sundown (part i)

we all thought it was a joke…

…but apparently it isn’t.

it was 1996. mom had died in february, and six weeks later (around st. patrick’s day) i had gotten let go from 101X due to “budget reasons”, or so i was told. so i was fired from my dream job and lost my mom all within six weeks and was less than a year out of college, so this was the “real world” to me…

…fucking lovely. but i was far from broke.

thanks to a triple threat of life insurance policies my sister and i had plenty of cash, and that was after paying off her car AND the house (the latter of which has since been re-financed for various reasons so i have a mortgage payment again now). money wasn’t needed, so i hadn’t bothered to replace the radio gig. plus, under the circumstances, i was in a bit of a funk…so i wasn’t really looking for anything, but was doing something that had always brought a smile to my face…

…shopping at sundance.

i had been there for about five minutes when bobby, the owner, wandered over to me…

haven’t heard you on the radio in a while…

(i shrug) got fired – budget issues.

we need somebody part time; wanna work here?

yeah, that’d be cool.

alright – i’ll ask nancy (his wife) and get back to you…right your number down (hands me a post-it and a pen)

i got home less than an hour later to a blinking answering machine:

sean, it’s bobby from sundance records…get here at noon tomorrow, and bring your i.d.

“that’ll be a nice summer job”, i thought to myself, not realizing it would last a bit longer. by the time i finally left it was four years. it was on my “job bucket list” (back before i knew what a “bucket list” was, you understand) – club dj (done), radio dj (done), sundance (now done). i had been shopping there since i was in seventh grade, and i was now a college graduate; but now, after thirty-five years of business, they close their doors for good on april 1st.

blame the owners getting older, the digital download era, and the economy – it was a perfect storm to kill a record store…but it’s still a sad day.

for those of us locals, april 1, 2012, is the real day the music dies.