January, Virginia: Crooked Beat / Pet Sounds

Snow is a big deal if you live in a place where it rarely happens. My area got eight inches on Monday, January 3, and for a day, it was magical. 

By that weekend, we were irritated. The town remained crippled. Shovels were sold out at the hardware stores. People fought online about whether someone owned a parking space after spending hours clearing it out. (As a former Chicago resident, my take would be: fuck yes, you own it.) That Saturday was windy and cold. The snow, now impacted into snowbanks speckled with gravel, had long since lost its magic. Christmas and New Year’s were long gone. This is the part of the year that just plain sucks.

I am embarrassed to admit I had to Google local record stores. I went to the one closest to me: Crooked Beat Records.

 

Crooked Beat is tucked away in Old Town, Alexandria. Old Town is an odd mixture of cobblestone kitsch and subsidized housing. The main drag, King Street, is lined with boutiques and restaurants that get just enough tourist, day-tripper traffic that they can get away with being mediocre. I often bring visitors to Old Town because it’s undeniably charming. On my own, I rarely end up there. I had not known, and would not have guessed, that a record shop was hiding on a side street.

Turns out, Crooked Beat used to be located elsewhere. Adams Morgan, D.C., in fact. They closed up shop, apparently, due to the original location’s rat problem. Anyone who has spent an evening in Adams Morgan will find this easy to believe.

Crooked Beat is small in a comforting way. It feels well-curated: they’re not simply trying to sell anything and everything that came out that month. The place is more or less one aisle, with an island in the middle. A small bin of local music (primarily, but not exclusively, Dischord) is the first thing you encounter when you enter. Clash t-shirts and rare albums are displayed behind the counter. Two men were working that day, talking about the recent news of David Bowie’s estate selling the rights to his music for five hundred million dollars. A compilation of 1960s garage psychedelia was playing on a turntable.

I paced the store until I felt I’d lingered too long. I had Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy under my arm but swapped it out at the last minute for Pet Sounds.

One customer, a regular, was ahead of me at the counter, purchasing a dozen or so records. He chatted with the cashier, and I was briefly annoyed at the wait. Then I thought: No, this is part of it. Being a human, in a line, on a shitty day, waiting his turn. This is part of the tactile, non-screen life that I supposedly want to get back to.

When it was my turn, the cashier held the record up at his co-worker: This was our biggest seller last year. More than any new record.

Their biggest seller. Well, of course. Any serious conversation about the greatest American album ought to at least mention Pet Sounds. In fact, so much has been said and written about it, I’m not going to bother adding to the pile. Except to say that it seemed like the perfect record on that shitty, winter day. 

Pet Sounds, if you could somehow squint your ears, might come off as a sunny, ebullient record. Which, to me, makes its unique brand of melancholy all the more affecting. Think of some of the mopey poet-songwriters of that era:

   Simon & Garfunkel: A winter's day...in a bleak, and dark December...

   Leonard Cohen: It's four in the morning, the end of December...

Beautiful stuff, but I also want to say to them: Dude, anyone can be depressed in New York. It's another thing entirely when the Beach Boys let anxiety rise to the surface amid plinking harpsichord notes and random bicycle horns. Like most people, the first songs I knew by this band involved surfing, drag racing, girls, beaches, and school spirit. As The Beatles proclaimed, they didn't know how lucky they were. Is it vindicating or disappointing to know that you can be just as anxious and alienated in the sand and sun as you can in New York in winter?

   The Mamas and the Papas: I’d be safe and warm, if I was in L.A....

Brian Wilson would beg to differ.