Rant #3,118: Our Day Will Come

The past weekend was pretty inconsequential, at least for me, but I did do one thing that was crazy, a lot of fun, but also quite a bit tiring.

It was this year’s first of two Record Store Days on Saturday, where independent record stores across the world get to shine with a plethora of new, mainly vinyl releases to entice shoppers.

I do Record Store Day each and every year, have done it for many years now, and I have no intention of stopping, even though I did say a few times to others there that “I am getting too old for this.”

Not the actual day, per se, but the prep I have to go through to get to my local record store early in the morning to be one of the first on line.

On Friday night, I went to sleep at about 11 p.m., and I figured that when I wake up on Saturday morning, whenever I wake up, I will get up and scoot to the store, which is about a mile or so away from my home.

I wanted to wake up early so I would be one of the first on line, because in this case, the early bird DOES actually catch the worm, or at least the best choices of records on that day.

I woke up at 1 a.m.—yes, I had trouble getting out of the bed—took a shower, got dressed, and motored over to the store—

Where there were already two people ahead of me, two people who, I later found out, had been there since about midnight.

I had a folding chair with me this time around, so I plunked it down, put up the hood on my hoodie, and sat there for about the next seven hours or so.

The three of us spoke for just about the entire time, which took away the chill of the morning to a certain extent, but we did have some side shows that also took away a bit of the chill, and woke us up in the process.

A police car pulled up right in front ot the store where we were congregated, and the cop in the car asked us what we were doing there.

When we explained to him what we were there for—and asked him to join us—he quickly gave us the thumb’s up, got in his car, and sped away--only to come back to the same area about 10 minutes later for a more serious purpose.

Literally right after he left, we heard someone screaming from the major road right by the store, Sunrise Highway, which is a major thoroughfare which unlike most “highways,” has lights on it for many miles as it stretches from Nassau County into Suffolk County, and is one of the major roads on Long Island to get to where you want to go to.

Anyway, our attention turned to Sunrise Highway, as someone was darting traffic while yelling and screaming about something.

This person somehow made it across the highway without getting hit, but someone must have called the police on him, as a flurry of police cars surrounded him in the gas station that he had come to as he somehow made it across the street in one piece.

There must have been 10 police cars that surrounded him, and even with that presence, it appeared from our vantage point that the guy—who was probably drunk or stoned out of his mind—refused to get into one of the police cars that were there.

Eventually, two ambulances arrived, and he somehow was put into one of them, and whatever situation was at hand was over and done with, but several of the police cars stayed around for some time afterward for good measure.

The sun hadn’t even come up yet at this point—it never really did that morning as it was overcast the entire time we were there—and it was breezy and cold, but as the line got longer, we braved the elements—which included some rain—and finally, the store opened and we went in to get our goodies.

Me, I set a limit in how much I want to spend and I really stick to it, and I did during this particular Record Store Day.

I bought four Record Store Day releases—from drummer extraordinaire Hal Blaine; singer/songwriter Carole King; Brit rockers T. Rex and Irish rockers U2, and that was that … or so I thought.

The guy ahead of me at checkout—who was number one on the line—was finally done with picking what he wanted, and he strode up to the checkout counter, and all told, he spent more than $1,000 on records that day.

It took a while for him to check out all his stuff, so to fill in the time, I went over to my favorite part of the store, the singles bin of 45 RPM records, and staring right at me was an old single fron 1973 that I just had to have, and you see it above today’s Rant.

It is “Our Day Will Come,” a promo single released by Lorna Luft 50 years ago, when she was trying to make a name for herself in show business like her mother, Judy Garland, and her sister, Liza Minnelli, had so successfully done.

It is not a great record, and it is not to my taste, but I did not buy it for myself, I bought it for my wife, who is a huge fan of those three ladies.

The picture sleeve, adorned with Luft’s pretty face, was almost staring at me, asking me to buy it in a funny sort of way, and as the cashier was totaling up the guy’s $1,000 purchase, I snatched up this single, which for me, was really more important than the actual Record Store Day purchases I made that morning.

I later gave the record to my wife—I surprised her by not telling her anything, and putting it in the refrigerator so she would see it—and you know what they say, “A happy wife is a happy life.”

So we were all happy that Record Store Day, and even though I did day, “I am getting too old for this,” you can bet that I will be at the same record store during the same time of morning in November when the next such day is held on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Yes, I do some crazy things during the year, and this is certainly one of them, for sure … but when Lorna Luft stares you in the face like that, and then your wife is happy, what, me worry?