In music, a flat five is a passing chord that harmonizes well with almost any sound. The singers in Chicago’s Flat Five—Kelly Hogan, Nora O’Connor, Scott Ligon, Casey McDonough and Alex Hall—are as versatile as the name of their group implies. They’re all well-known songwriters, musicians and side-persons in their own right, but when they sing as the Flat Five, they touch on something transcendent. Their complex, intertwining harmonies bring to mind the shimmering sounds of the Four Freshmen, Beach Boys, Lambert, Hendricks And Ross, Harry Nilsson and the Everly Brothers—singers who could create breathtaking emotional effects using nothing but their voices. The Flat Five will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand-new feature with them.
Hogan: I grew up in the suburban hinterlands, about 40 miles west of Atlanta. I woulda given my left lady nut to have had a local independent record store to go to back in the day, but all we had in my town was a cruddy Kmart full of Debby Boone and Dan Fogelberg LPs and man, did that suck. “Here, have some vanilla.” “Don’t you guys have any other flavors?” “Sure! Here—have some french vanilla!” Most of my friends were happy with vanilla, but I had an itch. I needed a place to go where I could find out about real music. I didn’t even know what was out there, but I knew something was happening that didn’t involve the Captain, the Tennille or the Bread. I was getting hints.
While baby-sitting late at night at a neighbor’s house in sixth grade, I saw a beautifully disheveled Bette Midler on Saturday Night Live singing a great song that went “Those were days of roses/Poetry and proses and Martha/All I had was you and all you had was me, ” and even though I didn’t know the title, I tried to memorize the song on the spot so I could find out what it was. But then the next day I remembered that there was nowhere for me to go to even try to buy that record—and no one to even ask about it! Which, if I had, I would’ve found out that that song was written by Tom Waits. Tom Waits. I could’ve known about Tom Waits when I was 12! Oh, the time I would’ve saved!
But no. I probably just flipped over my copy of Styx Pieces of Eight and played side two again.
A few years later, on another late-night TV show, I got a boner from a clip by a crazy hyped-up band called the Dickies. The next weekend, I begged a ride 16 miles to the closest chain record store to try to buy a Dickies record. Turns out all I got for my gas money was a blank stare from the teenage employee and a mute gesture toward the monolithic Phonolog. Oy, the Phonolog.
Are y’all familiar with the abject hopelessness of the Phonolog? Might as well just go ahead and kill yourself. It was a reference source about seven phone books thick, full of mostly obsolete information, printed in really small type, and if you did actually find an entry (and the accompanying billion-digit serial number) for the record you were looking for, you would write all of that out on a tiny order slip, and wait three months or more—only to have your slip come back stamped in red: “out of print.” Son! Of! A! B!
I probably just went home and played side one of Journey Infinity again. Things weren’t looking too good for me and music.
Then, when I was about 17 and finally mobile, I found Atlanta’s Wax ‘N’ Facts—a truly independent, weird, grumpy, capricious, filthy dirty, nook and cranny-y, hip, dorky, opinionated, cram-packed and bottomless golden barrel of music record store! Finally! The record store that changed my life. Ahhhh! I had no idea that so much music—so many kinds of music—existed in the world. Duke Ellington! Price! Barbara Dane! Blowfly! Bartok! Oscar Brown Jr.! The Del Rubio Triplets! XTC! Stuff Smith! Sheila Jordan! Peter “Snakehips” Dean! Yma Sumac! Jonathan Richman! Speedy West! Style Council! Latimore! I realized that I could never ever live long enough to listen to even a fraction of it, but I was sure gonna try.
More importantly, it also made me realize that, if Blowfly and Bartok both rated Sharpie-labeled plastic LP dividers, then maybe there was enough room for me to make music in this world, too. Maybe one day there’d at least be room for me in the generic “H”s. I’d been secretly dreaming about it forever. You could say that a record store saved my life. My parents might say that a record store ruined my life. Either way, I won.
So listen up, young people! I come from a beige and forlorn shag-carpeted past with a warning: Don’t mess this up! A real record store is not some Etsy-y boutique “oh isn’t this quaint” luddite hold-over exhibit that you visit like Colonial Williamsburg! Record stores—real record stores—are the bloody, pulpy, veiny, throbbing reasons that your favorite bands exist! Don’t believe me? Go on twitter and ask ’em!
Count your blessings if you were lucky enough to grow up near an actual record store! And if you’re lucky enough to live near one today, get up off the internet and take a walk there right now! I beg you! Young people! Don’t mess this up! Record stores need you! And for sure, you need them. Trust me. I’m old. I’m from the past. I know stuff. Now get out of my yard!
