Going through the piles of records at those stores was a major part of the fun. I didn't care about getting down onto the dusty floor if I had to—I wore the dust as a badge of honor. And I learned so much just from looking at the singles' labels. It was a real education in who wrote what, who produced what. And the joy of finding a record that I never knew existed that was written or produced by one of my favorite creative people—like all that weird and wonderful Joey Levine/Kasenetz & Katz stuff that kept turning up.

All those memories and more come to mind reading R. Stevie Moore's brief e-missive [that's him at right], which he has generously allowed me to reprint here:

From: R. Stevie Moore
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 10:46:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Records

i just awoke from a deeeep dream about our old used vinyl hunts and haunts. wow! those days are sadly gone (us now and our Amazon, eBay and Google...Ha! whod'a ever thunk?), but here i sit on the kitchen floor in 2003, going thru all my old 45's!! thank jesus i didn't toss them (yet).

god, it's so incredibly spooky! that musty smell, checkin A & B-sides, chart positions which I'd scribble on faded labels, matched record company sleeves to discs... man, i love my records! 45 years of 45's!!! I still own some of my very first 7-inchers. ones uncle Harry gave me when I was only 6 (!!), which still have those tiny adhesive stickers with brown numbers for organizing in some strange order. remembering those old carrying cases with the manila folders, A to Z.

still got many of my original mid-60's purchases (77¢!)... many with colorful Dymo-tape "STEVE MOORE" owner identifications carefully lined up & stuck on the labels.

when I first moved up here, we usedta go buy them by the trunk full, bring 'em home, clean 'em up. always the fun game of 'you can't judge the condition merely by sight'. some looked mint, but on playing they sounded horrific. and vice versa: ones that were grimy and gouged might explode from the speakers, and the more they were cleaned and played, the better they would come to sound. would often hafta regularly wipe off the stylus of accumulated gunk! ugh! and, often a skip caused by an 'external' dot of dirt could be repaired like new, simply by scooping it out with fingernail and spinning it a few more times!

and off center pressings! often when making fill-up cassettes, would need to carefully reposition the 45 (without the adapter!) so that it would be properly centered.

i love my 45's!! alphabetically stacked, i still got the rockers, the pop vocalists, the old classical, the doo wop, the spoken word, the hits, the misses, the country, the punk imports, the soul, the jazz, the parakeet teaching records, ALL of it! many stuffed two to a sleeve... it's sentimentally hard to weed out the worthless junk ones.

still pulling 'em out, oughta keep burning 'em all on CDR.

so incredibly sad, a lost golden era.

"Records are second to none, the way I choose to entertain myself..."

i'll take them to my grave, i guess!

"Hey, why's everybody watching TV? I got some RECORDS, people!!"

and nowadays, the very memory of 45's is becoming as archaic as 78's and wax cylinders!

forever young,
teenage mooreman