comments heard in music stores...

[Ken Dryden]

They don't even have a place for Art Pepper. You call this a jazz section?

[Spontooneous]

Employee training a clueless new employee in the classical department (back when there was a classical department):

"Just tell them you recommend the Karajan or the Solti. That's all you have to remember."

[tonym]

Forgive my lack of sophistication, but what the hell is a chav?

Oh....I really don't want to be the one to enlighten you, but what the hell.....

Edit: Oh good, others have done it already!

Edited June 6, 2007 by tonym

[WD45]

At the indie record store I worked at for many years:

"I heard if you know the password you can buy weed here."

"Where are your soft rock cassettes? I like soft rock. Is that bad? Am I bad?"

"Can I get engraving done here?"

We should have written more of them down...there were hundreds...

[jazzypaul]

At the indie record store I worked at for many years:

"I heard if you know the password you can buy weed here."

I worked at a record store owned by the guy who invented the hitter box. That kid was simply in the wrong town.

[Stereojack]

I heard these in my store:

Spaced out dude looks out the window while standing at the register, and says, "Is it raining outside, or am I high on acid?" (it wasn't)

********

Me: "I'm sorry, we can't buy these records. They're all scratched."

Customer: "Can't you just iron out the scratches?"

********

"Do you know where I can get a pair of quad headphones?"

********

"That's just the tip of the icebox."

[catesta]

I heard these in my store:

Spaced out dude looks out the window while standing at the register, and says, "Is it raining outside, or am I high on acid?" (it wasn't)

Yes, it was!

[sjarrell]

"Do ya'll buy CDs?"

"Yes".

"How about compact discs?"

--------------

"Did you know that Kip Winger was in Alice Cooper's band on this record?"

[danasgoodstuff]

My fav was the guy trying to impress a girl holding a robt Johnson CD, "Oh yeah, I heard him open for the Stones." Not in this world he didn't.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Nothing like that EVER happens to me in music stores.

MG

[Alexander Hawkins]

Stood browsing the diminishing jazz section in the local HMV when a couple of 'chavs' walked past. One of them muttered "wanker's music"!

Chavs and wankers - 2 reasons I stay out of GB.

Nah - it's chavs, wankers and toffs.

Let's not get all nationalistic....you never know where it might lead us

[Alexander Hawkins]

Forgive my lack of sophistication, but what the hell is a chav?

This is a brilliant thread. Whatever the pictorial version of 'mot juste' is - well, that's it right there!

[Shawn]

"Do you have a copy of Quiet Riot's Mental Health?"

[zen archer]

in a local used cd store i heard a kid on his first day of the job tell the owner that

his parents use to play the Beatles and Rolling Stones when he was growing up...

the owner replied ..." well there is no accounting for Bad taste ...........

[Teasing the Korean]

"Do you have any records by them old guys like Beethoven? I need to pick up a gag gift..."

[etherbored]

I heard these in my store:

Spaced out dude looks out the window while standing at the register, and says, "Is it raining outside, or am I high on acid?" (it wasn't)

********

Me: "I'm sorry, we can't buy these records. They're all scratched."

Customer: "Can't you just iron out the scratches?"

********

"Do you know where I can get a pair of quad headphones?"

********

more, please jack!

[Dan Gould]

Nothing like some of the quotes listed so far, but I was in the jazz section of a chain store in Tallahassee when someone approached me thinking that I worked there and asked me if I had any "Speero-Geero". I told her I didn't work there but someone came over to help her. As I walked past her to flip through the Sonny Stitt section, she said "I don't think its Speero Geero. How about Dave Cruisin?"

I didn't know whether to at her or .

[sheldonm]

..also not a record store but I was in the Jazz Kitchen a while back and a nice african american lady asked if Delfeayo Marsalis was "Winston's son"....

[JSngry]

This one may come with an asterisk as it did not happen in a music store, but instead took place in an art museum gift shop (the Kemper Museum in Kansas City). A couple in their seventies or eighties, who looked like two of the old people on the Andy Griffith show, perhaps Clara (Aunt Bee's friend), and one of the many elderly men on that show, were standing there with their super clean-cut, all American girl daughter, probably in her early fifties. The daughter had a bubble hairdo, ugly glasses and Wal Mart clothing.

I say all of that not to insult them, but only to set the mood for what they said. The daughter said, "Well, now that I have heard your albums by Larry Coryell and the Eleventh House, I wonder if I would like any traditional jazz. I have never really heard any."

Whoa....

[K1969]

OK I was young and very naive. Before the golden age of reissues I was in a second hand record store in London circa '89 and asked if they had a copy of Sun Ra's Lanquidity. The guy behind the counter kept a perfectly placid face and said "yes, actually there's sealed copy in the comedy section for 2 pounds" My heart lept and and I asked "Where's the comedy section?" I waited till I could grow a beard before going back into that store.

[Niko]

OK I was young and very naive. Before the golden age of reissues I was in a second hand record store in London circa '89 and asked if they had a copy of Sun Ra's Lanquidity. The guy behind the counter kept a perfectly placid face and said "yes, actually there's sealed copy in the comedy section for 2 pounds" My heart lept and and I asked "Where's the comedy section?" I waited till I could grow a beard before going back into that store.

i was standing at the cut out bin (so there is only one copy of most cds ) at zweitausedeins and some fat 60 year old guy who was looking through the CDs in the next box turned around and without a word took all the 4 or 5 CDs i currently had in my hand (if this type of thing happened more often I'd have been less puzzled... luckily it doesn't) he looks through them, apparently they don't tell him anything (hatology or so) except the last one which was the Barney Wilen / Philip Petit Duo Album... he looks at it, says "Wilen, he was pretty good, like the French Doldinger" (?! sounded very competitive, the way he said that) "but, i do not buy any music that was recorded before 1990" (the Wilen is from the 80s) and handed it back to me with a disappointed look

Edited June 9, 2007 by Niko

[clifford_thornton]

That dude should've got the smackdown for such behavior (on all counts), unless this is deemed common practice in Zweitausedeins.

[Niko]

That dude should've got the smackdown for such behavior (on all counts), unless this is deemed common practice in Zweitausedeins.

it isn't actually i see i almost spoilt the story by not mentioning that he actually was looking for "straight ahead jazz" (= anything that will never be recommended in a free jazz thread) but didn't buy anything earlier than 1990 because of the poor recording quality, he said, like he was on the watch for the latest Scott Hamilton record or so (and from all this you could tell that most likely he was not completely together allthough i am still not certain)

[mikeweil]

I remember checking one record store (or rather electricity goods store that carried records alongside lamps, toasters, etc.) 30 years ago in Mainz and asked if they had any jazz Lps. The young girls said they were afraid they hadn't any, and commented "that's with real improvisation and the like?"

[Hot Ptah]

In 1978 I visited a friend in Los Angeles. He had just moved there. We looked in the yellow pages and found an independent store that specialized in jazz albums. We drove there, quite a distance. We asked the owner if he had any Sun Ra albums. He said, "no, Sun Ra's only popular on the East Coast. No one likes him out here."