“The machine was open. No kidding, just sitting there, wide open on a Sunday, a hundred quarters just sitting there.” My pulse was beating hard when I spoke these words to my friend Andy over the phone, “And I got a free issue of the Sunday Rocky Mountain News.”
“Enough of the Rocky,” he said to me, “how much did you get?”
It was a wide-open change box of the Rocky Mountain News newspaper box that enabled me to purchase my first Sonic Youth album, 1995’s Washing Machine. Living in a small town the box probably wasn’t cleaned out too often; in fact, it seems like we only received the Sunday edition of the Rocky, they never bothered bringing us the news during the week. In this open box was 140 quarters, probably all from that day alone. So there I was, $35 right in front me, faced with a decision that, I’ll be honest, wasn’t too difficult to make. I packed the quarters into my backpack and biked home. My parents were gone for the day, so I dumped the money out all over the bed and began to count. That’s when I called my friend Andy. He’d just picked up Washing Machine and was listening to it while I talked to him.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s Sonic Youth. It’s amazing,” he said.
I was hearing, I found out later, the last track “Diamond Sea,” a 19-minute freakout that would later blow my mind with face-melting noise riffs that I can honestly say I never thought I’d hear in my life.
So I went out with my quarters and bought the album. The clerk, a face that I’d learn to know over the next few years, congratulated me on purchase, but looked at me with a distinct air of annoyance as I plopped down the $15 worth of quarters.
“You give up collecting them or something?” the clerk said to me.
Startled at someone questioning the origin of the quarters, I muttered something about a crazy aunt or uncle and ran out of the store.
I popped it in my Aiwa CD player when I got home. “Becuz” kicked in and my brain felt like it was about to hemorrhage. “What is this?” I thought to myself. “This can’t be music, this is, this is something else all together.”
Then the nine-minute title track hit me in the face. My eyes opened wide, the feeling of panic hit me, and for whatever reason, I began to feel guilty about my recent treasure hunt. Thurston Moore seemed to be yelling at me, Kim Gordon slapped me in the face, Gordon sang, “it’s a woman’s face/ and she threw a quarter down at me and she said / ‘honey, here’s a quarter go put it in the washing machine.’” The rock continued to pummel me in the face, and the words echoed over and over in my head, “here’s a quarter.” They knew. I don’t know how, but Sonic Youth knew I bought their album with quarters that weren’t rightfully mine.
I took the CD off, sat down on my bed and stared at the backpack filled with quarters. I never mentioned it again, I never bought anything larger than a soda or some candy with Blackbeard’s stolen change. I even bought a few copies of the Rocky each week to pay them back. As far as I was concerned, I owed them the $35 that I stole. I think I still owe them about $25, but after they went out of business I realized it probably doesn’t matter much anymore.
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