#atozchallenge #wis C is for Circling Overland

[jon_chaisson]

Front 242's Front By Front! album has to be in my top ten albums of 1988, partly due to "Headhunter" being such a kick-ass single. This band is one of the original leaders of EBM (electronic body music), an intriguing mix of dance, synth, and post-punk that began in Belgium and became successful on college radio and dance floors in the mid-to-late 80s. In America many of the bands ended up being tied in with the WaxTrax label, which released many European EBM albums and singles and inspired many US bands such as Ministry and Front Line Assembly.

I bought the cassette of this at Al Bum's in Amherst MA. The store was on North Pleasant Street, next door to the gas station (there's a handful of boutique clothing stores there now). It was in a perfect location, right in the middle of the downtown shopping area and equidistant from both Amherst College (at the southern end of the town common) and UMass (just north of the shopping strip). There's a tiny parking lot in the back that didn't have meters, so if you were lucky, you'd find a spot and be able to hang out in the store for a good long time.

I don't remember how long this particular Al Bum's had been there before I found it, but by the time I started going there whenever my family went shopping there (or more often, when my dad and I would drive down there), probably around 1985-6 when I was still looking for Beatles bootlegs, of which they had a good handful.  I knew of their Worcester store (up the street from That's Entertainment, who also had a great Beatles bootleg selection).  By the time I'd started buying all the stuff I'd heard on college radio, I knew this was a good place to go. This was when I knew I'd have little luck searching at Strawberries or Musicland or any of those chain and mall stores for anything deeper than maybe the latest Cure and Smiths albums...Al Bum's was my first foray into the indie record store. Even when I and my friends discovered Main Street Music in Northampton, we'd always visit Al Bum's if we were in the Amherst area, especially if we were going to hit Panda East or Bonducci's as well.

I remember it being a very dusty place, I'm not sure why. I think it's because its prime color was a beige-brown from all the wood bins and the uncovered ceiling, and the overstock racks underneath were always dusty. Most of the walls were covered with posters you could buy up front, the usual Smiths and Cure and Bob Marley posters and all that. The walls were lined with the vinyl bins, with the tape wall way at the back behind clear plexiglass. Near the door was a magazine bin and that week's stack of The Valley Advocate. If I recall, the narrower middle rows were first carrying the non-rock titles and the seven-inch singles (and a small section near the front for the new releases), but that would later change to the vinyl area when they started selling cds in earnest.

I seem to remember buying this particular Front 242 cassette one October afternoon soon after it came out, and after hearing "Headhunter" a number of times on WAMH (they'd released that single about a month earlier). Back then the format I purchased was based on two things: 1)whatever format I had their other stuff in, and/or 2)how I'd listen to it the most. I bought a lot of cassettes on the premise that I'd be doing a lot of Walkman listening with them, and I knew this one would get quite a few plays. But I also remember that I bought it the same day I unexpectedly saw Chris coming in to the store. He'd graduated high school the year before me and was now at UMass right up the road, so it was a pleasant surprise to see him again. We chatted up the latest gossip and what new albums we were lusting over (trust me, that tended to be the focus of a LOT of our conversations back then), and so on, then went on our way.

I don't remember when the store closed up, but it must have been in the early 90s when I was in college.  The original in Worcester had stayed around for decades, but the Amherst store just vanished once I headed out to Boston, same with the Leominster store.  I'd later be a regular at Mystery Train up the street, but for the most part it was Al Bum's that originally paved the way for my indie collection.