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My usual genre of audiobook is the thriller. Please: Conspiracy-based novels or true crime books need not apply. Give me a Michael Connelly book featuring LA Police Detective Harry Bosch or a Lee Child story about one-time military policeman Jack Reacher and leave me alone.
But I took a chance at the library this week when I picked up the audiobook The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce. I wasn’t sure what genre it fell into. I started listening in the car, shut it off, went back to it, turned it off…not quite able to decide if I liked it or not.
In the first place, the story is based in London so the reader has a British accent. I’m sorry but my ears have a severe aversion to a British accent. Online, the book is called “a quirky love story” and “a journey through music.”
Kirkus Reviews begins its review with this sentence: “Stocking only vinyl in his London music shop, Frank Adair has the ability to select the perfect song to ease each customer’s spiritual crisis.”
“For Frank, music was like a garden; it sowed seeds in far-flung places. People would miss out on so many wonderful things if they only stuck with what they knew.”
Suddenly I found that I could not stop thinking about a Pennsylvania record store from my formative music years.
I’m talking vinyl, baby.
George’s Song Shop was located in Johnstown which is the closest city to the tiny town I’m from. It was an amazing place. You could walk into George’s with just part of a title of a song or words from its first verse and the owner knew exactly what you were looking for. Rows and rows of 45s and albums filled the space.
When I could finally afford it, I bought my first album there in 1970: The soundtrack from the movie Love Story. It’s likely that 98% of my 45s in the basement came from George’s. Ah yes, fond memories.
So I decided on a whim to Google George’s Song Shop Johnstown.
Holy Turntable, Batman! The place is not only still open and, per Parade Magazine, has the honor of being America’s Oldest Record Store, BUT…the same guy, John George, is still running the place (at least as of April 2018)! He’s 75 but doesn’t look it. I swear I could have picked him out of a lineup.
John George took over the shop in 1962 when he was just 19. That means he was probably standing behind the counter when I bought my very first single in 1963: “You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore.
I guess it IS true: Love what you do and you’ll never “work” a day in your life.
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Norma, (believe it or not) my hubby and I took a tour of downtown Johnstown just a few weeks ago, and drove past George’s Song Shop. Yes, it is still there! No more Glosser Bros, no more Penn Traffic, no more Joy Shop, no more Lee Hospital where you and I were born, but George is still there. The last 45 record that I bought there was Wynonna Judd’s 1992 release, “My Strongest Weakness.” Yes, it is a somewhat tragic love song – and I still know most of the words . Don’t know what that means.
Why I could sing that song right along with you. Why do we like tragic love songs?