He laughed when I told him he was my hero. I wasn’t being funny.
My recent conversation with Rick Thomas was one of those talks that puts a smile on your face, and leaves it there long after the call has ended. We talked about old times. We talked about old friends. We discussed the small world scenario that reconnected us after three-plus decades. But most of all, we talked music.
The mid 1980’s were a magical time for me. Being in my early twenties, I had newfound independence and an ideal lifestyle. I had just landed my first radio gig, weekend overnights at THE rock station in Chico, California. I capitalize THE because KFM 94 was truly a rock n’ roll powerhouse in that time and place. The coolest station in the coolest town. Chico was and still is an extremely hip college town where broke students could easily get by on cheap beer and even cheaper burritos. That made it the perfect place for broke disc jockeys as well. I was living a rock n’ roll dream. Still, I needed a bit more than I was making on just two shifts a weekend spinning discs. Fortunately my all-night hours at the radio station freed me up enough to take on a second part time job at the local record store. We’d better capitalize THE on record store too, because Sundance Records was THE record store in town. Cool displays, miles of new and used record racks (yes, vinyl records back in that day), and a sound system that was turned up louder than it should have been 99% of the time. The greatest thing about Sundance Records, though, wasn’t a thing. It was a guy. The greatest thing about Sundance Records – was Rick.
Rick was a wealth of information unlike anyone I have known before or since.
I’ve known a few guys like this when it comes to sports, but never when it pertained to music. You know those guys who can tell you what Mark McGuire’s lifetime batting average was, who scored the game winning goal in the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals, and how many interceptions Joe Montana threw in his rookie year? Yeah, Rick was like those guys, only with music. Ask Rick who wrote Stand By Me, how many albums Herb Alpert put out, or who played bass on the Bridge of Sighs album, and he would rattle off the answer… The CORRECT answer, off the top of his head. Hell, I think Rick even ACTUALLY KNEW who the walrus was!
Working at a record store was cool. Working at a record store with Rick was inspiring. For one, you just had to admire the guy. Well into his 30’s, he still had long hair, and still successfully avoided a job with a dress code or a time clock. Ponytail and polo shirt, he was a collision of hippie and preppie that fit no mold. He smiled a lot. He knew a lot. For an up and coming disc jockey like me, showing up to work with Rick was like Daniel La Russo showing up in Mr. Miyagi’s garden shed. I was being trained by the master. It didn’t matter if it was Def Leppard or Liberace, if a customer had a question about a record, Rick had the answer. I observed and absorbed. Soon tidbits of information that I learned from Rick in the record store were making their way onto my all-night radio show. If I told the story of where the Edge got his first guitar, or who contributed background vocals on Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, chances are Rick fed me that information while stocking shelves or pricing used albums.
Every day was like attending class at the College of Rock Knowledge. But Tuesdays. Tuesdays were special.
In the music industry (and the reason for this I still do not know) new releases come out on Tuesday. I would beg, plead, and switch shifts so I would get scheduled to work alongside the professor on Tuesdays. To a non-music geek this may sound exaggerated. To someone who didn’t decide their career path on a Cub Scout outing to the local radio station, this may not seem like a big deal. But to me, it was like getting paid to attend rock n’ roll fantasy camp. Anticipation would be running high as I re-alphabetized the racks, waiting for the UPS man to bring in the week’s new releases. When they arrived, I would drop everything and rush behind the counter. The moment I’d been waiting for was finally here. Rick would pull out his boxcutter, precisely slit open the perfectly square cardboard carton, and carefully pull out each new release. With every album came a dissertation. Rick would remove the record, look at the front cover, turn it over, speed read the back cover, then dispense his wisdom. He knew at least a little something about each and every new release. It was on one of those Tuesdays that I learned about Buster “Cherry” Jones, the highly skilled and sought after session musician who played bass on Chris Spedding’s ‘Friday the 13th’ album. I can vividly recall yet another Tuesday, when I got my first glimpse of the space aged cover art from the debut release of a hot new guitarist named Joe Satriani. As he carefully cleaned the grooves and placed the record on the turntable, Rick explained to me that this was the guy who taught Kirk Hammett of Metallica to play guitar. Obscure trivia to some, invaluable, career-applicable knowledge to me. Each Tuesday new releases came in. Each Tuesday new lessons were learned.
After a while my radio career took off, and I no longer needed to work two jobs. Reluctantly, I left the record store so I could successfully handle my new full-time duties at the station. After a few years and a few promotions, my career took off even further, and I left my small market gig for a major market job in Tampa. Chico, and the tutelage of Rick Thomas were – literally and figuratively – far behind me.
Now let’s fast forward to a late night in late 2019 when I’m up mindlessly scrolling through pet pictures and political ignorance on Facebook. I see a post from my Facebook friend, Phyllis. Phyllis and I grew up together, haven’t seen each other since we were kids, but through the power of social media were now reacquainted on the internet. Phyllis grabbed my attention when she posted a pic of her husband’s record collection, 3,000 DISCS STRONG! I click the ‘WOW’ emoji, she clicks the ‘LAUGH’ emoji. Soon we begin a Facebook conversation about her husband and his audio obsession. With each response a little more information gets revealed. She informs me her husband used to work in a record store. I tell her I used to work in a record store. “Didn’t you work in Chico?” She asks. “Yeah”, I reply. “Well he worked there in the 80’s”. “No way! I worked in Chico in the 80’s”. Now we really need to click the ‘WOW’ emoji. It turns out my childhood friend, Phyllis, was married to Rick!
Far too late in the night for any reasonable person to make a phone call, but this was no reasonable scenario. Besides, Phyllis said he was up, and gave me Rick’s cell phone number. I couldn’t believe it. For years I had wondered what became of this genius, this rock savant, this, this… this human predecessor to wikipedia. Not gonna lie, I was a bit nervous about making the call. Not only had a lot of years gone by, but I held this guy in very high esteem. We’re talking hero status. Nevertheless, I dialed the digits.
His voice sounded the same. His laugh was the same. After nearly forty years, Rick and I were catching up on old times.
We reminisced about the record store and other old friends who worked there. We caught each other up on life stories, family, and what a small world it was that found him coming up on twenty-five years of marriage to a girl I grew up with. We also got serious. I did my best to sincerely thank him for all the wisdom he shared. He did his best to downplay the severity of the health problems he had been facing. But most of all, we talked music. We wrapped up the nearly hour-long conversation on a high note, with vague plans of trying to get together soon. I really looked forward to that.
As we often, but should never do, we let time slip by. A couple of months after our phone call along came the holidays, then a pandemic. Months went by and Rick and I still had not arranged that get together. I heard from Phyllis a couple of times after that, and made a couple more attempts to call Rick, but I guess his health was worse than I allowed myself to believe based on that cheery phone conversation we had last September. Months turned into a year, and there I was, in front of my computer doing another mindless late night Facebook scroll. That’s when I read the post that let me know that our reunion was never going to happen. I clicked the ‘SAD’ emoji as I realized that my last conversation with Rick – was literally – my last conversation with Rick.
When we lose someone, our minds head off in a lot of different directions. If we’re fortunate, they pretty quickly shift into memory mode. We push aside the sadness and latch on to fond recollections. My mind took me back many years. I started reminiscing about those Tuesdays at Sundance records. Time shifted and I reminisced about our much more recent conversation. As I replayed that phone call in my mind, I just had to smile. Because in that conversation – that final conversation – Rick and I talked music. We always talked music.
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