YOU NEED TO BE LOGGED IN TO SEE YOUR RAYV COMPATIBILITY
For the Sake of Art and Freedom 30/04/2008 I spent more than one hundred and sixty dollars on music last week, at Utopia records, one of my favourite stores.
There’s an unfair generalisation floating around that the store is only for those that favour industrial metal sounds, are emotionally defected and, of course, have many unresolved childhood traumas. But there are also certainly many of us that love it for the sheer joy of beautiful music.
There are certainly many of us who love it because we feel connected to something bigger than ourselves.
I cannot count the amount of times I have stood behind the glass cabinet, encasing the autographs of each member of the New York Dolls, wishing that one day I will be able to buy it.
Or how many times I’ve stared at the dude standing behind the counter, ordering CDs, wondering if he feels the exact same thing I feel when I hear the music play.
Or how many hours I have spent digging through copious amounts of vinyl records looking for the names that affect me most, whether it be The Rolling Stones, Johnny Thunders, Thin Lizzy or even Led Zeppelin
I have tried many times to develop a working thesis about why rock music means so much to the millions of people that are drawn to it. Maybe it’s because deep down we’re all really pissed off.
Maybe it’s because we spend so much time being told what we should say, how we should look and what we should be.
Maybe it’s because we’re tired of being screamed at twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, about how we should have a job and a mortgage and a car.
We are what we have and can give back, as some would say.
I think that in our quest to be a ‘productive’ member of society, we have forgotten how to just be a human being. Mick Jagger once sang “With no money in our coats and no loving in our souls, you can’t say we’re satisfied”, and I believe it. I could look around Utopia records for a lifetime knowing with an honest heart that every body here believes in some place better.
It’s an easy store to navigate around. The CDs and DVDs are laid out alphabetically in the usual music store way, but then, it’s not just CDs and DVDs that Utopia records sells. If you walk to the rear of the store, you will find cabinets of collectables, linking our lives to the lives that we most admire; Autographs, figurines and unreleased records.
There are racks of posters that are hard to find anywhere else, but could be stared at for a very long time. I’m guilty of this because I can never explain the sensations I feel as I stare at images of Jimi Hendrix, clutching his guitar to him in a passionate display of humanity and life.
There are shirts and boots and clothing to be worn by those of us that possess the utmost pride in rock music, with a blatant disregard for all the current fashion trends of the times. There are shelves of books and autobiographies, adorned with beautiful bright coloured pictures, marking the lives of those who dedicated their lives towards music for the sake of art and freedom.
In fact, there are even underground autograph signings and performances by musicians that share with us, their particular brand of freedom and leave us crying internally for more.
But my personal favourite by far, are the rows and rows of new and second hand records that are laid out near the front of the store. Many of them are extremely hard to find and indescribably endearing in the thought that they must have been loved by at least one other person feeling the exact same pride and admiration thirty years prior. There are not many places I’ve been to that are like this.
People can think whatever they want about Utopia Records, but it has no bearing on the music. The music is something else and it is me coming back to myself when I am starting to feel lost and worn down and scared. I can spend one hundred and sixty dollars on vinyl records in one week and know that the money doesn’t matter. It’s what those vinyl records will make me feel. Perhaps Bob Dylan summed that one feeling up the most accurately when he wrote;
“Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship, my senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, my toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.”
For those of us who live in Sydney that ache for some semblance of free, its places like Utopia Records that actually provide it.
