It was almost three weeks ago when we found ourselves taking a trip to the state where we had grown up and departed from over 23 years ago. The swampy cauldron where Ye Olde Monk had developed into the music loving person that I am, in spite of no one exactly pointing the way for me. The occasion was the memorial of a friend who had died earlier in the year, but now there was going to be a weekend of memorial events held by her school alumni [The International School Of Bangok] in their usual Space Coast haunts.

Were is not for this person, its very possible that my wife and I would never have met, because the late Susan was nothing if not extremely gregarious. And one night at Orlando club The Edge, seeing local garage rock kings The Hate Bombs, she and her quieter friend walked up and introduced themselves since she could not bear seeing me every where they went clubbing any longer. By the next year, her friend and I were making wedding plans.

So when my wife was making plans to go and asked if I wanted to attend, I made it happen. Working long days to make up for the vacation time I didn’t have following our big splash out in Europe earlier this year. I felt that I had to honor her role in our lives. The Loy Krathong ritual this year at the class reunion/memorial would be honoring our friend and at twilight one evening we set boats we had made earlier with banana tree chunks, leaves, and assorted flowers adrift on the Banana River as they made their way out to the sea.

The next day my wife was planning on being alone where she and her friend spent many a day together in the Florida Space Coast. The thought occurred that it would be an opportune time to visit with the family of commenter Mr. Ware in Orlando. We met at a logical halfway point and my wife dropped me off into their care for roughly 24 hours.

I’d not seen Mr. Ware and his family since our last visit to Orlando in 2021 to celebrate another friend’s event birthday. Though we FaceTime every now and then, like the song says, “ain’t nothin’ better than the real thing.” We retired back to their home in Casselberry to dine on a scrumptious brunch that his loved one had made. The subject of how to spend our day together arose.

Believe it or not, none of the two times that we had visited Orlando following our move in 2001 [2007, 2021] involved music shopping. And since then, Mr. Ware’s son Kellan had matured to become a record collecting chip off the old block. With a blog of his own! He was keen to join us on our bin-diving trawl, and the two stores I strongly had an interest in visiting were still going! Having survived the scourge of the Napster Plague™. There was also a new store [where said son had a gift certificate from burning a hole in his pocket] which was also thrown into contention since each of these locations were within a five minute drive of one another. And the whole Ware pack would be going along for a day spent together. What’s not to love?

ROCK + ROLL HEAVEN

I first stumbled across Rock + Roll Heaven when it was a tiny storefront in the Lake Ivanhoe shopping district in the mid-80s. I popped in there one evening, glanced around at the stock without buying and then lost track of the store for about 7 years. By the time I started shopping there regularly, in 1993, the store had grown to much its current large size. When there was a Saturday with nothing big planned in the 90s, we would often spend a few hours at Rock + Roll Heaven as owner Ray Ehmen would be famously holding court. A music-loving raconteur, he elevated the spirited discourse that is one of the important secondary traits of hanging out in record stores that doesn’t even cost a penny! There was the cast of supporting characters like Wally or his brother Fred that we relied on for kicks if Ray wasn’t in.

In the old days, we always went on a Saturday for the simple reason that the store was closed on a Sunday. But that was then. These days it’s open seven days a week, baby! That’s no doubt down to the international tourists eager to bin-dive during their trips to the Vacation Paradise™ that is Orlando, Florida. Money was obviously being left on the table and now the store is open seven days a week. So… progress!

The last time I’d set foot in Rock + Roll Heaven was during the summer of 2001 on my last weekend in Orlando where during the last few months, I had been rounding up loose 12″ and 7″ records needed for some of my planned BSOGs [boxed sets of god®] in the knowledge that nowhere where I was moving would have stock remotely deep as at R+RH. The store had grown over the years to absorb one of the shops adjacent to it. The main room had the all important 7″ singles stock up front near the window.

While I had a few ideas of things that I was wanting to buy [my actual want list is as long as dozens of forearms…] I didn’t have the time to select any of the key items that I probably should have. There are always CD-R projects where I need a single here and there to complete them but I’ve lost that plot in the last two years not spending a moment on my former hobby. And the data just isn’t cluttering up my head these days. Which is probably good because on this Sunday Ray Ehmen, the owner, was in the store! I’d hoped against hope that I would get a chance to see him and chat and once we shook hands we were off and running. Pausing only to let other customers ask their burning questions or for Ray to take a phone call for someone looking for that special album.

We spent a long time catching up and talking record trash. Ray’s reach on the Orlando scene that we enjoyed in the 90s went far beyond selling records. Ray was Grand Poobah and advisor to the best of the local bands that occupied so much of our time. When he wasn’t actually promoting shows, he was passing on his wisdom to the wet-nosed punks of the Orlando Scene. I’m convinced that they wouldn’t have know about 60s Orlando Garage Rockers We the People enough to have covered their weird underground rumbling, “My Brother The Man,” without Ray pointing the way.

Ray and I got a really good chance to talk for the better part of two hours, Filling in the gaps and getting up to date. I helped to dispel some misconceptions about who I did and didn’t know. Setting the record straight. Truth be told, I was so grateful to talk to Ray that I was not really crate diving much at all. Kellen and his mom actually retired to the White Wolf Cafe across the street while I was busy shooting the breeze, but it has been 23 years. Ray was looking hale and hearty and had resisted the sort of dissipation with age that most [lesser] record store owners are subject to. And he was familiar with the deceased that had brought us here this weekend so that subject was touched upon.

After the better part of two hours, I felt that I should be actually shopping for records, so there were a few things that I remembered looking for in Europe only to find that if it wasn’t LP, Beatles or Metal I was largely out of luck! I regaled Ray with my sad trip to the largest record shows in the world, lamenting that fact that people were still hot on The Beatles after all of these years. Ray couldn’t see it either, but he was glad to sell the record in any case. His idea of a great band wasn’t The Fab Four® and I got Ray to wax eloquent on the glory of Roxy Music which was only music to these ears.

So I saw the John Cale “Mercy” CD on the racks and asked if he had the latest one, but he did not. Then I heard about the infamous John Cale show at Sleepout Louie’s in Casselberry back int he mid-80s that I actually attended. A trainwreck of a show that I was nonetheless happy to have attended. There are good trainwrecks [Cale] and bad ones [Debbie Harry] so it’s not cut and dried.

I’d known the promoter of the Cale show [Robin Shurtz] as he wrote for the New Wave music paper [“Dogfood”] that I followed eagerly as a high-school kid and ended up writing a few reviews for in their last issue. Ray also knew Robin and we exchanged anecdotes and a few raised eyebrows.

There are not many LPs that I still need but I always stop and take a photo of the holy “No Wave” album which defined the US New Wave movement for my good friend chasinvictoria back in the day. I cannot say exactly how many copies that he owns as I believe that he buys each one he sees! If you’re not familiar with it, suffice to say that it was quite the catalyst for his conversion to the Church Of New Wave®. As pictured below.

I had hoped to find a cheap CD of 10ccs “The Original Soundtrack” but after I asked the other staffer there that day it was not to be. Then I saw two copies of something that made my eyes bulge!

It’s nearly impossible to believe but the “Ultravox: The Island Years” box of 4xCDs of everything that the band with John Foxx had recorded for Island was released in 2016. I have many of the DLX RMs of the Island ‘Vox canon, but those with the rarities appended to them, are done in a willy-nilly fashion with things like the “Live Retro” EP spread across multiple discs! This represented the three classic albums with a fourth disc of all of the rarities in a coherent fashion. And the cover art came from a promotional piece that Foxx had designed for the transcendent “Systems Of Romance” album in 1978. And then this 4th disc went one better by including monophonic but cracking live versions from the Old Grey Whistle Test performance by the band!

I have given this to friends as a birthday gift but had shamefully dawdled on buying a copy for myself. $24.98 later and this was a shame no longer! Truth be told, this was the first time that I had ever seen a copy in the wilds in front of me, or naturally, I would have bitten! But when record shopping is largely an online phenomenon, sometimes a paralysis sets in. And today this store had two copies of it! That speaks of a sense of wonder being rekindled in myself.

THE BOUNTY

• Robert Palmer: All Around The World – MCA Records – MCA-52643 – US – 7” – Rock + Roll Heaven/$2.00
• Ultravox: The Island Years – Caroline International – CAROLR037CD – EU – 4xCD – Rock + Roll Heaven/$24.98

So this day after over two hours spent mostly chatting with Ray, I was getting out of R+R Heaven for under thirty dollars! Almost madness, as I can remember spending $150 per weekend visit with a more focused search on actual records instead of conversation. Many was the time where I’d trawl the 7″ bins and buy every record that delighted…whether I “needed it” or not! Often just for a sweet picture sleeve, but I’m older now. And this day it was more important to catch up with Ray for what might be the last time ever.

The store was still here, the hundreds of thousands of releases in hundreds of formats were still there, without a computer inventory. Filling every nook and cranny of the sprawling store. Prices ran the gamut from giveaways to hair curlingly pricey, but with my tastes, I find that everywhere I go, the most exciting things to buy are often there for a song. The stuff I was interested in was all quite what I deem affordable. Let’s just say that I didn’t put anything back with a regret. In the end, all I ask from a record store is that anyone with any budget can come in and shop and leave happily and on that score Rock + Roll Heaven still delivers after nearly 40 years shopping.

Next: …Remix Remodeled