-= Jones and Clarke =-
Small shops line the streets, obviously an older part of the city, the initial settlings of Erin's Vale can be seen here. Some of them are reconstructed, new paint and wood being replaced on their structures, while others slowly decay from age. For the most part the small shops still manage to have a quaint appearance, allowing those that enjoy to pursue the history of the city to see some of it still evident.
It was the introduction of a night club near the eastern side of the street however that caused some of the old fashioned store owners to cringe. It caters to those of more extreme and eccentric tastes, bringing a whole new variety of patrons to the area come night. It was the introduction of that club that opened the area to other less savory businesses. From time to time a patrol car can be seen, coming to look for those women of the night that are rumored to linger around the corner of the streets every so often.
Obvious exits:
Interzone Records IR
Daisy has arrived.
Daisy walks into the record store.
Daisy has left.
Compton has arrived.
You walk into the record store.
Interzone Records - Main Room
Everything used to be something else, and Interzone Records used to be a bowling alley. Some traces of the original layout remain: the sunken floor, the shoe counters where the cash registers now sit, and most notably, the wide open spaces where the lanes once were, now filled with row after row of CD's and records, sorted by genre and artist.
The walls are a testament to Erin's Vale's rich history as a stop on the Pacific Northwest touring circuit. They're covered from floor to ceiling in psychedelic-inspired posters, from cracked and fading Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd tours, to recently-printed memorabilia from The White Stripes and The Donnas. Just as the walls are covered in posters, so the counters and record bins are plastered with stickers, in some cases several layers deep, covering the history of punk rock, from The Ramones and Stiff Little Fingers, to bands that are still practicing in the garage.
Near the counters, a small alcove has been devoted entirely to local bands, showcasing their music and littered with advertising fliers for local nightclubs, bars, music halls, and theaters - any place with a stage.
Over the sound system, there is music playing. Always.
*Places and +views available*
Contents:
Daisy
Enid
Obvious exits:
Side Door
Compton walks in off of the street.
Compton has arrived.
In a way, all used record stores have certain things in common. They're covered in posters. They're covered in band stickers. The Violent Femmes play on the sound system. There's a little punk girl with strangely-colored hair in the aisles, bopping along to the music while she returns CD's to their appropriate bins.
They descend like plagues of locusts, Daisy and her ilk do, and don't let up until they've shoplifted or purchased every last goddamn copy of _ROCKET TO RUSSIA_. And so, locust-like, Daisy and her ilk decend, though today's ilk -- Compton and Penny -- suggest that she's a gutterpunk, rather than a high school punk. She wanders up and down the aisles, not purchasing anything in particular but, rather, maneuvering so as to allow Enid no possible line of sight that encompasses Penny, Compton, and herself.
They're clever that way.
Though the probable cameras render it entirely moot.
Daisy and Penny walk in side by side, the former ahead of the later. Must've been her idea. So Penny tosses her cigarette outside while Compton's got the door. She follows Daisy down aisle ten, boots skidding on the unwaxed floor. She turns a shoulder to the stacks, flips through some cds in the dollar bin and yawns.
"What're we supposed to be looking for?"
It's asked of Compton while she de-lints her pockets.
The old guy, slips in last and quickly busies himself in the vynil section.
"Judas Preist, the one they sued em' for in court. You know, like the actualy exhibit A one..."
One second he's at Blue Oyster Cult, then another on the opposite wall at the Dead section and then again at the Jimmy Bufett row. His presence is slippery, moving in and out of your attention like a lazy trout in your mind. It's not that he actually disapears, you just simply manage to miss him.
Friends don't let friends shoplift The Ramones. Enid isn't looking, of course. She twists on the balls of her feet as if putting out a couple of cigarettes while she returns albums to their rightful place in Rock Music, A-M. She pops a great big bubble of pink gum and chews it loudly, though not so loudly that it can be heard over the music.
"Dude. P-dogg."
P-dogg must refer to Penny, because it's in that directly that Daisy's facing, and it's in that direction that Penny's not responding. Maybe the music's too loud. She repeats:
"Dude. P-dogg."
She's holding up a fine example of the contents of Aisle 10: a spoken word album whose album cover depicts William S. Burroughs' drooping features looking askance at an incogruous swirl of Technicolor. The album's title is so psychedelic as to be unreadable.
"Did you get Hiro a Christmas present this year?"
Cornelius walks in off of the street.
Cornelius has arrived.
The record store is positively crowded. The Violent Femmes segue into The Velvet Underground, with Lou Reed singing "Sweet Nothin'" in his cracked and ruined voice. Enid hum along, with great enthusiasm and little talent, when she's not popping her gum. Her hands are kept busy returning CD's to their bins.
"Thought he was some kinda Buddhist..." Compton perks up from behind a crate of Steely Dan.
The door to the music store swings open. A very wet old man bearing a strong resemblence to a drown cat steps inside the shop. "Ach... it is cold out there." Cornelius observes keenly. Momentarily dazed and confused by the visually blinding display of psychadelic 'art', he blinks his eyes, shaking his head. "My god..." Murmurs, turning immediately to a display.
l Cornelius
This is an older man. Slight, sort of frail looking. Top of his head has a sort of dusty look to it. In truth it's just what remains of his white hair clinging to his bald head in light little whisps. Ice blue eyes are behind wire rimmed glasses. Skin is pale white, wrinkled, looks almost like paper. Cheeks are lightly tinted red, just a bit of color there. Nose is hooked, downwards and his lips are thin, set in a line of disapproval.
Slender, scarecrow-like body appears to be loosely clad. The shirt is a plain blue dress shirt with a golden green tie that hangs down in front. The pants are light cotton dress pants, a black color, neatly pressed looking. Shoes are nice but kind of scuffy looking. Carries a cane in his left hand. Ebony with a silver cap in the shape of a smiling woman's head.
"Yeah," says Daisy, drowning out Lou Reed, "he was some sort of Buddhist, on account of it having something to do with his Japanese ancestry, and then he pretty much dropped that in favor of something what I don't know what it is."
Dextrous fingers busy themselves in the racks. It's apparent (now that she's attracting attention) that she's not shoplifting -- she's interweaving CDs from her purse with CDs on the rack.
That's right, P-dogg isn't paying attention. Her fingers are tracing across an Anti-Flag section, staring intently at the back of the cd zoning out. "Daz-ee baby, slow down," Daisy's getting much too far ahead of Penny "there's totally no cameras here" catches her eye just then, implies there couldn't be "it just wouldn't make economical sense. Surveillance in a bowling alley? Do you know how much space there really is here? I mean have you ever seen what goes on behind the pin machines? Me and this guy once, you remember Johnny Irish?"
A clear, shining example of the kind of person that hangs around in record stores. She's rocked, talking a mile a minute with no end in sight. "Well Johnny and I got into this thing one night after Jesse roped the wrong guy,.." Penny's still holding that cd at a strangely conversational angle "like that guy? Daisy - like that guy," pointing at Cornelius "only black and he had kindof a gut." How the guy in the story relates to the guy in the store is anyone's guess - it makes sense to Penny, so she continues "Anyway so the point is we had to get outta the bar so we walked through an alley and ducked in this door, but like we had no idea where it went and it was the scariest.shit.ever."
Enid is certainly an odd little creature. She returns a handfull of Misfits albums to their rightful place, then moves up the aisle for Leonard Cohen. "Mr. Shobaz!" she calls out to the old man, once he's recovered from the former bowling alley's bright interior decorating scheme. "I wasn't sure you ever left your waxworks!" She glances sidelong at Daisy and waves Leoard Cohen's 'The Future' in a way that isn't the least bit threatening. "We've got a whole section over by the counter for local bands," she says. Chew. Pop. Chew. "Or yu can just leave 'em at the counter and we'll sort 'em properly."
"Hardly ever Nid, hardly ever. But I had some shopping to do. I recalled that you sold... records here. So I wanted to see what kind." Looking around slowly, a wry smile touches his features. "Nothing that I would imagine that I would listen to." Observing the others in the shop, he pauses looking at Daisy, as if he recognizes her before looking back to Enid. "Can you reccomend something?"
Laughter comes from Compton, now over at the 'C's and digging in to the Clash. Apparently the thought of local hillbillies mashing instruments being to Daisy's liking to be... unlikely.
"Right. Well," Daisy says, voice wavering sheepishly before it finds its strength. "We ain't exactly local, having just moved, as we did, from San Francisco and then to Toronto, and then after that to right here. I guess as I don't have to be sneaking them into the racks anymore.
Hand goes in purse; hand comes up with gum; gum goes in mouth, then back again for a CD, which she tosses underhand in Enid's general direction.
"Anyway. Yeah. We're the Invisible College. Not to diss on my man Lou, but you could throw that on, if it happens that you want to." She turns back to the racks. "I suppose I'll clean up your racks, then."
Enid weaves out of Rock A-M, passing Compton at 'C,' where she makes approving noises of his taste in music, assuming that loud bubble gum popping sounds are approval. The cocks her head to the side as she attempts to read the old man. "Classical? Like, Verdi or Vivaldi or some other Italian guy? Wagner? Not that Wanger's Italian, but," she gives a vague little wave of dismissal. "Jazz? Kletzmer? There's this band called the Kletzmatics that...well...you've gotta hear 'em." She snatches Daisy's CD out of the air with her free hand. "Thanks," she grins at the gutterpunk. "We'll make you a proper label and file you under Local and Rock I. You gus got any gigs yet, 'cus I've got a promoter friend who's breathin' down my neck for new acts."
The older fellow ponders this for several moments. "I will try... the... ah, Kletz-matics." Cornelius says, thoughtfully, glancing at the others before looking back to Nid. Rowdy kids. Probably going to try to jump him or something outside of the shop. Can't trust most young people. Degenerates, all of them!
Penny moves around to where Daisy put down the Burroughs thing and picks it up then surprises everyone; see she WAS keeping up "Christmas, huh." An absent gesture, her hand goes inside her jacket with the cd. She looks down like there's something moving around her feet "...has it been a year already?"
Penny looks a little green.
The smile on Daisy's face is so broad that it has to be put on crooked, half of it jammed up into the little cheek-room she has to spare and the other hanging relatively limply in the corner. It shows off some reasonably poor dentition and ill-considered dental hygeine, but that, if anything, is par for the course.
"It's been a year for most of us, Penny dear," says Daisy, eyes tracking Enid back toward the counter -- she IS going to put that album on. "I dunno how long it's been for you."
Enid sends Daisy's album flying across the counter, where it's caught by the red-haired punk working the register. In a few minute, it will be heard over the sound system, depending on what kind of priority the counter boy grants it. Now she waves Cornelius along towards the Folk section and looks around for the Kletzmatics. "They do this sort of funky Eastern European folk music, mostly in Yiddish, at least I think it's Yiddish," she mutters. Chew. Pop. "It sounds kinda like coughing up a hairball."
This gets a raspy chuckle. Cornelius walks over to the section she indicated. Fingers, like dexterous spider legs, click the records along before they slip one from the rack. He studies the front of it, then the back on it. Eyes always on those pesky kids.
Daisy, sotto voce to Penny, eyes rolling as hard as they can: "Euuch. Goyim."
Compton is old, to make a point. Well, much older than the 'kids' he trucks with. As he wanders the store, popping up here and there in his peculiar way it could be noted that he's older than the rock he checks out, older thena the Punk he puruses and older than the crap 60s Folk Music he avoids like the plauge. Each of the eras of music have washed over him like a ocean of Pop culture and yet he remains. Salty and crusty as any sea dog.
Enid looks down at Cornelius in all of her blonde (at the roots, anyway) haired, blue-eyed goyish glory. "I think you'd like it. It's traditional, but it's not like they're all falling asleep while playing their accordions and squeezeboxes and stuff. Todd Ashley was totally listening to this when he started Firewater." She looks expectantly at the much older gentlemen before her face falls and she says, "Umm...forget I said that. It probably doesn't make any sense to you."
"Indeed. It does not." Cornelius grins, moving through the store to the front with the one record. Setting it on the counter, he asks. "How much for the purchase?"
Top priority, of course.
What burst forth from the loudspeaker is not punk. It starts out breakbeat and noise. Noise and something spoken - it rises, tidal, and fades like the undertow - always there but just out of range to be heard. A silvery ting is flipped into the mix, shuddering with the vocal. It's not English. It's not Spanish or anything instantly recognizable - maybe Scandanavian - as a matter of fact it *does* sound a little like Bjork. But then again, maybe not.
Penny ta-ta-tas with the bassline and touches Daisy's elbow and guides her, the beat nodding her head, toward Compton in a very pointed and specific way. Paranoid.
The redheaded clerk at the counter puts on the album: it's always good to have one last-ditch local band to pull out in any musical discussion; something that no one else has ever heard of; something that stops the escalating erudition in its tracks.
The music on the CD isn't what one would expect from Daisy. It's an intricate wash of pop culture -- here and there, you can pick out fragments of jingles from commericals of the 1980s, distorted quotes from old movies, soundtracks running both forward and backward. The vocals, cigarette-roughened and husky, aren't English. The vowel sounds are wrong, and rasping back-of-the throat noises -- as in Hebrew or Arabic -- predominate.
Maybe the vocals are Daisy. It's hard to tell.
In any case, she glides along with Penny, casting a sidelong (and not altogether comfortable) glance at Cornelius. Behind Compton, she stops, peeking out around for another look.
The red-headed boy behind the counter rings up Cornelius' order. Enid lags behind, leaning against one of the bins with her head cocked to the side as the music starts. "Hmmmm." Her chewing and popping slows to a near-halt. "Like Halou meets The Sugarcubes. You guys do this kinda thing live or are you strictly a science fair band?"
During the debut listening of the Colleges latest offering, COmpton appears next to Cornelius at he counter with an armfull of Carly Simon records and asks the red headed kid, "Yo, where's the shitter?" in his completely accentless voice of slow death. The kid points to a partially blocked doorway in the back.
Off Compton goes with a spyness in his step that wasn't there before. What? He doesn't like listening to Folk music...
Blindly unaware of any of the interest in him, Cornelius takes out some wrinkled bills, putting them on the counter. Waiting for the boy to give him his change, he glances around the room one more time, observing. Curious.
The red-haired boy makes change for Cornelius under Enid's watchful gaze. The yellow-haired girl rests a hand on her bony hip and glares at the counter boy as if to make sure he does it right. "You got time for me to come by the waxworks tomorrow night, Mr. Shobaz?" she asks. "I've got the night off." It's a store full of music-lovers and gutterpunks and Nid wants to spend her free time with a guy old enough to be her grandfather.
"Totally. Though they're, like, invitation-only, or did we stop doing that, Penny?"
Daisy leans back against the counter, rolling her shoulders in a sort of an approximation of a shrug.
"We got sort of a vibe we're generally going for. And we usually only throw parties to premiere a new piece. Hiro comes up with them, mostly, and Jesse mixes."
Penny looks dead-on at Cornelius; she's very clearly on something. It's an extreme stare - wide eyes and bitten lip. Because she thought it was an aside, Penny asides back "We stopped until," and she makes this hand gesture; a complicated riff on sign language. Daisy should translate for the curious.
Penny looks greener.
"It would be quite acceptable Nid. We can start with the basics." Cornelius turns and meets Penny's gaze. Offers her a grin that might be friendly. But what are the chances of that. And it's gone. "See you tomorrow. I have procured the tools you will need." Holding the CD, Cornelius makes his way for the door. To the lovely outside.
It isn't ASL. It does, however, seem to remind Daisy.
"We stopped until Monday turned to Saturday again. It's some kind of ritual inversion or sommat, right?, where maybe the public sphere becomes private and whatever?"
Grinning at Enid, not having bought anything yet, she makes for the door, Penny in tow.
Penny probably doesn't realize it but the Burroughs cd is still in her hand. And as an anchor to Daisy, she can not help but be pulled by gravity in the direction she leads. Technically Compton should be leaving with them but he's ..still in the bathroom.
And who knows how long old men really take.
Cornelius walks out of the record store and onto the street.
Cornelius has left.
Enid has disconnected.
~FIN~
