Butchers & Bakers play Washington, DC’s Paperhaus on Saturday, 8/4.
“I wanted that white Sonic Youth record. Soundtrack to some art film, I’d look at it at least once a week at Kim’s Underground, in the back of the video store, imported, maybe Japanese vinyl.”
“But I did buy at Kim’s: Call the Doctor: “This is love and you can’t make it in a formula or shake me,” which lead to Sleater-Kinney’s self-titled album— I believe on 10 inch vinyl. Corin Tucker’s blood-curdling chorus in “Wedding Song,” “I don’t owe you anything,” the perfect cadence of her rage gave voice to my own.
Bits of each record went on to mixtapes, painted with sparkly nail-polish and inserts painstakingly collaged and annotated in tiny teen-print. I bought out everything Sleater-Kinney related at Kim’s and Rocks in Your Head, down to the compilation Move into the Villa Villa Kula with a twelve minute Eileen Myles spoken word piece on the B-side and Sleater-Kinney’s “More Than a Feeling” cover. I don’t think I’d even heard the original version.
But it started with 45s, books on record, probably age three. “This is the story of Star Wars. You will know its time to turn the page when you hear R2-D2 go like this.” And Sesame Street Disco, the Lady and the Tramp soundtrack with the Disney image emblazoned on the record, and Karl Orff’s Music for Children— marimbas, timpani, before Orff became the soundtrack to twee indie rom-coms.
Junior high: Finally discovered there were more Jefferson Airplane songs than “Somebody to Love,” which Cousin Brucie introduced me to on 101.1 WBCBS FM NY, when I wasn’t taping DeeLite, En Vogue, Black Sheep off Z-100, Kiss FM, Hot 97, the old WBLS. I played Surrealistic Pillow and then Volunteers on repeat. My mom taught me “Comin’ Back to Me” on guitar, the first song I ever learned to play. I mooned over the pink cover, Grace Slick’s bangs, dreamy San Francisco. I waited for my own plastic fantastic lover, wailed “White Rabbit” in my thirteen-year-old-totally-sober voice.
I’d already ransacked the Beatles and Stones records, stole the poster out of the White Album to hang in my room, unzipped the Sticky Fingers cover, wondered why the Through the Past, Darkly album cover was an octagon, if my dad had cut it that way himself. It wasn’t until years later in some record store that I saw its twin. I tried listening to the Velvet Underground then, Nico and the banana and White Light White Heat but I wasn’t ready yet. Ditto John Fahey’s Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes.
More high school: Ditched out early on the AIDS Walk in 1995, was cutting across West 80-something Street from Riverside to Central Park when my friend and I found a whole stack of 70s records, mostly Seals & Croft, Flying Burrito Brothers, maybe a couple Linda Ronstadt. We took what we could carry, picked mostly based on the album covers.
Later I would constantly find promos thrown out on the street by DJs, labels, magazines— thank you 90s— mostly instrumental hip hop or shitty house, occasionally something good, once a whole pile of Eightball records. I used them to try to scratch but was too much of a nerd to commit and fully fuck up my Dad’s needles—plus there was only one turntable and if I ruined it I couldn’t listen to records.
Portland: “Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody”—Sam Cooke and Parallel Lines on repeat, drinking greyhounds on the porch, checking out the boys on their way to the Can-Do at Fred Meyer, Madonna 45s, Heart, Neil Young, Dolly, Aretha, Tommy James. “It’s 11:59 and I want to stay alive.”
Then the records we bought just so we could hang up the album art: Accept’s Balls to the Wall. This was way before Portlandia but it’s true, everyone was a DJ. One of them stole my Flock of Seagulls and Prince records when he DJed my going away party. Every thrift-store record bin had at least two copies of Houses of the Holy and Dreamboat Annie. My friend feathered her hair almost as well as Heart.
Later: Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane,” a warped record. The guitar, warbled behind scratches, its tremolo coming through a juice-can telephone, long-distance communication. “Once I saw you standing in a crowded, hazy bar.” You get farther and farther away from that bar. You are standing in another room alone, a different side of the country. The last time you listened to that song all the way through was forever ago, but just the opening riffs still floor you every time.”
—Rebecca Keith
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Band photo: Sam Morgan
