origins vol1...

I didn't have the opportunity to go away to college. I went to a University in New york City with no dorms, and I took the same bus I took when I went to high school. It was a bit of a rip off, considering it wasn't really my choice to stay in the city at that point, but at the time, I had no choice—I was still a little radioactive back then. Point is, I didn't get that quintessential college experience one gets from living in campus housing and all that entails.

My freshman year I started working at a Tower Records out in Carle Place, LI. December, 12 1991, at least I think it was the 12th, I'd ask Dave Cooper, but he's either drunk, dead or British, and either way, know one I know has seen him in at least 14 years. I worked there until December 30, 1997. That's a long time to work retail, but I needed to pay for school and then needed somewhere to hang out at before I was ready to join the rest of the work force in reality. Over the 6 years I worked there I met so many people, listened to so much music, ate so much taco bell, went to so many shows, drank so much beer, attended so many parties and smoke so many cigarettes that you can indeed say that my time at Tower Records was my college life. I bring it up because the point was raised last night in Brooklyn. I sat, ate, and helped save the world from alcohol with three of greatest and most legendary members of that era of my life.

Invariably, when we get together, which, thankfully, seems to be becoming a more regular thing these days, the old days come up—the parties, the people, the customers and the smoking breaks. However, what is refreshing is how much we end up talking about something else, whether its our own lives or life in general. I said to my host, Spag, last night, as I have in the past when we have crossed path at Croxely's, or punk rock shows or the Hempstead line that if a psychologist put the two of us in a room together and wagered whether we would become friends the hypothesis would read no. The same can be said about a lot of us that worked at Tower and ended up becoming friends, but Spag replied that we all seemed to have the same thing inside that brought us all together. A familiarity if you will. The same could be said about Sods and Anne. Although you would never guess any of us would become and remain friends at first glance, there were the four of us last night in Brooklyn, enjoying an incredible meal compliments of Spag over a decade later...

There was no Lenny, he's tending to the wilderness and his brood in North Carolina, or Andrea who is unexpectedly in town but unfortunately indisposed, our thoughts with her. There was no Hope or Reggie, although in a frenetic moment between the lemon grappa and G & Ts, we reached out to Arizona to see if they had Lenny's number. No Hripsack, Maureen, Mary Duggan, Chris Feehan or Ellen. Just us four—for now.

The thing you get from the college experience is the relationships you forge within the construct of being bound to the same environment. The same can be said about a place like Tower Records. A working environment unique like no other. We all came to Tower and worked there for a variety of reasons, but we stayed there and interacted there together because there was a common thread that tied us together and that in turn has brought us back together. This much I know—I wouldn't be the person I am now without, the thoughtfulness and steady ear of Sods, the sweetness and grace of Anne, and the energy and sheer will of Spag—then and now. Here's to many more trips to Brooklyn and the like.

Here's to listening to a couple of more records...