Dick Storms Co-owner, Record Archive 8 <strong>POST</strong> | Issue 9 <strong>January</strong> / <strong>February</strong> <strong>2015</strong> Tom Dooley
DICK STORMS, CO-OWNER OF THE RECORD ARCHIVE, IS OFTEN REMEMBERED FOR HIS DANCING RECORD MAN COMMERCIALS. HERE, A MORE SERIOUS SIDE OF A MAN WHOSE RETAIL MUSIC SHOP CELEBRATES ITS 40TH ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR. What is your current state of mind? I’m in a planning state of mind right now. Your favorite food and drink? My favorite food is BBQ fish, and my favorite drink is Rohrbach Highland Amber. Your favorite color? My favorite color is metallic gold. Your favorite flower? Black tulip. Your idea of happiness? My idea of happiness is boarding an Amtrak train, going to my sleeping compartment, and waking up in Chicago for breakfast. Your idea of misery? A TSA line at the airport! Occupation you admire? Oh, I admire musicians. Real musicians. Not like me. Are you a reader? If so, do you have a favorite author? Margaret Atwood and Elmore Leonard are my favorite authors. So I’m pretty middlebrow in my reading, but it’s what I like. Your favorite qualities in a man and a woman? I like men who are innovative. I like women who are smart. Really intelligent women are like high bling factor. Who are your favorite artists? In terms of painting, my favorite artist is Clyfford Still. He’s a West Coast painter; he was an abstract expressionist, and the Albright-Knox has probably the biggest collection of his work in the country. There’s an entire wing devoted to him. … Hell, hell of a painter! What do you appreciate most in your friends? I like friends who are there for me, you know? I like friends who let me be there for them. What is your main fault? Concentration. I grew up in a big family, and if I’m concentrating on something I just put up the walls, and I’m in my own world. So my worst fault is that I’m monomaniacal. What is your best trait? My best trait is my curiosity. What is your favorite film? “Ghostbusters” Who are your favorite heroes in film? The Dude. If your life had a soundtrack, what song would play next? “Fly Me to the Moon” What music do you find exciting right now? Well, I’m into an area that a lot of people are into right now, and that is the early days of electronic recording, between 1928 and 1932. … There was a flashpoint then, when ethnographic music and hillbilly music and black music and all of it sort of became all the same. Contemporary American pop music was born in that moment, when there was all this access to all these different musics, and they started melding together. And one of the areas was jug band music: Memphis Jug Band and Gus Cannon … That’s kind of my favorite music, but specifically the originals from that period. If you could only listen to one album, what would it be? It would be Big Joe Turner, “Rock and Roll,” Atlantic 8005, 1957, I think. If you could have dinner with two people—one living, one dead—who would they be? Cicero and Zbigniew Brzezinski. A couple of astute political observers. What natural talent would you like to be gifted with? I’d like to have a green thumb. I don’t. For what fault in others do you have the most tolerance? Loquaciousness. The least tolerance? Imagined omniscience. If you had walked a different path in life, where might you be? When I was young, I actually hit a crossroads (and I didn’t really know it). I was invited to join a real estate agency in Mill Valley, Calif., when I was 21. I don’t know if I’d have ever taken it though. Painter. Painter is the other path I could have taken. I paint now, but I don’t do it as a profession. It’s a vacation, which, you know, gives me a lot of latitude. I don’t have to sell the shit [chuckles]. I have to figure out a place to put it. How do you wish to die? Quickly. What would people find surprising about you? That I’m interested in ancient Roman history. Do you have any words or beliefs that you live by? The best thing about getting old is that you get to be old for the rest of your life. You can read that as ironically as you like. —Interview by Alexander Degas Issue 9 <strong>January</strong> / <strong>February</strong> <strong>2015</strong> | <strong>POST</strong> 9
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