Zach Selwyn

Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.

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  • Buy Zach’s Book “Talent Will Get You Nowhere”Talent

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  • 18calo3y70z0hjpg  Lakers are For Fakers * 2015 By Zach Selwyn

    The following is an email chain I exchanged with my Hollywood agent, who I have paid 10 percent of my income to these past ten years. In that past decade, he’s brokered a deal or two for me and has also bought me lunch three times. His agency is a big one, but I am a lowly peon in the cable TV hosting game, dwindling way beneath the Seacrests and Trebeks of the world. However, I am undoubtedly the biggest sports fan on the roster. Which is why, as a die hard NBA fan, I began asking him for tickets to the agency “luxury suite” four months ago to watch the Los Angeles Clippers play the Cleveland Cavaliers at the Staples Center on January 16, 2015…

    Oct. 12, 2014.

    From ME: Yo – Looking for Clippers – Cavs tickets on Jan 16 2015. I think the Cavs are gonna be great this year – and their new coach is a mastermind. Clips look strong too. Both teams will be in top playoff mode around January. If possible, might I be able to get into the agency box seats that night? Asking early to make sure… Thx – Z

    From AGENT: Z! Of course buddy. Emailing tickets guy. You need two, right?

    From Me: Yes Thank you so much.

     Nov. 8, 2014.

    From ME: Checking in on Clippers – Cavs tix for January. Has anyone asked about them? Thx – Z.

    From AGENT: You’re #1 on the list. I got you covered big Z.

    From Me: U Rule. Thx.

     

    Dec. 9, 2014.

    From ME: Hey brother – any news on those tickets? It’s getting close and I want to make sure I get in here before the office shuts down for holiday season.

    From AGENT: Thank you for your email. Our offices have closed until January 7, 2015.

    Jan 7. 2015.

    From ME: My dude. Zach here – Hope your holidays were awesome… I was in Seattle with the fam. Checking in on Clippers – Cavs game for January 16. Wanted to see if you could email the tickets to me? Or maybe messenger them? Very excited – thank you sooo much.

    From AGENT: Hey Z. Checking in with tickets guy again today.

    nba-houston-rockets-los-angeles-lakers
    When the Lakers lose, this is often what the Staples Center looks like…

    Jan 8. 2015.

    From ME: Any news?

    From AGENT: Hang tight.

     

    Jan. 12, 2015.

    From ME: Hey man, sorry to bother you – but game is in 4 days – trying to figure out babysitter and all that stuff… Looking forward to seeing LeBron.

    From AGENT: (No reply).

     

    Jan 16, 2015.

    From AGENT: Hey Z, so sorry bud but we had an overflow of ticket requests for this game… Apparently both teams are playing really well. Matthew Perry snapped up a pair this morning and Giuliana Rancic is top of the list for the other pair. Sorry bud. We’ll get you into a game. I know we have seats for the Lakers – Nuggets on February 10… Chace Crawford just turned them down.

    In the world of celebrity, free stuff is king. Matthew Perry and his 500 million dollars does not need free basketball tickets… Plus, he’s sober, so all the free booze in the luxury box was going to be ignored anyway. Giuliana Rancic? Or DiPandi or whatever her name is? Are you kidding me? She makes fun of celebrity dresses for a living. She probably heard the word “Cavs” and thought it was a leg workout. And Lakers – Nuggets tickets? The Lakers are led by a guy who is famous for being Iggy Azaleia’s boyfriend. Kobe is out for the year. They’re not exactly a hot ticket. The point was, I was not considered successful enough to snag the Clippers tickets. I was looking at some washed up pretty boy from Gossip Girl named Chace Crawford’s rejects… Perry and Rancic were gonna be on their iphones in the suite the entire time and most of the so-called Hollywood celebrities who were going to the game probably think “Chris Paul” is a type of champagne.

    article-2054384-0E8FA56300000578-757_468x630
    Although Im a huge Matthew Perry fan, he doesnt party and look like this anymore…
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    WTF is this? Maybe a few hot dogs is exactly what she needs…

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    When I first moved to Los Angeles, the Lakers were all that mattered. They had Del Harris, a young Kobe, Van Exel was being name-checked in Jay-Z songs, Eddie Jones and huge NBA stoner Sam Perkins. (Who looked blazed in 99% of his games). My friends and I would drop $25.00 to sit in the nosebleed section of the Forum just to catch a fading glimpse of what the legendary teams of the 80’s left behind. They were likeable underdogs who fought hard and always battled. Then came Shaq. And Phil Jackson and Kobe became Kobe. Those were the last years I liked the Lakers. Kobe lost his appeal when he shaved his mini afro and faced his legal troubles. Still, going to games was fun because, hey – going to the games are always fun. Still, these last ten years I stopped rooting for them and began just appreciating all professional basketball in general.

    Now, Los Angeles is all about the Clippers. A recent text from a buddy read: Lakers are for Fakers… I’m going to the Clips game. The abundance of Lakers flags that people used to display from outside of their car’s windows are long gone. The sea of purple and gold has been replaced by red, white and blue. And let me tell you, I have never seen anyone play pick-up basketball while wearing a Carlos Boozer jersey.

    Still, the luxury box is indeed, luxurious. I emailed my agent back a few days later and accepted the Lakers – Nuggets tickets. At least I could see Arizona Wildcat-alum Jordan Hill and possibly watch a few Jeremy Lin up–and-unders. Plus, my brother is a huge hoops fan as well and neither of us are Matthew Perry – sober. Watching two out-of-the-playoff race teams loaf up and down the court over free hot dogs and Stella Artois isn’t a bad way to spend a Tuesday night.

    I emailed my agent a week before the game to make sure he could send the tickets over.

    Feb. 3, 2015

    From ME: Hey man – excited for Lakers – Nugs game on Tuesday… Can you messenger the tickets or email them? Thx brother – Z

    From AGENT: Yo, Z – Hey man… looking into this. Looks like Chace Crawford might want the tickets after all… but it depends on if we can get him seats on the floor or not.

    From ME: You’re fired.

    When it was all said and done, Chace Crawford ended up not going, so I snagged the tickets. The game was poorly attended and didn’t even get exciting until the 4th quarter. Jack Nicholson wasn’t there. Neither was Leo. Or any other familiar celebrity face that we have all come to associate with the Lakers. Instead, it was my brother and myself, sitting amongst a bunch of 22-year-old agent assistants in the luxury suite, sipping Stella Artois and filling up the stat sheet with junk food.

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    Bieber texting and missing Kawhi Leonard dominating the 2014 NBA Finals last year.

    I looked long and hard down at the floor as the game wound down. I was having the time of my life. I guess watching LeBron James would have been a lot more entertaining, but this was still a pretty awesome way to see a basketball game. As a sports lover, sometimes it doesn’t even matter who is playing. And after Swaggy P made a three-pointer and did the eye goggles gesture with his hands, I suddenly became a Lakers fan again for the first time in ten years.

    And as I squinted hard at the row of folks seated on the floor, I believe I recognized a celebrity typing away into his iphone three seats down from the Lakers bench.

    It was Chase Crawford.

     

    Buy Zach’s newest album “Skywriting” on itunes NOW!

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/skywriting/id910266624

    Skywriting

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  • Premieres Sunday February 19! on AXS TV!

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  • DISNEY XD 8:00 pm March 16!

    also starring the man – Zach Lavine… !!!

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    Jacob Bertrand photo bombing Zach And Zach #kirbybuckets

    Zach LaVine will guest star on Disney’s ‘Kirby Buckets’ this week

     

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  • Z36974ZACH joins RUDE JUDE and ROSS from BINARY STAR to talk hand jobs, proper towels for that time of the month and some secret slang!

     

    more here: http://foreallyshow.com/

    Biary Star Fo Really Show funny podcast Jude Ange jude angelinni rude jude Secret Slang Sirius XM Zach Selwyn
  • <blockquote class=”instagram-media” data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-version=”7″ style=” background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% – 2px); width:calc(100% – 2px);”>

    <p style=” margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/BZj_BSagq-s/&#8221; style=” color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>Got an amazing musical surprise from @zachselwyn and @rahzelthelegend at @interbrand's #BGB2017. Thanks for the impromptu jam session guys! @roywoodjr was rocking out right off screen.</a></p> <p style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>A post shared by Dr. Oz (@dr_oz) on <time style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;” datetime=”2017-09-27T23:05:12+00:00″>Sep 27, 2017 at 4:05pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote>
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  • Episode #17 Missi Pyle & Zach Selwyn

     

    We play “Fake or Florida” and talk about women’s panties…

  • By Zach Selwyn

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    It was somewhere between Los Angeles and Palm Springs when I found myself helping a woman re-apply bloody gauze to an open wound that had split open due to complications from liposuction in Tijuana.

    Moments later, another woman – with a razor blade tattoo on the side of her neck – smacked her 7-year-old son for spilling his Mountain Dew on her iPhone and screamed something at him in Spanish.

    Sometime after that, a man with an infant child walked out of the bathroom in the back and promptly dumped a full diaper in the trash bag hanging in the middle of the aisle.

    We still had seven and a half hours until we hit Tucson…

    Welcome to the Flixbus.

    For the past few months, my mom and a bunch of other friends have been raving about a new public transportation service known as “The Flixbus.” For a low price, you can travel on this large “comfortable bus” anywhere you like and select from a great list of pre-chosen movies – and use free WiFi the entire time. I looked it up and it seemed legit. And definitely affordable. A ticket to San Diego from Los Angeles cost $4.99. A ticket to Palm Springs? $6.99… To get to my hometown of Tucson, I was looking at $22.00. Since Southwest Air wanted nearly $400 for two one way plane tickets, I booked my 9-year-old daughter and I on a 12:30 Flixbus to Tucson leaving from downtown LA.

    Wanting to beat the crowd, my daughter and I took a Lyft down to the parking lot across from Union Station, right by LA’s famed “Twin Towers Correctional Facilities.” It’s an intimidating spot – heavily populated by at least five bail bond storefronts and street meat hot dog vendors. It’s hard not to take note of family members leaving the bail bond stores, openly weeping about their loved ones having spent the night in jail.

    “Are they crying because they have to take the Flixbus too, daddy?” My daughter asked.

    “Uhh, no. Whole different situation.”

    I promptly took notice of the waiting area and its potential to escalate into a violent “prison yard” type of situation. A woman was walking around selling homemade “street tamales” out of a plastic bag, three 12-year-olds were selling bottles of water and packs of cigarettes and two men with children were openly sharing a blunt in front of their kids. (As would happen, I ended up buying two street tamales and a bottled water, as I had not thought to pack any food for the journey.)

    I hadn’t even boarded the bus yet and I was $19 dollars in the hole.

    The line to board the bus was non-existent. as Everybody sort of milled about near an area until the ticket conductor shouted out, “Palm Springs, Phoenix and Tucson line up HERE.”

    The awaiting pack scrambled immediately. As people got tossed aside and trampled like they were rushing the stage of a Travis Scott show… Elbows were thrown. Space was cleared. Somehow, I managed to grab all of my luggage and scoop up my daughter before she was flattened to death. Sadly, even though we were the third people in the waiting area, we had been easily bullied to the back of the line by the violent mob, which was led by a 6’7” ex-linebacker wearing a baseball cap reading: K.U.S.H. Keeps Us Super High.

    My advice? Pay the extra $20 online and get a reserved seat.

    Once my daughter and I got on the bus, we noticed that any available seats together had been claimed. Eventually I was forced to convince a man who looked like he had recently been let out of a Texas prison to switch seats with me so that my daughter and I could sit together… He scoffed, kicked the side of the seat and mumbled something under his breath.

    “Thank you so much, sir,” I said.

    His response?

    “I run this bus, cocksucker.”

    Lovely.

    Eventually he moved and we accepted the fact that we were stuck in the last seat in the back of the bus… basically right next to the toilet. And then, minutes before we left, a rather large woman came back and destroyed the bathroom… I nearly vomited. My daughter asked to switch seats. The bus pulled out into traffic.

    Nine hours to Tucson.

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    Back of the bus…

    The first thing people tell you about the Flixbus is that you can watch unlimited movies and surf the web, email, text, whatever you like. As it turns out this is simply not true. After trying for nearly an hour to watch Euphoria on HBO GO, I was alerted repeatedly with notes that I was in a “non-connection zone” and that I was possibly traveling “out of the continental United States.” I switched over to Netflix and was met with much of the same. Incredibly long loading times, spotty streaming and the inability to watch anything. After looking up the Flixbus website, I came across some small type in the “Services” section that read, “Please do not stream Netflix, YouTube or HBO Go on the Flixbus as it slows down everybody’s WiFi speeds and will not load correctly.”

    Wow. That would have been nice to know. Oh, also? They DO NOT ALLOW MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS on the bus that are bigger than 12 inches… So unless you’re strictly a harmonica player, forget bringing your acoustic guitar anywhere. (Since I was going to play a gig in Tucson, I now had to rent a guitar from the local music shop).

    Anyway, reading deeper, they recommended that passengers watch their curated film selections on the Flixbus app, which were “expertly chosen” and free. I checked it out. The selections were the same as what you’d expect on an airplane: Wonder Park, A Madea Family Funeral and about 9 shitty Melissa McCarthy movies.

    Seven hours and 45 minutes to Tucson.

    As we rattled over the freeways on the outskirts of Los Angeles, weaving in and out of the carpool lane, I was convinced I was going to die on the Flixbus. My daughter was getting carsick from the bumps and sudden stops and I could not believe that I had chosen this as my best means of transportation to Tucson…

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    A recent Flixbus accident in Germany.

    The bus continued to shake from side to side, causing a middle-aged lady across the aisle from me to begin moaning. Like, painfully moaning. And grabbing her sides. Thinking that she may be in labor with a child, I looked over and noticed that she had a freshly dressed wound on the side of her mid-section. At one point, she screamed “Fucking FUCK, can you drive a little slower?”

    “Are you OK ma’am?” I asked her, hoping she hadn’t been shot in a bank robbery gone wrong and was using the Flixbus as an escape tool.

    “Uggh, yeah – I’m just recovering from plastic surgery,” she said.

    “On the Flixbus?” I responded.

    “Well, I live in Palm Springs,” she proceeded to tell me. “I went to Mexico for liposuction because it’s like, 75 percent cheaper down there.”

    “Oh my God,” I said. “Didn’t you go through some sort of like, recovery first?”

    “I’ll be fine once I get to Palm Springs.”

    We hit a bump and she made a noise that I have only heard once before in my life back when I witnessed a goat slaughter in a tiny village in Mexico in 2003.

    “Oh fuck,” she screamed. “One of my sutures popped – can you just hold your finger here for a second?.”

    Shielding my daughter from the horror of this situation, I regrettably leaned over and put pressure on an area of bloodied gauze that had come undone. Eventually, the woman fastened it back together with a clip and thanked me profusely. I excused myself to the bathroom and threw ice cold water on my face.

    Plastic Sugery ** COMPOSITE **
    Some of the better results from Dr. Machado’s Tijuana Surgery Clinic. Facelift? $44.99

    30 minutes later the ride was smoothing out. Looking out the window I saw the desert approach.

    “Folks we are stopping in North Palm Springs in eight minutes,” the driver announced. “We will have time to get refreshments and some air.”

    “Thank fucking God,” the bleeding woman said.

    We pulled into an AM/PM parking lot in Palm Springs and the lady limped off the bus and met her ride. She waved good-bye to me and sped off into the Palm Springs afternoon. For all I know she bled out on the way home and is dead.

    The good news was that 12 passengers got off the bus in Palm Springs. This freed up some seats and we moved a few aisles away from the bathroom. The miles began to roll away and I started to fantasize that I was Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy taking the bus to a new dream, over expansive desert land and into the heart of opportunity. Of course, Jon Voight was heading to New York City in 1968 and I was going to Tucson to visit my mom, but the view sure was pretty.

    20 minutes later, I opened up one of my tamales-in-a-bag and gave it a shot. It smelled like some sort of fucking rotting animal. A few passengers looked over at me and covered their faces with blankets and scarves. Acting casual, I took a small bite and chewed for a few seconds before beginning to feel violently ill. I managed to spit the food into a bag and quickly wrapped it up, avoiding the grossed out looks of my fellow Flixbus friends. Luckily, that was exactly the moment when the newborn’s father emerged from the bathroom with the full diaper. He tossed it in the center trash bag and the entire bus groaned and began cursing him out.

    “What am I supposed to do?” The dad asked the gallery of hecklers.

    “Flush that shit,” the guy in the K.U.S.H. hat suggested.

    The driver came on the intercom and reminded everyone that nothing but toilet paper could go down the toilet. The passengers collectively groaned and went back to their devices. At this point, between the tamale and the diaper, the bus was turning toxic. If you lit a match in the thing, there was a strong chance the bus would explode.

    Six hours to Tucson.

    Our next stop was in Blythe, California, on the Arizona border. Here, we were given a 30 minute lunch period and the only restaurant around for miles was a McDonalds 25 feet away. Assuming this would be my last chance to eat before 9:30 that night, I broke down and ate six Chicken McNuggets and an Oreo McFlurry.

    I also called my mom to alert her of our progress.

    “How’s the Flixbus?” My mom asked. “Watching any good movies?”

    “Well, nothing really works,” I said. “Half the seats don’t have outlets, the WiFi in the desert sucks and they don’t allow streaming… and I refuse to watch Life of the Party. (That’s a terrible Melissa McCarthy movie BTW…)

    “What kind of food do they have?” She inquired.

    “They don’t have food,” I said.

    “What?” She said. “On their website it says you can purchase snacks and stuff from the driver?”

    What? Here I was nearly puking street tamales and eating Chicken McNuggets when the driver had food on him the entire time? Why were we not informed of this? I tracked down the driver as he smoked a cigarette and asked him if I could see a menu of the food they offered on board.

    “Their aint no menu, mane… We just have some Ruffles and shit.”

    Ruffles and shit?

    “Come on my man, you don’t have like a Tapas box? My daughter needs some Wiki Stix!”

    “This aint Alaska Airlines, mane,” he responded.

    Eventually, 100 miles from Phoenix, a college kid broke down and went into the bathroom to vape. He was far from discreet and as a man who once routinely snuck weed to smoke into airplane bathrooms, I viewed his efforts as amateurish. The key to smoking on a bus or airplane is to basically flush the toilet as you exhale with your face nearly in the bowl. Yeah, this is a disgusting activity, but for some reason back in the mid 90’s I had no problem shoving my head inside an airplane toilet. Now I can’t even USE bathrooms on moving vehicles. Anyway, the kid opened the door and a cloud of Watermelon E-Juice enveloped the back area. The kid walked out as if he had done nothing wrong.

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    Stick your head inside and flush as you exhale. Works every time.

    The smoke was impossible to miss and even though it dissipated quickly, it really upset the bus driver, who pulled over to the side of I-10 and DEMANDED to know who had smoked on the bus.

    My daughter raised her hand to volunteer the information.

    “Put your hand down,” I said, knowing that being labeled a “narc” at age 9 doesn’t do anybody any good.

    “Who was smoking back here?” The bus driver said. “I demand an answer!”

    I expected somebody to speak up… but nobody did. We all held together in a Flixbus code of silence. Shit, we felt like we were in La Cosa Nostra. For the first time on the ride I sensed a camaraderie with my fellow passengers. We all sort of looked at it the same way… If this was a bus in 1957, people would be smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey from flasks. We all had the same thought… Let the kid vape.

    Four and a half hours to Tucson.

    The rest of the trip went fairly smoothly. I was amazed at how well behaved my daughter was and as the stops piled up, the passengers started getting off. A few people got on in Phoenix and we got to Tucson in roughly nine hours and 30 minutes. To put that in perspective, If you drive directly from LA in a car, you’re guaranteed to spend eight hours on the road and you have to buy gas. If you fly to Tucson from LAX, door to door takes about five hours and 30 minutes. So, I basically lost four hours of my life, had to endure some awful smells and I got to be an impromptu nurse to the woman recovering from plastic surgery.

    When we got to my mom’s house, she had food and wine waiting for me and I told her all the fun stories from my 400 mile road trip in a public bus. We laughed, drank and I slept in until 8:30 the next morning when I awoke to my mom freaking out about a dead animal in the walls.

    “Zach, some animal died in the wall I called the exterminator already,” she shrieked.

    I woke up and smelled what she was talking about. I opened my backpack and found the OTHER street tamale I had forgotten to throw out buried beneath my laptop.

    “Found it, mom,” I said.

    She made me throw it out in the neighbor’s trash can…

    WATCH Zach’s music video for his song “Watch the Horses”…

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Read Zach’s New Essay “A Musician’s Dream Dies at Amoeba Records”

  • July 28, 2015
  • by zachselwyn
  • · Homepage · Music · Short Story · The Writer

  original_amoeba-music-hollywood-los-angeles     A Musician’s Dream Dies at Amoeba Records * By Zach Selwyn

         By now music snobbery should have gone by the wayside. After all, the state of music has been disgustingly bleak since MP3s dethroned the industry in the 2000’s. Jobs have been eliminated, rock ‘n roll clubs have closed and bands with true talent and drive have settled for Spotify streams as a means to an .08 cent residual check twice a year. It wasn’t always this way.

       In the glorious 90’s, I had friends with million dollar expense accounts, closets full of CD’s and other useless swag – like the Dave Matthews Band rain poncho I still have in a garage somewhere – and pockets full of drugs. But to say you are a “music executive”… or an A & R guy these days – sort of signifies that you are hanging onto a dream that died long ago. I have a good friend still in the business whose job it is to  re-package Greatest Hits compilations to Wal-Marts across America. He’s the last executive I know – and I doubt that putting together a 10 song CD called Best of Soul Asylum is what he dreamt of when he was a younger man. In a way, today’s aging execs sort of resemble the 55-year-old hair metal musicians still hanging around the Rainbow hoping their demo CD lands them a review in Hit Parader Magazine.

      Sure, nowadays vinyl is popular, but not everybody can plunk down $28.00 for a new Jack White album, no matter how many awesome backward grooves and upside down hidden songs exist when you play the thing on a 1976 Fisher-Price stereo. Besides, nice record players today can run upwards of 500 bucks. Isn’t it just so much easier to have a digital device or streaming service with everything you’ve ever wanted on it? Most of the world thinks so… But apparently, the gargantuan structure known as Amoeba Records in Hollywood does not.

     Amoeba Records is the last place in the world where a used “out of print compact disc” can fetch roughly $17.00. It is the last place in the world where snobby record store employees still exist- and consider themselves way superior than the people shopping in their store. It is the last place in the world where music entitlement continues to thrive, as tattooed polliwogs insult your used DVD or CD collection while snickering behind the counter about the fact that you are wearing a Black Crowes shirt.

     “Another R.E.M. CD?” One super tool employee whinnied as I tried to sell back a stack of CD’s from my collection. “Sorry, wrong decade.”

-1   There are two things the Amoeba employee despises: Your band and your CD/DVD collection.

    In 2003 my band released the first of our now five country-rock albums, ”Ghost Signs.” At the time, the death cart hadn’t quite been dragged through the streets for the physical CD, and independent manufacturers like Discmakers were still convincing artists like myself that things like shrink-wrap and jewel cases were ever so important. I fell for it, not only because it was my first time putting out my own album, but because I had always been one of those kids with 10,000 CD’s neatly arranged in jewel case displays across my dorm room. In short, I wanted my own title to exist with those titles. And there it was, finally in April of 2003: My album Ghost Signs by Zachariah.

61ANnlXky5L._SY355_      The minute I received my shipment of 1000 CDs in the mail, I did what any bright-eyed troubadour who harbored dreams of becoming the next Springsteen would do – and I sent them out to a hundred magazines, music festivals and bigger record labels, hoping for a bite, a lead or a review. I also packed a box of 50 and went down to Amoeba Records, hoping to get a top display in front of the store. I lugged the huge box to the consignment counter and met a skinny employee with a Descendents t-shirt on who rolled his eyes when he saw me drop my hard-fought album on his counter. In those songs were my heart, soul and dreams. I was under the impression that he would take 50 of them and then ask for 50 more. After all, this wasn’t some crappy demo tape, this was an actual well-produced bad-ass album.

    The employee barely shrugged at my hard work. He giggled and yawned. He wasn’t impressed. Instead, he offered up the following.

“We take two copies.”

“Two?” I said, incredulously.

“Yep.”

“But I have, like 1000 of these,” I said.

“So does everyone else. Here’s our deal. If these sell, you get 3 bucks. If they don’t sell in 30 days they go in the dollar bin.”

I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, expecting to unload 50 CDs and have hundreds of new fans clamoring for me to perform live at the Greek Theatre by the end of the summer. Instead, a skinny asshole with skin so pale you could count his remaining good vein had shattered my dreams in under three minutes.

            As of last week, both copies of that album are still floating around the dollar bin at Amoeba Records.

      11 years later, I experienced roughly the same exact thing when I dropped my band’s new album off at the store, hoping that they had opened their minds to independent artists actually trying to distribute their own music. I was greeted by a chubby woman with Betty Page bangs – who had a dozen bangles hanging from her wrist. She had strange vampire kitty tattoos and was ironically wearing an Usher tour t-shirt. I hated her smugness immediately.

“Consignment?” She asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve actually placed some of my music in the store before.”

“What an achievement,” she puked.

I laid my new album on the counter. 11 songs. Pristine and awesome. A personal accomplishment. It was called Skywriting and was my fifth album of original material. I had foregone the jewel case this time around for the plastic sleeve and single panel artwork. It was cheaper, less clunky and much easier to store. My friends had been doing it this way for years, so I took their lead and saved some money on manufacturing costs. The girl looked at me as her lip curled upwards.

“What kind of packaging is this?” She asked.

“Well, I didn’t print my new album in jewel cases because – really – who uses jewel cases anymore, right?”

Skywriting_rev
She shot daggers. It was as if I told her that the world was ending in a few minutes. I wasn’t sure why. The CD game had suffered so immensely in the time since I put out my first record, I figured the days were numbered that anyone would be caught dead with a jewel case. Or a CD for that matter. After all, new computers don’t even have DISC DRIVES anymore.

      “You’re kidding, right?” She vomited. “Of course we use jewel cases.”

    “Oh, I just figured they were becoming obsolete and everything.”

    “I have 25,000 CD’s at my house. You call that obsolete?” She said.

      I wasn’t sure what to call it. I have 25,000 CD’s as well, but mine were all stored in Case Logic books and on shelves in closets. The days when my alphabetized CD collection was the envy of every Pi Phi who waltzed into my fraternity house asking to borrow The Chronic were OVER.

      “You don’t use the big CD books?” I asked.

      “CD books are bullshit… You can never find anything, the artwork gets folded which means you can’t re-sell it and the discs get scratched in the storage… Whoever started using those things in the first place was an idiot.”

jack-black-high-fidelity
“Youre music sucks, bro…” – Every record store guy.

      I couldn’t believe it. I was having an argument with a record store employee about how to store compact discs. It was like arguing that the news in tomorrow’s print newspaper would be more relevant than the news just posted on the internet.

    She took my CD’s and re-packaged them in some abandoned clear jewel case she had in the back of the counter and filled out a consignment sheet for me. This time, I only brought two copies of my new album, wishing not to embarrass myself by leaving down the elevator with 50 copies like I did a decade prior. I signed a sheet saying that they could sell the album for $7.99 and that I’d retain three bucks of each sale.

            Then I suggested we put the CD in the country section, to which she replied, “Nobody wants to be in the country section… especially with a name like Zachariah. You think anyone is looking in the ‘Z’ section of country?”
“Maybe they’ll find it while looking for Dwight Yoakam?” I suggested.
She rolled her eyes again and hit me with even more conceit and arrogance.

“No offense, but if anybody is looking for Dwight Yoakam, they probably aren’t looking for you.”
I hated this bitch.

“Fine,” I said. “Put me next to Warren Zevon and ZZ Top in the ‘Z’ section of rock n roll.”

“Good choice,” she said. “Not that anybody is looking for them either.”

I thanked her for being so awesome and told her that she’d be surprised at how fast my CD’s would sell. She eeked out a fake smile and waved me off before moving onto the next customer who was selling a large amount of unopened House of Cards DVD’s.

     Three days later, I sent my brother into Amoeba to buy both of my CD’s. I didn’t care if I was losing a few bucks by doing it. The point was to prove to these assholes that I could sell something at their store. I slipped him $20.00 and he went in and came out with both copies of my new album.

            A day later, a different manager called me and informed me that I had “miraculously” sold out of my CD’s and that if I wanted to bring a few more by, he’d be happy to consign them and pay me the $6.00 I was
owed.

            “How many copies should I bring down?” I asked him sarcastically. “About 50?”
“Why don’t we start with one,” he said.

I told him I’d be in that afternoon. But that I wasn’t providing a jewel case…

ZACH’S LATEST CD “SKYWRITING” is for sale for $7.99 somewhere at Amoeba.

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Amoeba Records High Fidelity independent artists Jack Black Los Angeles Music musicians san francisco short story snobs Zach Selwyn Zachariah
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