Arts & Entertainment
A melodic farewell
Locals lament closure of Dupont Circle record shop
Suzy and Jack Menase, owners of Melody Record Shop. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
With the rising popularity of downloading music from places like iTunes and online stores like Amazon, more and more record stores are closing, surrendering to the convenience of not having to leave the house to get both new and old albums.
Melody Records, an institution in Dupont Circle since the late ‘70s, is just another casualty in that unfortunate trend. Local gays are lamenting its impending closure. It was always popular with Blade readers — it won several “Best of Gay D.C.” awards in the early ‘00s, which still hang in the store above the new releases.
“Melody Records was one of my first discoveries when I moved to D.C. more than 11 years ago,” Michael Collins, a gay D.C. resident, says. “I stopped there about once a week, sometimes more often than that, and I seldom left empty handed.”
The owners, Suzy and Jack Menase, opened the store in 1977 before moving to Dupont two years later after having to vacate their previous location on E Street when developers wanted to redevelop the area.
“We just found Dupont Circle to be a busy area and thought it would be a good location for us,” Suzy Menase says.
They’ve been in the business so long, they’ve always tried to stay on top of things, and seen all the trends come and go, then come again.
“It’s been like a full circle. We started with vinyl and now we’re ending with vinyl,” Suzy says. “It’s neat to see young kids coming in … they’re not excited about CDs but they’re excited about vinyl.”
“I think the sound quality that they heard made it very attractive,” Jack Menase says.
The store has always held a wide selection of genres, including large sections of seemingly less popular genres such as opera, new age and more.
“The opera queens would squeal while the uber cool disco boys looked for the German imports of what would later be called ‘industrial’ in the specialty bins,” says Stephen Yasko, general manager of WTMD 89.7 in Baltimore.
The Menases have always worked to make sure they have a full selection with a little bit of something for everyone.
“If we don’t have it in stock, we order it for them,” Jack Menase says.
“With CDs, if you can’t sell something, you can return it,” Suzy says. “It’s not one person deciding what we carry.”
The Menases announced they were closing through a letter on their website, saying, “technology, the internet and the economy has taken its toll.”
“In the past two or three years, sales have been declining … we saw it coming, but we were just trying to hold on,” Suzy says. “We have such a strong, loyal customer base, we wanted to stay as long as possible.”
They both remember a time when there was an abundance of record stores in the D.C. area that all survived until the early 90s.
“One by one, everybody closed down,” Jack says.
Being in Dupont, the store automatically became a favorite spot for gay customers.
“Where else could you run across a copy of Ethel Merman’s disco album from the ’70s?” Collins says.
Also, Lambda Rising — a gay bookstore and staple of Dupont Circle — used to be next door.
“We were very sorry to see them go,” Jack says.
“Whoever came to them, whoever came to us went to them,” Suzy says. “They were great neighbors to have.”
Some music lovers continued to purchase CDs — at least in some genres — even into the digital music era.
“I loved Melody,” says Kevin Lees, a gay Washington resident. “I still typically buy classical and sometimes jazz in physical CD format for the copious liner notes and anytime I was looking for something in particular, I would always look at Melody first as my contribution to local stores in the face of Amazon. I’m surprised it lasted so long and that it outlasted Lambda Rising but sadly, the record store is clearly destined to be a thing of the past.”
There are a few members of the staff who have been working at the store for years, including a few who have been around for more than 10 years.
There are a lot of people who have been going to the store for years and some are even on a first-name basis with the Menases.
“They know my whole family and I know theirs,” Suzy says. “It’s not customers, they’re family.”
“I was heartbroken when I saw the going-out-of-business sign on the window,” Collins says. “What a regrettable loss for Dupont Circle and for all Washington music lovers.”
The shop is at 1623 Connecticut Ave., N.W. No firm closing date has been set. For now, it’s open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch was held at Salamander Washington DC on Sunday, April 19. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) was presented with the Allyship Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The umbrella LGBTQ sports organization Team D.C. held its annual Night of Champions Gala at the Georgetown Marriott on Saturday, April 18. Team D.C. presented scholarships to local student athletes and presented awards to Adam Peck, Manuel Montelongo (a.k.a. Mari Con Carne), Dr. Sara Varghai, Dan Martin and the Centaur Motorcycle Club. Sean Bartel was posthumously honored with the Most Valuable Person Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Television
‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
In the years since “Schitt’s Creek” wrapped up its six season Emmy-winning run, nostalgia for it has grown deep – especially since the still painfully recent loss of its iconic leading lady, Catherine O’Hara, whose sudden passing prompted a social media wave of clips and tributes featuring her fan-favorite performance as the deliciously daft Moira Rose. Revisiting so many favorite scenes and funny moments from the show naturally reminded us of just how much we loved it, even needed it during the time it was on the air; it also reminded us of how much we miss it, and how much it feels now like something we need more than ever.
That, perhaps more than anything else, is why the arrival of “Big Mistakes” – the new Netflix series starring, co-created and co-written by Dan Levy – felt so welcome. We knew it wouldn’t be the Roses, but it seemed cut from the same cloth, and it had David Rose (or at least someone who seemed a lot like him) in the middle of a comically dysfunctional family dynamic, complete with a mother who gets involved in town politics and a catty sibling rivalry with his sister, and still nebbish-ly uncomfortable in his own gay shoes. Only this time, instead of running a charmingly pretentious boutique, he’s the pastor of the local church, and instead of a collection of kooky small town neighbors to contend with, there are gangsters.
As it turns out, it really does feel cut from the same cloth, but the design is distinctly different. Set in a fictional New Jersey suburb, it centers on Nicky (Levy) and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) – he openly gay with an adoring boyfriend (Jacob Gutierrez), yet still obsessive about keeping it all invisible to his congregation, and she drudging aimlessly through life as an underpaid schoolteacher after failing to achieve her New York dreams of show biz success – who inadvertently become enmeshed in a shady underworld when a gesture for their dead grandmother’s funeral goes horribly awry.
They’re surrounded by a crew of equally compromised characters. There’s their mother Linda (Laurie Metcalf), whose campaign to become the town’s mayor only intensifies her tendency to micromanage her children’s lives; Yusuf (Boran Kuzum), the Turkish-American mini-mart operator who pulls them into the criminal conspiracy yet is himself a victim of it; Max (Jack Innanen), Morgan’s live-in boyfriend, who pushes her for a deeper commitment and is willing to go to couples’ therapy to prove it; Annette, his mother (Elizabeth Perkins), who lends her society standing toward helping Linda’s campaign against a misogynistic opponent (Darren Goldstein); and Ivan (Mark Ivanir), the seemingly ruthless crime boss who enslaves the siblings into his network but may really be just another slave himself. It’s a well-fleshed out assortment of characters that helps our own loyalties shift and adapt, generating at least a degree of empathy – if not always sympathy – that keeps everyone from coming off as a merely “black-and-white” caricature of expectations and typecasting.
To be sure, it’s an entertaining binge-watch, full of distinctive characters – all inhabiting familiar, even stereotypical roles in the narrative – who are each given a degree of validation, both in writing and performance, as the show unspools its narrative. At the same time, it makes for a fairly bleak overall view of humanity, in which it’s difficult to place our loyalties with anyone without also embracing a kind of “dog eat dog” morality in which nobody is truly innocent – but nobody is completely to blame for their sins, anyway.
In this way, it’s a show that lets us off the hook in the sense that it places the idea of ethical guilt within a framework of relative evils, as it permits us to forgive our own trespasses by accepting its “lovably” amoral characters, each of whom has their own reasons and justifications for what they do. We relate, but we can’t quite shake the notion that, if all these people hadn’t been so caught up in their own personal dramas, none of them would have ended up in the compromised morality that they’re in.
However, it’s not some bleak morality play that Levy and crew undertake; rather, it’s more an egalitarian fantasy in which even “bad” choices feel justified by inevitability. Everybody’s motivations make enough sense to us that it’s hard to judge any of the characters for making the choices – however unwise – that they do. In a system where everyone is forced to compromise themselves in order to achieve whatever dream of self-fulfillment they may have, how can anybody really blame themselves for doing what they have to do to survive?
Of course, all things considered, this is more a relatable comedy than it is a morality play. As a comedy of errors, it all works well enough on its own without imposing an ideology on it, no matter how much we may be tempted to do so. Indeed, what is ultimately more to the point is how well this pseudo-cynical exercise in the normalization of corruption – for that is what it really about, in the end – succeeds in letting us all off the hook for our compromises.
In the end, of course, maybe all that analysis is too deep a dive for a show that feels, in the end, like it’s meant to be mostly for fun. Indeed, despite its focus on being dragged into the shady side of life, the arc of its messaging seems to be less about a moralistic urge toward making the “right” choice than it is a candid recognition that all of us are compromised from the outset, often by choices we only force upon ourselves, and that’s a refreshing enough bit of honesty that we can easily get on board.
It helps that the performances are on point, especially the loony and wide-eyed fanaticism of Metcalf – surely the MVP of any project in which she is involved – and the directly focused moral malleability of Ortega; Levy, of course, is Levy – a now-familiar persona that can exist within any milieu without further justification than its own queer relatability – and, in this case, at least, that’s both the icing on the cake and substance that defines it. That’s enough to make it an essential view for fans, queer or otherwise, of his distinctive “brand,” even if he – or the show itself – doesn’t quite satisfy in the way that “Schitt’s Creek” was able to do.
Seriously, though, how could it?
Victory Fund brunch draws top LGBTQ officials, 2028 hopeful Andy Beshear
Inside the lonely world of MAGA gay men
PHOTOS: National Champagne Brunch
PHOTOS: Night of Champions
‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
Science said stop; the Supreme Court said no
Response to a personal attack against me
Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood
Charlie Kirk Act advances in Tenn.
