had to explain that other than oldies tours to Japan, he has no income from music.

Kinda surprised any blues/r'n'b/r'n'r fan wasn't aware that most musicians like that never got anything from their hits, but I shouldn’t be!

Great article, Scott. I sent it to a friend of mine. Your sense of humor and writing reminds me of him.

it's funny, maria is out in front now most of the week while i'm in back pricing and putting things on Discogs and she now gets all those people who used to drive me crazy. she tells me about them. which means that i get to utter my favorite phrase: "welcome to my world". 15 straight years of people coming in and telling you that they heard that records were coming back. and for 15 years those people never bought a record. she got a real live one last week. one of the usual suspects comes in and tells her - and he was telling her not asking her or trying to start a conversation: *PEOPLE DON'T LISTEN TO RECORDS ANYMORE*. and she nicely says oh yeah people actually do....and then he says *THERE IS NOTHING TO PLAY THEM ON ANYMORE*. *YOU CAN'T GET TURNTABLES ANYMORE*. and she says actually you can....and he says *YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T LISTEN TO THEM ANYMORE*. and she says actually young people do listen to records. and then he says *YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T GO TO SEE LIVE MUSIC ANYMORE*. and she says no i think young people do go see live music. and then he says.......WELL GOOD LUCK WITH ALL THIS. and leaves.
you don't get that at Walgreens or CVS.

thanks! and thank you all again. i'll just keep thanking you all.

ilx has always been very supportive. it has meant a lot to me.

i don't know if i ever mentioned this but waaaaaaay back before i started posting here i heard about ilx from frank kogan in an e-mail and of course i searched for my name when i heard that people talked about rock critics here and someone said something like yeah i don't know about SS and someone else said something like *he's the perfect critic for other critics* and i was like hell yeah! i'm good with that. fuck normal people. i didn't want to write for them. haha! this was probably 2003? it might have been geeta. anyway, that inspired me for real. i didn't even know if anyone liked what i was doing other than chuck - and frank and don - and they were all obviously crazy. in a good way. things like that kept me inspired to do it.

I read this as a sequel to the chapter in Marooned: the latest instalment of a bemused picaresque through the world of work - grocery store employee, custodian, record-store owner...

one of my very favorite movies. free on Youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w1FoHxjv0k

Yeah this was great. I like rants when they are funny.

Makes me wonder what the stereotypical annoying Gen-X record store visitor will be like once the torch is passed.

gen x record dads generally just look really depressed and like they had way too many IPAs the night before. they rarely give me shit. they rarely speak!

https://riotfest.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Portlandia_801A_BandReunion_MPX-1920x1080_R1.jpg

gen x record dads generally just look really depressed and like they had way too many IPAs the night before. they rarely give me shit. they rarely speak!

I have never been in your shop but it feels good to be seen!

Enjoyed your blog. I miss blogs.

lovely late development is gen x moms coming in by themselves and browsing and buying. also mostly silently. just more women in general now and its such a relief from the non-stop dude parade.

re: "i used to have a blog" - yeah i know, i rediscovered & read it quite recently, it's still there & it's still great

oh wow thanks! i just looked at it for the first time in years. it feels archaeological.

seeing women in large numbers in record stores is totally a new (welcome) experience for me as well.

I haven't actually worked in a store in a long, long time, but I feel like the big generational record-store dad shift was that any given Boomer would presume they understood records more than a younger person behind the counter, as though they'd walked into a store selling their personal childhood possessions and might be asked to explain or sign a few, whereas Gen Xers tend to presume the opposite and desperately want the worker to validate them as cool and knowledgeable

^^^ It me

As a gen x woman lifelong record shopper and former store employee, I very much want to be left alone to make my choices. I 100% don't want to boast about my knowledge nor do I seek the validation of the person behind the counter. Also resent being lumped together based on reproductive choices. Not all women are moms! But I like this essay regardless.

My mom has also been known to put things in front of Marty the Robot to freak it out. She also pushed him a couple of different times. She said she once saw the robot inadvertently (?) chase a woman down an aisle.

For some reason, the last time I was in a Stop & Shop (I usually go to Market Basket) the robot was dressed up as a chicken, with a beak – or maybe it was supposed to be a turkey, since it had a wattle. But this was well after Thanksgiving.

Fave so far is opening, the unexpected sensory gifts, rainbow ov smells: a lot of old American cities used to be like that, maybe they all were, certainly a decade or so after Clean Air Act, when I first went to Nashville, it was through that shot in Altman's Nashvilledowntown: newspapers blowing around rainy night streets, fireplug buildings (some of which contained Bluebird Cafe, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Ernest Tubb's Record Shop, many more lesser-known and some even seemingly nameless joints, Exit In over towards the Music Row---Vandy interface, I think).Blonde On Blonde had always sounded so NYC to me, and in a sense it was,is, but also recorded with Nashville Cats in Nashville, who had no trouble with the atmosphere)(likewise Charlie McCoy playing guitar all through the previous album's "Desolation Row").
And way before that, when my grandfather insisted on driving us from North Alabama to Chicago before the Interstates were finished, lot of it was one bad-cough urban sprawl, so I was always ready for things to get more congested, then thinning out again (retaining the smell,as you say).

I was very into the Plugz, but the Cruzados album with "We're All Just Hangin' Out in California" seemed too vibey smoov, like lesser Byrds by way of much lesser "Don't Fear The Reaper"----yet a live set on cable was the shit, maybe because of this one mavericky guitar slinger,who may not have been on the albu I had---nevertheless, lots of hot stuff on that thread you started,though I still am too ignorant of Green On Red (Chuck Prophet has since made some good solo albs, I know that much).
Will re-read this latest installment several times, thanks again!

Thanks, Don! Have you ever written at length on Nashville or other places that you have lived? I would love to read if so.

I always play Rank & File's Long Gone Dead album when I get it in at the store. I always loved that song but the whole album is good.

When all is said and done, The Gun Club were kinda my fave 80s roots rock band back then. If you want to call them that. Gothpunk Americana is still Americana. Those albums are so cool. though 1985 was the year of The Knitters for me. I played that album so much.

I picture the dad who sent his kid for Graham Parker records as trying to amass the complete Pazz and Jop winners.

Ha! Wouldn't be too big a job for kid seeking P&J GP, who seemed to sink through those polls pretty quickly after he ditched The Rumour, at the end of the 70s (The Real Macaw was a pretty good singer-songwriter album for 1983, but don't think it placed very highly)
xp Scott, I only visited Nashville, but some of that may end up in a long thing I'm still trying to finish.

Yeah, that Rank and File album---and I hope, now that X have finally called it quits, that we might get another Knitters album.

Scott, I really enjoyed this. Thanks for keeping up the good fight.

thank you!

Your description of not wanting to talk to record store employees certainly articulated everything I felt - I would never get to the end of my list if I kept getting input unasked for!

Never did get to go to those giant NYC shops in their glory days, but I will paste my favorite 90s NYC memory here:

In 1993 I took the bus down from Boston to visit friends in the Village, and before meeting up, I decided to detour to St. Marks to look for LPs. I immediately gravitated towards a set of milk crates on the sidewalk in front of a record shop, and while I hunched and flipped through them, I sensed two people in my peripheral vision, one at each side of me. I turned to my left, and the guy said to me, "Hey, you can get most of those same records for cheaper at that place." He was pointing across the street. I turned to my right, and the guy on that side looked me in the eye and asked, "Will you pee on me?"

lol

I feel like you could have negotiated something there

Hey Scott what did your dad do? Maybe you've written about it before and i missed it?
The movements described made me think : drug dealer

he worked for trucking companies. sales. he went to big companies to get their freight business. he was away a ton when i was growing up. he went all over the place. not a glamourous job. but he liked to travel.

I was wondering about that too, and also how he knew so many jazz musicians.

he went to shows in nyc forever. since the 50s. he knew a bunch of people casually. the jazz world is pretty small. you end up knowing who your fans are if you are a musician. i don't know how many times my dad saw someone like george coleman but it was a lot. i probably saw george coleman 3 or 4 times myself back then. he would drive people home from gigs sometimes. but he would also go to tons of shows in CT when we lived there. and then later upstate when he lived near Saratoga. Skidmore had a good jazz department and Lake George had festivals. he just didn't have any good jazz friends in the 70s and early 80s to go to shows with when we lived in CT. so we went with him. or he stayed late in the city and went by himself. after i moved out he luckily became friends with a neighbor who played drums and he would go to a ton of shows with them. and then way later he went to shows with his friend stan who still lives in brooklyn. masta ace's father-in-law.
he originally was thinking of going into radio/broadcasting. he loved radio. so he worked at CBS and NBC in the 50s as a page/usher/gofer. he worked on Your Show Of Shows, and the Ed Sullivan Show, and The Ernie Kovacs Show and a ton more. he used to go on walks with Ernie during the day when Ernie wanted to get out and clear his head. he would walk Edie Adams' dog. he liked it. but then he got my mom pregnant so he had to get married and get a more serious job. that led to trucking. and alcoholism. and buying too many jazz records.

my dad with his high school friends from Summit, NJ at Birdland with Stan Kenton. my dad really loved Stan. hey, it was the 50s.

from left to right: ashley seward, russell starkes, julian hill, andy catana, dickie dennis, mackey, and stan kenton.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/293989817_10160533999977137_5096544918248589223_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=bDdq8l4XMzoQ7kNvgEv-__0&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&_nc_gid=As_uhafr0Aynu4gdcbrEPWR&oh=00_AYBT7JDVi1RrebvF31P_W3zeXmQLgaLlRAqG5cK_L7lrbQ&oe=6785D75C

Wow, thanks for sharing that scott

Wow---been thinking about looking for this pic from a long-ago post on ilx----your father and Stan look as I remember (execpt I had Stan in an Eisenhower bomber jacket, in there between Charles Lindbergh and Charlie Starkweather, the pure products of America goin crazy, as Stan glimpses maybe the ultimate version of "The Peanut Vendor"(main thing I know by him is City of Glass---Stan Kenton Plays the Music of Bob Graettinger---so amazing---novelist Robert Stone wrote about acid parties feat. orig 10" LP of that, at Kesey's house on Perry Lane in Palo Alto, when they were Stanford grad students [then they'd go roaring up to Frisco jazz clubs]) Kovacs, hell yes!

I swear the next one will be the really really funny one. I was nervous about this so I sent it to a few people and Karen Schoemer really liked it a lot and had such a great response to it and I truly respect her as a writer so I felt better about it and it made me more willing to put it out there. Almost a year since the first one I wrote. I do want to end up with one...thing. We'll see. Baby steps. I'm not sharing this on my own Facebook because cousins but if you like it feel free to share it with your loved ones or on your own Soc/Med! Honesty is my new policy. I might put it on the Bluesky.

Trigger Warning: SELF-HARM, SELF-ABUSE, DRUG USE, DRUG ABUSE, ALCOHOL ABUSE, TOBACCO, DEPRESSION, MENTAL ILLNESS, CONNECTICUT, RECORDS, VINCENT GALLO

https://medium.com/@scottseward68/where-there-is-smoke-confessions-of-a-used-record-dealer-in-new-england-a20fca456b38

<3

I don't have anything useful to say other than a) WOW and b) you are a really good and characterful writer, Scott.

This is so, so good.

I have some family in Trumbull. Is that near your store?

thanks you guys.

i'm not actually in CT anymore, calstars. i just grew up there. trumbull is about half an hour from where i grew up.

Great read, Scott.

Read the first one in Maggot Brain over breakfast this snowy morn.

Great writing, Scott. Not just describing the mindstates you’re grappling with but making them visible and visceral on the page.

Indeed. You and I inhabit such different worlds, Scott, and you fully dragged me into your world, helping me to understand it better.

thank you for writing that, scott

Thanks you guys! it means a lot to me that you appreciated it.

i really appreciate you sharing your stories scott. it really inspires me. i'm thinking of starting a blog again, on medium or something. i just feel kinda scared because i feel like the stuff i write needs to be Serious Business and sometimes i just want to say dumb shit.

i finally broke down and got a bsky. a lot of the reason i kept off social media is because i was afraid it would ruin my professional reputation or some shit. whatever. i don't have a professional reputation to protect anymore. i feel free in a kris kristofferson sense. i might start talking about my life in public other than posts here. i've been trying to bury a lot, to hold a lot of stuff back, and it hasn't been working really good.

if there's anything i can say to your post it's that if i've learned anything, it's that i'm already whole, that i'm not broken, that i never was. and i think you're a whole person too, even if it doesn't seem like that. a person can be whole and still feel hurt, still feel really really bad, still feel guilt and shame and all that stuff. it might sound weird to say but you're a role model to me, have been as long as i've known you, and even moreso now. that might be hard to believe. i find it hard to believe all the people who look up to me as role models. at the same time i know it's true and i'm glad to have been able to do that.

the thing that's scary about writing is how much i cry. and a lot of that is that it's easier to cry when i'm on estrogen, but whether someone cries or not, expressing that pain is so hard and so important. anyway i cried reading your story, and that's a good thing. and i think it's super cool that you're doing it. you're one of my favorite people on ilx.

Aww, thanks, Kate! I really appreciate that. I feel like Ilxors have kinda been my perfect audience all the way back to the days when I wrote for the Village Voice. They get me and they know where I'm coming from even if their experiences are different. If people here liked what I was doing then I was happy with that. But it does feel different to share personal stuff on a public website outside of here. And it has opened me up more. I think it would be great if you wrote longform stuff on a site like Medium. I picked it because it was easy? There might be better places. I haven't paid to be a member or anything. You get more perks if you pay. But I just like the clean look of the site. Sometimes I forget that I even had a blog in the old days! You are a good writer and super smart and have so much to say about your own experience. I think people would really dig it. And I think its more important than ever for people to be vocal about who they are. Even if that can be truly scary to do in public.

As someone eternally trying to give up smoking (i'm down to not buying them, but regularly hanging out with smokers who are generous with their cigs), I felt this one. Great read Scott.

Thanks!

I forgot to mention that my fave band Stella Kola had a show at my pal raymond's bookstore and they asked me to read before the show and I read that one about being in the city with my dad and my dad came to listen so that was nice even though I know all the swearing bugs him. It was a tribute of sorts to him.

nice

Thanks for sharing this Scott. I've enjoyed reading all of the entries so far, but this was my favorite. Hope you keep 'em coming in one form or another.

Thank you! They have been good for me and I'm glad people have enjoyed them.

I'm going to see a therapist - or actually i think they are in-training to be a therapist - FOR THE FIRST TIME next week and I'm tempted to just print this one out and hand it to them at the end of our first meeting. Ha! What the hell would they think?

I knew I was in good hands when I looked this person up and saw that before their therapy career-path they were an actor who appeared on two episodes of American Horror Story. Perfect! This country kinda writes itself, doesn't it?

Any decent therapist would do their 'neutral-creeping-into-this the best you got?' face!

I really enjoyed reading this (if that's the right word). I've got a son who I know has an incredibly complex, traumatic inner life, the extent of which I've only sensed, and it's still rare to see this stuff written down and discussed. Keep them coming!

And I hope your journey towards some kind of peace continues. Best.

Thank you so much. The encouragement is very helpful. it really is.

All these pieces have been good, but that one was great. Glad to know you.

aww, thanks, phil. i was thinking the other day that the first truly autobiographical thing i ever wrote was for your book many many moons ago.

I loled at this:

My love for that stuff is the only reason I have been able to keep a store open for 16 years. It certainly isn’t the money or that guy who is possibly ten different guys who comes in and asks me if I have any Tool and then talks about Tool and then leaves only to come back again and again because some people, it turns out, are Tool or nothing kind of people. It’s the Tool way or the highway for these intrepid…tools.

and at the boring friends of your kids "who stare at you catatonically."

I loved this, scott, especially the way you avoided the moralism.

And without smoking, why bother drinking? It just made drinking sadder than usual.

To me it's the opposite. I see no point in smoking without drinkig. I can't smoke sober.

I'm going to see a therapist - or actually i think they are in-training to be a therapist - FOR THE FIRST TIME next week and I'm tempted to just print this one out and hand it to them at the end of our first meeting. Ha! What the hell would they think?

Great idea IMO

Scott, this is a great essay. Thank you for sharing. :)

xp it is a great idea. i just finished up a very personal writing project, probably the most sustained personal writing i've ever done, and i'm absolutely sending it to my therapist. (also i really loved this piece scott, and it helped me untangle some stuff in that very project)

Glad it was helpful, Ivy!

this is blowing me away. thank you for writing and sharing this.

This was a great read. I relate to a lot of this.

Thank You x 2 !!

Cigarette with coffee and a newspaper and rye toast and bacon and a hangover was the best thing ever. Thanks for the reminder. I don't even eat much bacon these days, as it's not as good without the full suite.