As you all know, I’ve been waiting on a record by David Berkeley called The Fire in My Head. For those of you who don’t know, Berkeley is an independent artist who has a bunch of really great records.
I ordered this one back in February, & gave it some time because vinyl most likely makes up a smaller percentage of his sales & is expensive to press. I figured that they probably press the records in batches, so they had to wait until they met the number they press at once. Well, the date the tracking number gave me came & went, & I became a little nervous.
I knew it wasn’t a problem on Berkeley’s end because the record had shipped & the tracking information followed it to my building. I just never received it. No one had seen it; it was just gone.
Jump to May. I was just about to ask Amazon to get my money back, so I could try to reorder it through Berkeley’s site instead, when the man who works in the mail room dropped a package on my desk. It looked like a record. He told me that it had been delivered by one of his colleagues to the wrong Bill, whose last name is vaguely similar to mine. When I opened it, I found that it was what I had been waiting for.
The meaning of this post is to acknowledge David Berkeley & his crew working at his store. See, when I opened the package the packing slip fell out. On it was a nice, handwritten note thanking me for buying the record & for being a fan. They said if I order through his website next time, they’ll be sure to give me some deals.
Whether or not the deals are there for anyone who purchases through his site doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that someone in his camp wrote a note to let a fan know he’s appreciated. This is the way it should be done, but unfortunately, you never see it. Granted, a musician who makes the celebrity list probably can’t do it because if you answer one, you have to answer a million more, but this just makes me appreciate the efforts of a passionate artist trying to make a living. Doing that isn’t an easy thing to do & I guarantee it took his sweat, blood & soul to get where he is. Small gestures like thank you notes make fans realize this & make it easy for them to support his work. I have never had a problem doing that, & this just reinforced it.
So, Mr. Berkeley, in the off chance you stumble upon this tiny corner of the internet which contains a blog about music & life’s little details, thank you to you & your wonderful support staff at your store. Your efforts don’t go unnoticed, I promise.
As for the rest of you, check out David Berkeley. It’s definitely worth your time. If you’re interested, you can buy his albums & other merchandise here.
Bill's Bologna 