utilitarianism: n. The belief that the value of a thing or an action is
determined by its utility.
You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio
If you’re driving into town
With a dark cloud above you
Dial in the number
Who’s bound to love you
Oh honey you turn me on
I’m a radio
I’m a country station
I’m a little bit corny
I’m a wildwood flower
Waving for you
Broadcasting tower
Waving for you
And I’m sending you out
This signal here
I hope you can pick it up
Loud and clear
I know you don’t like weak women
You get bored so quick
And you don’t like strong women
‘Cause they’re hip to your tricks
It’s been dirty for dirty
Down the line
But you know
I come when you whistle
When you’re loving and kind
But if you’ve got too many doubts
If there’s no good reception for me
Then tune me out, ’cause honey
Who needs the static
It hurts the head
And you wind up cracking
And the day goes dismal
From “Breakfast Barney”
To the sign-off prayer
What a sorry face you get to wear
I’m going to tell you again now
If you’re still listening there
If you’re driving into town
With a dark cloud above you
Dial in the number
Who’s bound to love you
If you’re lying on the beach
With the transistor going
Kick off the sandflies honey
The love’s still flowing
If your head says forget it
But your heart’s still smoking
Call me at the station
The lines are open
– song circa 1972, by Joni Mitchell
You Burn Me Up, I’m A Cigarette
You burn me up I’m a cigarette
You hold my hand I begin to sweat
You make me nervous
Ooh I’m nervous
It must be real bad karma
For this to be my dharma
With you
You burn me up I’m a cigarette
Life with you is a loser’s bet
You make me crazy
Ooh I’m going crazy
Your therapeutic antics
Well they really make me frantic
With you
Strategic interaction irreducible fraction
Terminal inaction and a bitter hostile faction
I’m getting anxious
I’m franxious
Transactional diseases are the only thing that pleases
We
You burn me up I’m a cigarette
Demanding my attention which you’re not gonna get
What did the sage mean?
What had the sage seen?
Musical elation is my only consolation
Oh yeah
You burn me up I’m about to ignite
When you tell me you love me I give up this fight
I’m feeling put down my feelings shut down
I want rejuvenation from male emancipation
Strategic interaction terminal inaction
A bitter hostile faction irreducible fraction
Transactional diseases are the only thing that pleases
We
Concerned that he may not seem believable as an inebriated dancer, Fred Astaire got into character for a scene where he is supposed to drunkenly flail around a dance floor on New Year’s Eve by downing a shot of bourbon before each take.
Most of the footage used in this clip is from the seventh take (how many shots of bourbon are there in a standard fifth?)!
The film is Holiday Inn, from 1942.
Personally, if I’d had even two shots of booze, I’d probably be flat on my face like Astaire is in the perfectly-timed last second of this scene. But I can’t even dance when sober, so the comparison is hardly valid.
But here’s a more widely circulated one: CHOCOLATE “KISS” PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES
Mix together:
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. peanut butter
2 tbsp. milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla Sift together:
1 cup flour
1 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
Mix all together.
Form into balls and roll in sugar, flattening slightly.
Press a Hershey’s Chocolate Kiss in the top of each cookie.
Bake 7-10 minutes in a preheated 375°F oven.
Put into tupperware containers and serve to hungry music retail customers on the day after Thanksgiving.
[Update: The aforementioned “secret” recipe can be found here.]
Shortly after announcing, on 1 November 2007, the closing of Laser’s Edge Compact Discs, I was invited into the studios of public radio station WBHM to discuss my thoughts on my business and the business of music. Program Director Michael Krall (who maintains a blog with criminal infrequency here) asked me the questions, and the interview aired on ‘BHM’s local arts program, Tapestry. I was dealing with a severe sinus infection at the time and was completely fried on antibiotics. Knowing that, I was terrified to listen to the interview until today (5 December 2008…this post is back-dated). Here it is, including an excerpt from the midnight in-store that Josh Ritter performed at Laser’s Edge on Halloween night 2007.
Owner closes CD store before losing his edge
Posted by Mary Colurso November 09, 2007 5:00 AM Categories: Columns, Music
Fans lined up outside Laser’s Edge for an afternoon autograph signing with Taylor Hicks. (photo: al.com)
It’s a windy fall morning and Fred Osuna is sweeping the sidewalk in front of his store.
The small heap of dry, brown leaves on the sidewalk doesn’t reflect Osuna’s mood, which is reflective and relaxed, almost lighthearted.
He’s been a small-business owner for more than 16 years in downtown Homewood. “This is my home away from home,” says Osuna, 47, who lives in Crestwood. “I love this neighborhood.”
He’ll be leaving it in a couple of months, however. Osuna’s business, Laser’s Edge Compact Discs, is closing at the end of the year.
But don’t start weeping, bemoaning the state of the recording industry or hanging black garland over the door at 2825 18th St. South just yet.
Osuna says his decision to shut down after Christmas wasn’t the result of immediate financial problems or an inability to cope with short-term changes in the CD business. For now, he says, Laser’s Edge remains solid.
“Some people still love the excitement of the chase. They love exploring, looking for music or interacting at the store,” Osuna says.
He says he simply couldn’t predict that Laser’s Edge would be in similar shape in 2013. That’s how long his next lease would last, after the conclusion of the current lease at the end of January.
“I had to ask myself: What are the odds of still being successful in five years?” Osuna says. “Considering everything, I’d have to bet against it.”
Online music sales, discount chains and digital downloads have affected his sales, as they have made an impact on other independent music retailers, causing what Osuna calls “a little of a downward slope.” But there hasn’t been a deep or drastic spiral, he says.
“The writing started appearing on the wall in 1998 or ’99, but only because that’s when you started seeing people getting their music in other ways,” he says. “As things change, they eventually are going to overtake a business like this one.
Osuna says he decided to shut down before that happened.
“It’s time to make the step, make the jump,” he says. “It’s pretty much like taking the step to open the store. I know, deep down, that it’s a good business decision.”
To his way of thinking, Laser’s Edge reached a peak of sorts on Halloween, during an in-store performance with singer-songwriter Josh Ritter. Although artists ranging from Diana Krall to the Blind Boys of Alabama have played mini-concerts tucked into corners of Laser’s Edge (which has a total of 1,500 square feet), none of them had quite the poignant charm of Ritter’s late-night set.
“Josh was a prince, as always, barefoot and in a toga,” Osuna wrote in an e-mail newsletter the next day. “I stopped counting at 100 people, but even with the tight crowd and the very late hour — or perhaps because of it — the in-store was intimate and emotional.”
Osuna’s Nov. 1 message to customers — “a ridiculously difficult type of letter to write” — had much the same tone, delivering news that prompted many to call with their regrets or send him thanks for the memories via e-mail.
Some have been frequenting Laser’s Edge since June 29, 1991, when Osuna…heard the store’s cash register ring for the first time. (Osuna…became the sole owner [in 2000].)
The store’s appearance hasn’t altered much over the years, Osuna says, although computers have been introduced, listening stations have been installed and the daily soundtrack customers hear has been loaded — from CDs, naturally — into two maxed-out 80GB iPods.
Those iPods, holding perhaps 23,000 tracks, are likely to be auctioned along with other store memorabilia in January. Autographed posters and store fixtures will be on the auction block, as well.
“I’m going to have to find a place to buy music,” Osuna says, laughing.
Dismantling Laser’s Edge before its closing isn’t an option, he says. On a recent weekday, the store shows no signs of its impending demise. As always, the inventory — an estimated 5,500 to 6,000 CDs and DVDs — places an emphasis on classical and jazz recordings, along with a carefully chosen selection of rock, pop, folk, country, blues, R&B and world music.
Discs by local musicians occupy a prominent niche. In fact, three brown boxes stacked in a corner hold hundreds of copies of an item exclusive to the store: Taylor Hicks’ 2005 independent CD, “Under the Radar.”
When the “American Idol” winner was competing for the title on national TV in 20006, Hicks, a Hoover native, and Osuna struck a deal to make “Under the Radar” available to fans around the globe. No other retailer was permitted to sell it.
“I saw an opportunity and I jumped on it,” Osuna says. “The adrenaline was pushing, and it was fun. People from all over the world have come to the store because of it, from Finland and Japan and Canada.”
Osuna has been a near-constant presence at Laser’s Edge since Oct. 15, 2004, when he dismissed his staff to cut costs and go it alone. He says he isn’t sure what his professional future will hold, but his spare time — a luxury for someone accustomed to an 80-hour work week — is likely to be filled with bike rides, swims and lots of movie-going.
“I feel a little bit of sadness, but it’s exciting, too,” he says. “My mind is just full of ideas.”
Fred Osuna, left, [was] ready for business on the opening day of Laser’s Edge: June 29, 1991. In his office, Osuna still has a framed invitation from their preview party, held the night before.
FRED’S TOP 10 LASER’S EDGE MOMENTS
(FOR TODAY … ASK ME AGAIN TOMORROW) By Laser’s Edge owner Fred Osuna
1. Opening day (June 29, 1991): Our first customer, Amanda Wilson, buys eight copies of the Kathleen Battle & Jessye Norman CD, “Spirituals in Concert.”
2. Our first Christmas (1991): On Dec. 16, 1991, the store is quiet, everyone else goes to lunch and a woman walks in the back door holding a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. A limousine trunk full of laserdiscs and a $2,279.02 check later, she leaves. The crew then returns from lunch, wondering if it will ever get busy.
3. Shame Idols vs. the rain: Local band Shame Idols, including staff member Jesse Suttle on drums, plays an in-store performance so loud that no one notices the hurricane-force monsoon raging outside. The event is captured on videotape (the in-store, not the monsoon).
4. Hugging Diana Krall (1996): My friend Sherri Nielson and I escort relatively unknown jazz artist Diana Krall around town for three days, two concerts and a CD signing at Laser’s Edge. At the end of the weekend, Diana thanks me with a death-grip hug, and I let go first, opening the door wide for Elvis Costello.
5. The day after Thanksgiving: It’s a tradition she has created: My mother visits Birmingham from South Carolina every Thanksgiving, and descends upon the store that Friday with bundles of freshly baked cookies for the customers.
6. Ain’t nothin’ like ’em at Carnegie Hall: A visiting classical violinist asks us to take him to lunch at a barbecue joint recommended by his friend Itzhak, which is how…I find [myself] seated across a table from Gil Shaham and his Stradivarius at the original Dreamland in Tuscaloosa, sharing a slab of ribs.
7. A lesson for Ryan Adams (Jan. 24, 2003): Ron Sexsmith plays an in-store performance made up entirely of songs requested by an adoring full-house crowd — one song from each of his albums, in chronological order. During the set, I hear a clicking sound, and notice his girlfriend sitting on the floor at the back of the crowd, calmly knitting a sweater.
8. Receiving the NARM award (2002): Laser’s Edge wins the 2002 NARM Advertising Award for that year’s CD Sampler, which was designed as a tribute to my parents, featuring photographs of my mother and recently deceased father. Our competition includes upstarts such as Best Buy, Tower Records and Borders Books & Music.
9. Hem (2001): I hear a beautiful song called “Betting On Trains” on an Uncut magazine CD sampler, track down the album from an Irish Web site, find out the band is American, assume they’re from the Midwest, find out they’re from New York, assume they’re from rural upstate New York, discover they’re really from Brooklyn. My love affair with the unofficial Laser’s Edge house-band, Hem, begins.
10. Halloween with Josh Ritter (2007): At his midnight in-store, Josh Ritter — having earlier been told that I am to announce the store’s closing the following day — ends the evening with an a cappella Irish Toast.
I live in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, in a craftsman-style bungalow that needs constant renovation.
I have spent large chunks of my life in southern California (chunk #1) and the Boston metropolitan area, primarily Cambridge (chunk #2). Alabama is chunk #3.
Before my current, nearly 20-year run in the music industry, I held jobs doing psychiatric research at Massachusetts General Hospital, supervising the student crew at Harvard’s awe-inspiring Widener Library, tutoring Crimson undergrads in music history, cooking, bartending, gathering epidemiological data on retinal melanoma at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, and pursuing graduate study in Medical Psychology. I am convinced that there is a common thread among these things, but I haven’t yet discovered it.
Revelatory thought most often comes to me while in the shower or while swimming, and my astrological sign is Pisces (water, water, water). Otherwise, I am usually thinking of a solid half-dozen things at once, and this weblog may eventually represent many of them.
I am not conversant in Simpson ephemera, though when I have seen the show, I have laughed out loud. The Simpsonize Me! site was cool (obviously…above), and I even tried it with a picture of my cat.
I post something every single day, whether it is a fully-formed articulate idea or something that someone else wrote that I happen to find of interest. Maintaining a weblog can be an exercise executed in a vacuum and, since no man is a dust mite, I thrive on the few comments that any of you might have the generosity of keyboard to throw my way. I will always respond when there is an open door.
I have a mailbox at spitballarmy (at) aol (dot) com.
Here are some things I’ve been diggin’, of late (updated periodically):
![Fred Osuna, left,... [was] ready for business on the opening day of Laser's Edge: June 29, 1991.](wp-content/images/bhamnews_lasersedgeclosing_photo2.jpg)
I live in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, in a craftsman-style bungalow that needs constant renovation.
solid half-dozen things at once, and this weblog may eventually represent many of them.