File this under: Profiles in Crate Diggers.
There’s a lot of talk these days about the loss or lack of “third places.” The kinds of spaces that are neither home nor work, where you can go to enjoy community with others. Count record stores such as Cheapo Records in Central Square as one of those “third places” where you can still strike up new and interesting acquaintances IRL (“in real life”).
I met Randolph, a distinguished older gentleman with glasses, who had a wadded-up tissue in his right nostril and a mild skin condition, digging among the discount crates in the outer vestibule of Cheapo Records last Saturday. We exchanged a few pleasantries, a few words, and I was glad we did. The encounter put a warm glow on the rest of the afternoon.
Randolph addressed me first. He eyed with interest the Al Hirt record that I had pulled from the stack.
The trumpeter and New Orleans bandleader Al Hirt was also known as “The Round Mound of Sound” due to his generous proportions. Career highlights include a raft of effervescent if unprofound hits during the 1960s, a halftime performance at Super Bowl IV, getting hit in the mouth with a brick on a Mardi Gras float (lampooned by SNL with the “Let’s Hit Al Hirt in the Mouth with a Brick Contest” skit), and playing “Ave Maria” for the pope in 1987.
A solid brassman from the days of yore, to be sure, but not widely coveted by collectors and connoisseurs. Hirt pressed a lot of records in a four-decade career and blew a sweet trumpet, which is not to say that he made any lasting contribution to the music tradition that is waiting to be rediscovered. Hence his inclusion in the $1 crates at the door to Cheapo Records.
To collect Al Hirt records in 2025, you have to be an odd duck. Randolph and I are both odd ducks, who brought different admixtures of historical curiosity and sentimentality to the record I had set aside: Al Hirt’s “That Honey Horn Sound.”
“Are you going to buy that one?” Randolph asked.
I had planned to, but, suddenly, I felt like I had stolen the album out from under him. Fairly or not, I felt like a thief. And it gave me pause to reflect whether I was bringing the same amount of passion to the purchase that Randolph might bring.
I looked deep into the eyes of Al Hirt on the record cover. Hirt’s jowly portrait stood out against a lush purple backdrop, with slicked-back hair and checkered suit, grinning like he had just eaten a freshly baked pie off my grandmother’s windowsill. Should I pass this one on to Randolph?
I offered my fellow crate digger the record. He gently demurred. There’s community among crate diggers, especially the $1 crate variety. But the law of “finders keepers” still holds firm. And if I wasn’t following the law, Randolph would follow it for me.
He introduced himself and immediately began extolling the virtues of The Round Mound of Sound. I could only agree, letting out a flurry of yeses and yeahs, which, when I’m tired, or hungover, or hungry, or all three, tend to get clipped into Germanic-sounding jahs.
“Did you study German?” Randolph asked.
In fact, I had. I’ve studied German, and many other subjects, some of which I even remember.
“Yes,” I answered, making a quick mental calculation of whether responding with a “jah” was too on the nose.
“Then you must have studied the great poet Goethe.”
“Yes, I think so.” Somewhere on my bookshelves there was a near mint German-language copy of Faust in two volumes.
“Then you must know his most famous phrase.”
This is the point at which I started to feel a little smug and superior. Goethe was a literary giant that our era mines for quotes, aphorisms and zingers instead of reading his works through. I hesitated in my reply, lest I become complicit with Randolph’s reductivist agenda. I even thought to chide the old man for his simplicity. But then I looked at the balled-up wad of tissue in his nose, and reflected on my own unthumbed volumes of Faust, and I thought better of it.
“He’s got many famous phrases,” I offered.
“But this one is the most famous,” he continued: “Ich bin ein weltbürger.”
I am a world citizen. That’s what Goethe said. What a beautiful phrase. Can you imagine the kind of treatment you’d receive for getting up on a soapbox and singing that tune in public these days? You’d be tarred, feathered and hung up by your heels from the nearest lamppost by “patriots.” Randolph and I discussed what valuable lessons the phrase could teach our present moment.
We talked a bit longer about work, life and other little things before I had to leave for a concert at MIT. I wished him a good day, folded the Al Hirt record under my arm and floated like a red balloon towards the cash register and the rest of my day.
Hit this
Friday: Bitch (Club Passim, Cambridge)
Queer icon, actress, musician, writer, “feminist force.” Bitch (aka Capital B, Karen Mould) is everything except a female dog and the kitchen sink. She’s been around the block in music, theater and comedy, bringing every kind of entertainment to the stage with thought-provoking punch. What type of show is she bringing to Harvard Square? Not sure, to be honest. And maybe the artist isn’t either. The promotional video clip at the event page suggests we’re in for music. Be ready for anything and, like they say in “The Bachelor,” “open to love.”
Saturday: The Debo Ray Experience (The Burren, Somerville)
Debo Ray is a multitool, genre-spanning singer, Berklee teacher and omnipresent gigger around town. The Burren is the perfect kind of intimate venue where you can appreciate her charisma up close. Like most performers, she thrives when she feels the energy she’s putting out to the crowd bounced right back. So sip a few and get into it. You won’t fail to find joy in her spin on songs from, or originals deeply indebted to, the pop, rock, and R&B traditions of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.
Oct. 17: Tysk Tsyk Task, The Ghouls, Makeout Palace (The Lilypad, Cambridge)
Any one of these bands could serve as a suitable headliner for a show at the House of the Lily. Get your tickets now. Neo-grunge all-stars Tysk Tysk Task are currently the only band listed in the header of the event listing at the Lilypad website, so let’s shout them out first. Fronter Samantha Hartsel has been refining the TTT sound for years, gigging at every venue under the sun. In grunge terms, “refining” means knowing when to hammer the noise, and she’s surrounded herself with A+ noisemakers who know how to do just that. What to say about the 2024 Rock N Roll Rumble winners The Ghouls that hasn’t already been said in sentences that begin with the words “What to say about the 2024 Rock N Roll Rumble winners The Ghouls … ?” And Makeout Palace are freshly tuned up after kicking out the jamz at this year’s Fuzzstival.
Live: Dissolve at MIT
The electronic and experimental music event known as Dissolve returned to a blackbox theater at MIT on Saturday. Part lectures, part performances, the hybrid event presented by The MIT Spatial Sound Lab positions itself at the bleeding edge of technology and the art of sound.
The promise, puzzle and pains of artificial intelligence, venture capital’s flavor of the month, was foregrounded in many of the talks and performances. Doctoral student Mishra interwove his otherwise elegant performance of laptop electronica with an AI-component of dubious artistic value. While the music played, the audience logged into a chat via a QR code and fed Mishra token phrases such as “Grimace milkshake” and “Shoegaze type beat,” which he then used as prompts for an AI music program to redirect the evolving sound.
What kind of music does AI contrive with the prompt “Grimace milkshake?” The kind of music where you feel the seconds and minutes of your life ticking away and piling up into a meaningless heap of nothing.
Dance also featured on the program. Dan Safer and Ishmael Houston-Jones wowed the crowd with postmodern choreography set to a musical score by Christian Frederickson, who, mercifully, had little to say about machines that think.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
A stronger
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