Given the very nature of the unstoppable, jackbooted goose-step of time, it shouldn't feel surprising that certain periods of one's life or since-vanished places are forever becoming "longer ago," so to speak. It's as if they're trapped on a specific continent that you are continually sailing diametrically away from (although, to be fair, to milk that analogy, if you kept sailing in perpetuity, you'd eventually ram back into it on the other side). In any case, I'm continually struck by how things that have now taken place many years ago still seem relatively recent. It's as if you blink, and five or ten years go by. Earlier this week, for example, I read that the Pretenders' third album, Learning to Crawl, crossed a milestone of 28 years. I still think of that record as "their new one." Don't look now, but I'm getting old.
Yep, this is another post (much like, say, my recent one that recalled The Cat Club or my half-assed attempts to master skateboarding as a teenager) that shan't "move the needle" (as they're keen of saying in my office). It's just another shameless bit of nostalgia-wallowing. Stop here if that bores or offends you.
Still with me? Okay... well, apropos of nothing in particular, I recently stumbled upon an article that was published on the eve of the demise of the Manhattan incarnation of one of my old favorite haunts, Rocks in Your Head in SoHo. The fact that it's now been gone from its storied, bunker-like cave on Prince Street between Thompson and West Broadway for six years now really put the zap on my head. As I lovingly documented back on this post, Rocks in Your Head always felt like so much more than simply a humble record shop. It was more of a shrine or a seemingly secret meeting place for kindred sensibilities. When it could no longer afford the spiraling rents of the neighborhood, it moved to Brooklyn in April of 2006 to a location I never visited and closed for good shortly after that.
Nowadays, the space is occupied by a soulless real estate agency.
Not wishing to make you feel even older (hey, we're all going in the same direction) your line about the Pretenders reminded me of my Dad who still refers to Bringing It All Back Home/Highway 61 as Bob Dylan's "middle period".
Posted by: James Taylor | January 20, 2012 at 10:25 AM
I can not walk anywhere near Prince and West Broadway without feeling a pang and a desire to go shopping at Rocks In Your Head. The record store I miss the most.
Posted by: swtcurran | January 24, 2012 at 10:31 PM