Happy Rex Manning Day

You knew what day it was, didn't you?

Today was Rex Manning Day.

You know...Rex Manning.

The singer.

You don't remember his big hit, "Say No More (Mon Amour)?"


I still remember the day I drove to Delaware to meet Rex in person.

Oh, wait. No, I didn't. Rex isn't real. He's a character in a movie.

Empire Records is a largely cult movie from 1995 and Rex Manning is a character in a key part of the movie who is played with over-the-top doucheyness by Maxwell Caulfield.

The movie evokes a lot of what might have been sort of OK about the mid-90s. The cast is solid for that time (and I think Renée Zellweger has done fairly well for herself, for instance). Even (most) of the music is good, with the highlight (in my opinion) being "A Girl Like You" by Edwin Collins.


But, more than that, it reminds me of one of my absolute favorite places: music stores, or "record stores" as we once called them.

From Book and Record in Carmel (or, eventually, Baldwin Place) to department stores like Caldor to eventually Record World and Record Town, I grew up perusing many a place to get music.

I grabbed the sheet at Caldor, anxious to order the 45's out of the bin behind the counter that never seemed to have anyone working there. How else would I get my fix of John Sebastian's "Welcome Back" from Welcome Back, Kotter?

And you always ordered by the number off that sheet! "May I have number four, please?"

I should mention that none of these options were what I would call independent music stores, which is at the heart of Empire Records.

But it was often the best we could do.

Eventually I graduated to the heaven of Tower Records (in New York City and Stamford and Nanuet) and even Virgin in Times Square, not to mention the amazing record stores of Greenwich Village. I know Virgin had the heartless sense of the Fox and Sons mega-bookstore in You've Got Mail but it was still a nirvana. It was my equivalent of the worst store you can think of because you knew I was gone and probably wasn't coming out.

The same with Tower Records and let's not even discuss Borders, which tended to hit all of the "music snobs" notes in me.

Jazz. Rock. Pop. Everything, and the ability to get it if they didn't have it.

I haven't even mentioned perhaps my favorite, and it's still open!

Plan 9 Music in Virginia (with one location in Charlottesville and, more importantly, in Richmond).

Jon introduced me to Plan 9 and, for the love of Paul McCartney, I was gone every time. To be clear, there were certain things I had to do in Richmond: walk around Maymont, stroll across the James River, and go to Plan 9.

Simply the fact that there were used records/CDs made this a dannnnngerous place.

Purchases from there included The Beatles ("The White Album") and one of The Beatles Anthology CD sets. But, among the used CDs were Van Morrison's Moondance and a fantastic song collection called Hang The DJ - Modern Rock 1986. This CD included songs from Oingo Boingo, The Smiths, The Psychadelic Furs (with the movie version of "Pretty in Pink"), New Order and a lot more. I've played that CD a lot.

So, when I saw it was Rex Manning Day -- I repeat: REX MANNING DAY! -- I thought not only of Empire Records and the collections of characters that hung around that store, but of Tower Records and Virgin and Book and Record and Plan 9 and Johnny's Records in Darien, which is one of the few remaining record shops that I can name off the top of my head.

Amazon is just fine, but nothing can replace how great these places were.

So, Happy Rex Manning Day.

Damn the Man.