Thirsty Thursday

In the U.S., neighborhood record stores are vanishing at an alarming rate. Brendan Toller’s documentary “I Need That Record!: The Death (Or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store” has taken a snapshot of the downward spiral of the music retail business as sales hit an all time low and offers us a look at the heartbreak and frustration that comes along with the world of iTUNES, corporate radio, and chain stores.

Born and bred in Hartford, Connecticut, twenty-one year old Toller began working on the documentary in ‘06 after finding out from a friend that his own local music haunt, Record Express, was shutting down.

“I was actually in L.A. and I got a call from my friend Jeff Slocum who told me,” Toller said. “And I was sad, but not too shocked because Ian [Laforce], the manager who’s in the film, would tell me they were just getting by the last few months and it would always be reported in the press that more and more record stores were closing.”

The death of Record Express, and the toll it takes on Laforce is part of the soul of the documentary. Laforce represents the everyman who has found their passion and a day job they love, only to have it all crumble while the media focuses on the decline of labels, ignoring the effects on people who aren’t pulling down a six-figure salary.

“They’d all point towards downloading or ‘well that’s the way the cookie crumbles, the iPod is the future’ and I thought ‘whoa, that’s really one sided,” Toller said. “There’s a lot other things going on. Big box stores, corporate radio control, the waste and excess of major labels, so I set out to sort of tell the whole story and try and chronicle all the changes that have happened since the launch of Napster.”

With no connections in the music industry, Toller simply reached out to a handful of legendary musicians in the hopes of finding out how they felt about the possible end of the American record store and discovered that they were all quite passionate about the subject.

“…especially the interview with Mike Watt. He was doing a poetry reading that day, so maybe he was in a more theatrical or introspective mood than normal but he was totally saddened by some questions [Toller asked] and looks troubled,” Toller said. “It’s a deep thing to see these stores potentially go. It’s not just shopping, it’s a real personal trip, as Watt puts it. Meeting people of all different ages, backgrounds and tastes, getting turned on to stuff you wouldn’t normally ever find… people were really enthused about [the film], which is why I think I was able to get the cast of characters. Thurston [Moore] and Glenn Branca, Chris Frantz, Lenny Kaye, Noam Chomsky, Patterson Hood, etc…I just wrote them and they were all into it.”

From Ian MacKaye [of Fugazi and Minor Threat] to Trash Records, who have to take their business on the road after being forced out of their store, everyone in the film feels the blow of having the local music scenes die a little bit every time a store closes and the community breaks apart a little more.

Toller spent three weeks crossing the country gathering the interviews and documenting the struggling businesses, making stops in New York City, Boston, Cleveland, Toledo, Anna Arbor, Detroit, Minneapolis and a number of other cultural hubs, collecting over seventy hours of footage.

“The owners who’d lost their stores, man, I mean to put everything you have into it… and to lose that… running a business, making a film, recording a record is a lot of fucking work and to just have it be gone and be taken over by something like Wal-Mart or a tanning salon has to be heartbreaking,” Toller said.

“We talked to Jesse Kempner, of Arons records, who were around for forty-some years and he had a heart attack closing his shop. [He] doesn’t even want to listen to music now. He said he will at some point, but that there’s still a lot of emotions there.”
Toller, whose time in film school obviously gave him a great feel for documentaries,
has dedicated his career to taking these intimate moments and creating a snapshot of a time and a feeling.

“I think film is a great medium not only to entertain but to teach, show, and enlighten,” Toller said about his reasons for making the film. “Again, it’s like I couldn’t even tell you the movies playing at the big movie dome down the street. They’re all the same oversexed, unfunny, guy-tries-to-get-girl stories marketed to teens who have nothing better to do on a Friday night… and these Hollywood people spend zillions of dollars on films. I spent maybe five-thousand.”

“I Need That Record” is in the final stages of editing, with Toller hopeful to get it out on the festival circuit this summer. The young documentarian is currently working on a film project with Danny Fields, the man who signed the Stooges, MC5, Nico and managed the Ramones.

With the relatively low cost of a decent digital camera, cell phones being packaged with video features, and the blogosphere opening the world up to amateur journalists, Toller is hopeful for the future.

“There’s so much shit going wrong right now… people with cameras, a good crew and vision can intervene.”

Originally published in the Spring ‘08 issue of Ghettoblaster, a quarterly culture and entertainment mag.

Last May, Robert Downey Jr.’s return to the screen as “Iron Man” dominated theaters nationwide and with that Marvel has revived a brand new series for the other infamous man of steel. Writer Matt Fraction stepped into the fray and took the risky spot of writing the fledgling Invincible Iron Man during a boom in interest. With oodles of well-received comics in his tool belt, Fraction and illustrator Salvador Larroca have created an action-packed, grim, beautifully done series sure to knock the socks off of longtime Iron Man fans as well as curious newbies fresh from seeing the Favreau directed flick.

“I couldn’t ask for a bigger, better launch pad,” Fraction said. “I was kind of guessing what I’d hoped the movie was and I was trying to write the book accordingly. I couldn’t be happier. There, in fact, is a scene in the second issue that is very similar to a scene in the film between Tony [Iron Man] and Pepper [his assistant]… so I felt like I was barking up the right tree.”

The new series kicks off with some of Tony Stark’s (Iron Man) technology creating havoc in the hands of suicide bombers in Africa. With Larroca’s lush, striking illustrations, the horror of dangerous technologies falling into the wrong hands bursts off the page as characters detonate and we get a sinister introduction to Iron Man’s latest and most deadly enemy, Ezekiel Stane, as he melts a room full of big tobacco executives.

With independent comics helping to bring adults into the fold a little more, Marvel seems to be doing their share as well by not dumbing-down the storylines or characters to appeal to children. Instead of throwaway tales that are likely forgotten by the time the next issue arrives, clever and well-mapped stories are weaving a compelling web to snag new readers.

“You can tell kind of much more complex, or at least more riveting and more layered kinds of stories…” said Fraction of the evolution of comics from children’s toys to contemporary literature. “Iron Man is about a guy in a giant cartoon robot suit, but you can still tell stories that with that, that weren’t possible back in the day. What’s always interesting about Iron Man if you go back is that they were always trying to do these kind of adult stories with the characters, these stories that were sort of outside the wheelhouse of what’s appropriate for a kids comic book. He’s an alcoholic. He’s homeless. You know, these kind of crazy stories that’s kind of done through the lens of ‘oh, right, it’s still a kids comic’ so they kind of hold up in a very weird way.”

It’s hard to believe that ten years ago, Fraction was working on music videos for Common and Hot Hot Heat, but here he is, rebooting famous franchises and scooping up new readers along the way. After successful runs on Marvel staples like The Punisher War Journal and The Immortal Iron Fist, Fraction is also tackling Uncanny X-Men as of this July. He’s also not allowing himself to be pigeonholed into being strictly a super-hero kind of guy. He’s been toying with the idea of a graphic novel about Abraham Lincoln since ‘01, and has been steadily stockpiling the pieces of the puzzle he needs to make it work.

“I wanted to write a book about the political process, so I’m focusing on the presidential campaign of 1864,” Fraction said. “There’s no twists, no like ‘and then zombies show up’ or anything like that. It’s a straightforward political graphic novel. I wanted to write about a politician that was brave enough in his convictions to lose half the country for them and then to unrelentingly hold onto those convictions as the country went to war over his decision. I admired the man’s moral courage. I admired that there was a time when everything wasn’t polled and tested and marketed and finessed and spun. That there was a basic, simple, human, moral, absolute right, even though it flew in the face of states rights, even though it flew in the face of what was the first chapter of the American experiment. But they knew it, the founding fathers knew that it was coming and Lincoln stood up and did it because it was the right thing to do, certainly not because it got him any political points… I just wanted to do a story about a politician worth talking about.”

Originally published in the Fall ‘08 issue of Ghettoblaster, a quarterly culture and entertainment mag.

New series is here. Every Monday you get a new episode until we’re out. Bask in the golden warmth of the new outro theme by Mr. Nick Whetro of The National Beekeeper’s Society and iCARUS HiMSELF.

Sparkle Picnic: Episode #2, Series 2 includes:

- Sex Goddess
- Gay Coke
- Hiring Policy
- Gay Coke
- Obsessive Compulsive Neurotic Masturbator
- Gay Coke
- Eating Out
- Gay Coke

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