For going on two decades I’ve had this memory in my mind of the hardest, most pronounced eye roll I had ever received from a record store employee. It wasn’t until a few years ago that a friend pointed out that I had, over time, confused the location of this painful event and I’d been unknowingly slandering a different store all these years. It was in fact the store Adult Crash on Avenue A. One day while shopping there I asked the young man behind the counter what the music he was playing in the store was. He was hunched over reading a CD booklet and when I spoke he closed his eyes tightly as if in pain. He slowly turned to me, parted his lips while keeping his teeth clenched, opened his eyes slightly, let out a sigh and said, “Atari. Teenage. Riot.” and jammed his finger at a 7″ sleeve on the counter. Naturally I twisted the knife I had jammed between his ribs and asked, “Is it for sale?” and his response was a community theatre production-level eye roll, a deep exhale and a wordless finger point to a nearby bin. “THANK YOU!”
Looking back I’m not really sure why for years I would tell this story as having happened at Mondo Kim’s on St. Marks. I don’t particularly remember any of the staff there being jerks, ever. Actually, there was a handful of people that worked there over the years that were “friends” meaning if I ran into them in Brooklyn we would politely acknowledge each other with a nod and grin and then retreat to our respective corners of whatever bar we were at. Many of them were sources of knowledge for me, especially when it came to movies. I think that’s where I learned what a Region 2 DVD player was. And from what I remember, they were always fairly generous when it came to trading in used CD’s and vinyl for cash, something I had to do much more than I would have liked to in my 20’s.
One clear memory of Kim’s was the time I saw two of the most milquetoast, NYU student-looking dorks get into a physical fight. It started with whiny yelling and then one eventually spit on the other leading to some shoving and then before you knew it they were rolling around on the floor clawing at each other. I don’t think anyone there, employees or otherwise, knew what to do. Finally one of them was temporarily restrained by his own courier bag that was now backwards across his chest preventing him from flailing any further. It wasn’t until they pushed away from one another that one of Kim’s terrifying turtlenecked security guards arrived on the scene to give a half-hearted, “Ok, guys! Let it go!” and order them out of the store. Like most fights it was over within 20 seconds. An employee who had watched the whole thing from afar made his way over as the two warriors exited the store and let it be known that he was acquainted with at least one of them by saying, “Uhh hey man…are you alright?” and got a polite wave in return. He walked over and picked up a few CD’s that had ended up on the floor during the battle and started putting them away. I was probably standing there agape trying to figure out what the hell had just happened when the employee looked at me, held up a couple of the CD’s and nervously laughed, “Man, people are going crazy over this stuff.. Ha.” And that was the first time I ever heard of Les Rallizes Denudes. I figured, “Whatever this Japanese band is, they must be AMAZING!” The CD’s were actually bootleg CD-R’s and they were through-the-roof expensive so I passed but made a mental note. Turned out the only person I knew who even had anything by this band was the same person whose prized possession was a copy of that Shellac record they only gave to their friends so I assumed they weren’t my thing and forgot about them for some time.
One of the last times I was in Kim’s in that location, right before they moved to the much smaller spot down on 1st Ave, I went in to dig through the stuff they were clearing out before the move. I can’t remember who I would have known that was working there at the time but I had been getting a small “family discount” for awhile and by the time they were moving at least one clerk was just straight up putting things in my bag and waving goodbye. Digging through the wreckage, there was a few black metal records I was very curious about but they were still pricey. There was a few other things that I was pretty sure I could flip on eBay, and nothing much else. Right before giving up, in a dirty, torn LP box full of old zines, I found a copy of a soft-bound magazine called “Etcetera”`that looked like a cross between The Wire and Wax Poetics. Inside was what I think is still the only Les Rallizes Denudes ever pressed onto a 7”. Someone had clearly screwed up by letting this record end up in this box and lucky for me my friend behind the counter could not have cared less. When I got home and opened the magazine I was amused to find it was completely in Japanese and only the cover was in English. Looking at it now, I can’t help but be reminded of Human Giant’s “A Typical Day At Other Music” skit.
When Kim’s eventually closed I had mixed feelings. The 1st Ave location was nothing like any of the old locations. All of the Kim’s faded away when they probably should have just burned out. When I read about Mr. Kim shipping his entire collection of VHS tapes and DVDs to a remote a village in Italy, like everyone else I was initially shocked, but soon realized anything more normal would not have been as fitting an ending for one of the least-normal places I had ever spent time in. Not surprisingly,, the move did not go smooth at all, as chronicled HERE.
Here’s the most recent update I could find on the status of the Kim’s collection move to Italy after a few…..delays: Mondo Kim’s second act in Sicily
Here’s The Story of Kim’s Video & Music, Told By Its Clerks and Customers
Les Rallizes Denudes at their finest:
