Dedicated to Scratch Records (R.I.P.)

The year was 1980-something. 1988? Okay. '87 maybe. We heard about this little tiny record store in downtown Vancouver. We were from the odious 'burbs against our wills. We were used to heading out every week to Odyssey Imports, to Track Records, to Collector's RPM and A&B Sound and Sam the Record Man, all on one strip (after Odyssey moved over from Granville St), then on a short bus ride to Zulu on W.4th, in another super-cozy space that I think once housed Quintessence Records. So here we had yet another record store to go to, on Cambie, near Hastings (apologies to non-locals - I know that reading about "familiar" street names is totally irritating).
It wasn't on street-level, it was just off the sidewalk and down some hazardous steps into a narrow pit that also housed three other shops - as far as I know, the only place in Van where such a thing exists - and second from the end before you popped back up the opposing staircase. Of the two, I preferred that other-end-staircase, but I can't say why.

Creak open the door, and shit; this place is small. Sort of triangular too. Nine out of ten times heading in and to your immediate left on the sofa behind the till was Keith Parry, owner-proprietor, music-lover of any genre and all-around swell fellow (as well as member of Superconducter, among others), with a How-dy! and we were like, "Uh - hey.", and hit the racks. We weren't used to benevolent - or non-paranoid, or anxiety-free - music-shop owners, but time went on and we eventually got on famously.  

Tons of vinyl we'd never seen before. A small table full of used 7"'s (I refused to pay $8 for a worn copy of the DK's first single "California Uber Alles" and now kinda sorta totally wish I'd bought it, since I think brand new 7"s go for the same amount these days) and weird stuff all over the walls and ceiling, including a giant homemade Residents eyeball-with-top-hat made out of macrame. No, paper-mache. Whatever. And rail-thin Keith with the hair down almost to the waist, perpetual smile and infinite (okay almost) knowledge on the local scene and anything vaguely underground. Tape cassette shelves on the walls, a small zine-display, some rarities and a GG Allin voodoo doll in the front-counter display, tiny video cabinet with obscure VHS tapes, and cheap dollar-boxes under the used bins filled with unexpected treasures, like when I found that 1982 12" version of BAD RELIGION's first 7" (when the initial 1981 7" sold out, BR repressed it the next year in a bigger size), and my buddy said, "Hey, cool - let me see that...". 
Yeeeeeah. The next moment I look up and the fucker was at the register buying the thing.
(I eventually got it back 22 years later.)

Carl (The New Pornographers) Newman behind the cash machine when Keith was out, malevolently staring down potential customers through a ton of red hair just daring them to buy anything that didn't meet his approval. Small surprises, like candy added to your purchase or doodled artwork on the other side of the printed plastic store bags. I actually still have my record bag with a big Scratch logo on one side and a life-size, multi-colored va-jay-jay adorning the back.
Mr. Parry giving me an original 11x17 gig flyer for the Dead Kennedys/D.O.A./Toxic Reasons show at the Commodore Ballroom from 1982 after he saw me eyeing it with insane lust.
It was just a warm, neat place. 

Then he moved shop.
Like half a block away, across from the ass-side of the ancient Woodward's building and permanently shadowed by the parking garage next door. I helped move a bit of stuff along with Claudio (where's he at?), but my S.A.D. was spiking and it was a little weird. The new place was way bigger and had an awesome secret: a stairway somewhat in the middle of the floor-space led down to a series of rooms (used for storage, parties and I believe photo-shoots) that, as you traveled along, became smaller and smaller until you ended up in a tiny dank-ish concrete area with a manhole over your head that popped you up into the middle of Hastings. The rear of the place opened to a tight alley that threw you out onto the edge of Gastown.
Only a few years later and Keith pulled up stakes and took a smaller location on Richards, a non-descript building with only a doorway and sandwich-board to let you know where you were. Head down the long hall and there ya go. At this point I had pretty much stopped hitting the place for stuff, maybe once every three months or so: all the record shops previously mentioned had bit the dust due to both rent/lease hikes and the CD "revolution", and Granville - once a main punk-hangout - was in the first stages of personality-suicide and getting downtown was less and less of a fun pastime and more and more of a depressing punch of reality we only fully feel in retrospect: things move forward and change has to happen. Other reasons being that old-school punk LP's in the used bins were on the decline, and all the new music I was getting introduced to wasn't really available at the shop. 
It was also a weird feeling being in Scratch without Keith ever in sight anymore (he retreated to the office for the distro work and other office-y business), and 2-3 new staff members busy doing figures or shuffling product away and not knowing you, or that you had been buying stuff from the previous incarnations of the place for like ten years. 
The laid-back relaxed vibe we felt had gotten necessarily replaced, and there we are being moved forward. 

Jump ahead to sometime last year and Scratch moves to a spot on Hastings. Like, almost literally a spot, something matching 50 square feet almost right across from Pigeon Park. Incredibly cramped but also kinda cozy, and I guess far too small to accommodate the both old and new stock needed for a venture to hold out for very long. Also, the two times I was in there, the clerk seemed to have ADHD and a nervous anxiety usually reserved for startled squirrels. 

After 25 years, the physical store is dead, fully survived, however, by their online services, so go there instead and order away. (Edit: the site hasn't been updated since '14)

It's something we never think about at the moment because really, why would you?: that amazing place you go to will not be there forever. Except maybe the aforementioned Zulu Records still around in their second location.


As something of a tribute, I serve up "The Sensuous Black Woman",  by "The Madam".  
The Madam was actually Lady Reed, a familiar face around Rudy Ray Moore (of many a Blaxploitation flick such as Dolomite and Petey Wheatstraw). You can hear Lady Reed in outtakes - tho' not from this LP - on N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" on the track 'Gangsta Gangsta', if you're at all familiar with that release (and damn, you should be). 
But here she lays down the simple rules for sexually attracting, seducing, and keeping your man, and keeping him interested and horny for your beautiful Black pussy. 
And, if you're prone to discomfort around words such as pussy and cock, please, please do not bring these downloads onto your computer, because it's pretty much nothing BUT those words and better. Or worse, I guess. As the jacket says, "Rated for Mature Adults Only". Not the immature ones who are gonna start heckling their monitor drunkenly half-way through.  
And the album is produced by R.R. Moore as well, put out on Kent Records which had a roster including bluesman Guitar Slim Green and a group called Snatch and the Poontangs. The year? Sources say 1977, but it sounds like something from '70-'72.

Side one is her monologue on the subject, while side two is her giving a smaller version with a Q&A session, and it's hilarious. The audience of a seeming few is completely awesome. 

Caveat on the sound quality: my copy seems to have been played several hundred times by someone using a rusty axe as a stylus, and I've run it through a 'click & hiss' eliminator, so that odd aural activity in the background is not the tides of the ocean or elevator noises, but the dubious fixings of Adobe Audition.

(photo credit: me)

Download here:
 Sensuous Black Woman