I'm sorry, you just don't cut it.

I tried to be open minded, really, I tried. My hopes were raised by the posters in the window and the smell of incense and mysterious things coming from inside. I thought that maybe, just maybe I’d found a worthy replacement, somewhere that I was going to make my own and find my music. Close, but no cigar. You reminded me of New Moon, but you weren't New Moon. You had the handwritten place cards (which I’m starting to think are made by the same person no matter where the store is located), the old plastic case holders turning yellow, the smell of incense in the air, the people wandering up and down, clicking cases against each other as they searched for an elusive prize. It was all there, but it was too…commercial, I guess. I miss the hole in the wall atmosphere, the incense in the air that you never saw burning but always smelled. The scent that stuck to everything so that after you left and went somewhere else, you still smelled it. I’ll give you this, there was a scent, but it was faint.

Maybe you’re too big for those little things I wanted. I guess the things I recognized when I entered set me up for a fall because you couldn’t possibly live up to my expectations. It only got worse when I started looking at things. I looked for bands I thought would be there, that I knew would be at New Moon, but they weren’t there. Sure, other sections were bigger, offered more, but the little things were missing. I miss the metal section, tucked against the wall between punk and techno. I miss seeing Mike and Gil and Chris and Jason and everyone else who knew me there. I miss buying the CD that surprised the people at the store who would later tell my brother who would ask if it was true what I had bought, which would then lead to a lending of things from his own collection that I might also like. I miss making my way around the store, finding the things I wanted to buy and the things I never would. I miss knowing that if I couldn’t find something, it could be ordered, no matter how obscure the title. I know, you had people, and I’m sure they were knowledgeable, but they were more concerned with the job, not the music, and I doubt I could take them up on a conversation about bad black and white sci-fi movies from the past where the monster could be a guy in a gorilla suit with a fishbowl on his head. I also miss being able to find the Leonard Nimoy or Chuck Mangione album that I’d never buy, but liked to look at. Maybe that only happens in the little places where you really get to know the people. If so, that’s sad because the little places are doomed.

I guess I expected too much. It’s just that, well, you weren’t hard to enter that first time. You weren’t the place I had to bring a friend to the first time I went in because entering was like stepping across the border into a strange new world that required the buddy system. You weren’t the place where you never knew when you entered whether you’d be hearing jazz or metal, where they’d write your purchase in a notebook for inventory. You were just…a store. You were too much like Wherehouse and too little like New Moon. You tried hard, I’ll give you that, and maybe I’ll find that New Moonness in you that I’ve been looking for, but I don’t think anyone is going to write a comic about you. It’s just that I dedicated over ten years to that store and it was taken away from me because it was too small, it didn’t carry the pre-packaged corporate pop music in bulk, it was dark, it smelled funny, and some people didn’t want to go in, but it was mine, and it was a lot of other people’s too. I guess I looked to you to fill the gap that was created when my store closed. You put up a good effort, my friend, but you just fell short. I’ll be back again though, because for now the little similarities will have to be enough.