When I was about seventeen I worked in a record shop. Actually it was a record shoppe - Sandy Bay Hi Fi and Eduardo’s Record Shoppe to be exact. I’d just finished Grade 12, with marks reflecting my lack of interest, and spent nine months being the co-host of a music video show called Between The Teeth, which was on before Beatbox on Saturday mornings on the ABC. Possibly the only show in history to have virtually never been seen by anyone, although one of my old boyfriends taped a song from the end of the show, which had my credit on it. He couldn’t remember having ever actually watched it though.

Working in at Eduardo’s was mindless but awesome. I loved music, I got to talk to heaps of people, and order in obscure records I couldn’t find anywhere else. Because the shop was in the carpark of a supermarket, we didn’t get much passing trade, so a lot of the time I could blast whatever crazy tunes I wanted and no one minded. It was in some of my massive downtime I discovered Tom Waits. I’m pretty sure it was Heart Attack and Vine, which someone had ordered, then never picked up. Although I was mostly into the Ramones and Australian bands on the Au-Go-Go label, I instantly loved the insanity of a crazy raspy voice, and music that didn’t seem to make any sense.

This was in 1987, so CD’s were just starting to appear, but almost no one I knew had a CD player. We speciallised in CD’s, so the reps from the turntable companies would come in and verbally trash CD players, the CD reps were evangelical in their hatred of vinyl. I liked vinyl, mainly because it seemed like much better value for money, and the bands I liked always had awesome covers.

Some of my favorite Eduardo’s memories:

On Saturdays (our busiest day) I’d be ordered to play CD’s from our ambient collection. One day I had ten people ask me where the toilets were after I played a CD featuring a babbling brook. I was under orders not to let anyone use said toilets, which didn’t really make anyone happy. I remember sniggering quietly to myself though.

One turntable rep setting up a demonstration using Joe Satriani’s Surfing With The Alien on vinyl and CD, and switching back and forth between the two, with the volume at about 10. He was cool, and he was right about vinyl sounding better.

Meeting one of my favorite boyfriends, Matt, over the phone while doing an order from BMG, who refused to send a rep down to deal with us because we were so tiny. I ended up moving to Melbourne to live with him.

Smearing a CD with peanut butter and still being able to play it, but I honestly don’t know how that worked, or why we didn’t destroy the highly expensive piece of equipment it was played in.

Every Saturday I’d go to work with the most hideous hangover. Over the carpark from us was a coffee roaster, and I’d made friends with a very disturbed young man who worked there and hated my boss more than anything. He’d bring me a cup of whatever coffee they were roasting that day, and stay to bitch for about ten minutes. Ah, that sweet sweet caffeine …

The cute boy who’d come in sometimes, and my friend Leisa and I nicknamed the Body Beautiful. Man he was dumb, but he lived up to his nickname.

Last night, as Miss M and I were eating dinner, she surprised and amused me by putting on a Tom Waits CD - The Heart of Saturday Night, which is quite melancholy, but slightly more accessible than some of the others. After she finished her ravioli, she played some air piano, then got up and did some Isadora Duncan style interpretive dancing to the second track (I’m not sure what it’s called, because someone burned it for me), which ended with her collapsing to the floor as though dead. This morning she played it again, this time without the dancing. The girl might not like Carly Simon, but any seven year old who digs Tom Waits has character.

Today I’m loving: the guilty pleasure of cancelling an hour of work! And brownies.