Open ’Til Midnight: A Love Letter to “Empire Records”

Maybe it’s the idea of being surrounded by vintage music posters, advertising for a 1990s band’s first show on Sunset Strip. Maybe it’s the smell of dust that fills the chaotic space when you pull an old sleeve out of a buried pile of singles from the 1950s. Maybe it’s the vast array of characters that walk into your neighbourhood record store: people ranging from a once 1970s punk-rocker admiring the posters promoting the shows they once attended to a young music enthusiast ready to purchase their first record. Whatever the drive might be, all attendees have one thing in mind when browsing through a record shop: “thank you for the music”. 

May it be the conversation one has with the store clerk when bringing their favourite new album up to the counter to pay. From Joni Mitchell’s 1971 Blue or The Verve’s 1997 Urban Hymns, the store clerk ringing the purchase into the computer system may have a thousand thoughts running through their mind. While working at a record shop, you can read people as they become submerged with a type of media that evokes feelings and brings them back to a state of being. Seeing a glimpse into their life solely based on how they skim through records. Flipping through one 45” at a time admiring the thought-provoking artwork scrawled across the thick envelope filled with an artists’ deepest feelings or simply running a hand down the aged spines that peek through milk crates stacked high on the floor.

The coming-of-age film from 1995, Empire Records, catches a group of hip, music-savvy outcasts in their everyday life working at a ‘Sunset Strip’ esque record store. One of the best soundtracks for young music enthusiasts as the film has a heavy rotation of different genres found through records such as “Free” by The Martinis, “Circle of Friends” by Better Than Ezra and “Sugar High” by Coyote Shivers — all finding their own parallels between the characters themselves. With a heavy resemblance to the atmosphere of the famous Amoeba Music shop in California, the film offers a look into the lives of record-shop employees who feel lost in a sense of unknown while in a place that some may say offers the exclusivities into the world of art. (Only by alphabetical order of course). The film draws our attention to the emergence of larger corporations within the music business taking over the independence of those ‘mom and pops’ businesses. While we watch the group of outcasts save their independent safe-haven from being turned into a franchise, it offers an intimate look into the 1990s popular culture and the over-industrialization of franchises replacing music history.

The only thing better than the soundtrack of the film, is the music that plays in the background at the record shop or the songs that the characters choose to play for their morning dance break. Working at a record store, you're not only immersed into the world of music history, as you clock in at 9 am, you're also taking note of how/what music affects certain people. Ultimately, allowing one to read people in a way that only a record shop employee may be able to. With music technologies ever growing at our fingertips, working within the atmosphere of music’s original form makes the art that much more special. 

Watching a group of outcasts rocking out on the rooftop, selling $5 beer to save the Empire Records shop, chasing after a young-theft stealing a Whitney Houston CD for his girlfriend, and by glueing down a tub of quarters from a casino onto the floor — but A.J. doesn’t need to explain his art to you — juvenates a feeling of living through the medium just as it is intended to be.

If you’re not feeling, you’re not listening. This is what I’ve learnt spending time rummaging through heaps of music in a classic shop much like Empire Records. Admiring the employees who are showing a 20-something business student where their mothers favourite album is kept, or ringing up Patti Smiths’ 1975  Horses for an older gentleman who intends to gift it to their grand daughter for their 18th birthday. While working in a record store may be a dream to many, we have films like Empire Records to supply us with a hint of that indescribable feeling. Wondering if you’re a Debra, an A.J., a Corey, a Lucas, a Gina or a Mark — Empire Records only helps romanticise the job of working in a record shop while exploring the 90s teen culture that we tend to hear about only in the reminiscing lyrics of a hit record.

Empire Records is a love letter to the kids who don’t know where to go next, or who know where they should go, they just need to find the right rhythm to get them there.