SWIFT KICK TO THE SOLAR PLEXUS / DAVE SCHOOLS

How To Enhance Your Listening Experience By Stealing The Music You Love

Ever since I can remember, I've loved music. I don't mean loved so much as I mean I NEEDED music. Being an only child, music and books were my best friends.

My parents quickly realized that I could be placated with a weekly trip to Standard Drug Store, which sold a wide variety of 45 rpm records and even a few of the top-selling LPs of the day. The first thing they bought me was Deep Purple's version of the Neil Diamond tune "Kentucky Woman." My folks likely thought it was a "safe" record to buy their young son because it was a Neil Diamond-penned song, but my incessant listening to Purple's brutally loud and cool take on the song nearly drove my dad crazy.

After that, it was a steady diet of Creedence Clearwater Revival 45s. CCR seemed to have a new #1 single every month in those days, and it was a form of rock n' roll that my folks deemed non-threatening, at least compared to the mind-warping acid-rock of Deep Purple.

Soon, I inherited a box of 45s from a family friend who was being shipped off to fight in Vietnam and wanted me to have his collection. The gift was a goldmine: The Who, Sly & The Family Stone, The Turtles...not to mention other assorted one-hit wonders like The Bubble Puppy and the 1910 Fruitgum Company!

As my fierce desire for new music grew, my parents decided that it was time I graduated from the Mickey Mouse turntable - where Mickey's little arm served as the tone arm of the turntable - to an actual stereo system. The door was opened for the LP, and so began my endless journey from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin and beyond.

By the time I was 12 or 13 years old, my appetite for new music had outstripped my allowance, and I was forced to get creative. A paper route seemed like a sensible method of earning some money as I wasn't yet old enough to be a bag boy at the local Safeway. I lived in a compact neighborhood consisting mostly of little old ladies who paid up on time and sometimes gave the polite, young paperboy an extra tip. At the end of every week, I pooled my hard-earned cash from the paper route for my weekly bike ride to Gary's Stereo and Record shop in Willow Lawn.

Gary's was an amazing place, a stereotypical ‘70s multi-purpose cultural establishment. Upon entering the store, the customer was greeted on the right by a lengthy glass display counter filled with a rainbow assortment of what was then called "paraphernalia." Behind this counter lurked a couple of not-so-helpful sales clerks in the classic "too-stoned-to-help-you-yet-too-snobby-to-care-about-your-decidedly-unhip-needs" mode.

Every square inch of the walls at Gary's were lined with vinyl and posters proclaiming the newest major label releases. It was something beautiful to behold. To the left were the newest the Top 40 45s displayed in racks, six feet high. On the other side were the shelves where the LPs resided. Beyond the records, the store opened up into a much larger showroom that housed the stereo department.

Gary's was a wonderland to me: a place where I could go and just dig through the 12 x 12 inch pieces of art to my heart's content. I would go back and forth from one end to the other like a typewriter working my way from bottom row to top, repeating the process on the other side of the shelves until I'd zeroed in on just the right album to buy. I always stopped before I got to the Classical music section...that was for the old folks.

I was a huge Pink Floyd fan, having been turned onto them a few years earlier by my camp counselor, Klaus, who had come to Camp Greenbriar from Germany with tapes he recorded off of Berlin radio stations that were filled with "The Pink Floyd Sound" and other strange kraut rock.

The gap between Floyd releases was interminable to their fans, usually two or three years. It was during the period between Wish You Were Here and the release of Animals that I discovered and became enchanted by the cover of a Floyd LP that I had never seen before: Ummagumma.

Ummagumma was a much-sought-after double LP containing both a studio album and live show recorded in the U.K. in June 1969. My paper route earnings, when combined with my allowance, only amounted to enough cash to purchase a single LP for $5.99. Ummagumma was a bargain priced at $10.99, but it was still too pricey for my wallet. But I needed that music NOW. There was no way I could wait for two weeks and actually save up the money needed to purchase it, so I devised a plan to STEAL the record.

I always had a few extra copies of the evening paper in my shoulder satchel and would often take them into Gary's after my route to give to the guys who worked in the store. Over time, they warmed up to me as I became a regular and faithful customer. My loyalties wouldn't allow me to go to Peaches Records; besides, Peaches was way out on Broad Street, far beyond my bike-riding range.

Testing out the size of my paper satchel with a record or two at home, I discovered that if I slipped the record between the extra copies of the paper, no one would be the wiser. I planned to wait until a day when the papers were thick and heavy with advertisements - usually Wednesdays or Fridays - in order to smuggle the double record out of the store.

The days crept by until that next Wednesday afternoon when I nervously began the bike ride from the end of my paper route to the Willow Lawn shopping center with a few extra copies of the Richmond News Leader in my bag. I excitedly entered Gary's, said my hellos, slipped the extra copy of the paper to the guys at the register, and began my usual routine of perusing the record shelves.

Having spent so much time there, I knew the layout of the store fairly well and had found a few blind spots where I could stand and pretend to look at records while performing the "lift." No store employees would be able to see me, especially if I waited until the guy in the stereo department was busy with a potential customer. He loved to tell his customers stories about his days as a roadie in the 60s, as if this would somehow soften even the toughest buyer into purchasing a new hi-fi system.

I picked up a copy of the double live Status Quo record and carried it to where the Pink Floyd records were located. Pretending to be fascinated with the liner notes, I placed it on top of a copy of the coveted Ummagumma LP, which I had put in the front row for easier access earlier that week.

As the moment of truth approached, the FEAR began to grab hold of me. I hadn't even smoked pot yet in my life, but suddenly for the first time, I understood paranoia. The bottoms of my feet went numb, and I was engulfed in a cold sweat. My ears felt hot and I could feel my face, red and glistening. Surely the clerks at the front counter knew what I was up to and were calling the cops!

Peering cautiously at them over my shoulder, I could see that one clerk was reading the comics section of the paper while the other was demonstrating to a pair of older teenage girls the proper use of a waterpipe that had several hoses extended from its barrel and what appeared to be a detonator type plunger attached to its top. They giggled at the clerk's suggestion that they should go to his van so he could show them how to use the thing for real.

I slowly turned my head back to the stereo department, where my eyes met those of the ex-roadie salesman. Was I caught? How could I be? I hadn't done anything wrong...yet. I took a deep breath and made eye contact with him once again as if to disarm any possible suspicion. He was glassy-eyed and staring right through me, bored (and likely stoned) out of his mind with not a customer in sight. I decided quickly that I was going to have to make the five-finger discount over by the dreaded Classical music section. It was the only place where I was completely covered from view from both ends of the store. It was probably designed that way....after all, who shoplifts classical albums anyway?

I made my way over to the classical rack with both the Status Quo and Pink Floyd records stacked together and feigned interest in the London Symphony's rendition of "Swan Lake." Holding my breath, I quickly slid the Floyd LP into my satchel while keeping the Status Quo record visible to anyone who might be looking. While this was truly a remarkable performance of sleight of hand, my paranoia screamed that the satchel was bulging with my stolen booty, but my common sense counseled that it looked exactly the way it always did.

As quickly as I could without attracting any undue attention, I returned the Status Quo vinyl to its proper place and, turning, steeled myself for the real moment of truth: the walk past the guys at the cash register. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I felt as if I was going to faint at any moment. There was a loud buzzing in my ears as the clerk who'd been reading the comics said, "Not buying anything today?" It was all I could do to simply mutter something about having to meet my mom for dinner before I lurched clumsily through the doors and out into the freedom of the fresh air.

Mounting my trusty Schwinn 10-speed, I turned back to the store to make sure no one was coming after me before peddling like the wind for home, nearly being mowed over by a speeding car on Monument Avenue that was in even more of a hurry than I was. I did the usual teenaged zombie walk past my mom and went straight upstairs to my lair, pulling the brilliantly smuggled treasure from my satchel and into the light where I could admire it.

Carefully, I slit the album's shrink-wrap and looked wide-eyed upon the iconic image of the members of Pink Floyd that adorned the cover. It was so beautiful. I slid the black vinyl platter from its protective white sleeve and placed it on my turntable. As the needle caught the groove and the first pulsing beats of "Astronomy Domine" began, I dimmed the lights and prepared myself for what was surely to be the greatest moment in my music-listening career.

But something was wrong. As the music flowed freely from the speakers with absolute clarity and Waters and Gilmour sang the line, "floating down the sound resounds around the icy waters underground," I realized what it was: my conscience was catching up to me. Guilt was picking apart my new favorite Pink Floyd song before I even realized how great it was!

I was a teenage shoplifter.

I couldn't make it through the entire song. I wanted to confess, to turn myself in to the Gary's police, but I knew what the store manager did to shoplifters....THEY TOLD THEIR PARENTS!! And as far as I was concerned, any jail was better than having to face that look of disappointment in my mother's eyes.

In these days of downloading gigabytes of music in the blink of an eye, "stealing" doesn't really seem like that harsh of a word. Hell, even I've downloaded music without paying for it. Granted, it was an obscure live track of Radiohead performing "The Spy Who Loved Me" downloaded via a freshly installed version of LIMEWIRE, but Karma justly rewarded my offense with a fantastic array of malware and spyware that permanently crippled my PC and forced my timely leap of faith into Mac Nation. Still, I loved the fact that I had this glorious cover version of a song from my childhood performed by one of my favorite modern bands.

The moral dilemma was far more clearly delineated when I returned to the scene of the crime all those years ago, pedaling back to Gary's after a few days cooling off period spent hiding my guilty expression from my mom.

There was no yellow police tape cordoning off the Pink Floyd section. No one seemed overly suspicious. The front display guys were doing their usual shuck and jive with the paraphernalia, and the glassy-eyed stereo salesman was regaling a customer with the story of how he'd once been the guitar tech for Iron Butterfly guitarist Erik Braunn and how Braunn wore black gloves that he only took off to perform. Since my life had deviated into the criminal dark side, I bought a copy of Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality and hastened home.

A few months later, I was caught by my mom after having smoked weed for the first time while listening to "Sweet Leaf" with the kid down the street. His name was Skippy, and he shot squirrels off the power lines with his pellet gun. He also had a really hot older sister. It wasn't too long before I could enjoy all four sides of Ummagumma (although you have to be REALLY stoned to fully enjoy Roger Waters' "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave and Grooving with a Pict"), but in listening to the album over and over again, I can tell you that the weeks of craven guilt and shame I felt for having stolen it only served to enhance the alienating and dark music that lay etched into its vinyl grooves. Ummagumma became the soundtrack to that period of my life as I tested the limits of the law and my mother's patience, nothing too out of the ordinary for a teenager in the late 70's.

Despite my criminal history, I'd like to think that I've cleared my karmic debt with Pink Floyd by purchasing every conceivable repackaging of Dark Side of The Moon they've issued over the years. Hopefully, I'm free and clear with Gary's, too - having bought the vast majority of my vinyl collection, stereo equipment and first Tokemaster bong there.

Sure, times have changed and stealing music has become the norm. Can you imagine what it might have been like had today's tolerance of music theft been present in the 70s? Thousands of music lovers would have been literally carting away the entire recorded histories of their favorite artists! And guilt free at that. I think I'm jealous!

I truly believe today's music lovers have no clue about the theft of music. In their minds, it's not stealing at all. It's as if the digital frontier is akin to the land grabs of the Old West, ready for the taking by those savvy enough to navigate the uncharted territory. But besides breaking the law, are today's digital music lovers robbing themselves of a vital experience in music enjoyment? Maybe the music thieves of today are missing a crucial ingredient from their collections: guilt.

Guilt is so wrapped up in my feelings towards Ummagumma that I don't know if it would sound the same without it. It's part and parcel of the burden of enjoyment I have to bear while listening to this great recording. I'm not sure if listeners in the digital downloading era understand the full appreciation that develops as a result of bearing that burden. And let us not forget the actual physical burden of having to carry all that vinyl around!

The guilt of stealing music shouldn't be as easy a burden to carry around as the weight of an iPod. I often ponder the remarkable reality that my entire 44-year history of collecting and devouring music - encompassing more than 30,000 songs - can now fit into a portable device no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. It seems kind of sad, especially if you consider the hoops that a child of the vinyl era had to jump through in order to achieve a decent record collection. It's just too easy to slip my iPod into my pocket and go.

But when I do, "The Spy Who Loved Me" just never sounds as heavy as "Astronomy Domine."

Widespread Panic's Dave Schools regularly gathers together with all sorts of furry musicians - sometimes in caves, even - and grooves with more than just a pict in the process....

(Photo Credit: Chris Wilson (www.christopherwilsonphoto.com)