fandomtownies | Groovy Tunes; Wednesday [ 05/23 ].

There had been an... unfortunate incident in Jono's room that morning involving a cat, a mug of coffee, and an entire box full of Jonothon's favourite vinyl. The cat was fine, thankfully, and Jonothon wasn't terribly concerned about the streak of coffee that had run down the front of his shirt, either, but the vinyl?

The vinyl. The only thing that would have stabbed at his heart more would have been if the coffee had ruined a letter he carried at all times in his pocket, or if he'd gone tripping over his Stratocaster, instead.

But it was sort of like coming home when he stepped into the Groovy Tunes, even after so many years. He offered the girl at the counter a vague little smile, collar of his coat only slightly obscuring the bottom half of his face today, and then headed over to the records.

"How much grunge have you got in stock in LP format? I had a bit of an incident this morning, I have a fair amount to replace."

[SP for work today, but I really couldn't resist. Hiii.]

When the chime from the door rang at the entrance of a potential customer, Fawn huddled deeper over her notebook, dug her pen deeper into the pages. She should have called in; she should have just said she was sick or something. She couldn't come to work because she was ill with a bad case of Freakitus.

But the man seemed to know where he was going, so she kept her head down until he started toward the records, only when she was sure she'd see mostly just his back did she lift her head to curiously look at him behind the safety of her curtain of hair. Then he actually spoke, and, like a deer springing into the woods, she lowered her head to pretend she'd never looked in the first place.

But there was a question, so she should probably answer, and she masticated her abused lower lip longer than it should have taken anyone to think of a response. Fawn shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted, "I'm new."

When she looked up, she had only meant to do so briefly, but she found her head tilting as she observed the customer more closely.

"New, hm? Then... I hope Fandom is treating you well," Jono replied, his voice holding only a small note of that awkward air that tended to creep in when he was aware that someone was looking. Sheer force of will kept him from burying his face more deeply in his upturned coat collar. "I used to work here myself. Used to manage, really, while I was still a student here on the island. But it's been all too long since I've stopped in. I keep meaning to, but..."

But, well, he sucked at social outings, trips to the bars or the coffee shop where he could tuck himself away in a booth aside.

"I turned into a pony over the weekend," Fawn said, in a firm, bitter response to the man's statement about how the island was treating her so far, though she kept the real cruelty, that the island had turn her back, to herself. She tossed her hair back a little bit; most of it came tumbling right back down, but it was her way of lessening how intensely she was scoping out someone else. She'd long ago realized that she'd basically been exiled to the Land of Misfit Whatevers, and knew better not to look too much for the fault in others, lest they start looking for hers.

"What happened to all your LPs?" she asked, feeling incredibly grateful that there hadn't been some sort of Freudian slip, and that it actually did come out at LPs and not something else with an extra letter in the middle.

Edited 2012-05-23 12:47 (UTC)

Really, Jono was rather used to that other question, himself. The answer usually tended to come out either a little too blunt or a little too dry, and then from there he'd lapse into either an angry silence or he'd just leave.

At least this way, he'd leave with an armload of vinyl.

"We were nearly all ponies over the weekend," he offered, leaning forward to ever-so-casually look over the selection. "I had wings. And the vinyl..." He exhaled a bit of a sigh, shaking his head. "Precariously stacked boxes, an alarm clock that I forgot to shut off, a mug of coffee, and a startled cat. The less said about that, the better."

It hurt too much to recall.

Was that the quirk of a grin hidden somewhere inside of all that hair? Perhaps, but, if there was, it was gone so quickly it may have been a trick of the light or the ghost of something else. Fawn brushed her hair behind her ear, little good that ever did her.

"Maybe you should get one of those iPod things," she suggested lightly, in the manner of someone who really didn't know anything about it except by hearsay. "You wouldn't have to worry about precariously stacked boxes of music if it's all in a tiny little device."

Did Fawn realize that this was just the way to get a finger pointed at her in an over-dramatic fashion from a man who generally wasn't all that playful whenever he could help it? Huh?

"Blasphemer," he accused, though there were the undertones of a smile somewhere in his voice, and lingering around the corner of his eyes. "That's all well and good for wandering about, but nothing compares to the sound that you get from vinyl. Nothing."

He would defend this opinion to his dying breath.

"Nothing?" asked Fawn, with quite possibly the best straight face known to mankind. So help the world if anyone taught Fawn poker and then caught her in the right mood.

"With the sole exception of live performances, of course," Jono sniffed, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his nose up into the air.

He'd defend that one well beyond the grave, if need be.

Fawn wore a considering face, a doubtful face, put on just because the guy was clearly passionate about it, but she eventually nodded. "You sound like my brother," she noted. She was still pretty sure that Cliff never forgave their mother for not letting him touch the secret stack of jazz records their father kept in the closet; she wondered if they were still kept secret.

Jonothon couldn't help but smile faintly at that, losing the up-in-arms posture he'd put on and easing into something a little more casual.

"And is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"

He personally couldn't see how it could possibly be a bad thing. At least for him, his sympathies to her brother if the poor bloke sounded anything like him in turn.

"A good thing," Fawn allowed, although she did give it a moment's consideration. "He's in a band now...a real band..."--as opposed to just them playing for extra cash in the subway--"...so I guess he would know. Good thing this place still has vinyl, then, right?"

The vinyl section was even bigger than the cassette section. It made her a little sad, since a tape player was all she had right now.

"Trust me, I would pitch a fit and overthrow Seifer as grand overlord of the Groovy Tunes if it didn't," Jonothon intoned, a smirk still toying at the corners of his mouth. "Just because a good portion of my time is taken up with time spent at the theatre," and fighting crime, "doesn't mean I wouldn't put aside a day or so a week here in order to make certain this place is run properly."

He missed this place. Being surrounded by music, not having to deal with uppity actors who figured they belonged in the spotlight more than all the others... But so long as there was vinyl in stock, he didn't feel it was mandatory that he stage an intervention or something, either.

Fawn did recall Seifer briefly mentioning (thus leading her to believe he was just talking and not really meaning it, but one never knew for sure) handing over the keys once he was finished with this place, so the conversation took an intriguing turn. She tilted her head slightly.

"And what constitutes as running it properly?" she asked, emphasizing the last word in a decent mimic of the man's own pronunciation. She didn't have Cookie's gift for accent, but she could hold her own decently. "Obviously, the vinyl, but anything else?"

"Well, a willingness to expose yerself to new music can't hurt," and now Jono was laying his own accent on a little extra thick, just to give her a run for her money. "It's all well and good to sit behind the counter and ring in orders, but if someone comes in asking for, say, grunge on vinyl, knowing what stock you have in is always a benefit."

It was a subtle barb, but he was mostly teasing. She was new. She'd been a pony over the weekend, probably for the first time. He wasn't going to hold that against anybody who wasn't used to the island's antics just yet.

Fawn bit her lip, and this time, it wasn't because of the usual nervousness.

"And deprive the customer of the experience of getting to discover them for himself?" she asked.

"Not deprive," Jono replied, shaking his head. "If they ask for help, you can provide it. If it's self-discovery they're looking for, they've got it covered."

He nodded to the sound system behind the counter. "And besides, unless you want them judging an album by its cover, you'll need to be willing to let them have a listen before they pay anyhow."

Which wasn't something that a lot of music shops offered, but Jono had always seen it as half the fun of working at the Groovy Tunes, back when he was still a student.

Fawn frowned a little as she turned her head to follow the man's nod to the sound system. "Last time I tried using that," she admitted a little desperately, "I couldn't get it to play anything except this awful racket. I think it was Japanese."

And it was powerful enough to swipe away any snark she might have managed a second ago. It's a miracle she made it through that day with only a few light seizures, really.

"That'll happen from time to time," Jono replied, actually a bit sympathetically. "Through December, it'll be Christmas music. Sometimes the same one song on repeat all bloody day."

He had a deep, abiding loathing for Feliz Navidad. And would forever, most likely.

"I didn't even think to ask, when are you from, luv?"

If she was from some point in the past, it would explain why she was working in the music shop but was so easily turned off of the sound system, really. He could sympathize, having come to the island from an era when MTV still actually played music.

"I think I can handle Christmas music," Fawn said, a bit derisively, especially since anything would be better than the J-pop on loop, she was pretty certain of that, and even most things on repeat. How many times did she have to listen to Cookie belting out this Madonna song or that one all day long?

And her voice went a little defensive as she answered the question. "And I'm not from that far back. 1989."

Though, really, if this was a normal school in 2012, then most of her classmates wouldn't have even been born then...

Jono held up his hands in a sort of silent surrender, smiling wryly.

"I was from 1995 when I first wound up here, back in... 2009, I think it was. It all blurs together a bit. It's been near seven years since then, for me."

So, you know, he could relate to weird time things.

"I was only asking because I wanted to know if you were interested in a more thorough walk-through of the sound system, here. CDs weren't exactly the norm back in the eighties."

Fawn considered pointing out that they were becoming more popular where she was from, but that meant also bringing around the fact that she wasn't familiar because she was too poor, and she didn't want to do that. She shrugged her shoulders.

"I should be able to figure it out," she reasoned. "If I can't figure it out, then I should really probably be working somewhere else."

"Fair enough," Jono replied with a wry smile. "Hopefully you won't have to deal with too much more J-Pop in the future, luv."

He glanced down at the vinyl that he was standing beside, tilting his head a little at it.

"In any case, you have a bit of catching up to do," he noted. "Though most of the music they play nowadays is utter shite."

And, again, Fawn was taken back to Cookie prancing around the flat in black lace and bangles. She gave a faint grin.

"So I guess if I said 'what's the point in catching up, then?' you'd tell me that most of it is utter shite, not all of it, and it's important to be open to new things, right?"

Jonothon prefaced his answer with a quick, sharp little grin.

"I was going to say that it was important to be able to be convincing when you tell your customers to avoid the Bieber, or else you might be found guilty of cruel and unusual treatment of an unsuspecting victim, but your answer works well, too."

"The Bieber?" asked Fawn, arching an eyebrow, since that almost sounded like one of those STDs they warned you about during that Very Special class in heath ed.

And thank goodness that Fawn's musical tastes ran in the complete opposite direction of most fourteen year old girls'.

"If you can close your eyes and envision a thirteen year old girl singing 'baby baby,' and then think of the mental jarring you'd get when you discover that the girl in question is actually a boy with a horrid shag haircut, that's... about as close as mere words can come, really. You'd have to hear it. And trust me, you don't want to."

The Bieber. Not all that far from being one of those STDs they warned you about, really, no.

That was...a fairly elaborate description, for the most part, which just prompted Fawn (quite possible the horrible part of Fawn) to comment, "You seem to know an awful lot about this Bieber."

Jono gave Fawn a wry smile, at that.

"I've had more than my share of female friends around here who were... fans."

Rabid ones. Or personal friends of that kid, which was almost worse.

And what a convenient cover that was. Fawn, being a smart girl, kept her mouth shut on that particular thought.

"I'm so sorry," she said instead, with a modicum of sympathy.

"I'll give anything a listen to at least once," Jono admitted, shaking his head. "Doesn't mean I always like it."

He pulled a handful of Pearl Jam LPs from the display, flipping through them to make certain that he hadn't picked up two of any one album, and then shrugged. "I prefer my music with a bit more substance. Or at least performed by people who have actually reached puberty."

Fawn strained a little bit to get a good look at the albums he had pulled, while trying to make it seem that she wasn't trying to look. "I like jazz," she offered, idly, not really having anything else to contribute to the conversation, and, besides, she was always curious on what other people might think of her musical tastes, "and bluegrass. Willie Nelson's my favorite."

"The redheaded stranger, hm?" Jono nodded a little at that. "I don't mind a bit of classic country, myself. But I won't admit that to just anybody."

Okay, so he kind of just did.

"Jazz, I enjoy. And the blues. Ska. Reggae..." He could keep going. For just about forever. "It's good to see so many newcomers to the island with an appreciation for music, these days."

"It's kind of hard for me to avoid it," Fawn admitted. "If Daddy hadn't gone into the war, they say he would have had a chance to play with Miles Davis."

At this point, she might have been fluffing her feathers, just a little.

And Jono twisted a wry little smile, at that. Wasn't that always the way of it? Potential wasted, blown to hell in one way or another.

"Was making a decent living for myself playing pubs in London, once upon a time. Probably wasn't all that far from a record deal myself. It's difficult to cut music out entirely, once you've gotten a taste for it. Once it's in your blood, I mean."

"We used to play subways," Fawn found herself saying, before she could really stop herself. Conversations with her was like a complex system of valves, and, sometimes, the right one got turned and the faucets started spewing out water. "My whole family, for extra money. My brother actually got himself a real band now; Daddy plays with him now, too. I would have been drums, but...well..."

And just like that, with a dismissive shrug of her shoulders, the knob twisted and the valve shut off again.

Jono nodded faintly, but he didn't pry. When you stopped midway like that, generally there was a reason for it. And she'd been good enough to not go picking at his scars to this point.

"Friend of mine that used to work here, my old roommate when I was still a student, George, I convinced her to pick up a drum set back when she was still new here. Always fancied starting a band here on the island, made a few attempts at it here and there, me on guitar, but people come and go like the tides. Good luck to anyone hoping to keep a group together once you get it going."

Fawn shrugged again. "I was never really that good, anyway," she said. "I never had as much musical talent as my brother and older sister." Which wasn't necessarily true, but it was true as far as her percussion skills went. "And my dad, obviously, even with most of his fingers gone on one hand, I don't think I've ever heard anyone play piano as good as he can."

Hearing things like that... Jono really couldn't help but smile faintly. A pianist with amazing talent, in spite of an injury that should have been debilitating.

And such a voice, for someone without a mouth, a throat, lungs...

"Sounds like one hell of a man," he decided.

Groovy Tunes; Wednesday [ 05/23 ].

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