I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about downtown Manhattan’s once-thriving network of independent record shops in several weepy, sepia-toned posts about stores like Rebel Rebel, Rocks in Your Head, Second Coming Records, Bleecker Bob’s, Venus Records, St. Marks Sounds, Subterranean Records, Other Music, Bleecker Street Records, Disc-O-Rama and It’s Only Rock N’ Roll and several others. From the mid-80’s until about into the early 2000’s, my best friend from high school, Rob B. and I used to routinely hit these shops on a circuit we inexplicably referred to as “the Schmoo.” If we were “out schmooing,” that meant we were invariably rifling through the bins at any of these above spots — or other’s like Route 66, Rockit Scientist, Kim’s, Golden Disc, Record Factory or Freebeing — trying to meet our insatiable need for new music.
But there were other stops on our circuit, a crucial one being at the Pizza Box on Bleecker Street to wolf down slices while examining our spoils. As with all of the concerns cited above, that — too — is gone. To be fair, a paltry handful of our former regular haunts still hang on today, those being Record Runner, Generation Records, Academy Records and Downtown Music Gallery, but one would be remiss to suggest that their respective prospects were especially promising in 2020. That’s just the way it is.
But from around 1987 to late 1988, we had another regular stop.
If you stand on the southeast corner of West 8th Street on Sixth Avenue — basically right in front of the hulking space that formerly housed a Barnes & Noble and a B. Dalton books before that — and look south, you’ll probably still see a bunch of folks selling dubious shit on the sidewalks. Old magazines, DVDs, vinyl LPs, books and other largely weathered ephemera are periodically up for sale along this strip even today. But back in the 80’s, it was a much more robust ersatz marketplace, one that stretched as far down as the basketball courts on West 3rd.
I don’t remember how we first happened upon him, but Rob and I came to know a young merchant on this strip named Tim. An unassuming kid from somewhere on the Upper West Side — usually sporting a mammoth pair of headphones — Tim was in the business of selling bootleg cassettes. For the layperson, this means illegal live recordings of the same variety that got nearby Second Coming Records in trouble (as discussed at greater length here). We’d show up about once a week and check out Tim’s little briefcase of offerings, immaculately presented in alphabetical order and all marked with the inky font of a thick black sharpie. Like ourselves, Tim was especially besotted with a few specific bands, and his stock leaned heavily in those directions. For whatever reason, his two favorite bands were the Minutemen and the Sisters of Mercy, but he also had tapes by ancillary acts like fIREHOSE and my then-faves in The Mission, along with sundry recordings by bands like U2, The Cult and The Cure. We were very clearly his target demographic, and frequently availed ourselves to his wares.
In the middle of penning this post, I heard from Rob and he informed me that we once went to Tim’s evidently sprawling townhouse on the Upper West Side, but I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I just don’t remember it.
In any case, the one specific tape I remember buying off our Tim in May or June of 1987 was a pristine, soundboard recording of The Mission playing a gig I very bitterly missed at The Ritz on East 11th Street in just that previous April. I’d missed the show in question being that I was away at school when the band drunkenly plowed into town. Capturing the Mish at the hoary height of their powers, it featured roaring runs through their early singles, a few odd covers and tracks from their debut LP, God’s Own Medicine, including a lungful reading of “Wake,” a throaty middle-finger to their former taskmaster Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters of Mercy. I played the absolute shit out of that tape, taking it with me a bike trip across Western Europe, managing not to lose it in any number of grotty youth hostels along the way. I absolutely cherished it. Much like the XTC tape I discussed the other day, I still have it, although nothing to play it on. But sadly, unlike the XTC tape, I’ve never found a recording of the Mission at The Ritz in April of 1987 anywhere else. Not on disc. Not on YouTube. Nothing.
Anyway, sometime after all this, we again happened upon Tim on Sixth Avenue again while schmooing. At this stage, he mentioned that he was considering giving up the whole bootleg cassette venture. We earnestly tried to urge him to stick with it, but he informed us of a growing spiritual investment in Tibetan Buddhism. In short order, Tim fully renounced his materialistic endeavors, and stopped showing up to ply his cassettes.
We never saw him again.
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