Day 7

Like a lot of kids my age in the Eighties, I worked in fast food.  I got a job at Arby's in 1983. (The woman I have been madly in love with all of my adult life is the one who handed me the application - read that story.) By 1985, I was an assistant manager closing the store 3-4 nights a week and opening it at least once a week, usually on a Sunday because I had classes Mondays through Fridays. Paydays were Thursdays which was usually my night off, along with Saturdays.  (I think.)  Can't remember what my hourly wage was but I looked it up and from 1981-1989 the Federal Minimum Wage was $3.35 an hour.  I want to say I pulling down twice that but I really can't be sure.

So this particular Thursday, I went to the two University area record stores that were practically adjacent to one another after class.  First stop was Zip's which was apparently having a sale on Jim Croce albums and in spite of having ordered a copy of Photographs and Memories from Columbia House just a couple of weeks ago, I bought that album along with three other Croce records.  My Dad is a huge Croce fan, so I became a Croce fan by osmosis.

I also added BTO's Best Of to my collection that day.  Bought it primarily to have "Takin' Care Of Business" and "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"  but was pleasantly surprised that I liked most of their other hits as well. Other purchases included the second album from Prince associate Andre Cymone, which continued the new wave funk sound he had begun on his first album; The Flirts album so I could finally replace my well-worn 45 (below) and the Gamma 3 album solely for the song "Right The First Time" which was still getting airplay on the local rock station more than two years after it was first released.

I Got A Name - Jim Croce (1973)
Life And Times - Jim Croce (1973)
Photographs And Memories: His Greatest Hits - Jim Croce (1974)
You Don't Mess Around With Jim - Jim Croce (1972)
Best Of BTO (So Far) - Bachman-Turner Overdrive (1976)
Survivin' In The '80s - Andre Cymone (1983)
10 Cents A Dance - The Flirts (1982)
Gamma 3 - Gamma (1982)

http://www.biocomp.net/o100375.htm

Also picked up the sweet anti-static gun (above) to compliment the Discwasher brush (below) my Dad had given me the year before.  Used them both faithfully and religiously.  (Almost never ever did I use the Zerostat gun to do balloon tricks.)  Don't remember getting rid of either one of these crucial accessories but I haven't seen them in at least 20-25 years.

Down at Discount, which I'm pretty sure was corporately related to Musicland in the malls, I picked up two albums that I apparently didn't see at Zip's where they had a tendency to sell out of stuff:  They'd open the box of albums and put it out on display with a handwritten sign showing the price, that's it.  On more than one occasion, I encountered multiple empty boxes.  Both of these albums became instant favorites and remain so to this day.

Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads (1984)
How Will The Wolf Survive? - Los Lobos (1984)

Still have all the Croce titles on vinyl and some of them CD.  BTO, Cymone, Talking Heads and Los Lobos were all replaced by CDs while The Flirts album was replaced by this one, also on vinyl:

Gamma 3 no longer exists in any form within The Audio Archives.  Still looking for the Discwasher record care stuff - more boxes to go through.

The TOTAL TALLY:

records bought: 29

    money spent: $166.01