HOT WAX

 Record nerds hear stories all the time about destroyed stock piles of records. Because they didn't sell and warehouse space was needed; because they were pressed in dystopias that at some point destroyed the entirety of their country's music as if Ferenheit 451 was never written; or any number of other tragic reasons.
 

But that kind of thing just doesn't happen in the 21st century. Unless, of course, you are really from the 1960s and are stuck in some kind of time-worm-hole with the rest of us in 2010. Take, for example, my friend Young Chris: an enormous African American man in his mid-fifties from the deep south who's radio show has helped to empower the soldiers of the Civil Rights movement—trapped instead in the body of a diminutive white boy in his 30s with a Friday night show on EastVillageRadio.com that serves as a spectacle to rich douchebags who bridge-and-tunnel their ways onto our city streets and don't give a shit about shit except for Jäger shots and "lemme see your tater tots."

How and why it happened is besides the point. But out of the 300 records that were pressed, only the handful that Chris grabbed before reporting to duty at Big City Records survived the massive meltdown. I was one of the fortunate few to visit Big City Records on the day Chris was giving them out before he realized they were the only copies that would ever exist. I was in the right place, at the right time, in the right company.