Stuck In The Middle With You - Page 2

OK, hold on, we’re almost there, I promise. Did you know that we are lucky enough to have one such store just down the road in Cheyenne? The place is called Ernie November, its off of Lincoln Way in the same block as the Wrangler, kind of tucked away – you blink you miss it.

Ben, please, you’re killing me – THE POINT ALREADY!

Ernie November is dying. I was there recently talking to owner of the place, it’s down to just him on the staff front and he’s praying for a better year or it might be time to shutter the windows. Now no, obviously Ernie November closing isn’t going to affect the GDP of the nation, they certainly don’t qualify for a bailout. Heck, it would probably have an almost nil affect on the bottom line of Cheyenne if they closed but something else, something bigger, would be lost – that place.

That place where music lovers go to blow the dust off an old record and discover that treasure they’ve been seeking for years. That place where those kids who aren’t athletes, in the “in-crowd” and most likely ridiculed by others go to seek some solace. You may be able to score a game winning touchdown, I know how to map Leadbelly to Iggy and the Stooges to the White Stripes – stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

So again, what does this all mean? Succinctly – the Lady Gaga that’s rocking your iPod came from some band, some band you’ve probably never heard but you can rest assured that someone, in some basement, or laying on their bed did. And that someone passed it along to a like-minded friend who passed it along and passed it along until someone like a Lady Gaga heard it and figured out a way to make it work for the masses.

Our underground will soon enough be your mainstream.

You need us, you need us music geeks and snobs like the earth needs worms – to move things around, to shake it up, to make it fertile again.

Article Author: Benjamin Cossel

A working journalist, Benjamin currently serves as a combat photojournalist and is the managing editor of a weekly newspaper in southeastern Wyoming. He’s worked as a reporter in Ohio, Arizona and done several deployments in the military crossing the globe. …

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