Pretentious Record Store Blog

How many times have you found yourself trapped on a broken down bus going nowhere fast, completely surrounded by a smörgåsbord of the craziest freaks, geeks, weirdos, aliens, robots, cavemen, megalomaniacal midgets, dinosaurs, buddy cops, giant mutant monsters, dysfunctional couples, depressed artists, ninjas for hire, poli-sci majors, sit down comics and one messed up kid with a head full of LSD and only Jesus and His pet goat to help him through his trip?

If you have, then it’s just another Tuesday in your so called life. Congratulations, friend, that means that you’re already a big Freak!

If you have never had the luxury to find yourself in such a position, then it’s about time for you to expand your horizons a bit and venture outside your comfortable little sphere of normalcy; it’s time for you to experience first hand the depravity, humility, misadventures and downright oddness of how the other half lives!

So what are you waiting for: tune in, turn on and join the parade… Purchase the limited edition Parade of Freaks WizardWorldChicago Special now at IndyPlanet.com.

The Parade of Freaks/Pretentious Record Store Guy is hitting the road, folks! June 27th-29th we setting up shop at Wizard World Chicago. We are extremely excited since this is our first official convention outing. We will also have the very first issue of Pretentious Record Store Guy miniseries for sale as well as the Wizard World Parade of Freaks Special Edition which has the much anticipated Agent of C.H.A.N.G.E. 5 page story as a bonus. It’s going to be amazing and we can’t wait to see you there. So if you’re in Chicago and are attending WizardWorld, come look me up. Enjoy.

In order to fully submerse yourself in the world of Pretentious Record Store Guy, it helps to know the lingo. To help out all those wannabe hucksters, hipsters and scenesters, we here at Pretentious Record Store Guy have decided to educate the coalition of the willing in the vernacular of PRSG. Enjoy.

Pretentious - characterized by assumption of dignity or importance
Pretentious Record Store Guy - most every record store employee, our protagonist
Hipster - a person characterized by a particularly strong sense of disdain and alienation from the mainstream and a real affinity for the cutting edge and/or independent; a person in the know.
Scenester - a person always involved with a particular scene, mainly to be seen
Fashionista - a person who always on the cutting edge of fashion and style and flaunts their knowhow
Phil Collins - drummer, singer/songwriter, 80s pop icon and mortal enemy of Pretentious Record Store Guy.
Retro - of or designating the style of an earlier time
Indie - Independent music
The Heat - slang for something that is so amazingly good it goes beyond being “hot” and becomes
Emo - emotional music characterized best by whiny, adolescent lyrics and heart on the sleeve junior high school poetry a la Sunny Day Real Estate and Dashboard Confessional
Hipster Battle - a contest of wits in regards to who is the most in the know
Triple T Hipster BaTTTle - an extreme Hipster Battle sort of like a XXX rating for the hipsters
Rock Band Central - the staging point for all rock bands
Digg - the act of promoting something online
Andrew Wood - The Jesus Christ of Grunge
Bleed the Blood of the Dying - A post-emo-core band with slight math core influences
Gospel Music - the word in music, home of Pretentious Record Store Guy

Every journey has a beginning, every story has a start and every record store has a Pretentious Record Store Guy. This is his story!

When you’re Pretentious Record Store Guy, you’re life is pretty much made in the shade right? You get to see all the cool shows, pick through all the good music and take home all the latest promos. Life is pretty good, right? A pretentious existential crisis, with jokes about music.

The key to being in a scene is to be seen, and nowhere is more important than in a record store, where the employees are cooler than you and know every big band a year before anyone else does; welcome to the world of Pretentious Record Store Guy.

You’ve seen his adventures monthly in the pages of Playback:STL and online at pretentiousrecordstoreguy.com and now Pretentious Record Store Guy is going on his biggest journey yet. Issue #1 of the epic Pretentious Record Store Guy story hits the web like underground single from your favorite band, only instead of being sonic delicious goodness for your ear holes it’s music for your eyes and your cerebral cortex. If you have never read any Pretentious Record Store Guy comic, than do yourself a favor and read the first 10 pages for free at the Pretentious Record Store Guy website.

It’s a Hipster BaTTTle happening (3Ts like XXX only TTT)!!!

Available now at IndyPlanet: http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1076

I have a confession to make. I fucking love Tom Petty.

I know I shouldn’t say that because I’m a Pretentious Record Store Guy and Tom Petty should be enjoyed only in an ironic way that trivializes the mainstream and uses the false facade of irony as a substitute for nostalgic appreciation for the things that our parents loved and held dear, but that’s not the case. What I should really say is that Nick Cave is the greatest songwriter in the world not named Bob Dylan and that Dylan peaked in the late 60s, but honestly I’ve been thinking about it long and hard and I can’t come to any other conclusion except that Tom Petty is a genius.

Every one of Tom Petty’s songs is filled to the brim with California surfer zen nuggets of wisdom. Petty just drops these little gems of goodness as an aside so you don’t even realize how utterly brilliant he is until you one day your car gets rear ended and the rental they give you only has a radio in it and silence gets old after a while so you pop on the radio and Tom Petty comes on and whispers to you that:

“The waiting is the hardest part.”

or what about:

“Even the losers get lucky sometime”

and

“Running down a dream is sometimes further than it seems.”

And these are only a few of the gems I’m referring to. In life, everyone throws the word genius around like every little creative endeavor is a work of art, but the Prententious Record Store Guy thinks that most art is shit, and is undeserving of the title of “Art” and that real genius is hardly ever appreciated in it’s time, so for the PRSG to deem Petty a genius and at the same time make a complete about face from his pretentious tendencies to do so, well that is an act that should go noticed. And since Pretentious Record Store Guy is a self appointed expert, his advice is that of a sage and could even be considered an act of genius.