Old Records Never Die by Eric Spitznagel Page A

all that useless minutiae, then it would confirm that it was really just useless minutiae after all.
    There was a time not so long ago, in the latter half of the twentieth century (and maybe before that, I don’t know), when you had to be careful about who you invited to your house. Even the most sane-looking person could have dark impulses, an inexplicable and insatiable need to fuck with the CD collections of strangers. If you left them unattended for even a few minutes, you might come back to discover that your music had been unhelpfully realphabetized. Or worse, separated by genre or time period, or arranged in aesthetically ornate piles. They were always so pleased with themselves, like they were providing a valuable service. “I noticed that some of your CDs were in the wrong jewel cases,” they’d say. “
Daydream Nation
was in the case for
Doolittle
. I mean, how ridiculous is that, right? You never would’ve found it.” The only thing to do was smile tersely and make a mental note never to let meddling idiots near your music again.
    My music isn’t on any clouds, and it probably never will be. Because I want my music to be flawed. I like the hisses and pops ofmy old records and CDs. And I like that if somebody picked up my iPod, they’d probably be confused and angry by the asinine way that the songs are organized. But I’d rather risk losing it all in a hard-drive crash than have my music library become just another homogenized collection of songs.
    â€œJust don’t spend too much money on records you can’t listen to and we don’t have room for,” Kelly said.
    Two hours later, I don’t know where either of them are, and I’m holding a copy of
Bona Drag
, transfixed by the faded Crayola-blue cover. Pulling it out was like turning a corner and running into an ex-girlfriend, somebody whose old letters you still kept in a shoe box.
    â€œCharlie, no!”
    Kelly’s voice jolted me out of daydreaming. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear him, somewhere behind me, his little feet scurrying like a rat in a tenement, giggling as he ducked through legs and evaded capture. I could see the eyes widen in the adults who noticed him, alarmed not so much about a three-year-old running so fast through a maze fraught with so many dangers, but those outstretched chocolate fingers, aimed like swords at their precious vinyl.
    â€œElvis Costello!”
    Charlie was crouched under a table, pulling records out of boxes and roughly examining them. He’d pretend to read each title before yelling “Elvis Costello!” and then he’d slam each delicate little disk onto the floor, with such force it was a miracle they didn’t shatter under his fist.
    The night before, we’d listened to some Elvis Costello—his favorite artist of the moment—and he asked if Costello had records. I told him yes, many, many records, some better than others, and if he searched really hard tomorrow, looked in every box and on every table, he might find some.
    A man with bushy gray eyebrows and Frank Zappa facial hairwas zeroing in on Charlie. “Sir, sir, please be careful with those,” he blustered, looking panicky and uncertain. This was obviously new terrain for him, as he called a three-year-old “sir.”
    â€œElvis Costello go BAM!”
    My forehead tightened. I loosened my grip on
Bona Drag
, let it fall back into the box. I had to restrain my child before he destroyed enough records to decimate my entire record-buying budget.
    â€œThat your kid?” I heard a voice ask, as I wrestled an already battered copy of
Spike
out of Charlie’s lobster claws. I looked up and saw two guys, roughly my own age, with the compulsory rock T-shirts—one sported a Dinosaur Jr. album illustration, the other was Guns N’ Roses. They had bodies like Russian nesting dolls, neckless and smooth. They were, thus far, the only people in this