By Byron Spooner I also grabbed the new Nick Lowe, The Old Magic, for old times’ sake and found the former new wave pop parodist and svengali/producer sounding like Buddy Holly in the middle age he never reached. This is a compliment, especially when one considers how the bright spirits of Holly and the Everly [...]

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By Byron Spooner I got sick of listening to all the stuff I have stacked on my desk—Blind Blake, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Gram Parsons, Workingman’s Dead, Anthony Braxton,  Blind Willie McTell—plus playing music on the laptop sounds like shit, so I went out and bought a bunch of new CDs and tossed them in [...]

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By Byron Spooner Still, it came as something of a surprise when Ruth announced she wanted a divorce.  I mean I’d gotten the feeling things weren’t going exactly as she’d planned, but everything seemed okay on my end, so what the fuck, right? Maybe I worked too much, maybe I drank too much, maybe I [...]

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By Byron Spooner Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys became yet another of our musical obsessions.  Frank and I had both read Nick Tosches’ book Country: The Biggest Music in America and figured it was just about the best book ever written on country music, perhaps on all of American music. With chapter headings lurid [...]

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By Byron Spooner “…and he’s lying there in an alley, drinking Woolite,” Frank said. “Yeah, it’s Gene Wilder.” “Oh, yeah, I forgot that.” My wife, Ruth, walked in one late morning, as was her habit on her day off.   A little thing and perky, smart and outgoing, with a big nervous smile that opened every [...]

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By Byron Spooner Albert would generally wander in after his lunch completely fucked up. Most mornings he’d have a hit or two with his second cup of coffee, right before leaving the house; just enough to be a little slap-happy for the morning shift, but lunch time called for a full bowl, or even two [...]

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By Byron Spooner When Frank and I moved to Marin County and opened the book store in San Rafael we assumed we were opening in an affluent suburb pretty much like any other. And in many regards we were absolutely right. It was a suburb ten miles north of San Francisco with a large, thriving [...]

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By Byron Spooner Witherup was a certified, diagnosed mental case and Albert a full-time stoner, characteristics not widely regarded to be resume-toppers in the business world but just about dead-square on the mean in used-bookselling.  After all, no lives depended on their performance or ours. It wasn’t like we were dog sledding the vaccines to [...]

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By Byron Spooner As they say in the real estate industry, the house doesn’t present well.  The mustard paintjob has seen better days and the porch steps haven’t been hosed off in a decade or more.  It’s narrow and deep and set back only five or six feet from the sidewalk. No one’s kept up [...]

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By Byron Spooner I hang up the phone.  The first thing that occurs to me as I pause to absorb the news that Albert has gotten busted is that it’s not my problem.  Definitely not.  Albert doesn’t work here anymore. Besides, when he did work here his hiring hadn’t even been my decision.  I’d merely [...]

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