So the weekend before last was the Totally Tubular Festival in Raleigh. Great fun, but one of the nicest features of the weekend was finally meeting up with Todd Lewis of Fluid Japan. We had the day after the show set aside for a little Record Shopping Road Trip® action. We had planned on looking for the silver discs in the venerable Schoolkids Records store. Neither of us had been there and the store’s rep was significant. And wouldn’t you know it, the night before onstage, Modern English told the crowd that they would be signing at the store this day at 2:00 PM.

Believe it or not, Ye Olde Monk has never attended an in-store signing appearance like this before. Owing to the dearth of bands I would find acceptable in Central Florida growing up. Besides, in that pre-internet era, it was next to impossible to find out about such things. XTC doing an in-store appearance in a local Peaches in the late 80s was particularly galling at the time as I only found out the next day through the grapevine.

At least I had a storied past with the Schoolkids franchise dating back over half of my lifetime. I first shopped at the sore in Gainesville, FL. Eventually making my way up the eastern seaboard to shop at the store in Chapel Hill, NC [excellent] as well as the Durham store [since closed]. In all of my trips to Raleigh, I had never thought to shop for music. The Chapel Hill store was the sister store to this one. The others were unrelated franchisees. These days, only the Raleigh and Chapel Hill stores persist. So after a relaxing breakfast talking music with Mr. Lewis, we made the scene at Schoolkids.

The location was another of the Triangle’s reasonably upmarket record store locales. Maybe the days of dire little holes in the walls are incongruent with the current retail environment for the happy-making discs? I was used to record stores traditionally in downmarket locations run by sketchy types who fed certain compulsions. This Schoolkids was in a vibrant shopping center. As we entered the store, an hour before the appointed time, there was the display of Modern English product awaiting new homes as well as the flyer for today’s event.

Todd and I immediately grabbed personal copies of the less numerous silver discs! Just seeing them there was heartening. With that in hand, we commenced to looking through the well-appointed store. I saw new and used CDs, DVDs, LPs, used LPs, 7″ singles. And even some fun tchotchkes [but not enough to take up retail space better spent on actual music]. All the things we need from great record stores. After that milestone, we started browsing the bins. I was thrilled to immediately see what was my favorite album of the naughts at the front of a row; taunting me with its presence. I can’t say if I ever saw “You Will Have Your Revenge” by Baxendale in a store before! I have a copy because my brilliant wife heard “Music For Girls” on WPRK-FM in Y2K and thoughtfully bought the CD for me!

As we would need to pay for the discs before signing, Todd and I checked out and squared up [for now] before things would be getting hectic. At that time, Todd and I managed to have a great conversation with the store’s owner. Who revealed that the racks had big casters on them to move them out of the way for all of the hardcore shows they host in-store for all ages! I had been looking for used Judas Priest CDs in recent months; having been in a metal mood, and discussed their rarity with Todd and the owner and man did I get an earful. First Todd proffered that no one, I mean no one, ever gets rids of Judas Priest CDs. Then the owner illuminated some of the behind the scenes political issues with getting copies on CD as they are allowed to go out of print in spite of the high demand.

He also spoke at length about the difficulties of running a record store in the current environment. He says that the Pandemic spending bubble for wax had definitely begun to deflate just as the labels have jacked up princes on LPs across the board in the last year or so, so the trend lines are headed downward. Because of the high LP prices, people are looking back to CDs as a more economical way to get their collections stocked up and those supply lines are fading fast. I raised my perennial concern over how many pressing plants have shuttered in the last 15 years as it gets harder to press the silver discs, even as all sorts of LP pressing concerns are coming online as a response [a bit behind the demand curve] to the renewed demand for wax. It’s all a bit deflating, but boy did the owner have a lot to say on the issues.

It was some time after 1:30 when Modern English arrived well in advance of their appointed time. As the store was beginning to fill with people the owner had to run and have a confab with the tour manager on logistics issues but not before shaking hands and accepting my and Todd’s business cards.[Yes, Virginia, there is a PPM business card!] Once we settled into the line snaking through the store, Todd and I had a conversation with the lady in front of us who unfortunately, wasn’t able to attend the show the night before. But she was a West Coast fan from the KROQ-FM salad days! So we talked about how she had grown up with hip, New Wave radio having a big commercial impact. As did Todd, growing up in Detroit with WBLS-FM. Yours truly lived in the south so no good music got played on anything but the Central Florida college radio ghetto [at 1300 watts] on WPRK-FM.

Then it was our turn to meet the band and get the discs signed. Their tour manager was pulling double duty as photographer for the fans and our copies of the “1 2 3 4” album were soon enhanced by the band’s signatures. It felt like seventy to a hundred fans had shown up at the event, many with t-shirts from the night before. Of course, lots of the fans were staying by to help fill the coffers of Schoolkids with more than just the Modern English album to take home. after all was said and done, the entourage moved on and Todd and I got to examining the rest of the store.

Schoolkids is more than just a record store. They also have a record label and all of their product was on prime display in the store. Their imprint includes such Monastic notables as David J, Marty Wilson-Piper, Johnette Napolitano, Tommy Keene, The Verlaines, and The Veldt. The last of which I’ll be seeing opening up for The Chameleons in October! I saw them 30 years ago opening for The Cocteau Twins, as I recall! And many of the dozens of Schoolkids titles in the store were available on CD as well as LP. Nice!

I carefully scanned the used and new CDs, and it was the new good that delivered today. I was impressed to see Triangle Rock Royalty Dex Romweber have a hefty section of his post-Flat Duo Jets catalog there. When I was checking out the owner said that Dex personally delivered them to the stores. Of course, I had all of them. All except for the elusive “Ruins Of Berlin” by the Dex Romweber Duo on Bloodshot! So that was going home with me! Now there’s just an obscure split LP with Throw Rag that I foolishly passed on [it was LP only] the first time I saw the Duo, and the Norton split 7″ with ? And The Mysterians and I’ll have the full Dex Romweber Duo catalog!

And then I saw something that I haven’t seen since 1999… the new CD by Pet Shop Boys! The last one I can recall seeing in store before what I’ll only call the lean years, was “Nightlife.” After “Very” I was taking a huge break from PSB due to the dull, soulless daaaaance music their singles carried. But by the time that they broke from EMI and released “Electric” I was actually hot to buy new PSB…except in this town it was impossible. Given that I saw the “Electric” tour at Moogfest in 2014, this was a disappointment. No one had PSB music on CD. Ironically, just the day prior, commenter Echorich had shared a photo of his white LP oif “Nevertheless” on his new turntable and chatter on the offline thread went to PSB, naturally. Little did I know that 24 hours later I’d be grasping my own copy of “Nevertheless” on the silver disc!

Then I turned to the LPs and saw some friendly faces. Prices here were good. All over the place. Something for every budget. I saw the zippy “Synapse Gap [Mundo Total]” by Joe “King” Carrasco + The Crowns! Joe’s 1982 album that actually sports Michael Jackson singing backing vocals on a song! Possib;ly the stranmgest of musical bedfellows I’ve ever seen, and at $4.95 priced just right. But I already own a copy. This reminds me that I need to get back to making CDs one day as the Joe “King” Carrasco program has been sadly ignored for too long!

There was a “Collectibles/Rarities” bin that I was almost afraid to look in but it was filled with some things that weren’t three figures…but nothing I needed. I saw something from my brief “FM Rock” period that I’ve not seen in decades: the Sue Saad + The Next album from 1979! This was music slightly to the left of Pat Benatar, with added New Wave coloration, but nothing I had ever pined to hear again. Yet here were TWO test pressings from Richard Perry’s Planet Records label and they were $79.99 each. Undoubtedly, a former employee had retired/died locally, and these discs had gravitated here. I can’t say I’ve ever seen the likes of them prior! Heck, I can’t remember seeing the commercial pressing much at all in the ensuing 45 years. Yow! This record is 45 years old?!!? I’M old.

I was happy to see singles getting some shelf space but there weren’t any of the 45-40 year old import 7”ers that I still need this day. I went to the new arrivals in wax and saw something that gave me pause. The single Robert Palmer studio album that I still needed. I showed it to Todd and mused ruefully that it wasn’t the CD that I actually wanted. This attracted the attention of two women who were browsing nearby and we all got in a spirited conversation about Robert Palmer/Power Station. They had also been Durannies, of course, so we steered the conversation to the second, almost unheralded Power Station concert; the one with Robert Palmer singing but not John Taylor playing bass. They cited the period as John being in rehab but had missed that almost stealth tour.

They were also buying records, and one of the ladies shared her stack o’wax. Todd and I were impressed with a copy of Wang Chung’s top quality “Points On A Curve” in there to balance out the “Mom album” of Barbra Streisand’s “Guilty.” Mom album as in one the lady’s mother had when she was growing up! Todd gave them a yum code business card so they could hear some Fluid Japan and since I had forgotten to pack more business cards [I was all out by that time – Modern English got my last one] I could only point them to this website.

As it was getting late in the afternoon, I wanted to head back to Mebane and visit with my other friends I had seen the concert with the day prior. I paid for my two other CDs and left there with three brand new CDs. A rarity! It was fun shopping with a new friend for records [as usual] and there had been many good conversations this afternoon. Lending some credence to the notion of record stores as social centers of some quality!

Before we parted I had to play Todd a song that I had discussed with him and the next thing you know, I was hearing Fluid Japan tracks that I have bought on Bandcamp before our vacation in April, but had not had the time to actually play yet! Sad, I know! I had been impressed with Schoolkids as it seemed to be another old school classic record store that didn’t alienate me in the slightest. Just like Chaz’s Bull City Records had been the day prior, except that Schoolkids had things I wanted. A challenge at my age when I’ve seen and bought it all before. I have to say that Research triangle music geeks have it pretty good in their hands! And this day I finally had my first Modern English album as well! Talk about correcting a New Wave Blind Spot! We’ll have to share thought on that soon!

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