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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz "Overheard at the Record Store"

Posted by Dave Segal on Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 1:29 PM

Music consumers say the damnedest things. The House of Cat site collects—and will, I hope, continue to collect—some of their LOL utterances. For example:

“This is one of those bands that, thank god no one knows about, so I can keep them private.”

“I smoke outside. I don’t care about my lungs but I don’t want to ruin my records.”

Dude. Epic.

One of my favorites from when I was working at Everyday Music in the dark days of 2003-04, directed at me: "Has anyone ever told you that you look like Perry Farrell? Because you do." And then there was the EM classic, "Do you sell CDs?" No, really.

Add your own hilarious encounters in comments, if you wish.

Comments (7) RSS

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From my days at Easy Street, the classic "Would Jethro Tull be under J or T?"

My favorite time was back when I worked at Second Time Around (RIP), a guy walked in and I said "Hey how's it going?" His reply was "I've got two dollars." I said "OK." Then he asked me if we would by his baseball. I said that we did not by sporting goods, that we were, in fact, a record store. Then he spent his two dollars on a button and called me a Narc and left.

Posted by John Totten on November 19, 2009 at 2:41 PM

Sort of similar to "Do you sell CDs?"...Back in my video store days when DVDs were relatively new, I got numerous people who would come up to the front counter, DVD in hand, and ask "Do you have this on DVD?"

Posted by T on November 19, 2009 at 2:52 PM

@1:
The JT question is funny, but to be real, and it's kind of funny that Charles mentioned him earlier today, it really bothers me that I don't know whether to put Pete Rock under P or R.

Not in a record store, but someone recently told me that KRS-One is on the new Prefuse 73 album and it had gone platinum. O RLY?

Posted by cosby

on November 19, 2009 at 3:35 PM

Then there are the far-too-numerous-to-count times people would come in and ask some variation of "Do you have that one song? You know, it's on MTV and has that guy in it?" (Note, I last worked in a record store in the mid-80s, when MTV actually played music videos; in fact, that was about all they played.)

Posted by dicon on November 19, 2009 at 4:30 PM

Dear Dave and The Stranger,

Thanks for the mention! I will definitely keep the "Overheard" quotes coming. Working in a record store won't make you rich, but it is quite entertaining.

All the best,
Cat Johnson
www.houseofcat.net

Posted by Cat Johnson on November 20, 2009 at 12:17 AM

I love the "I don't care about my lungs, but I don't want to ruin my records" quote. LOVE IT.

I don't have anything funny other than constantly getting asked where stuff is. I'm not an employee and have never been one, but I spend enough time at my store of choice that apparently I look like an employee. I finally gave up on directing them to staff members (especially considering I've spent more hours in the store than most of them) and I now just show people where what they're looking for is.

Posted by bunnypuncher