Deerhoof released a new record, "The Magic," today. Shelve it with their focused, non genre-tributary releases. Under Deerhoof: Rawk.
In 2003, I bought my first Deerhoof record, "Apple 'O," at Other Music, which closes tomorrow.
Opposite to interstellar alignments, rock-bottoms will sync. Trenches intersect. Lows coincide. Namely, my plum, writerly day-job of nine years ended involuntarily today. Yet I'm far more vklempt over OM's demise than I am over unemployment.
Permit a wistful moment: early '00s. October. I'd stroll up Broadway, after a day amid the misery traffic of the criminal courts, and wander among the stacks at OM, their door open to the first autumn chill, the late-day sun in the southwest skimming off their south-facing window, the murmured recommendations of staff beneath unknown in-store music I'd refrain from asking about only so I could leave without spending $20 more than the $60 I'd probably drop. There was no end to treasures found, like this probably rare '05 release by Scott Mou and Animal Collective's Noah Lennox, both OM employees at that time or some time:
OM's initial rise is already re-hashed well in other places. I recall standing at a listening station (so age me) in Tower Records, sometime in late fall of 1995, looking out the window across Great Jones and seeing OM's logo in their window, a "coming soon" tag (maybe?) beneath it, and thinking: Whoever's opening this middle finger to the vastly overpriced Tower is crazy like a fox. One thing about New Yorkers (who aren't landlords): they like to taste-make.
For a while after OM launched their concurrent online music biz in '07 (same year Tower closed, I think) OM's weekly emails became the best music writing online, where anyone with half a brain was tired of Pitchfork's High School-newspaper-level hackdom. Some of us do not forget or forgive Pitchcrotch's embarrassing and unfair panning of Long Fin Killie while OM rightly championed LFK to the high hills.
So Like Rocks in Your Head, Kim's, and Pier Platters, OM will live on in price stickers on the plastic outer-sleeves of the many records I'm saving to someday finance a week's tuition of my kids' college educations.
Jobs are a dime a dozen. Other Music was not.