I Feel Like I Found a Tape for Everybody
A follow-up to yesterday’s post about Upstairs at Eric’s.
Growing up it looks like I was about 10 miles from the Record Rack in Montrose in Houston, where the good dance records were.
This was no random, lucky find. This was the place to actually get great records. I found out about it in ninth grade, and before I think I was going to two different Sound Warehouses before, one near Memorial City Mall and one off Westheimer.
Both like super treacherous bike rides when I think about it. But I was pretty adept at zipping around on my Peugeot back then. And I always say, had cycling teams been easier to find out about, I would have been on one for sure. That would have been my thing. Still have the legs to prove it.
Anyway, after a bit of digging, turns out the Record Rack was directly connected to Numbers. The big question I had, after getting all the feedback from posting this cassette, was, how did we all hear about this record?
I think we were all pretty in tune with Numbers, and we had brothers and sisters, and it looks like this album only got to 92 on the Billboard chart. It was number four in Houston. And really popular in the inner city, and clearly got out to outside the loop, which would have been the start of the suburbs.
And when you’re a kid, you know how tight money is, so it’s not like you had that many records or tapes. So we were all just listening to our stuff over and over and over again.
I’m overwhelmed by how many people have the same love for this record. And normally, I’d be a bit pissed about that, but it’s real heartwarming.
I walked into a store today, saw an old friend, and she started talking about it immediately.
Actually, I got a DJ gig out of it too. I was so happy that the association was made. I’m doing it for nothing.
You can do that sometimes when you’re the DJ. You can do it all the time when you’re the DJ, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Maybe in a different country, in a different neighborhood, some of Vince Clarke’s bigger bands, like Depeche Mode and Erasure, may have done it more for some, but for me, this one remains the most important.
I don’t know if it’s the best. I can’t … I have no relativity about issues like this, because it’s just such a big thing to me. And clearly to other people.
And just like memories are feelings, the real sense of knowing that this community’s out there is just wonderful.
I’m so glad I found that tape. I feel like I found it for everybody.