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Just out of college, I worked at a small record store that was actually a front for a much larger music bootlegging operation. The owner was a coke-fuelled mafia wannabe, who rarely stopped by the store, except to empty the register. I would always have to give customers huge discounts, because I couldn’t make change for them.
The boss was completely moody and unpredictable. You never knew if he was gonna scream at you because sales were bad, or if he was gonna tell you to close the store early because he was taking everybody to Benihana's.
In the days before you could download just about anything on the Internet, a bootleg CD could cost you anywhere from $25-$40 bucks. A lot of the store’s revenue came from the sales of the “rare live imports” that we kept in boxes behind the counter.
One day, after working about a month in the shop, my boss asked me to accompany him on a short drive. We drove to a storage unit in Riverside, loaded his car with boxes and boxes of bootleg CDs, and started driving up the coast.
Over the next three days, we hit every cool record store between here and Sacramento, selling the CDs to store owners for a whopping $21 a pop - an especially insane amount, since I knew my boss was only paying $5 a disc!
more after the jump
Just a few short months later, I was doing the drive by myself. I built up my own music collection, scouring the record shops used bins, while the store owners looked through my merchandise. If I wanted to buy $100 worth of records, I would just trade the store four bootleg CDs, and deduct $20 from what my boss owed me.
Usually, my boss owed me a lot. When I was just working the store, it seemed he rarely had enough money to pay me my measly hourly rate. When I was running bootlegs, I would have anywhere from $500 to $10,000 on me by the end of a trip, and I would always make sure to take my paycheck off the top.
I still had to work the occasional shift in the actual record store. My last day working there was a memorable one. A dismal Sunday night in the dead of winter. I was working alone, and I called the boss several times asking him if I could close early. It was pouring rain, and we hadn’t had a customer in hours. My boss insisted that we stay open until 1am anyway.
Towards midnight, a sketchy, drug-addict looking dude bursts into the store and rushes the counter. He has a gun drawn, and tells me to give him all the money. I look at his grimy fingers, twitching on the trigger of the weapon, and give him everything we have - barely a hundred bucks.
The guy clutches the bag of cash and tells me “this is your lucky day”. I laugh nervously. He asks me what I think is so funny, and I tell him that I don’t think getting robbed at gunpoint is lucky. He glares at me and tightens his grip on the gun. “You’re lucky I don’t kill you.”
We both stood there frozen for what felt like an eternity, but was probably a matter of seconds. I imagine he was contemplating whether or not to kill me. Finally, he lowered the gun and backed out of the store. My boss yelled at me for giving the guy all the money, and I quit on the spot. It was several years before I saw my boss again. I ran into him at a concert. Displaying his typical drug-enhanced manic behavior, he gave me a big hug and bought a round of drinks for me and all my friends. I still laugh whenever I pull out a CD and it has a price tag from that record store.
photo by Heath Biter
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Those were the days. I loved looking for bootlegs in shady CD stores.
Oh give us a hint-I don't think anyplace during this period could've been more surreal than Neal's Records @ Glendale & Colorado- kitty-corner from the Hillside Strangler's upholstery shop/torture dungeon. Good ol' Neal a.k.a. "Reverend Jim" the sacrificial lamb of the famous O.C. Record Swap Meet Raid
Sounds like Bleeker Bob's back in the 90's on Melrose.