Wednesday. Hump day again. Got over the hump and I coast to the weekend, but with a stop off at a periodontist tomorrow afternoon and seeing the Slits at McSwells. Breaking my personal boycott of McSwells, after over a year of avoiding the place. That came into effect after breaking my boycott of Tunes, a record store in Hoboken where I bought my ticket for the Slits. I started my boycott of Tunes in June of 2005, McSwells boycott started in September of the same year. My vindictiveness is courtesy of my father. He was quite a vindictive chap in his day.

The boycott with Tunes started last year when I bought ‘The Name of this Band is Talking Heads’ a double cd of Talking Heads live for Julio’s birthday. I got it home and found there was no seal on the jewel box and the jewel box itself was broken. I turned around and went back to the store and complained saying they sold me a used product at full price. They insisted they didn’t, that the cd was actually in a listening post. I explained to them if the disc was played once, it was used. They were quite snotty and I swore never to go there again.

I called the store the next day and asked for the owner who was out so I left my number. The owner called back a few hours later and he seemed like a nice guy. I explained that I support independent record stores and was surprised at the attitude I was given. He said he was surprised that they didn’t give me my money back. I told him that they told me that they weren’t allowed to. Store credit only. Nice operation. The staff isn’t trusted to make judgment calls that the owner thinks they should have made. Of course when I gave the disc to Julio for his birthday, he didn’t notice the broken jewel box or the missing seal.

The McSwells boycott comes from seeing the dB’s last September. The band who had broken up back in the eighties had gotten back together. I had never seen them live and enjoyed their first two cd’s immensely. The dB’s were playing two nights and I bought tickets for both nights. It was a fun night, ran into old friends like Rita and a few others. My brother Frank was there and it was a good time. The band sounded just like their records, and that was a problem. I found myself bored standing in the crowded backroom with many balding, paunchy rock critics or wannabees listening to music that sounded just like the records.

What was I doing there?, I asked myself and decided the next night to sell my ticket back to McSwells. It was a sold out show and I didn’t think there would be a problem since when I used to work the door at McSwells we used to do that thing all the time, buy the ticket back and resell it to someone that wants it. No harm no foul and incredibly easy. But incredibly easy isn’t in the nature of the little Hitler that’s running the show now. He was/is an uber nerd, and I was constantly at loggerheads with him before he bought the club with two other partners. So I took it as his exacting revenge on me for all the strife that occurred between us twenty years before.

His excuse for not buying the ticket back was, ‘I can’t do that.’ He’s a friggin owner of the place and he could do anything but decided not to. Little fuck. So if I see him tomorrow, and he usually would ask when the old crowd that used to work or hang out there was coming back, if I see him, I’ll simply look away.