David - I promise that I am not trying to one-up you, but your story reminds me of a horrible night when I worked at Plastic Fantastic in Ardmore PA for the aforementioned clown Harold Gold.

One Friday night (and Friday nights were always very busy), Harold thought it would be a good idea to play Marianne Faithfull's "Why'd You Do It?" on the store turntable.  I had never heard the song before, so I was as surprised as the rest of the store when the song played on.  I watched as one by one customers started understanding what was being sung, and I felt as uneasy about it as they did.  I don't recall people flying out of the store, but the looks of shock on their faces stays with me.  I suppose that was Harold's intent, but I still don't understand why.

Michael

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "David Bash" <bashpop@earthlink.net> 

> --- In audities@yahoogroups.com, Career Records wrote: 
> 
> > I think the Reckless in SF was one of the snootier shops I'd visited, 
> > but I've gotten a lot of indifferent useless help along the way. In the 
> > old days at Rhino, there were some very opinionated guys. I did see them 
> > fool a Zep hating coworker into liking a Zep track... 
> 
> Having lived in LA since 1982, I had the opportunity to shop at the recently 
> departed Rhino Records several times. For many years, particularly in the 
> '80s, the counters were run by very smarmy, grad student types (please don't 
> be offended by that-I was a grad student as well) who fancied themselves 
> extremely clever. One night when I was there, they were playing side one of 
> Patti Smith's "Easter" album, which ends with the song "Rock 'N Roll 
> Nigger". If you've never heard that song, Smith uses the N word several 
> times, culminating with her repeatedly yelling the word at the end of the 
> bridge. Anyway, on that particular night there were several 
> African-Americans in the shop, which was not a very common occurrence; now, 
> I can't be sure, but my guess is that the guys behind the counter knew the 
> album very well, and thought it would be "ooh, so deliciously ironic if we 
> played it while these people are in the store". When the song before "Rock 
> 'N Roll Nigger" came on, I went up to the counter and explained to these 
> guys that the next song would be particularly offensive to several of their 
> customers, who probably will not consider that Smith was trying to make a 
> point about prejudice. They kind of gave me a blank stare, and I left the 
> store before I could see what transpired. Hopefully good sense overruled 
> their desire to be the kings of irony, and they took the record off the 
> player. 
> -- 
> Bad Scene, Man. 
> David 
>