Joel Bellman, now an aide to L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, has penned a great piece for LAObserved about working as a clerk at Rhino Records in Claremont from 1977 to 1980.

An excerpt:

“The pay was modest – the first day, my wages included a second-hand copy of Neil Young’s ‘American Stars ‘n’ Bars’ – but I would gladly have paid them for the privilege. If there was ever a dream job, that was it.

“If you remember the film ‘High Fidelity,’ that was us. Yes, we, too used to run people out if we didn’t like their music, like the poor fellow who came in one day looking for a Village People album. ‘We don’t carry that kind of stuff,’ I sneered. ‘Why don’t you try The Wherehouse.’ And if they ever argued with us about our trade-in appraisal – they were dead. We almost bodily threw one grumbler out of the store – to the lusty cheers of the other patrons.”

Read the whole piece here.