A Good Day's Work (16 page)

Conversation with him does tend to come back to that subject. Like any self-respecting music nerd, he's got his list of favourite artists—in order: The Replacements, Neil Young, Tom Waits, The Ramones and R.E.M.—and desert island discs:
Pleased to Meet Me
by The Replacements, Wilco's
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Some Girls
by the Stones,
Loaded
courtesy of The Velvet Underground and The Kinks'
Something Else
. (So, of course, does Dayna. The amount of crossover underscores how simpatico their tastes really are. Her most-wanted artists in order of preference are Elvis Costello, The Replacements, Talking Heads, The Ramones and Nick Lowe. The albums she could not do without are
Life's Rich Pageant
(R.E.M.),
Tim
(The Replacements),
London Calling
(The Clash),
Dear Catastrophe Waitress
(Belle and Sebastian), and
Get Happy
(Elvis Costello).

“Going to see Neil?” a young guy asks Stu. He and Dayna are. They go to see a lot of music, in Saskatoon and in more promising venues like Austin, Texas. The big touring acts. Also the locals they like to support by selling their discs on consignment and by giving them shelf space. While I'm lingering near the front, a smallish rocker in a hoodie enters. He's got what to me sounds like a crazy proposal: he wants
to pre-sell his next CD to the Vinyl Diner and the smattering of other shops in the city. Then, when it's made, he'll hand-deliver it to them. By bicycle.

Stu listens patiently without a trace of judgment in his face or posture. After the guy has said his piece and left, Stu steps out from behind the cash to rearrange the stacks, flipping idly through the merchandise as he goes. There are dollar records and others for fifty cents each. He's got the usual categories—country, jazz, soul and rock 'n' roll, the clientele being primarily a rock 'n' roll crowd—and more esoteric fare like doo-wop. Spaces on the wall racks indicate pilferage. Occasionally Stu catches someone shoplifting. He doesn't call Saskatoon's finest. He just asks for the merchandise back and tells them not to bother coming back. “I fire them as a customer” is how he puts it. Then he returns to the front of the store and a stack of discs, which he keeps around for when things are a little quiet.

Stu reaches down, picks up an album—
George Thorogood and the Destroyers
—and pulls out the disc with his right hand. He looks at one side in search of nicks and scratches, flips it over and eyes the other. If everything looks okay, he puts it down on the glass. Stu picks up a plastic bottle of isopropyl mixed with sterile distilled water, gives a barely perceptible shake, then lays a little circle of liquid on the vinyl like a Michelin chef doling out raspberry coulis. He picks up a soft rag, wraps it around his hand and begins cleaning the surface in a gentle counter-clockwise motion. Trouble spots receive particular attention. Then he flips it over and repeats the procedure on the other side.

When Stu is satisfied with the record, he holds it up to examine his handiwork. He spins it in his hands to consider the other side, blows off something, then flips it back for one last
look. Stu lays the record down. He picks up the cover, opens it and slides the vinyl back in. He runs a hand over one side of the cover and then the other to ensure that everything is smooth inside. If the record is well enough preserved or widely enough sought, it goes in one of the cellophane sleeves he buys a thousand at a time. Then he affixes a sticker, on which he writes a price with a Sharpie.

“It's a formula,” he says of the pricing. “An X markup, but I'd rather keep that to myself. The price depends upon how common the record is, how much demand there is for it and what kind of shape it's in.” I ask him what best stands the test of time. “Led Zeppelin. They just transcend every new generation. I'm all out now, but once I get more they'll disappear as fast as I get them.” Aerosmith “sells like Bieber.” Neil Young and Leonard Cohen are also hard to keep in. Ditto Saskatoon's own Joni Mitchell (“If I get a copy of
Blue
, it will move right away.”) and contemporary acts that could already be history as you read this.

Two women in their twenties appear. “You have the new Mumford and Sons?” The phone rings: a woman named Diane asking if the new Mother Mother has arrived. “Okay, I'll give you a call when it's in,” Stu says, hanging up. A fidgety dude in a hunting jacket sticks his head in and asks if Stu is still buying records. “It depends,” Stu says with a half smile. Encouraged, the guy hustles off. Stu knows enough not to get his hopes up. “People get rid of all their records because they're not into them anymore. They're broke or divorced. Or somebody is dead and there's an estate sale.”

We've all seen those forlorn collections. “Trash, curb fruit, the bitter residue of yard sales,” novelist Michael Chabon calls
them. “Orphaned record libraries called out constantly to the partners from whatever fate had abandoned them.” Stu collects lots of genres, so every disc calls out to him, promising something potentially great. He and Dayna scour the Internet and eBay. After work they go over to people's homes to look at old collections or they prowl defunct record shops to check out inventories.

Stu has bought collections of a thousand, even two thousand records. Once a guy showed up with a bag of records that Stu bought cheap. Among the dross was a copy of
Meet the Residents
, which, he tells me, was a parody of
Meet the Beatles!
by an avant-garde group called The Residents. Stu sold it on the Net for four hundred dollars, his biggest haul ever. Usually, though, the treasure hunting doesn't pan out that way. “I try to ask people quietly over the phone, do you have any Led Zeppelin, any Hendrix, any Stones. If they're from the eighties, any R.E.M., Clash or Joy Division. If they do, I'll know that there's probably some good stuff. If they say, ‘I've got everything,' usually that means they've got nothing.”

The guy returns, breathing rapidly from climbing the stairs, lays the first box on the floor with a
thunk
and says, “It's just been lying around the house. But I think there's some good stuff.” I think I see Stu's shoulders sag a little at these words. However, the first few the guy pulls out—Waylon Jennings, ZZ Top, Nancy Sinatra—aren't a total writeoff, so Stu starts the appraising and inventorying.

Since this looks like real work, I stroll around and peruse the stacks. There's a pattern. Up front: the cool stuff like Son House, Uncle Tupelo, The White Stripes and The Miles Davis Quintet, along with the local heroes—the merchandise surest
to appeal to the customers of a store like this. There's also rare material: the Rolling Stones' homage to the Ingmar Bergman movie
Through a Glass Darkly
in a cool die-cut album cover, the score to Alejandro Jodorowsky's crazy
El Topo
, the complete Jack Kerouac collection, the Beach Boys'
Smile
sessions.

The merchandise is predictably low on lame-ass pop. It's sweet to see some Gil Scott-Heron
(Midnight Band
) for $12.75 along with Canned Heat (
Cook Book
) and The Zombies
(Best Of)
—both for $15, which I guess makes them marginally more valuable than Jimmy Smith
(Paid in Full)
and Blues Magoos
(Psychedelic Lollipop)
, both going for a penny less. The free market is clearly doing its thing, in my opinion, if no work by Elton John fetches more than $10, the Rolling Stones'
Tattoo You
goes for $4.25 and Jackson Browne's
Running on Empty
a mere $2.25. On the other hand, the Beatles'
Help!
is $30 and a fine copy of The Clash's big deal
London Calling
gets $31.99.

I wander around, rifling through racks until some piece of cover art, or a nifty phrase in a liner note stills, for a moment, my undiagnosed ADD. The most expensive piece of vinyl I find in my quick perusal is
South Saturn Delta
by Jimi Hendrix at $43.99. I am not fit to judge whether Dock Boggs's
When My Worldly Trails Are Over
is worth $22.99,
I Want to Hold Your Hand
by The Buggs deserves to fetch $20 or the untitled album by “America's Famous Song Stylists” The Diamonds is a steal at $30. But when I go in search of some of my favourite soul and R and B recordings—Curtis Mayfield's
Back to the World
for $18.99 and Marvin Gaye's
Let's Get It On
for three bucks less—the pricing seems dead-on.

Stu and his man settle up. Rockabilly courtesy of Wanda Jackson, who once apparently dated Elvis Presley but was now,
incredibly, back on the comeback trail, fills the high corners of the room. Closing time looms. Dayna's on her way. The Vinyl Diner—which has had twelve paying customers, which Stu calls “a little slow for a Thursday”—is empty except for a tired man far from home, momentarily regretting his vocation, and a tall, unhurried guy who plainly does not. “Owning your own business means the work doesn't end when the door closes,” Stu says. “This just happens to be work that I like. I never don't want to come in.”

He says these words, with their stripped-down John Lee Hooker splendour, on an evening when it must be a hundred below zero outside, in this shop celebrating bygone glories, where the classic albums still live. He understands that the world of listening to music has forever changed, and that on this winter night many people who love a good tune will be hunkering down with their iTunes list. For all he knows, when I leave here, I will turn up my collar against the cold, put the ear buds attached to my MP3 player into my ears and disappear into the driving snow.

But Stu says retail is forever, and that there will always be a need for us to go and interact with a human being when buying the things that make life worth living. That may be just the opinion of a man who likes the look and heft of album covers and dreams of what they hold inside. It could be the wistful hope of a man who has found a way to spend his days doing exactly what he wants in the company of the things and the woman he loves. Sitting nearly horizontal on his sofa again, I really cannot say.

Yet I do know this: moments ago I held a cardboard sleeve in my hands. The dudes on the cover, lapels wide enough to
land a Sea King helicopter, are
baaaaaaad
. Booker T. Jones and the MG's, crossing a tired-looking stretch of Memphis road in single file. The album,
McLemore Avenue
, is named after where their recording studio was located, in the same way that the Beatles named
Abbey Road
after EMI's address in London. I flipped it over and ran a finger down the back. It was, naturally, a bunch of instrumental Beatles covers. No sign anywhere of the tunes I bought for my best buddy at age twelve. He's dead now anyway. But I swore for a second I could see him. I could hear that Hammond organ build.

CHAPTER
FIVE

EVERY JESELLY ONE OF THEM