The Ritual of the Music Store

A Great American Tradition Teaches Many Lessons

I had not been in an actual brick & mortar music store in a long time. Most of my music purchases occur in parking lots out of the trunks of vehicles, shortly after concluding E-Mail exchanges with murky human vignettes who lurk the back alleys of craigslist. Or via cold, soulless transactions on eBay or Amazon, typically involving credible Chinese replicas of vintage American standbys.

But today was a day off from school, and I figured it was time to introduce my son to the great American tradition/culture of music retail. So we hopped into the Town & Country and off we went. The destination doesn’t matter. All these places are the same. And as I soon discovered, nothing has changed.

We walked in the door to the friendly greetings of twenty-something males, each one surely a current member of, or refugee from, some band I’ve never heard of, working the music store gig because it somehow ever so slightly eases the pain of selling out to the real world. We quickly did the polite hi and bye, making our way to the back of the store where the bass amps await those among us who, resigned to being mediocre guitar players, find solace in being the best damned backbone of a band we can be. And so there were the usual array of Fenders and Ampegs and Brand Wannabes, the big ones and the tiny ones (but not the tweener ones I was really after). But that’s OK. It’s not like I was going to buy one today.

It doesn’t take long before one of those nice young fellas saunters back to see what’s up. And I tell him the God’s honest truth: My son here and I are both bass players, and I’m 57 years old, and I’ve never played a Fender Precision. Now, if you’re not a musician, forgive me for the lingo. All you need to know is the Fender Precision is the single most popular bass in the history of rock music. But I’m a “Jazz bass, two pickup” kinda guy. With 5 strings, not 4. But that’s another story. No self-respecting bass player of any merit has never played a Fender Precision. The kid looks at me like I have three heads. Oooookaaay… what can I do for you today sir?

Anyway, unlike the guitars, all the basses are hanging from the ceiling, out of reach. Merchandising? I don’t know. The young fella had to fetch a ladder to retrieve one of the two Precisions dangling from the ceiling. Bright red. He handed it to me from his perch, assuring me that this is the favorite of “Randy up front”.

When you’ve been playing stringed instruments for as long as I have, you kinda know what you’re dealing with in three seconds or less. And I knew immediately that $500 of the $649 instrument I had just received was built into the logo on the headstock. But, hey, $649 is bargain basement for a Precision, and it’s not like I was going to buy a bass either.

So my son and I sauntered back over to the amplifiers, I pulled up a stool, and plugged this glowing red hunk of rock n roll history into a twenty-five watt practice amp. That’s pretty much all you have to know about me. I’m just not that guy who lunges immediately toward the Five Hundred Watt Behemoth with the intention of alerting the whole store to my existence (basically, the musical equivalent of dogs peeing on each others’ mailbox posts – it’s a thing). Twenty-five watts seemed like a perfectly good place to start.

And so I began to plunk out some notes, firing off various observations to my kid, an aspiring bassist, hoping to impart some wisdom on how to evaluate an instrument… why a single split coil pickup …the pros and cons of a wider neck …looking for fret buzzes …why it makes no sense to pay $649 for a cheap instrument with a prestigious name plate, yadda yadda yadda. And of course he experienced the thrill of playing an instrument in a store for the first time, while your dad plugs you into increasingly powerful amps and discusses why this amp weighs half of that other amp. Sadly, this is not an experience I ever had as a kid, but that’s life.

Then a funny thing happened. Actually, a totally predictable thing. While I’m standing there showing him the compromises inherent in positioning a single pickup, about eight feet off to the side is some guy pulling up a stool and plugging in the pretty little Ibanez bass that has been plopped over there on a stand the whole time (since I often play a borrowed Ibanez that is just like it, I had been ignoring it).

I realize immediately that the ritual is on. It might as well be one male mountain goat entering the territory of another goat. For this is none other than Randy who, as a store employee, is doing his best to act like he is doing some sort of required act of maintenance, or rearranging of the merchandise. This of course is nonsense of the highest order. For what Randy is actually doing is performing the next step in official Music Store Ritual/Protocol. You see, we are now moving beyond simply peeing on the mailbox post to direct assertion of authority (my kid, of course, has no idea what is happening, and I feel no need to explain. Some things are best experienced). Randy plugs in that sweet Ibanez, and starts slapping away like Joe Funk in a 70’s soul band (think Wolfman in That Thing You Do, when Jimmy asks if he can “handle their stuff”). Doesn’t matter that my kid is still playing – full-on pack mentality is now in effect.

Now, if I were a member of the pack in full standing, the correct response to this would be a tail wag coupled with a sheepish, quasi-submissive gesture. In human terms, this would be something like “Good stuff dude, do you play in a band?” That might or might not lead to a conversation that I had no interest in having, possibly even leading to Randy pouring out a stream of tech jargon to establish my level of ignorance and further strengthen his position of bass dominance. But I would have none of it. This whole ritual has always struck me as profoundly rude, and I have no time for it. In fact, I was tempted to redirect my conversation with my son to such topics as “how worthless bass solos generally are”, and “how so many bass players are really flashy but can’t sync with a kick drum to save their lives”.

But I restrained myself. Of course, what I actually did is probably worse, the kiss of death to a musician desperately seeking attention and validation – i.e., getting totally ignored. Poor Randy. I don’t know if he needs validation in life, and I hope he finds it somewhere if he does. But, alas, that isn’t my job.

Randy eventually put down the bass and walked away, fresh out of ideas for credibly acting like he was doing something official. Or maybe he exhausted his supply of impressive licks. I don’t know. Sorry Randy, it just isn’t me. Like everything else in life, I understand the ritual, but I choose not to engage in it. I’m an Outsider. For the past seventeen years I have played a $129 Chinese Jazz bass copy that is for all practical purposes just as good as its $1,500 Fender equivalent. Sorry, it’s who I am.

Eventually, my son and I had the information we needed. A hundred watt, twenty-two pound Fender Rumble will probably do the trick someday. And yeah I like the Fender Precision (nice tone balance across the strings), but I’ll probably buy another Ibanez in the end. Easier to play and, with its active circuitry, much broader tonal possibilities. And way cheaper. Whatever.

On our way out of the store, I decided to teach the offspring another lesson. We had just used an hour of the store’s time and learned quite a bit. Yeah, it didn’t cost the store anything. That isn’t the point. Randy’s sidekick was helpful, and I appreciated that. I probably should have handed him ten bucks. Instead, I bought a couple cables – stuff that we need anyway for our electronic drum experiments in the basement. Sure, they would have been cheaper on Amazon. Again, not the point. I bought the cables as an implicit thank you.

So today we learned a lot. We experienced music store culture. We learned how to ignore rude people with egos, and how to do the right thing when people treat you with basic respect. And, yeah, we also learned how not to buy a $649 Fender Precision unless you value the name on the headstock over the cash in your wallet. It was a useful outing. End of lesson.