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Steve Murphy
Everybody Wins (Except for the Losers)
(independent) - 2018
Michael Panontin
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Describing a used record shop as "a graveyard, filled with plaques and monuments to the past that very few pay attention to", as Steve Murphy does in the opening paragraph of Everybody Wins (Except for the Losers), is bound to resonate with those of us who dedicate our time to the thankless pursuit of digging up obscure discs that few people care about.
The London (ON) native's conflation of cratedigging with gravedigging isn't really too far off the mark. An even better metaphor would be of the record geek, crouched over a milk crate of albums in the dusty back corner of a thrift shop or hunched in front of a laptop in the wee hours of the night, as a steadfast archeologist of cultural ephemera. Murphy acknowledges as much when he writes that "they provide eternal life for music - creations people slaved over and put to wax", a sentiment that has crossed my mind more times than I can count.
Everybody Wins (Except for the Losers) is Murphy's first real foray into prose fiction, and at a mere eighty-two generously spaced pages it falls somewhere between a short story and a novella. In it, he chronicles the gaggle of music geeks employed at the fictitious Snap Crackle Pops Records and the alternating excitement and tension that goes into pulling off a successful Record Store Day (which, we are dutifully told, is "when 30% of your entire year's sales are created in one day".)
Those expecting another High Fidelity, though, will be somewhat disappointed. The comparison is both apt and entirely unfair. Like Nick Hornby's 1995 masterpiece, Everybody Wins... is rife with the usual record shop minutiae: arcane pop references, obsessive list-making, holier-than-thou clerks and that surly contempt for customers they seem to possess in spades. But what it lacks is Hornby's keen sense of the human condition and his almost singular knack for wry laugh-out-loud humour - an impossibly high bar to clear for sure, especially for a self-published first crack at things, but nonetheless a requisite for poignant, stick-to-your-bones storytelling.
Still, Everybody Wins... is an eminently readable tale that focuses - for better or worse, I'd say - as much on the event itself as on the characters that populate it. Murphy, who has spent the last decade and a half heading up the Polaris-nominated Westminster Park, brings an insider's view of an industry filled with passionate, if slightly on-the-spectrum, lovers of cool music.
This is a quick and easy read. Those looking to relive the thrill of Record Store Day or just to hang out in a record shop without having to leave their sofa would do well to check out Everybody Wins (Except for the Losers).
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