Old Records Never Die Read Online Free Page A

the Loop, with an escalator to the second floor where they kept all the on-sale stuff (and an elevator to get out), is now a barber school. The church-like Evil Clown on Halsted, once located on the same block as an S&M leather shop and a hole-in-the-wall coffee place owned by a sweet old man whose son was eaten by Jeffrey Dahmer, is gone too. It’s been replaced with something called Batteries Not Included, a “bachelorette party store.” The place at Clark and Belmont, whose name I don’t remember anymore, is now a Dandy Dollar.
    Reckless was it. And it had moved across the street from its original location. Which was weirdly upsetting. It was like coming home from college and finding that your parents had moved your bedroom into the dining room. You still had a place to sleep, and it might even be an improvement, with more square footage and better access to things like food and TV. But it wasn’t what you remembered. All the important stuff that had happened to you, it happened in that other room.
    I have only one real memory of Reckless. But it was one of those “this is where I became a man” stories. Not the milestones that seemed pretty awful at the time. Like when you lost your virginity, which involved a lot of fumbling and bad decisions and neither of you enjoyed it very much but thank god that was done. The smaller but no-less-significant milestones. Like the first time a girl started flirting with you hard at a high school party, and you were like,“Whoa, what’s happening here?” And at some point, when nobody’s looking, she leans in close and whispers in your ear, “I want you inside me.” Which is kind of hilarious and adorable when it comes from a sixteen-year-old, because there’s no way in hell that’s ever happening. She might as well have said, “I want to take a space shuttle to Mars with you and build a colony and our children will build a new human civilization.” It has as much a chance of happening as the “being inside her” idea. But you both like the way it sounds—it feels like the most erotic thing that has ever happened to anybody in the history of human beings with genitals. You go home with the electric crackle of being desired, and you don’t sleep a wink that night, you just stay up, thinking about the bizarre idea that somebody in the world wants to see you naked.
    My main memory from Reckless happened in 1993. I was flipping through the bins and happened to be near a group of guys who were all several years older than me. They had rumpled T-shirts with the names of bands I’d never heard of, complicated tattoos on their forearms, and one guy had a spiderweb covering his neck.
    They were talking about Nirvana, and how Cobain had so obviously stolen his best ideas from the Pixies, and how even though Cobain had admitted as much, it was still musical robbery, and Nirvana was still the biggest band in the universe and the mainstream still ignored the Pixies, which just goes to prove that the vast majority of the music-listening public are idiots.
    â€œIt’s like they’ve got Mozart conducting right across the street, but they’d rather listen to Salieri,” one of them sneered. He was the obvious leader of the group. He had a shaved head, stretched-out earlobes pierced with plates the size of mayonnaise jar lids, and smelled like Marlboro Reds. I let out a muffled laugh, just to let them know that I was listening and agreed.
    â€œYeah,” another guy guffawed. “It’s like somebody who thinksStone Temple Pilots is an amazing band, and you’re like, ‘Dude, have you not heard of Pearl Jam?’”
    The cool bald guy with the jar lids didn’t laugh. He narrowed his eyes and scowled at him.
    Without looking up from the records, I did a growling parody of Eddie Vedder’s baritone. The tune was “Daughter” but I invented my own lyrics. “Don’t