you guys can read this if you want. i like you guys.

thought it might be entertaining to some. first thing i've written since i stopped writing. it's rant-y.

if it is NOT entertaining to you, though, don't sue me!

disclaimer: i do not hate all boomer. JUST most of the boomer who come in my store. haha!

https://medium.com/@scottseward68/open-for-business-confessions-of-a-used-record-dealer-in-new-england-42985dbca372

That’s great! Write more, I wanna hear more about your dad

really enjoying this scott

I appreciated the nuanced analysis of boomer cohorts and the specificity of the hateful examples, much more persuasive than undifferentiated boomer bashing

He says, “So, how does this work when you buy stuff?” “Do you plug into some database or something…” And I said, “Yes, I am a robot and I plug into my database.” And I said it in the voice of a robot!

LOL

I liked this, but I for one, actually miss Connecticut (for the proximity to more interesting places, haha).

I reposted this to FB and Discord. Good stuff.

nice little blog you have here

i used to have a blog! its still out there...i'd be afraid to look at it. though some of it is probably okay.

i have to say that i actually showed this weeks ago to an ilxor whose opinion i think highly of and they liked it and that's how i got the confidence to share. thank you to them if they read this. i do miss the outlet. of writing. i'm just glad you guys haven't gotten sick of my blab on here in general. i feel like i've been blabbing for months.

lovely piece, Scott. Thanks!

He says, “So, how does this work when you buy stuff?” “Do you plug into some database or something…” And I said, “Yes, I am a robot and I plug into my database.” And I said it in the voice of a robot!

I hope you made jerky robotic arm movements when you said it.

Nice piece Scott, I had two irl lols... you're a good writer...

This is greatness. I will share it out more properly tomorrow!

Keep on blabbing, that was great.

absolutely loved this

Very good. I like your writing style, with the runs of short sentences and the digressions you weave in and out of.

My feeling is that it’s a type of person, and it gets worse with age, so it peaks at the age of the men you have repeatedly run into, but I see the very same traits in people in their thirties and forties, and then it must be that they get amplified later.

But the particular reference points for men of that boomer age NOW – The Band, Eric Clapton and so on, maybe even playing the guitar themselves and owning a collection of guitars and amps, and all the fussing over hi-fi stereo equipment – make it especially annoying. I’m approaching that age myself, but I’ve never liked Eric Clapton or blues rock of any kind. I just don’t like it, perhaps because it was just before my time. I was once in various bands with someone about ten years older than me, and it was constant talk about the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Sorry, not interested, not then, not now. To be fair, he was a proper musician, not a dilettante with ten guitars, though he probably did own ten. I would also never go in a shop and start talking to the owner in that way. It wouldn’t occur to me to do something like that. I don’t like dogs either, or babies for that matter.

My wife is American, so I mentioned that I’d read your blog post and asked her if she’d ever been to Hartford, Connecticut. She said yes, and she doesn’t like it.

Great stuff bud. The struggle is real.

The bit about boomers and blues music just made me LOL on the train.

Omg a blog! In 2024!!

Very enjoyable, Scott.

"an LSD-soaked episode of Happy Days with an Eric Clapton soundtrack"!

Amazing. Thank you for sharing with us Scott.

First and last grafs esp. strong, catch a wave (oops boomer music ref), and as someone who worked in music product stores for many years, I know exactly where you're coming from (strike more boomer talk). Chuck Eddy, Frank Kogan, Lucy Sante (boomers all) are among those currently digging this on gmail thread, and Lucy knows your brother's store, is amazed, no maybe (oops).
Boomer rant is predictable, but there are a lot of people who are predictable in just that way, and yes every fucking one of them visits record stores.

Pickin' on the blues? Mr. Seward has been known to post favorable comments on I Love Music's renowned Do You Blues? thread.

Great essay Scott. It's being shared by about a dozen friends on social media right now lol.

Not even all of them ilxors!

great stuff scott, really enjoyable read! i encounter this variety of boomer at the farmers market where they try to break hundred dollar bills for a single bunch of cilantro and get the peach guy to deliver a sermon on fall growing patterns while buying zero peaches
HATE THEM

I'm happy you guys like it! It inspires me to continue. Old life in this gen X dog. And I don't hate dogs i promise! maybe just ask before you come in and let it run around everywhere. and please don't put your hot coffee cup on top of the records while you look at records. the records are not a table.

very happy, don, that you guys are enjoying it as well. tell frank i say hi and i hope he is well. that's awesome that lucy likes it. i am a big fan. cheers to all!

All this talk about the blues reminded me of this Onion classic https://www.theonion.com/affluent-white-man-enjoys-causes-the-blues-1819565488

Hurrah! Yes many friends on FB and elsewhere have all loved it. Rightly.

They are bemused by just about everything that regular people do. It’s as if they can’t believe that people still do things.

I can't tell you how often I bump into this attitude, scott. Thanks for writing and keep at it.

Enjoyed this! Sharing with a friend who has a record store in (removed identifying detail).

shared with a friend who is opening a store later this summer

I miss old people who were old, too. The other side of the generation chasm. Grandmas who liked Lawrence Welk and Liberace.

I was chatting with a boomer neighbor on the street, who is still actively working in the law. Had a trip to Philly, was sharing an Uber with "a job I never heard of before, an Influencer"

the influencer was super chatty British guy, asked the driver to take him to the best Philly Cheese Steak.

The driver, small talking, let it be known he was a member of the Stylistics. At which point the influencer went nuts and took all sorts of photos.

When my friend got out later, he said "I feel weird tipping you, you may have more money than me?"

The Stylistic had to explain that other than oldies tours to Japan, he has no income from music.

Kinda surprised any blues/r'n'b/r'n'r fan wasn't aware that most musicians like that never got anything from their hits, but I shouldn’t be!

Great article, Scott. I sent it to a friend of mine. Your sense of humor and writing reminds me of him.

it's funny, maria is out in front now most of the week while i'm in back pricing and putting things on Discogs and she now gets all those people who used to drive me crazy. she tells me about them. which means that i get to utter my favorite phrase: "welcome to my world". 15 straight years of people coming in and telling you that they heard that records were coming back. and for 15 years those people never bought a record. she got a real live one last week. one of the usual suspects comes in and tells her - and he was telling her not asking her or trying to start a conversation: *PEOPLE DON'T LISTEN TO RECORDS ANYMORE*. and she nicely says oh yeah people actually do....and then he says *THERE IS NOTHING TO PLAY THEM ON ANYMORE*. *YOU CAN'T GET TURNTABLES ANYMORE*. and she says actually you can....and he says *YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T LISTEN TO THEM ANYMORE*. and she says actually young people do listen to records. and then he says *YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T GO TO SEE LIVE MUSIC ANYMORE*. and she says no i think young people do go see live music. and then he says.......WELL GOOD LUCK WITH ALL THIS. and leaves.
you don't get that at Walgreens or CVS.

thanks! and thank you all again. i'll just keep thanking you all.

ilx has always been very supportive. it has meant a lot to me.

i don't know if i ever mentioned this but waaaaaaay back before i started posting here i heard about ilx from frank kogan in an e-mail and of course i searched for my name when i heard that people talked about rock critics here and someone said something like yeah i don't know about SS and someone else said something like *he's the perfect critic for other critics* and i was like hell yeah! i'm good with that. fuck normal people. i didn't want to write for them. haha! this was probably 2003? it might have been geeta. anyway, that inspired me for real. i didn't even know if anyone liked what i was doing other than chuck - and frank and don - and they were all obviously crazy. in a good way. things like that kept me inspired to do it.

I read this as a sequel to the chapter in Marooned: the latest instalment of a bemused picaresque through the world of work - grocery store employee, custodian, record-store owner...

one of my very favorite movies. free on Youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w1FoHxjv0k

Yeah this was great. I like rants when they are funny.

Makes me wonder what the stereotypical annoying Gen-X record store visitor will be like once the torch is passed.

gen x record dads generally just look really depressed and like they had way too many IPAs the night before. they rarely give me shit. they rarely speak!

https://riotfest.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Portlandia_801A_BandReunion_MPX-1920x1080_R1.jpg

gen x record dads generally just look really depressed and like they had way too many IPAs the night before. they rarely give me shit. they rarely speak!

I have never been in your shop but it feels good to be seen!

Enjoyed your blog. I miss blogs.

lovely late development is gen x moms coming in by themselves and browsing and buying. also mostly silently. just more women in general now and its such a relief from the non-stop dude parade.

re: "i used to have a blog" - yeah i know, i rediscovered & read it quite recently, it's still there & it's still great

oh wow thanks! i just looked at it for the first time in years. it feels archaeological.

seeing women in large numbers in record stores is totally a new (welcome) experience for me as well.

I haven't actually worked in a store in a long, long time, but I feel like the big generational record-store dad shift was that any given Boomer would presume they understood records more than a younger person behind the counter, as though they'd walked into a store selling their personal childhood possessions and might be asked to explain or sign a few, whereas Gen Xers tend to presume the opposite and desperately want the worker to validate them as cool and knowledgeable

^^^ It me

As a gen x woman lifelong record shopper and former store employee, I very much want to be left alone to make my choices. I 100% don't want to boast about my knowledge nor do I seek the validation of the person behind the counter. Also resent being lumped together based on reproductive choices. Not all women are moms! But I like this essay regardless.

oh gosh i didn't mean to lump everyone together. i meant actual moms. but there are all kinds of gen x women who come in. we have a big queer woman population here of every age too and queer moms and non-moms alike also make up a good portion of our buyers. thank the heavens.

and non-binary people. and the like. lots of younger queer folks. they didn't used to be such a big part of our customer-base. a lot of things have changed in general here since the pandemic. people moved to the country. all kinds of people. which is an awesome by-product of a terrible thing.

i WAS kinda lumping sad gen x dads together though. i basically meant people who reminded me of myself. slow. world-weary. heavy sighs. maybe not so quick to look at the records underneath because it means bending.

still requesting that someone who worked in record/CD stores in the late 90s-early 00s write a treatise on capitalism and planned obsolescence as viewed through CD and video anti-theft technology

because that shit was an unbelievable scam

i WAS kinda lumping sad gen x dads together though. i basically meant people who reminded me of myself. slow. world-weary. heavy sighs. maybe not so quick to look at the records underneath because it means bending.

still requesting that someone who worked in record/CD stores in the late 90s-early 00s write a treatise on capitalism and planned obsolescence as viewed through CD and video anti-theft technology

because that shit was an unbelievable scam

Should have been a link there. But I meant stuff like CD-Text, cd-i, Compact Disc + Graphics, etc.

my usual record store MO is to not say a word except hello because I worked retail for years and mostly just wanted to not talk to customers at all. although if I came into your store I'd probably at least cop to being an ILXor. otherwise that would be entrapment.

omg, please do!. i had an ilxor come in and they were paying for stuff and they only told me as they were leaving. i mean you don't want to miss out on your friend and family discount. or just come in and say hi. no need to buy anything. like i've said before, i've met dozens of people from here and i've enjoyed talking to all of them. even matos!

So I first saw skot's Medium maximal comeback when Chuck sent the link around, in reply to that xpost gmail thread incl. him Frank Lucy S, Mark S & others, which I started (subject line: Sunday Supplement: Chubby Checker Influenced By Moon) with this link to skotpost from 20 years ago, which starts w dorm revelations (not that kind) hosted by historic Dan Bunnybrains in historic Danbury CT, incl. Chubby Checker's musical connections to Jimi Hendrix, producer-wise and more---good read! And I still gotta catch up with this music: https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2004/02/

a different - longer? - version of that ended up in Ugly Things magazine way back when. i was the first person - as far as i know - to write about that album. still never officially rereleased but word is Chubby hates it.

Mark S on that oftmentioned gmail thread:

I attended EMP in 2007 in Seattle and Scott gave the best (or anyway most memorable because funniest) paper, about death metal I believe (I am not an expert on all the metals, plus it was 17 years ago). Did he write it up? I hope so but don’t know. Afterward he and Maria headed a party to go get (I think) pizza and he was lovely and I talked a great deal to Maria, whom very much likewise.

Mark, here's Scott's EMP paper (on folk metal, actually) -- the top (which I guess means final) post on his old blog, from a decade ago. It is indeed hilarious.

don, i'm gonna have to hire you as my publicist! haha! god, 2007 was several lifetimes ago. saw so many ILXors. it was such a treat to spend time with Mark S. he is such a great person to hang out with. Spent quality time with him and Simon Reynolds and went to a party at Matos manor. that was the first time i had ever spoken in public! i was on a panel with Erik Davis - a real writer! - and before i went on he said to me "you're gonna be great". i have no idea how he could know that. but he is kinda mystical.

2007 really was a million years ago, wasn't it? I met you in 2007 at the NYC reading for Marooned.

that was the same year!!?? holy toledo. that was fun. there were a lot of people there! and i read something weird that wasn't even from the book. jon williams was there. ian. i met nabisco and sang freud and unperson all in one night. jon lewis. laurel. ilx-time. and then my brother played at Cake Shop later that night. i never leave the house but when i do i like it to be memorable.

it's good! it's good writing! i love your writing. not just how much you know about music, how passionate you are about music, your _writing_, the way you _write_ about it.

-

some thoughts.

i've never been to connecticut. when i think about connecticut, i think about new haven pizza. i don't think i've ever been to connecticut. i've only eaten new haven pizza here in portland. it's the second most popular city in the us for new haven pizza, so i'm told. it's good pizza. better than st. louis pizza or altoona-style pizza.

i'm not so much bemused by what regular people do as the idea that there _are_ "regular people", people like your customers. i see signs of them. i went to a movie last night and there were some realtors trying to leverage their queerness for business in the most entitled, white, cringeworthy ways. they seemed to be appealing more to straight people who wanted to perform "allyship" by having a queer realtor. i guess that makes sense. most of the queer people i know aren't exactly ready to buy houses in portland.

time is weird to me. i've lived in the past for years and now i guess i'm "cutting edge" by virtue of being trans but i don't feel cutting edge. i feel extremely archaic. this is the only place i'm on the public internet. even when i talk about the present i talk about it in terms of the past, the way it _used to be_. i don't want to talk about my present. when i was young they said "those who say don't know, those who know don't say". i don't think it's true. i don't know _how_ to say. easier to talk about...

but i am old, i've always thought of myself as old. i mean i'm younger than you, scott, but "you're only as old as you feel". i've felt old, always. "boomer" = "old". i grew up with this weird, like... i wanted to be a boomer. i wished i had been there in the sixties, when things seemed exciting, things seem like they _mattered_, and now i guess for better or for worse things are exciting and i'm somehow caught up in it just by, like. existing. i worshipped these people, i wanted to be like these people, and now the idea of the "boomer" - because it's a _mindset_, not an age, one can be a boomer at any age. there are people who are younger than me who are boomers. i call myself a boomer, because to them boomer is a slur, like cis is a slur, and it's not the _word_, it's how we _use_ it, and we use it that way because of _how they act_. and they don't understand. they don't know. that's the bemusement, to me. it's not that they don't understand other people, it's this _clinical lack of insight_. they know not what they do.

my favorite thing about the term "generation x" is that it was coined to describe boomers. my "generation's" name is a boomer hand-me-down. it seems appropriate.

Dogs are big here. I don't know how it is elsewhere. "Emotional support animals". Animals won't fuck with you like people will, is I guess how it is. My QPP's roommate has an ESA. Flash bites me. I don't know why. I'm not hostile to Flash. People did "no dogs allowed" like in that Snoopy movie so I guess they came up with ESAs so they could have dogs around and like. Everybody _is_ an emotional wreck, everybody I know. People make all kinds of compromises but sometimes, you know how it is. People set "boundaries" in ways that make other people responsible for their shit. And sometimes people use ESAs like that. Not always. Sometimes. So stores have signs up now saying "If you got a seeing-eye dog, fine, but no fucking ESAs please." Sometimes in those precise words. I was at a bar Wednesday that had a sign out front saying "We survived a pandemic, we'll survive your shitty Yelp review". I kinda like that attitude. It's very East Coast. The West Coast isn't necessarily known as a "fuck you" kind of place, but more and more I got that old East Coast "fuck you" feeling. Maybe there's not that much difference between East and West like there used to be, maybe there never was. The Brahmins are now boomers with weed gummies and you have them on either coast.

Learning to fake emotion, I know that as a trauma thing. When someone is in an abuse situation. You don't get to be yourself. I was listening this morning, coincidentally, to _The Gouster_, from Bowie's "Who Can I Be Now?" The chameleon. Grew up queer with a schizophrenic brother.

(REDACTED):
I am a new person every day
It's called self improvement

Kate Cavatappi — Today at 8:52 AM:
or sometimes 4. Identity disturbance with markedly or persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

That's the thing. It's all about _them_, it's always all about _them_, and they don't understand what it's like for everybody else to have to put up with their bullshit without being able to hold them accountable, because they have all the power, always have. All their life. To me that's the difference between them and the people who are "mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs and/or depressed and/or desperate and/or chronically ill, and/or dying of terminal diseases", to be a "boomer" means not confronting any of that, believing that one's going to live until 150, believing that Your Generation ended racism and saved the world and that the people who hate you aren't treating you LIKE YOU DESERVE TO BE TREATED. But they never treat anybody else, you know. The way they think they _deserve to be treated_.

Kate Cavatappi — Today at 12:25 PM:
I've always tried to live by the "treat people as you want to be treated" kind of person. Unfortunately I used to kind of hate myself so that caused a lot of problems...

It's good to read your post. I was asking about it the other day here... Is it me? Is it only me who lives in this situation, who sees these people? Is it only Portland? And from what you say it's not. What you say makes me feel like desperate people are everywhere. It's just hard to talk about and acknowledge, without fear or shame, and so people don't want to talk about it.

It's that contrast. The boomers with all the records and the desperate people, and the former are the latter but with money.

-

we have a big queer woman population here of every age too and queer moms and non-moms alike also make up a good portion of our buyers. thank the heavens.

and non-binary people. and the like. lots of younger queer folks. they didn't used to be such a big part of our customer-base. a lot of things have changed in general here since the pandemic. people moved to the country. all kinds of people. which is an awesome by-product of a terrible thing.

i WAS kinda lumping sad gen x dads together though. i basically meant people who reminded me of myself. slow. world-weary. heavy sighs. maybe not so quick to look at the records underneath because it means bending.

― scott seward

i was never able to dad because gender dysphoria and all but slow, world-weary... again, that's the out of time thing, i always had these old man vibes... there's a picture of me from when i'm 20 where i'm look like a 50 year old chain-smoking golfer in 1971. but it's also interesting to know that, again. it's not just portland. the queer people. the pandemic babies. queerness has changed _so much_ over the course of the pandemic, and I don't know if it's coincidental or if the pandemic brought about a sea change.

for me the pandemic was... even more than trump, it's, what's the term? "stochastic incompetence"? stochastic incompetence changed my life.

-

i too really miss blogs. i had a blog between '20 and '22, a pandemic blog... it's the only way i can really write. i use ILX like a blog sometimes. i don't know what else to do, where else i can write that other human beings at least have a chance of reading. like i sad. i feel very out of time.

I read you, Kate! Thanks for the post! You can be who you are here. That's what I like about ILX. I don't have a lot of people I can talk to about a lot of things. In real life. I feel safe here! I also have therapist fear. I mean, I think it would benefit me. I could probably use a little of the ol' DBT. But I'm afraid to tell someone I don't know about my stuff. You know? Now I just wish i was starting a band so that i could call it Stochastic Incompetence.

hi scott! i too remember that seattle meet-up with great fondness, thank u for yr kind words :)

so long ago tho :(

But x many of us are still around! Not nec on ilx, but I hear things.