Entente Cordiale

It's gonna be a gas working with my old friend Kevin at the store from here on out. He's transferring to my store from the Norfolk Wherehouse to be our new POS manager since Amanda is leaving at the beginning of next week. Kevin and I have known each other for going on 18 years now, having worked together in various local record stores as far back as the 80's (his cousin Ted was my boss over at the old Music Man from 1989-91), and when the two of us get together reminiscing it's like that scene from the movie Jaws where the guys are on the boat showing off their battle scars like old war vets, with Kevin rolling up his sleeve saying "I got this one from a customer at Music Man back in 1988..." and me throwing my leg up on the table saying, "Oh yeah? Well I got this one from a customer at Fantasy back in 2002...". So yesterday when Kevin walked up to me on the floor and we got to catching up with each other, there was this detection from my end of an odd sadness between us. Or a bit of resigned defeat. Or a shrug of inevitability. Maybe a mixture of all three. But when I told him that I was happy to have him working with me again, just like old times, he just sighed and said, "Yeah. Or just happy to keep doing this for as long as either of us are able to at this point." Whether he knows something I don't, or if he's just another fellow music biz veteran familiar with all the signs and the harbingers that hark back to the closing of the Music Man, both of us just sort of looked each other in the eye and nodded in mutual agreement.

Speaking of vets, I also just learned yesterday that my friend David, former Music Man associate and Manhattan Tower Records manager, no longer works at Caroline Records, a position that he's held for almost 13 years, and now works delivery for for NYC's UPS. I was told by a mutual friend that David was even offered a job with another record company but he turned it down. The music business, he said, was just too unstable right now to invest his future with another label.

How long do I have to keep banging my own thick skull against the wall before I finally start seeing the writing on it?