Factory Records: A Q&A with Dave "Noise" James

When did music first seep under your skin?

Dave “Noise” James:  So, I’m 43 years old, to give you a timeline.  I first got turned on to music by my parents, like pretty much everybody else.  My dad was really into—and still is—Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Lou Rawls.  Johnny Cash and Ray Charles really came from my dad and my mom gave me Beatles records when I was too young to remember.  She was really into like Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, so I’ve always been down for anything.  They were never really into the coked-up stuff from the ‘70s, so I didn’t grow up with a lot of the same influences that my friends had, like the Crosby, Stills & Nash, or James Taylor, or any kind of that stuff from the ‘70s.  My parents were just more mellow.  I kind of got an appreciation from that.  My first records would be Beatles records—and kids get shitty toy records, those don’t count—but the first real records were like Beatles records from my mom.  I got a paper route when I was ten years old.  Because of the Beatles albums, I had an appreciation for records themselves.  Having a paper route, I had to get up at weekends each day at 5am or 6am in the morning and deliver the newspapers.  So I had bitchin’ access to garage sales.  I was up early and I was the first guy there so I had first pick of the records.  That’s where the bug started for record collecting, was just getting to the garage sales before anyone else and scooping stuff up.  Years ago there was a store at Harbor and Adams in Costa Mesa called Music Market.  They were pretty much…you could pretty much compare it to like what Amoeba is now—not as big square-footage-wise—but they were the place where, if it existed, they had it.  They had imports and everything.  I lived maybe a half mile from the place, so with the paper route money, I would just bike or skate over to Music Market with my friends and blow the paper route money on records.  There was a little circle of us that had a passion for buying records.  So between garage-sales and Music Market…

Were you the one passing out music to friends getting them hooked on stuff?

No no, I actually got most of my influences from my friends.  I wasn’t the trailblazer with music.  Like The Beatles I got from my mom, but like the Stones and the Who and the offshoots of that I got from my friends.  I had a buddy who was a year or two older than me and he was the guy who got into punk through some other neighbors who were older than us and latched onto that.  I guess if I chased my own kind of stuff, I was into really over-the-top Top 40 kind of stuff—Culture Club, Eurythmics, Thompson Twins—like I loved that kind of stuff too, I’m not ashamed to admit it.  Some days I’d be listening to Culture Club, some days I would go with Black Flag, or I’d put both in the mix and I’d be happy.  I was cool with whatever.

You are able to have a deep appreciation for music when you can see it from all sides.

It’s funny too, coming up with the punk rockers, there was like the punks versus the heavy metal guys—and I mean it all crossed over within a few years—but me and my friends, we really avoided the metal stuff.  We were into some of the stuff, but it took a few years for us to appreciate the metal, so I’ve got a way broader knowledge of the punk than the metal, which I’ve gained over the years.

(PHONE RINGS)

Let me grab this real quick.  (Answers) Factory Records.  Ah, open ‘til 8 o’clock tonight.  Yeah we’re at 440 East 17^th St., we’re between Tustin and Irvine Aves., and we’re behind a barbershop called Classic Clipper Barbers, so look for them.  Sure, bye.  (Hangs up).  Sorry about that.

It’s quite alright.  Tell me about Noise Noise Noise, your old record shop?

I started that and it opened on April 2^nd, 1991.  My knowledge came from, like I said, the garage sales and Music Market.  I actually started working at Music Market in January 1988, so I worked there for a little over three years I think.  I also did some time at a record store in town called Discount Records, and I did the record swap out in Buena Park, ‘cause there’s a big record swap every month.  So I had knowledge and that was like my college—working at Music Market.  I went to OCC (Orange Coast College), but I didn’t learn much there.  I was too busy drinking and not giving a shit, drinking and going to shows.  So I didn’t really gain much out of OCC, but Music Market I really learned about pricing used records, you know?

That’s a big part of the record store deal.

I was young.  When we were working there, a few friends and I, we look back and laugh at like the killer jazz we would come across and be like, ‘Fuck, no one cares about this,’ and then throw it in the $.50 bin.

And then you find out later that jazz record was worth $100?

Yeah, it was that we just weren’t into jazz and we didn’t have an appreciation for jazz or soul, so some people got some killer deals.  But yeah I’ve learned over the years.  So I opened up Noise in ‘91, and it was probably about four times the size of this and it had a back room and little office.  It was a lot bigger.  It started off just with used records and CDs were real hot back then—a lot of punk and indie kind of stuff.  Probably within six months or a year, maybe even the first few months of being open, a guy came in from LA and he had this stack of records and he said, ‘Hey I’m a distributor, I sell dance music.  There’s this new shit that’s taking over, it’s called techno music.’  He’s like, ‘Do you want to try it?’  I’d been to raves and stuff and I really dug that kind of sound, so I was like, ‘Yeah, just give me two of everything you have,’ and I put it out.  Within a week it was just gone.   And so we were one of the very first stores to sell the club music in Orange County—the techno and house.  I think it’s called electronica now, but back then it was techno and house.  That really filled the place up with customers.  We still did a lot with the punk and the indie stuff, but techno really put us on the map.  We became a really big store for that, and some other shops opened up in town after that that were just techno-based.  We started doing more of the hip-hop—just any kind of club wax, ‘cause nowadays everyone’s got their laptop, but back in the day you had to have turntables, a mixer, and a big ole’ crate of records.  We were one of the hubs for tons and tons of DJs coming through.  One of my favorite quotes ever is, ‘There is no record collection that is not hip-hop.’  It’s totally true because we sold all these different genres, so the hip-hop producers and samplers would come in just buying all this weird shit to sample and looking for beats and stuff.  Some of the techno-only stores didn’t have that, but we’d have the crazy jazz or the weird Prog records, or the reggae to sample, so people came from all over.

That was the time when sampling really took off?

Yeah it was essential.  It was huge.  And that was also during the pop-punk/ska explosion too, so we sold tons of that kind of stuff.  We did a lot of in-stores with local bands playing.  Home Grown, who got really famous, they used to play at the shop.  They played a few shows and I had a label so we put out a single for them, and we did a Sublime 7”.  We did a lot of cool stuff.  The label was me and Lob over at Vinyl Solution—to give him credit too—but yeah, it was killer times.  There was just so much going on.  Record stores today aren’t um…they aren’t necessary…like 15-20 years ago it was somewhere you had to go to find flyer to shows, you couldn’t just turn on Myspace or Facebook or any of that shit.  To look up shows, it was like, ‘Oh we gotta skate over to the record store and find flyers or grab a zine, see whats going on, to buy tickets, to get singles, all of that kind of stuff.  It was a real amazing time for music and we were just right in the mix of it.  It was rad.

Then everything changed?

Yeah, heroin shut it down in 2006.  I was pretty fucked up for the last few years of it and stopped paying rent and all those good stories that come along with drugs, so I shuttered it in 2006.  Yeah, that was the end of that.  For the first, probably, 12 years it was just amazing.  It just kicked ass and it was an awesome place to be, very good times.  The last few years were kind of sad, but, whatever.

Things are cyclical it seems.

(Customers walk in).  How you guys doing today?

Customers: Good, how are you?

James: Good.

Shopping through your store, I enjoy your labels and the commentary.  We’ve discussed how you have absorbed so many musical genres, but how did you discover all the information you post?  Is it through word of mouth or mainly online?

Yeah I use online too, but I’ve just been doing it for so long that a lot of it is just like…yeah it’s unfortunate that so much of my brain is wasted on useless musical knowledge.

Useless??

Well, a lot of it is.  For every interesting thing, there’s a hundred bits of useless trivia I’ll never use just sitting in my brain.  But yeah, I love putting the notes on, and people love the notes.  I get people that come in from the old Noise days and they’re like, ‘Man I still have the records and I put the sleeve on and I still have your note on it,’ and it’s rad to hear that from the people that they appreciate the little notes.

I keep all the packaging from records I buy…

That’s what you’re supposed to do.  And I do use the internet now to get information too, yeah absolutely, it’s great.

Gotta keep up with the times.

It’s an amazing resource.  Back in the old days, we had to have all these…I think I have them still… (Reaches for his books).

The ‘bible’ books?

Yeah, exactly, that’s what I wrote on my very first one was, ‘Dave’s Bible, Don’t Touch.’  They’re all these price guides and there were magazines, and yeah you’d just have old stacks of Goldmine Magazines with the biographies and discographies on artists and what values were, and now you turn on the computer and it’s right there.

What do I want to know?  Type it in, hit return.  Easy as that.

Everything is up there.  It’s pretty good.

When and why did you eventually open Factory Records?

Noise shut down in August of 2006, and it was a few months after that I cleaned up my act.  I got clean and sober in January 2007, and I was unemployed.  I had some money, ‘cause I had to sell my house.  My house was on the verge of foreclosure, so I had enough money to cool my heels for a little bit.  I got clean and sober, and it was funny, right after I did I went out on tour with a Jagermeister-sponsored band, which—I always joke with my friends in recovery—is not a good idea for most people.  For me, it was like the best thing that ever happened.  You know I was tied to this record store for 15 years and I had this opportunity to go out with the band and see the United States as 65 mph.  I was like the designated driver and it was really bitchin’.  I went on a few tours of the United States with them.  You don’t get rich doing that, but it kept me alive for the time.

Rich in experience?

Yeah, it was probably one of the best things that I’ve ever done in my life.  It was amazing.  You know, you make enough to eat and there’s always a roof over your head and there’s always fun stuff to do and you’re seeing different bands all over the place.  I did that for a few years and I worked with them.  The band was called SiX.  They did a lot of little tours and they were really good at getting opening slots for a lot of big metal bands, so we worked a lot of festivals and a lot of fun shows.  I’ve got knowledge on doing merch and stuff like that.  So I did that and a lot of hustle kind of jobs.  I didn’t want to get a real job because if a tour came up, I didn’t want to have to quit.  Through the band, we had a lot of little half-ass jobs that we would do for a month or two that would keep us alive.  They had one of those spirit Halloween stores down the street and the singer for the band became the manager and just hired the whole band.  Normally it’s a bunch of teenage kids doing that, but it was like all these bands guys.  It was fun, we got to do it and we got our paychecks and went out on the road.  Did that, and a whole bunch of other little jobs.  Then it was time to get a real job, so I went over to Second Spin and I got a job over there.  I was working over there with awesome people and was having a blast doing that, and wasn’t even thinking about doing anything else on my own.  When the record store that was previously, he went out of business.  The landlady here is the lady that runs the barbershop right out front.  I’ve known her boyfriend for years and years.  I didn’t know this was her deal here, but she wanted to keep a record store here, so her boyfriend hit me up at Second Spin and was like, ‘Hey, you want to do another record store?’ and I was like, ‘No, I don’t think so, I’m really not into it and that place is really small,’ and blah-blah-blah.   He said, ‘Hey, just come stick your head in and check it out.  So I came over and the minute I walked in the door, it was like I was thinking, ‘Ok, I could do this and put racks on the walls here and do this and that, and I’ve got all this shit in storage.’  So I was like, fuck it, what do I have to lose?  So I jumped in and it’s been amazing ever since.

I remember the buzz going around when people heard you had reopened…

Yeah, I hear that all the time.  It’s cool and it’s nice to hear people saying good things.  Noise Noise Noise was a really influential store and people have been really stoked to have me back—not to toot my own horn.  It’s what I need to be doing.  I need to be in town, selling records.  It’s beneficial to both the customer and myself.  Yeah, it’s a mutual relationship.

What are your feelings on local bands and local venues?

You know what, I’ve gotta admit that I’m definitely new back on the scene.  For years and years, I’d go to see bands all of the time and hit all the local clubs, and once you hit that heroin, it just fucking kills it.  So probably around turn of the century my clubbing ended.  And it’s just been in the past couple of years I’ve been going out again and seeing things.  But I love Detroit (Bar) obviously.  I mean, I was there opening night for Stereolab.  We did the presales for it at Noise, and I’ve watched that place grow.  I love that place, I think it’s amazing.  I get to DJ there for the first time in a couple weeks.  I’m really excited.  Avalon (Bar) obviously I was there on opening night… (To customers)  If you guys need anything feel free to interrupt too.

Customer:  Alright, we will.

James:  Yeah, just butt in.  Yeah Avalon opening night I was there.  I miss Mike, he was a great guy, but I’m glad that the bar is still there.  It’s a great little dive for little bands to get in, because they give bands opportunities to come in.  If you’ve got a PA and a mic, you can come in and do a show.  They’re really open with what they do, and they’ve given me a night to pretty much do whatever I want with.  If I can get a few heads in there to buy some cheap booze, they’re happy with it.  So it’s a lot of fun, and I’ve got a few different things coming up.  I finally got to hear the new sound-system over at The Observatory.  I’m excited to go see some more shows over there too.  I’m going to go check out a couple of shows at The Constellation Room, which is awesome because, every time I went to the Galaxy before, the music there was great for a bunch of has-been bands, and I definitely saw some old fogies over there.  But you know what, it was usually a big empty hollow hall, and to see them really utilizing that space, I’m pretty stoked over there.

There’s more to come at The Observatory from the sounds of it.

Oh I know.  Yeah, I kinda keep my ear to the ground.  I’m really excited because, for me growing up, I never went to the Cuckoo’s Nest ‘cause I was too young.  But growing up hearing about the punk bands at the Cuckoo’s nest, Costa Mesa has always been a city for music and arts.  (To customers) Take care you guys!

Customer:  Thanks, you too.

James:  You guys have a great day.

Dave Noise

Yeah, it’s funny when people claim nothing culturally relevant has happened in Orange County.

Yeah, you gotta look for it and you gotta hunt it down.  There’s a lot of bullshit you gotta dig through to get to it, but it’s absolutely out there.  It’s an amazing, amazing time for Costa Mesa right now.  I’m kind of including The Observatory ‘cause they’re right on the border.  For Orange County itself, things have definitely been shaping up.  I’ve heard there’s some bad blood between Detroit and The Observatory, but I think it’s going to be bitchin’ competition and it’s going to draw radder bands when it comes down to it.

They might end up pushing each other?

Yeah, they’re going to have to work to get killer acts, so I’m excited and I’m totally down for it.  They’ll both do fine, there’s plenty of bands out there.  There’s no need to worry.  Detroit is completely established as an amazing destination, and The Galaxy has morphed into this rad, all-ages Observatory now, so it’s really cool.  It’s a great time.  And there’s lots of other clubs.  People snicker at the Tiki Bar, but I’ve been there a number of times and there’s a ton of great shows over there.  It’s an amazing place.

The new sound-system at Tiki Bar definitely helped it’s status.

They’ve got a good vibe over there, and they just kind of do their own thing.  They were shuttered for a number of years, but they jumped right back into the same groove of what they’re doing.  I’m so stoked to see them back.  I had a friend who was the guy who was going to do the demolition of the place, and I would have been hired on to help knock the place down.  That’s what I was doing in between record stores, I’d help friends out.  One of my buddies does a demo thing and he was like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do the Tiki Bar,’ and I was like, ‘Oh fuck, for real?’  So it’s really cool to see that it’s doing well.  And there’s even like, when you walk out into the parking lot here, there’s Mesa Music Services, and TONEbUTCHeR over there.  They do, they haven’t done it in a while, but they’ve been doing analog synth shows and stuff.  Those guys are so cutting edge and amazing.  I’ve seen a few of their shows and they’re just unbelievable, so we’re gonna do a show with them in a few weeks and I’m super excited to.

Will the show be at Mesa Music Services?

We’re gonna do it at the Avalon.  We’re gonna do one of the Avalon gigs…

Let me know about that.

I’ll post a thing on your wall.  Yeah, I’m really excited about it.  Those are some guys to look out for.

I’ve been wanting to talk to Todd.  He’s so quiet and modest though.

Oh, he’s cool.  You start talking to him and he’ll open up, and he’s really excited about the stuff over there.  To see that stuff coming out of Costa Mesa, that’s great, I love it.

Tell me more about your experiences as a DJ?

Avalon Bar is like the main one.  My story DJing was that I used to do La Cave over here, and it would be like funk and soul, and lounge funk and cool stuff like that.  There used to be this weird, coked-up hipster club in Newport called The Thunderbird and it was where all the kids would go to do coke and dance to house music.  A few of us friends, we had the entryway and we played like jazz and acid-jazz.  That might have been my first real DJ gig, was doing that every week.  I’ve played at like Memphis, Habana, like all the little places around town.  It’s kind of funny—this is a good story but kinda sad—when I was really fucked up I told Steve Fisch, who was spinning over at the Kitsch Bar and need someone to substitute last minute, so I was like, ‘Dude, I’ll take a crate of records and I’ll go do it.’  I got there and the couple of wires there on the mixer were crossed, so it was like it was all backwards.  I should have just unplugged the wires and fixed it, but I was so fucking high and frustrated, needles were skipping, and this and that, and I pretty much just passed out on the turntables and got thrown out of the club.  That was like 2002 or 2003, and that was the last time I’d been on turntables in front of the public.  Last year Avalon hit me up and said to come on down.  I was like, whatever, it’s cool, I’ll do it.  Went and got some records out of storage and got behind the turntables.  It’s like riding a bike, it just comes right back.  I’m not one of these fancy guys that matches beats, no fancy skills, no scratching, none of that hipster, cool club shit.  But I bring cool records that people want to hear, and I know how to program it in my head so it’s not all scattered all over the place.  I’ve been having fun doing that at Avalon.  I got an invite to play Detroit in a couple weeks.  I started doing it with Mammoth Thunderpower, so it was just dig out the old cool heavy metal and the hard rock, and put a little punk and new wave and psych in there.  It’s all about rock n’ roll, just fun rock n’ roll—and no attitude, that kind of thing, just stuff that will make people dance.  None of that cookie-monster metal shit, but fun hard rock.  I really enjoy doing it again.

How do you feel about the different mediums of sound, like vinyl, tape, and digital?  Obviously you have an affinity for vinyl…

I’m just a vinyl person.  I’ve always been into vinyl.  I love CDs too, I know they’re not cool to like anymore and they’re outdated or whatever, but some days I come in here and I feel like sitting and reading a book out front, it’s nice to put five CDs in the old five-CD-changer and not have to get up for five hours.  So they serve their purpose.  I have a CD player in my truck.  Whatever with all this digital shit.  I don’t know how it works and I wouldn’t know how to put an mp3 into an iPod or any of that.  If I sat and thought about it I could.  I’ve got some little iPodish kind of thing and I used to go on walks.  It took me longer to figure out how to put songs on there than it would to go on my hour-long walk, so it’s like, fuck it I’ll bring my tape-deck and I’ll just go walk around with that.  In the late ‘90s, when Napster and all that shit was out and about, I was telling people that…excuse me a second. (To customer)  You ready to roll or are you still digging around?

Customer:  I’m ready to roll.

James:  Alrighty, you’re all set, see you soon, enjoy!  What was I talking about?  Oh, Napster.  Yeah, in the late ‘90s, I guess that’s when it was, I guess it was Napster that was the main thing and started to take hold.  I said all the time when people would ask, ‘What do you think is gonna happen?’  I would say, ‘No one is gonna get into downloading music.  It’s not gonna fly.  Nobody wants to sit in front of their computer.  People like to go shopping.’  What do I know?  I’m pretty retarded with that.  So, I’ve grown to accept it.  I can’t fight it—what am I going to do?  Fight Steve Jobs or something?  Not going to happen.  I’m just accepting of it and am grateful that there are people who still like to come in and dig and buy records.  People say it’s like a fad and whatever.  It’s not a fad, it’s just there’s certain people that like it and records are gonna remain popular.  There’s always been people down for their vinyl, you just have to size your store to accommodate it.  The mega-stores of way-back-when—there used to be one on every block.  Doesn’t work that way anymore.  There’s been two Towers in this town, a Virgin, there was Licorice Pizza.  Yeah, there’s been all sorts of stores.  Whatever, there’s room for the little ones.  You gotta be a person who doesn’t want to get rich doing it.  If you’re doing this to get rich, it ain’t gonna happen.

It’s about the love.

Right.

Tell me about your obsession with vinyl artwork?

It’s like, a vinyl cover is like four CD covers.  It’s just so much bigger.  I don’t know why I love it, but it’s cool to be able to open it up and smell the dust.  The art is just amazing—the photography or the drawings.  It relates to the time.  God I have so many records in storage, but I’ve collected so many records with like Star Wars art on the covers.  I collect covers from the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s just ‘cause they’ve got hot girls on the covers.  I could make coffee table books for days out of the hot-chick record covers.  Jazz record covers, and I’ve got weird spaceship records, just collections.  Sometimes I just get it for the cover.  I’d have to sit and think of what I have.  So many different times I’ll think, ‘That’s a killer cover.  I don’t even know what the music is, but I want it for the cover,’ then take it home.

And then there’s the music inside…

A lot of times the stuff inside doesn’t even hold up to the cover.  Sometimes there’s amazing covers and the music just blows.  But that’s alright, the cover’s look rad.

Do you play music?

Not at all.  I did one single in 1994 before Curt Cobain died when he overdosed on pills in Rome.  He took a bunch of Rohypnol and overdosed.  I was standing in the shower one day, like when all bright ideas come to you, and I started humming The Smiths song, ‘Girlfriend in a Coma,’ but I switched it to Cobain in a Coma, took that idea to some musician friends, and within a week we had recorded a song called ‘Cobain in a Coma.’  We put out a single—just real fast, we cranked out this clear vinyl, silkscreened 7”, sent it to the distributors and they said, ‘Oh this is kinda cool.’  A week after we sent it to the distributors, he killed himself and the single disc is like infamous now.  It’s me singing on it and that’s like the only thing I’ve ever done that’s musical.  I went into the studio and read the lyrics.  It was over at Mike McHugh’s studio.

At the Distillery?

Yeah, he’s an old buddy of mine.  So we just went there one night and just banged it out in a night.  It’s a pretty legendary record.  We made like 1,500 of them and it sold out overnight .

Do you have any copies left?

I have one here somewhere that I keep around to play to people.  I mean, it’s horrible but it’s funny.  It’s like, I can’t sing, but Mike worked it enough to where it’s not killing your ears, and we did a lot of effects and stuff.  It was rad.  Can’t play, but timing was perfect.  I can’t play anything to save my life.  Yeah, no musical skills here.  I’d love to learn how to play bass, but obviously not enough to actually put the time into doing it.  I’d love to be able to just kick back and do that.  If I really wanted to I’d do it, so I guess I’m not that passionate about it.  If it ever strikes me, I’ve got plenty of time here to do it.

 I heard that you and Darren from Vinyl Solution go way back?

I knew him before I opened up Noise.  I used to shop there.  When did he open?  ’89 or ’90 or something and I started shopping there right when he opened.  When I was new at Noise, we used to trade stuff back and forth all the time.  Yeah, he’s an awesome guy.  I’ve got nothing but praise for that guy, he’s an amazing dude.  He knows how to do it over there.  He knows punk rock like you wouldn’t believe.

He’s a wealth of knowledge.

Yeah, he knows his shit for sure.  Maybe not the techno records, but if it’s punk rock and new wave and all that, dude’s like an encyclopedia.

It’s cool that everyone has their own arena.

Yeah, like I have to say that’s I’m pretty well-versed in a shitload of different types of music.  A lot of stores will have their one focus, but I can come in here, and I know enough about different genres to keep the store real eclectic.  I’m pretty stoked on that, but I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of bands like a lot of these guys around here do, and I don’t care to.  I’m not interested, but I know the basics of a lot of different things.

I think you’re being a little humble…

No, I’m serious!  Honestly, some people can pull out like a jam record and they’ll know all the different songs on it and who produced it.  I gotta get on Discogs and look, ‘cause people come and are like, ‘Hey, I’m looking for such-a-such song.  What album is it on?’  I’m like, ‘I need the computer.’  I gotta go look in the racks and see, I’m not that good.  Some stuff, yeah.  But even the Beatles records I’ve gottta look up on the computer.  I don’t know what song is on what.

There are quite a few Beatles records.

I can’t keep track of all that.  I’m honest with people though, I don’t know what Led Zeppelin song is on what album.  I gotta go look.

Is it on III or IV…?

It’s all this useless knowledge that’s taking up space.  I can’t remember the little important stuff.  But now it doesn’t matter, the computer is right there.

Obviously the music industry has changed a lot.  What’s your view on more modern music, and the contemporary industry?

Honestly, I don’t even follow it anymore.  I really don’t give a shit anymore.  As long as there are distributors that are selling…I don’t order tons of new stuff anymore, it’s mostly used stuff for what I do, so I don’t really follow the labels anymore.  I’m really happy to see so many independent labels pressing vinyl, and even some of the major labels doing some of this stuff on vinyl, but I don’t give a shit about the music industry as a big whatever anymore.  Yeah, it’s just a big fucking disaster I’m sure, and it can go keep imploding on itself as much as it wants, but there’s always going to be—in my lifetime, at least—a scene of people who care about music for music and not the money.

Now with all the digital technology, it’s so much easier to create and promote globally.

I don’t even care about that kind of stuff anymore.  Every year it just gets lamer and more worse.  The artists that are on the charts are just getting sillier and sillier.  Like people from…what’s that Simon Cowell show?

Uhh, I think there’s a new one…

The old one, what’s the…

American Idol.

American Idol, thank you.  When shitheads from that show are the ones who are on the top of the charts.  There’s just something wrong…Yeah, that’s what it is, it’s horrible.  I don’t even care, it doesn’t affect me anymore, so let them do what they want to do…

And just stay in your bubble and let it decompose.

I guess one of the downsides with the internet and technology, is that there’s so many fuckin’ horrible bands out there—way more than there used to be.  Every time I turn on the computer, I get ‘friend requests’ from people that want me to listen to their new dubstep mp3 or whatever, and it’s like too many people do it now.  I’m not interested in people shoving stuff down my throat.  But it used to be like that, people would bring it in on cassette or whatever.  But now it’s just so easy to flood me with crap, but it’s also easier to delete.  It’s a lot more impersonal too, I don’t have to say no to them in person, I can just delete and be done with it, so that works out well too.

What do you want to see happen in the future of the music scene in Orange County?

I guess right now today, the most exciting thing for me going on locally is with like the Observatory, and I think the scene is really gonna get rad, just with the competition between some of the clubs around here.  I don’t know about the Yost, I haven’t really been following that.  I think that turned into a techno-kind-of-club, or electronica.  I don’t know how much they’re in the mix.  I’m excited to see more of the bands that are going from San Diego to LA.  Detroit’s been doing it for 10 plus years, getting some of these big names to stop.  With the Observatory now, I think we’re going to be more of a destination right in this locale right here.  It’s pretty exciting.  That, and I hope people keep loving vinyl.  It’s what I love to do, and people seem to dig it.

Entrance and Cheapo Bin

Wanna give a scope of what you offer here at Factory?

We definitely have a lot of the pretentious high-end shit up on the wall for the snobs.  We’ve also got, as you can see out front, the world-famous Cheapo Bin, and it’s all $1.99 or less and I constantly keep it stocked with different stuff.  People love it, ‘cause you can come in and for ten bucks—one of my favorite offers is that you can come in and for $20 you can come in and get dollar-tacos and a drink at the bar, and like five new records, and it’s rad.  And we’ve got stuff in between.  We’ve got new release stuff, we’ve got cool reissue stuff, all reasonably priced.  An average record in here is gonna cost between $2.99 and maybe $14.99, so it’s within reason for folks.  But yeah, there’s absolutely something for everybody.  You can come in and get records for like a $1 out front, or if you need an $800 Beatles record, we’ve got it on the wall, so there’s a mix.  Cassette tapes and CDs too.  CDs aren’t dead for me, it’s just a minimal amount of wall-space and I’m happy to have it up there.  We’ve got a little something for everybody.  It’s just a very relaxed place to come into.  There’s no attitude in here.  I’ve been doing this long enough, I’ve seen High Fidelity, and I know about the record store jerks and all that stuff, and there’s none of that in here.  It’s just a cool place to come and hang out and get some good tunes.

Vinyl Solution: A Q&A with Darren O'Connor

Did you grow up around Orange County?

Darren O’Connor: No, I’m from Hollywood, LA.  Echo Park, actually, which really isn’t anything like Hollywood.

What was it like growing up?

My dad always emphasized on me, ‘Don’t ever be late, and go to school.  That’s all I ask.’  I ended up being the only one in my family that graduated and got accepted to Otis-Parsons.  Yeah, but I obviously didn’t go.  I ended up falling in love with music.  In fifth grade I bought a Queen album, Day at the Races, and I got David Bowie’s, Young Americans album.  That was all I wanted was records.  Every time I did good, my dad never gave me money, but like allowance, I’d get something and I’d just ask him for records.

That started back in fifth grade?

Fifth grade, 1975.  And it’s funny that those two bands are the records that I wanted most because I didn’t even like any white music at all.  I only liked Soul music, other than The Doors.

                                          

What other artists were you listening to?

The Doors and War and Marvin Gaye.  Al Green and that kind of stuff.  That’s what my mom was listening to.  And rockabilly stuff ‘cause the only thing my dad listened to was Chuck Berry, Neil Diamond and Elvis Presley.  That’s all that he liked, other than classical music.  He didn’t like anybody, but my mom—it just reminded me of Pinesol, cleaning the house, windows open, Soul music in Echo Park.  It was just what I liked.  Creedence I liked, my mom listened to that too for some reason.

(To customer) How are you doing?  You got any questions?

Customer:  Um, do you guys have posters?

O’Connor:  No, not many.  I saw a poster store somewhere, but those aren’t easy to find.  I think there’s a good store in Whittier off on Greenleaf.  It’s like a rock shop and they have sweatshirts, lighters…it’s almost like the old head-shop style.  They’re not so easy to find because they take up so much space and shops can’t afford.

Customer: Alright, thanks.

What’s your history in the record business?

I closed Neil’s records in 1987.  I had a store from ’83 when I graduated, that’s why I didn’t go to Otis-Parsons ‘cause I fell in love with music.  My dad said flat out, ‘If you’re not going to school, you’re moving out, you gotta find a place to stay.’  Just simple as that, and that was always my dad’s theme of life was, ‘As long as you go to school and be on time, I’ll do what I can to support you.  But if you don’t want to help yourself,’ he always said, ‘there’s the door right there.  Whatever you know better than me, you can always go pay rent.’

Records was all you could see?

I ended up just going into a store and pulling up New York Dolls and Dead Boys records from 1983 and started with that and said, ‘You gotta put this up for more money, you gotta price these, you gotta get these up on your wall and get this farty old rock of the wall.  You gotta put up all these neat things.  Put them up for like ten bucks—you have them for like two dollars.’  Later, he wanted to hire me, and of course I wanted to work there, probably more than he wanted to hire me. 

At Neil’s?

Yeah, I wanted to work at another store called Turning Point, but Turning Point was more new records.  They didn’t deal with collectibles at all.  Neil was into everything—bootlegs, collectible—anything with money, he wanted to know about.  So I come in with all these punk records, going, ‘Put these Dead Boys at $10, put these New York Dolls at $10, put the Cramps up or whatever.’  So the store started doing really well, and it was off of Broadway in a little tiny shop, and a lot of crime was going on in that place.  He started having me work, then next thing you know he had to go to jail.  I started running it, moved into a 25,000 square foot store, got a 7” room, got a 12” disco room, and started getting sections.  I wanted to open a head shop in the back and start doing all these things.  Then Neil came back and started getting crazy.  He was buying hot merchandise, wanted to sell bootlegs, and he wanted to start making bootlegs, and I was just the cover kid selling records, ordering new releases, doing all the buying—like everyday and I was only 17 or 18 years old.  I could work 24 hours a day, I was just always there.  When I got that 25,000 square-foot store, I got construction workers and we built a little stage and a step-up counter where we were above the people.  It was kind of cool, ‘cause at the time no store was like that where you’re atop everyone and you could look out and we would welcome you as you walked in.  Then I got racks on the wall and started putting punk records up and that was when the store started going haywire.  I had it and it was going real good, but Neil signed his name…I was a kid, and I thought I was buying the store from him, but he had it in the contract funny, like when he’s in jail I can do it, and I have to buy the store at $3,000 dollars a month, and in five years, it would be my store or something like that.  By ’87, it started getting insane where cops were hanging out in front of the store and all this.  In other words, it started getting real bad.

Because of in-store performances?  Or something else?

No, because hot merchandise was coming in and out of there.  The final days, the cops are outside and I’m drinking a Schlitz and it’s like 10am in the morning and I’m like, ‘Why’s a cop out there?’  I keep putting my beer down to the side.  This guy ain’t even letting me drink my fucking beer, what’s going on?  The cop’s just out there in the front of the store just sitting there, and I’m like, ‘Don’t you gotta go get crime to fix or do something?’  And they were like, ‘No, you’re the crime.  You’re going down, we’re going to get you.’  He said, ‘You can make two decisions,’ and he told me straight to my face, ‘You could either stick with that guy, that criminal, in there and go to jail with him, or you can help us and tell us everything about Neil right now.’  I said, ‘You know what, no.’  And I just walked back into the store.  Neil came in—cops were still sitting there—and I go to Neil and go, ‘Neil, there’s two options.  You’re going to stop buying hot merchandise, you’re going to stop bootlegging, or I’m leaving.’  He said, ‘You can’t leave.’  So I said, ‘No, you have two options and I can do whatever I want, I’m a 20 year old kid.’  No one can tell you what to do if you’re a city kid.  I had the world by a string according to me—I had money, I was DJing, I was spinning at Scream, I was really popular making money doing all this stuff.  But he was like, ‘No, we can’t do that.’  I told him he was crazy and I went and talked to my dad.  I told him, ‘Dad, this guy’s a criminal.’  He’s like, ‘I’ve told you, never deal with a criminal.  Don’t let any liars or cheaters or thieves in your life, stay away.’  I come back to Neil and say, ‘I’m leaving man.  I quit today if this is what you’re going to do.  If I find one piece of merchandise that I think is hot in this store, I gotta go.’  Next day, sure enough, all these people are in with stacks of new release records, like 20 Beatles double CDs, and those were like $40 back then retail.  So I walk in and I’m like, ‘Neil, you’re blowing it, I gotta go.’  And before I could even get out of the store, he calls his attorney.  Neil hands me the phone and it’s his attorney and he says, ‘Darren, I’m going to tell you right now, if you try leaving that store, I’m going to ruin your life for ten years.’  I was like, ‘What are you talking about, I’m fucking leaving.’  He goes, ‘No you aren’t.  You can’t leave.  You signed a contract to buy that store with Neil.’  I go, “Yep, I’ve got three months, but fuck it, he can have the store, he can have everything, I’m leaving.’  He said, ‘Nope, we’re going to ruin your life for ten years if you try leaving that store.’  I’m only 20 so I say, ‘Fuck you,’ and hang up the phone, then say, ‘Fuck you Neil, I’m leaving.’  I left and I came back with my friends Lee and Tom, went into the store, left all my record collection that was at the store—which was quite a bit.  My friends said I gotta grab it, but I told them, ‘Norowitz—the attorney—told me if I take anything out of that store, that it’s theft, ‘cause it’s his store.’  So I took my record player, I left my records there, but took a certain little stack of records that I bought myself with my own paycheck.  Next thing you know, Norowitz, the attorney, comes driving up.  He took the keys out of our vans, stole them, raised them up in the air and ran down the street on Colorado Boulevard.  I was like, ‘You know what, fuck that guy, let him do it and let’s call the police.’  My friend, Lee, who doesn’t put up with anything from anybody, took off after him, and I start running after him, and Norowitz turns around in the middle of the street, still holding the keys.  So I go, ‘Don’t fucking touch him Lee, he’s an attorney.’  Norowitz stopped, Lee bumped into him, Norowitz threw the keys up onto the roof.  We didn’t know, but he threw them and they went up on this two-story brick-building roof.  We end up in jail—all of us—for attempting to hurt a licensed attorney.

What did you do after that?

I moved out to Tustin, came out here, and hid for two years and just traded records.  I didn’t let anybody know what the hell I was doing.  Then I opened Vinyl Solution in ’89.  It took me almost two years to finally find a store I wanted.  I wanted to move down to La Jolla in San Diego ‘cause I love that city and it seemed like a good hiding place.  So my mom steps in and tells me, ‘I’m going to help you, but the only way I’m going to help you is if you move on Beach Boulevard.  Half a million people drive up Beach.’  So I figured I had my balls in a vice here.  I’m either gonna live with my sister and hide and trade records all day, and keep hoping to open a store someday, or I’m going to suck up and do whatever my mom tells me.  She was like, ‘One thing I’ll do is I’d like to help you with your career.  As a mother, this is what I’ll do.’  I ended up opening up this store, and Norowitz comes back, took everything, said it was all stolen merchandise, on the day that my grandmother died.  It was 1989, December 23^rd.  He ended up getting kicked out of the state because of me, ‘cause we just didn’t bow down.  My mom was like, ‘My mother just died on the same day that your store got everything taken out of it—that I saw you work for?’  So she just went to town on the guy and went to court.  It was crazy.  I ended up here and dealing with all that.

When you opened the store on Beach Boulevard, what was the music scene like?

It was a great scene.  I opened the store, but I didn’t know anything ‘cause I’m still thinking of New York Dolls and The Dead Boys and punk this, punk that in the ‘70s, and all of a sudden, all these black and white kids with patches all dirty came walking in here.  And they’re like, ‘Do you have this?  Do you have that?’  They were naming bands that I never heard of that I thought were jokes.  I was like, ‘What’s this crustcore and straight-edge stuff?’  I didn’t even know what that fuckin’ was.  I didn’t even know what straight-edge meant.  I didn’t know Minor Threat or 7 Seconds.  I’m 46 years old now.  At the time in Hollywood, I didn’t even know.  I heard Minor Threat, but it was so ridiculous to me that I didn’t even bother listening to lyrics.  Same with 7 Seconds.  But you know what?  That was a big fuckin’ deal out here.  Like I said, I grew up listening to Soul music, and Queen, and Bowie, and then the Pistols, and I never looked back.  In 1982, I laughed at hardcore.  I went straight into Psychedelic Furs, OMD, Joy Division.  Joy Division showed up in High School.  I was like the only kid at Burbank listening to that, ‘cause I was hanging out with a lot of older people, so I was obviously very influenced, and I was an art guy.  Even when I was a kid, people were into like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and stuff like that, and I was into Roxy Music and King Crimson.  I was into that only ‘cause that’s what my older art friends were into.  The first weekend—I’m only here for like four days—I have a swarm of all these crusty kids coming in.  Then all the Huntington Beach kids from like Confrontation came in and were like, ‘You wanna carry this, you need to carry more Discharge.’  We could barely give away Discharge in Hollywood, but I’ll do it.  Go make a list.  He made me a list of about four pages.  I ordered it all that week.  It sold like that (snapping fingers).  I thought, ‘This is nuts.’  All I did was listen to every one who walked into that store from that day.  I’m gonna do whatever you guys ask of me.  It turned into 40 or 50 people my first weekend.  And from that point on, the store went really good.  All I did was just listen to my customers.  I added the extras, like if Minor Threats first album sells, everything must sell.  So I’d order everything on catalogue.  Then people would tell me what band they’re in now, and sooner or later they’re in Fugazi, then I gotta get Fugazi.  And it was just selling.  I thought I was going to go to my grave selling Pistols and Cramps and Ramones.

That sells too.

Yeah, but people are moving on here.  The other thing was there were 12-year-old kids into hardcore out here.

With working parents, so they just cruise freely on their skateboards?

I always wondered how such young kids, when I’d show up at places on this side, were showing up at shows.  I remember being at Burbank High and having my Pistols and my Dead Kennedys.  Listening to Pistols was like, ‘Wow, I’m allowed to hate.’  I never knew I was allowed not to like something.  And then I heard the Dead Kennedys and I was like, ‘You’re allowed to fucking think!  This is crazy.’  The book, pulling out that poster and seeing what Jello Biafra dare say was like…it changed my world.  And then I saw kids on skateboards that were a year older than me, and then I hear DOA.

What do you think it is about this area that inspires that?

It’s just a suburban thing where they are trapped.  A friend of mine told me, ‘You don’t understand what it’s like out here.  We have these model homes, we live in these nice houses, our parents don’t let us out.  When we go out, we’ve gotta get violent, we’ve gotta get crazy.  We’ve got a lot of hatred in our stuff.’  It’s just being in that perfect-type of model home, and things aren’t perfect.  A city kid doesn’t see that.  They think we’re all crazy, but it’s ok ‘cause we can do whatever we want, ‘cause our mom’s don’t even care about us, we could do what we want to do.  Even the parents that care, they’re so busy working and getting everything taken care of, it seems behind the Orange Curtain, even parents are too busy to have kids.  LA and in ethnic areas, family comes first.  They’re living off of tradition, they aren’t living off, ‘I’m gonna change this thing and I’m gonna build a new way.’  The full Reagan Youth type of thing, it was real, but when it started going metal and punk and people were starting to become songwriters and doing synth stuff and getting all new-waved out and becoming creative artists instead of just hardcore, Orange County, for the most part, was like, ‘Fuck you, we’re still pissed.  I loved when I was 12 in the backyard listening to hardcore, and I’m 35 and I still love mashing it up.’  And I think the reason that it’s that way, like I said, it’s just the way kids were raised in a suburban versus urban environment—two totally different things.

Also including the Orange County ideals of surfing and skating.

They go for it, and they didn’t do that in the cities.  I’m not saying that there weren’t great surfboarders or skateboarders that went to Santa Monica that ended up here.  Those people just had a total outside life that was different than the usual kids that went to the park and played baseball.  That wasn’t exactly what you do in this area, I don’t think.  Like my friend was saying, he used to listen to hard-core when he was 12—his brother was telling him about the Pistols.  And then he thought he was going to carry it through with the local hardcore that Zed was teaching them at Zed’s Records.  Next thing you know the ‘shock’ comes around and those kids came around, and they hit rocks hard.  They’d find drugs and get crazy on them.  I think they just had to skip a beat.  We were, as LA people, already smoking weed and doing dust and having a great time and learning on your own road how to handle life, and drinking beer in an alley.  It seemed like that just wasn’t cool for a long period of time in the Orange County thing when hardcore and straight-edge moved in and it seemed like the whole thing.  And then there was the other crew that were the black and white crusties, like the Reagan and The Confrontation, which won in ’89 in Maximum Rock n’ Roll as the best single of the year—a Huntington Beach band.  They were political, the fastest, loudest, grindiest band, and those were the kids that came into my store and were telling me that Discharge is their Sex Pistols, that’s how they explained it.  They said when they were 14-years-old they were listening to Discharge, and The Amoebics, and all this black and white hardcore, and they had to make it more angry and more pissed, drink more and get louder.  It seemed like there were two ways.  The kids were either grindcore and vegan people, to straight-edge meat eating people.  There was vegan straight-edge, but there was also the angry little rich kids in the baggy shorts and the baseball hats that were hardcore, and never let it go.  That was just a way of life for them.  My friend would say, ‘You don’t understand, when we grew up, it was like, ‘Mom, dad, I did all the dishes, I ate all the food off of my plate, I finished all my homework.  Can you drive me to the show?’  Parents were like, ‘Okay junior, should we pick you up after?’  All you would do is go let out your aggression.  You can’t come home fucked up ‘cause mom and dad are going to pick you up.  You can’t be climbing through a window and acting crazy, you’ll probably be slated off to a mental board and your parents won’t even deal with you.  But it seemed like that was just the way it was.  There was a thing they would call Chore Boys, and it was all the kids that were like, ‘We’re going to listen to hardcore and get crazy, and then go home and go to sleep in our perfect home.’  And then there were the skateboarder kids, the Duane Peters, and the Lorman, and the Ricky Barnes, and Lucero—all the people I met.  When I met them I was like, ‘There’s real people in this town that actually live on their own, wander the streets, drink, get thrown outta bars, and laugh the whole time while they’re doing it.’  We’re not going to jail, we’re not outta control, we’re just loving life.  This ain’t no dress reheasal, we used to say that.  This is our step in life right now.  When I’m on my bed, I don’t want any regrets, I don’t want to be like, ‘I wish I would’ve.’  Don’t hurt anybody, don’t steal from anybody, don’t lie, keep your same chick you had for two or three years.  We all know we’re going to take a tumble, we’re gonna get dropped like a bad habit, or she’s gonna cheat on you, or we’re going to do something messed up and their gonna get fed up with us, but it’s ok, let’s just live our lives.  There was that crew too, which is like TSOL and the Vandals when they started.  Punk was a way of life so much more here like nowhere else, and I don’t think it will ever die because of that.  Just like people who grow up in the Marines and they are always Marines.  With punk, it’s kind of the same way.  Even if you’re a fireman later, you always remember…all I hear from 50 year old men is, ‘Yeah, Social D over at the Casbah,’ or Black Flag or whatever.  It’s like, they still live that.  So Orange County is a totally different type of world from anywhere else.

What do you think about the scene nowadays?  Any venues you like?

I’ve always thought, as far as Orange County, a venue will never last.  There will never be a club that stays punk—the city will snuff it.  It will always have to move.  It will be like little ants just finding new places to go.  As much as you try to water it down or get them, the ants are going to come out in the sunshine and find where to go.  That’s the biggest thing, there’s no traditional nightclub and nothing old that was around.  It all gets snuffed out.  It’s a shame, but it does.  And that goes for anyone trying to do an all-ages show, but this is such a conservative town that I don’t think people will ever have a place.  Detroit Bar had to change ‘cause there was no way what it used to be, when it was Club Nazi, or Club Mesa or whatever, would last.  It was tough and there was blood everywhere and guys with swastikas across their neck, and those guys were the bouncers and they were supposed to win every time.  They never got in trouble.  They were the bouncers and you did what they said.  If they didn’t like someone, you had to leave, and there were people that backed them because they were homeboys.  Gangs and the culture that Orange County is against, they’re exactly kind of like, but in a white way.  You go to the wrong club in LA, it’s because you’re in the wrong territory of a gang area.  That’s pretty much the same thing here, but in a different way.  Club Mesa couldn’t stay the way that it was going.  As strong as it was staying in that mode, and holding true during the whole Fuck Dolls, Stitches, and that whole revival of punk that came back, it had to die out.  That place had to get overtaken with some art form.  And it stays there because it’s art form now.

The indie movement.

Yeah, it’s like everywhere in Long Beach but Alex’s.  You can play any kind of music at those places, but they frown on any kind of hardcore because people get violent at that shit.  It let’s out aggression.  But the scene is always going to stay.  There’s always going to be a scene out here, I believe.

How could there not be a scene of some sort in Orange County when you have so many diverse sections?

And it’s so remembered and traditional.  I mean, there’s movies about the Orange County punk scene.  The Adolescents, Black Flag, bands that came from near the water.  It doesn’t have to just be Orange County.  TSOL, Social D, Vandals—you could just go all down the line and there’s 30 or 40 bands like that.  Being a punk in the LA part as opposed to the Orange County, those guys were a lot bigger than us.  When I was at shows in LA, I was in the corner wanting to talk to some old homeless guy who went to the punk shows before that.  I wanted to learn from that guy.  Seemed like when the Orange County people came, they didn’t want to learn, they wanted to stampede.  It was like, ‘Oh we’re gonna get out some aggression.’  They invented slam-dancing.  The whole term is Orange County.  It’s a living, loving thing out here.

Was there a time when you were working directly with venues?  Ticket sales or anything like that?

Yeah, we’ve done ticket sales with the Galaxy in the older days and the ‘90s.  It never seemed to follow through ‘cause tickets were already going computer-wise.  And because we didn’t barcode, no one wants to deal with guys who are going to do cash—even though we’ve never fucked up or messed up.  Is it about 8pm?

It’s probably right around there.

Yeah, ok, it says 7:09 on the clock over there and I don’t change the clock.  Actually my phone would tell me.

We talked about ticket sales going digital.  How do you think the digital movement has affected the industry?

It kind of booby-trapped everyone into making it really rough for kids to get ticket at fair prices.  They have to pay a service charge, they have to have a computer, they’ve got to have a credit card.  They’ve gotta do these things or have their mom do them and they’ve got to have them done.  They can’t go, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna go to LA for the weekend and I’m going to go buy some tickets at the Palace and go get the tickets with no face-value, just straight across.  We do that for our shows.  The tickets are $35 for the punk rock thing, plus a service charge online, or you can get them here for $22.  Gotta have cash, but you get them for $22.  It’s amazing how big shows don’t do well at all.  Everyone just does it through the computer, zip, pop, have their number verified on their computer, print up their e-ticket, and go do it.  Like, we have punk rock tickets, and I’m telling you that everyone is gonna call, and I’m gonna get at least 500 phone calls Saturday morning and Friday night asking for tickets.  I feel like saying, ‘Are you serious?  You had to come home from work, make dinner, take a shower, brush your teeth, have a few drinks at a party, and want to pick up your tickets now, when these bands are getting f-ed having to pay to play?  The bands have to go and pay the promoters, and they have to pay to play if those tickets don’t sell.  It seems like very few people buy tickets ahead of time.  Everyone is so used to a credit card and a computer and everything at the tip of their fingers, they think they don’t have to rush.  It’s like, there is no way on earth that I should have 80 tickets for the punk rock thing for $22, when they’re broadcasted everywhere else as $35 plus the service charge.  You would think it would get around that Vinyl Solution has these tickets.  We put them on Facebook, we did them on all of our social network stuff saying come help the kids, buy tickets, they’re only $22 a piece, cash only.  I know it’s going to be insane Friday.  I’m going to want to throw my phone through the window, ‘cause every time we do a show—like we had Fear tickets and they had to pick them up the day before, but we had 50 Fear tickets for The Observatory.  He’s trying to break us into The Observatory.  Like for HFL, he brought us tickets—no one has come to buy them.  Even that I thought would sell hundreds ‘cause HFL is from across the street here.  But you can go to The Observatory and get them now.  It hasn’t affected me, and pretty much credit cards have been going fine since almost back when I opened this place.  It’s kind of the same effect, but I did use to sell tickets way better in the glorious ‘90s.

Before the days of the iPhone.

And that’s probably just a habit.  I can’t live without this thing (holding up iPhone), and I do everything with this, but I do not buy or do anything with credit cards over my phone.  I know it’s probably stupid and everyone else does…

Seems safer not to process that type of information through a cell phone.  Although, they definitely are convenient…

They’re perfect.  Google answers all your questions and is great.  They get real personal with you, but I’m sure iPhones do the same.  But Apple I finally got brave with, ‘cause I was always scared of Apple, but somebody finally told me, ‘Just have some confidence and realize that the Apple phone is only as smart as you are.’  I just laughed thinking, ‘So if you’re stupid, you can’t do it.  I’m not going for that.  I’m not telling myself I’m stupid.  I’m gonna learn.’  So I practically started touching everything and realized that I can go back and it’s ok.  Now it’s like I never want to go back to a PC.  But now it’s like, ‘What the fuck, I can’t get my Google?  Google tells me everything!’  A friend of mine, Lee, who knows everything and he doesn’t use computers, him and I have books and books and we just sit at bars and we talk about and read Mojo every month.  We talk about it and get totally amazed at the stuff that Mojo talks about.  That magazine is like our little Bible.  On the 8^th it’s out, we’re going to go pick it up.  If I don’t have my kid, I’m gonna go to the bar and get ripped and just read that thing all the way through.  Four days later, we’ll meet at a bar and are like two little girls talking about, ‘Did you read that article about so-and-so?  Can you believe it?’  It’s just really nuts because that’s just the way we are.  But we learn those facts, we read those facts from that magazine, and that’s important to find out what Ian McCulloch said about Joy Division at the time, or what he honestly thinks of them now, or what he thinks of his people.  They always have the 20 years later articles about this and that, and there are reissues and new books and new movies, new DVD’s and documentaries that come out and it just gets crazy.  It’s like we’re the two happiest kids in the world on those days.  And it’s really frustrating when there’s a kid younger than us telling us something when we’re talking and I’m like, ‘I know more about Johnny Thunder, I’ve seen him like six times.  I was the number one collector in the country, I’ve talked with him, shared cigarettes with him, I’ve drank with him, flown to visit him.  You know more about him than me, according to your computer.  You just check that, then say things.’

Facts have a certain perception, according to who is writing them.

That’s what Lee is like.  Now you can’t argue too much because there’s people on top of your shit, but when Wikipedia came out, it was a liars club.  I’d see stuff and know, that’s not true.  Many people have said it, but someone said it recently, like Lux (Interior) said it as a matter of fact, ‘Oh I died?  It must be true.’   When they would interview him, people would ask, ‘What did you think of that great rumor about you dying?’  And he’d go, ‘Well it must be true, right?  I’ve died like six times, on drugs I’ve never even done.’ 

People love their gossip.

It was like that when I heard he really died.  Someone told me on the internet or texted me and I was like, ‘Good one,’ and just kept driving and didn’t even worry about it.  Then I called Lee, and Lee was like, ‘Let me find out.  Well according to the Cramps fan base, it’s true.  They’re not accepting any friends, do not show up at the funeral, and all this stuff.’  I asked, ‘Can you say you’re sorry or your regrets?’  And he said, ‘You can, but she (Poison Ivy) isn’t acknowledging anyone.’  I’m like, ‘I’m not arguing with you Lee, you probably know what’s going on.  I guess he did die.’

What would you say the role of the record store is today?

I’ll use a perfect example, Record Store Day, everyone wanted the five hottest things; the Jack White or whatever, the Bruce Springsteen, the Devo Live double album, it doesn’t matter what it is.  It seemed like that was what my phone calls were all day.  People were out chasing an Easter egg, like, ‘I want that Wonka Bar.’  People used to buy records when they liked them.  They didn’t have to be told that it was cool and time to go do this.  I’m not against it, it’s the greatest idea, I’m happier than a pig in shit for Record Store Day, but at the same time, why do you gotta be reminded?  Why does it have to be like rat to cheese, let’s go get it, it’s on the internet…?  I dig the help-the-independent-stores thing, don’t get me wrong, but why do we have to be reminded?  We do that for McDonalds.  We do that for Coca-Cola.  Let those guys put commercials out for you to go remember to have a Coke everyday, or go eat at McDonald’s three times a week.

Everything is a brand these days.

Art shouldn’t be like that—but even the commercials are art, aren’t they?  A witty jingle of a McDonald’s commercial is gonna get you to buy their food.  I’m gonna say that the good things about the records is that it’s opened people up, because so many people don’t have genres or categories or closets anymore—they don’t have to be put in the punk rock closet, they don’t have to be put in the new wave closet, they don’t have to be put in a jazz closet.  Hip-hop artists like everything and if it has a cool riff, they’re gonna try it.  They’ll put a Metallica riff next to a Cramps riff, next to a Sugarhill riff, next to a Miles Davis.  But I wish people had the attention span to listen to the whole record because that’s when you really love music is when you own entire albums—and you look at them and feel them and you’re sitting down with your drink.  There are a couple things better than that, but that’s a really good feeling…of alone time…that lasts.  No one calls me after 10pm.  You can pretty much guarantee.  I could answer that phone but I’m busy listening to records or doing laundry.  I’m busy, I’m not gonna talk on the phone.  You can get me tomorrow.

(Steps away to check out a young male customer at the register.)

O’Connor (To customer): Great fuckin’ record man.

Customer:  Totally.

O’Connor:  I went and saw them just recently with Paul Collins Beat.

Customer: Yeah, I’ve seen Peter Case and he’s super good.

O’Connor:  This is one of my favorite singles I’ve gotten rid of a good 80% of my pop singles, but this one, no way.

Customer:  Yeah, as soon as I saw it…I thought, I can’t pass it up.

O’Connor: The live stuff, the studio stuff, it’s just the best pop where you don’t get tired of it.  Alrighty, you doin’ a card?

Customer: Yeeah.

O’Connor:  Okie dokie.  You’re all set, catch you later.

Customer:  See ya later.

(Customer leaves.)

As a record store, how do you picture yourself?  I mean, you have two young guys like that come in, cruise around the store, and probably find something that they might not find elsewhere.

Yeah, that’s kinda what it is.  I mean, that kid is a really open-minded type of kid.  You never know what he’s gonna buy.  He used to be the most fashionable, best looking little punk kid.  He was in a really good band and he’s really witty and smart.  Punk was really exciting to him and he liked all the new punk just as well as the old punk, then he started getting into the new-wave as well, and now he’s crossing over to just picking up stuff.  He’s still getting records at least once or twice a week.  He’s not a rich kid, but he can afford a record or two and he always supports the scene and always tries.  And those kinds of people are always really good.  Just three years ago, which is decades ago to him, but three or four years ago, he was just picking up CDs and shirts all the time.  He’s really smart and he knows music, but in the last couple of years, he’s been buying records like crazy—and an array of them.  It’s all over the place, you never know.  Like, he bought a $20 record, and that’s kind of outlandish for him.  He doesn’t buy too many reissues that are new, which is a big deal.  But he’s like a lot of people, they like dollar and five-dollar records, for the most part.  I sell those better than anything, unless it’s the new Tom Waits or Cramps or some really profound new record that comes out that people wait for.  That White Stripes guy, if he puts out a record—like today, all I got was phone calls for his new record.  I hate to be a dick, but that’s not my forte of music.  Those people aren’t my people.  I’m not going to chase that goose egg.  When I was younger I would be all over it.  I wanted everything new, I wanted every customer, ‘cause I remember when Nirvana was coming out and I was like, ‘Man, I fucking hate that band,’ and I could do that in LA ‘cause there were so many stores, but out here, people want to give me their money because this is their store.  It’s like, ‘Don’t make me go to Bionic, and I don’t want to go to Tower enough to buy that record.  Even if it’s more money I’d rather pay to buy it from you.’  It made me feel like, I gotta get on the ball here.  I gotta get whatever they want.  I’m not making money like I used to, but it feels like my store more than ever in my life.  It’s my absolute passion and love, and I love getting things for people and doing a lot of important releases, but now that the money is so hard and I’m not making bricks of money.  It used to be that I wanted to get anything for every customer.  Now it’s like, I want to get what I think my customers might like the most.  I just want to make the people who support me happy.  I don’t want them to say, ‘Pretty much you’ve got this, but you don’t have this.’  I want them to feel like they know their home-cooking, you know?  They’re not going to change on me.  Well, they’ll mature, but they’re not going to change and they come here for a reason ‘cause we suit em’ and people like that.  I kinda know if, for instance—whether it’s a Bags record or a issue of the new Tom Waits, or Townes Van Zandt--that’s more important for me to have at this store, than to have the new Jack White.  It beats me.  It beats the hell out of me—Record Store Day—when I know I’m not going to get those things.  Literally, somebody said, ‘I can’t believe you don’t have the Social D on yellow vinyl for Record Store Day.’  I had to be like, ‘Look, I ordered 40 of those, and I got zero.  I thought for sure I would get that yellow vinyl for Record Store Day.’  I bet they’re off in Massachusetts, at the one-city one-stops you know?  Or all around the colleges.  That record was #2 or something in Billboard charts for alternative music.  It was Record of the Year and stuff.  They have billboards on the side of the freeway and stuff like that.  And you know what, that kinda hurts when you’re like—I don’t mean to be cocky—but kids like us built that shit.  I’ve sold thousands of that, and this is what we get on Record Store Day?   A big fat goose-egg?

That seems to be the industry in general.

It is, and that’s ok.  You don’t want to get your feelings hurt, but that’s why I’m saying  I’m trying to stay and not throw any change-ups at my customers, and try to make a new one stoked.  It’s great, I love to see these people.  I just feel like their heads are opening.  I’m never gonna make fun of a kid in art.  I love the whole idea.  I love that you’re different, I love all that.  When you come into my world and all of a sudden vinyl is cool, I’m never going to mock someone for that.  It’s just the greatest thing and it’s one of our last hopes.  I’ve always said of life that, the day that art and music and literature is gone—basically art—freedom of speech is gone, this world is over.  We think that, because of art, that it’s a free world.  But when that gets taken, it’s going to be an ugly, fucked up world and we just can’t let it happen.  So I just praise God for anytime that any person does anything different.  When I was younger, I’d make fun of like, ‘Dumb fuckin’ rich kid with his Capezios and legwarmers, what a mannequin.’  Not only could I never afford that, but I never wanted to be like that.  As a punk, you didn’t want to be like that.   You wanted to wear your torn up flannel, you wanted to have orange hair, and it wasn’t even bad to get beat up, you just kind of expected it.  And you hated people that wanted to be cops one day.  But as you grow up, you realize we need all these different people in our lives.  It’s so beautiful to see that two people can hang out, and be so different.

If someone new walked into the store, and they had no clue about the scene, what would you suggest for them to listen to?

I usually have to talk to them for a little while and get them warmed up—see where they kind of stand.  They have to have some kind of category, whether it’s The Doors, or the Sex Pistols, or Elvis Costello, or power-pop.  I need a general idea of what kind of the power-pop you like, then I’ll lean them towards that.  I usually just start walking around the bins and start flipping through, ‘cause it doesn’t come to me until I’m looking through records, and then it’s like a fire in my head and I can just start nailing them.  But it takes me a few minutes to talk to them.  I don’t just lump someone into a category.

No two people go after exactly the same thing.

If you say you like stuff like David Bowie, I’m gonna start throwing you things like Roxy Music and stuff like that, and just keep going ‘cause that’s what I grew up on and that’s what I’m into.  I’d throw Queen at them, and if I see them shying away, I’d be like, ok, you’re more into the Rolling Stones, so let’s try Faces. Or, you’re more into guitarists, I’ll throw you over to the Ted Nugent.  Maybe you like some songwriters, so go for Bob Dylan.  Or if somebody said they wanted something new and they liked Nick Cave, I’d say grab the Grand Elegance.  If someone said they liked new-wave keyboard synthesizers, but I want something new, I’d tell them to do VUM.  I have stuff to push them into of newer or brand new stuff.  Some people want to know something new, some people want to know old that like new, and then I do the opposite.  If they said, I really like that VUM record that you turned me onto, or I really like that Grand Elegance.  Well I can tell you right now that VUM listened to a hell of a lot of Siouxsie and the Banshees, and they listened to a lot of Suicide.  And I’d tell you if you’re into Grand Elegance, they listened to a lot of Nick Cave and Velvet Underground.  Then we’d just go from there, and then I’d take a look around and pull something out of my head that is somewhere in between that that kind of would surprise them, or maybe not.  They might be like, ‘Oh I like that other band, but I don’t even know, who were The Velvets?’  And then they hear them and they’re like, ‘Oh I love The Velvets.’