2449 N. Lincoln Ave.

I never really fit in—at least on the surface. It was the clothes. Never partial to the neon colored hair, piercings and crudely-ripped clothes of first-wave punk, I looked quite the outsider with my feathered hair, aviator wire-rim glasses and waffle-stomper hiking boots.

I screamed mainstream. No. Worse. Suburban mainstream. But those were just clothes. The inner (and more-important, to my way of thinking) connection to the music was as absolute as an ARC weld.

In fifteen short years my favorite music had gone full circle—f rom rhythm and blues-inspired two and-a-half minute singles through the excesses (not all of them bad) of the acid and art rock era back to concise, highly danceable singles.

And when the record reviews in Trouser Press lit an inner fire that demanded their purchase, the place to get them was a two-flat on Lincoln Avenue with a white, glazed brick facade. That was where Wax Trax! lived, and where a five-year battle over my discretionary income would ensue.

Clearly under the influence, I bought freely. Some might even say lavishly. Rent? Car repairs? Food? Meh. They could wait. How were such mundanities supposed to compete with the new Jam single? Or that 7” Clash EP? Or an import copy of A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, its cover art a million-times more radiant than any domestic printing plant could manage?

Those were important.

And so it went in my youthful, inverted world.

As my appearance shifted ever so slightly (I lost the feathered hair and replaced my Yes and Led Zeppelin concert tees with ones from the Psychedelic Furs) and my visits bordered on weekly, I gained an ever-so-slight amount of cred from the Wax Trax! clerks. They pointed me towards Magazine and A Certain Ratio and the Fall.

And despite my lack of enthusiasm for the sartorial considerations of punk and new wave, it should be noted that when on multi-store shopping trips, other record store's purchases somehow always ended-up within my Wax Trax! bag. Go figure.

Self-conscious artifice? Fashion? I leave it to you, dear reader.

But change is the only constant, and spurred by Wax Trax's high-profile success, they soon had multiple competitors. And, it shames me to admit, most of them were easier to get to. And park at. And whether it was cash flow problems or managerial ones or the success of the in-house record label, the up-to-the-minute inventory began to lag.

The import 45 fixture with yellow dividers painstakingly hand-lettered with red and black felt-tip pens became dog-eared and neglected. Things were changing. Most-tellingly, guys who looked like me sat behind the counter.

Wax Trax's moment had passed.

But like so many groundbreaking things, its impact isn't measured in duration. It's measured in, well, impact. And Wax Trax! left a giant footprint on Chicago's music community.

Sadly, I found out too late about Julia Nash's online petition to have the store front at Lincoln and Montana designated as a local landmark. 

Here's hoping.

Absorbed

For many people, squinting at the matrixes on the runout portion of 2,500 record albums to determine where they were pressed would qualify as court-ordered punishment. As would individually discerning the condition of those records and their jackets.

It most-definitely is not a job for the ADHD-afflicted.

As a guy with a really long attention span, it's not quite punishment of the court-ordered variety. It doesn't even suck. Being that they're mine, and that it's been over a decade since I've had fact-to-face contact with them, it's actually quite a pleasure.

It is also very time-consuming.

Let me explain.

I had largely forgotten them. They sat, packed away in cardboard boxes since the onset of the Great Recession. One of the lessons imparted by that misery was that possessions are for the solvent. The employed. To have space for things requires money.

And for too many of the ensuing years, money was mostly a rumor.

The boxes sat unopened until just recently. After years fraught with stress-related weight gain, sickness, unemployment, poverty and death, revisiting the flower of my youth, when I obsessively scoured the length and breadth of Chicago's record stores for soul, blues, rock, reggae, jazz, country and western and soundtrack LPs, has been—for lack of a better word—startling.

My passion burned hot.

The covers. The labels. The posters and the stickers and the iron-on t-shirt transfers. Reacquainting myself with the output of some of my favorite fated-to-obscurity bands: Green on Red, Fetchin' Bones, The Family Cat, Blancmange, the Windbreakers and the Silos.

Feeling the heft and the thick, rounded edges of the old vinyl and the sharp, unfinished edges of the newer evoked oceans of memories. Of youthful, uninhibited freedom. Of disposable income. Of turntables and apartments and parties and girlfriends. Of mix tapes and friends in a better, far less-convoluted time.

In a world untouched by the Internet, record collecting was a matter of visiting stores and crate digging. Thumbing through countess bins of vinyl. Of hopes raised—and then dashed—as the vinyl within a pristine jacket appeared to have spent several hours on the the Dan Ryan Expressway.

But the joy of unearthing a pristine copy of Ann Peebles' I Can't Stand the Rain or Syl Johnson's Total Explosion, or of encountering Bob Koester (R.I.P.) at the Jazz Record Mart on Grand, where he regaled me with a story of Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson as I was set to purchase Howlin' Wolf – Live in Europe 1964 were priceless.

As was recognizing a girl from the previous night's Graham Parker concert at Wax Trax and simultaneously striking-up a conversation and a friendship. Or of finding new, still-in-their-shrinkwrap Japanese pressings of Otis Redding's first five LPs at the same store.

The real miracle is that I remained ambulatory.

But it has changed. A few keystrokes on a computer keyboard eliminate countless forays to far-fetched record stores, where imbued with a lottery player's faith I sought copies of Paul Kelly's Dirt or the Ohio Players' Pleasure.

I rarely succeeded, but the search was the thing.

While the Internet has certainly made collecting more-efficient, there is no sense of hard-won satisfaction. Or of the rewards of diligence. No sweat equity. It's record collecting reduced to the same ordinary-ness one encounters in the purchase of frozen vegetables.

There is no context. No sense of rarity. No buoyant joy of discovery.

But I am lucky. Given the choice, I preferred my way. The old-fashioned way. It drew me into parts of Chicago I never would have seen otherwise. And the joy of unearthing a long-sought after record after so many fruitless trips rivaled the Christmases of my childhood.

The goal was always to build a comprehensive vinyl collection. One that would incorporate the multiple influences that went into the creation of the musical chili called rock and roll. Did I succeed? Who knows?

But I've had an absolute ball trying. 

Record Store Remembrances

With the recent death of Tower Records founder Russ Solomon, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on record stores.

Rock 'n' roll grabbed a hold of me early. Hearing the Beatles harmonize on “She Loves You” electrified me; the resulting adrenaline rush was one of the best things I'd ever felt in my seven years on Earth.

It lured me into the local rec center, where on summer evenings a jukebox would play deep into the forbidden recesses of night (which was probably all of 10 PM). I would wander among the dancing teen-agers while Tommy James & the Shondells' “Hanky Panky” blared its lurid message, aroused by the vague but tangible feeling that something illicit was in the air.

Even in the innocent hours of afternoon, word of a “combo” running through some songs in a local garage would spread like wildfire, and suitably ignited, my friends and I would chase the sound like caffeinated bats honing in on food.

(I remember one band playing an unusually fiery version of “Gloria”, and wonder in retrospect if it wasn't the Shadows of Knight. The home was owned by an open-minded music teacher, who would've been sympathetic to a bunch of guys needing a place to rehearse. Plus it wasn't very far from the Knights' home base. But I'll never know for sure.)

My ability to listen to rock music went through the usual stages, moving from the transistor radio one grandmother bought me to the AM/FM radio another bestowed upon me to the eventual purchase an actual stereo. A very nifty and durable Panasonic.

Bereft of income, I asked for albums as Christmas gifts. The Beatles, Rod Stewart and early Chicago were deemed appropriate by my parents. It took my grandmother (yep—the same one who gifted me with the transistor radio) to introduce the hormonal wail of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix into the family home.

(To this day, my siblings fail to appreciate the parental tenderizing I did so that they might one day enjoy this music unburdened by the social unease that accompanies being regarded as an alien lifeform by your mom and dad.)

This incremental access exploded with the receipt of a driver's license. Armed with cash from a part-time job, I could now venture to the 'cool' record stores, which invariably lay beyond the confines of my provincial hometown.

When time and money (not to mention a car) were available, I was off to Old Town, where Uno's Bizarre Bazaar—a remnant of the counterculture that had flowered in the neighborhood a decade earlier—offered bootlegs.

The nearby suburb of Norridge featured Rolling Stone, a noisy, enormous store with coquettish cashiers who smoked cigarettes and wished you were David Bowie or Robert Plant. But only E. J. Korvettes could beat their prices.

The demands of higher education soon absorbed the majority of my money and my time, and my record-buying suffered accordingly. It was only after graduation that I began to explore the enormous city I lived in and satiated my lust for vinyl.

Wax Trax was my first obsession, since their remarkable inventory either carried every punk and new wave forty-five and import LP Trouser Press raved about or every punk and new wave forty-five and import LP they should have been raving about.

(That the cooler-than-thou clerks would sometimes condescend to speak with you was just a bonus.)

Unfortunately, this period coincided with the arrival of my first Visa card, and soon I was spending a disproportionate amount of my income there. On the bright side, I was able to list Wax Trax as a dependent at tax time.

When co-founder Jim Nash died, holes began to appear in the rigorously-maintained inventory, and it gradually became a less-urgent destination. While this was a boon to my financial well-being, area entrepreneurs had taken note of Wax Trax's success and it wasn't long before their shops were—to varying degrees—taking up the slack.

Evanston's Vintage Vinyl was probably foremost in my experience. It was similarly pricey, but what I assume was its owner (a very tall guy with clear plastic glasses and unfailingly dressed in leather pants) was at least helpful.

It was also the cleanest record store I'd ever been in. God knows I've crawled through places capable of incubating the Hanta virus, but there wasn't a chance of that at Vintage Vinyl. Hell, sometimes I felt guilty just rifling through the stock.

The only thing capable of marring those carefree days was the burden of parking. I could listen to the extended dance mix of my favorite song more times than anyone ever intended in the time it took to locate a $#@!& parking space.

It was on one such trip to Evanston that I glimpsed my salvation: the CTA. Its Red Line ran all the way from Evanston to 95^th Street, and conveniently stopped everywhere there was a record store I needed to visit. (That's needed, as in involuntary.)

An unintended benefit was that without a trunk, my impulsive excesses were kept in check. I mean, did I really want to lug around a copy of The Country Soul of Mrs. Miller for six hours?

Probably not.

An emerging interest in rhythm and blues and soul led me to the south side and Hyde Park, where Dr. Wax and 2^nd Hand Tunes nourished and sustained it.

Chicago was an ideal place to be interested in R&B, as its sizeable African-American population meant an enormous number of records had been bought and subsequently re-sold to resale shops when supplanted by rhythm and blue's latest and greatest.

Visits to Hyde Park yielded copies of albums by Ray Charles, LaVern Baker, Laura Lee, the Chi-Lites and Little Beaver. 100 Proof (Aged in Soul), Ecstasy, Passion and Pain, Denise LaSalle, Syl Johnson, Esther Phillips and Latimore.

Those record stores were islands of commonality. Places where only one strain of human being existed: music lovers. It was in these shops that the delusion of blacks and whites living peacefully side by side could be entertained.

In between the terminuses of the Red Line lay a raft of great records stores: The one whose name I can't recall on Sheridan Road near Loyola. The three-story monolith on Wabash that was Rose Records' flagship store. And the Jazz Record Mart on Grand, where on a good day owner Bob Koester would regale you with stories.

The purchase of Howlin' Wolf Live in Germany 1964 provoked my favorite.

Koester was backstage at a blues festival in the early-sixties when Sonny Boy Williamson happened to run into Howlin' Wolf, who had just completed his set. Williamson sized up the imposing Wolf, sweating from the exertion of his performance.

Then he spoke.

“I got to tell you something, Wolf. You sing like a motherfucker!”

High praise, indeed. I'd be lying if I claimed not to want that kind of life.

Not that my quests for vinyl weren't fulfilling. 

There was the Saturday night in the early-eighties that I strolled down Michigan Avenue in a light snow, in no particular hurry to get anywhere. At Dearborn and Washington, I descended the stairs to the subway and paid my fare.

Midway through a cigarette, I was greeted by a train consisting of the green and cream-colored cars of the nineteen-fifties. They featured brown naugahyde-covered seats and incandescent lighting and were, in retrospect, almost intimate.

I took a seat, opened my bag and examined my latest treasures.

Engrossed in the liner notes to a “5” Royales or Siouxsie & the Banshees compilation, accompanied by the rhythmic click-clack of the car's wheels on steel and the slight rocking motion endemic to rail travel, I needed nothing else.

Amid the noisy rush of my youth, this was a lesson in how resonant and sublime quiet contentment could be.

Fast-forward to the twenty-first century. Perusing e-Bay and the hordes of online sellers just isn't the same. With instant access to a world of vendors, there is no anticipation, no near-misses. The product is there, first time every time. There is no sweat equity. It is utterly drama-free.

I didn't know it at the time, but I liked the drama. I liked flipping through thousands of albums over countless visits, which only intensified the shock and subsequent slow-motion joy when I finally went face-to-face with a copy of Paul Kelly's Dirt or Willie Hightower's If I Had a Hammer.

Not only did I like the drama, I miss it. For better or worse, life is different now.

My mother was really good at not taking things for granted. Hopefully, so am I.