Broken Records Zine Review

Broken Records is a memoir of the years twenty-four-year-old Jessica spent working as a record store clerk. During this time she graduated high school and college, was almost arrested and single handedly prevented runaway truck carnage and an in-store blood bath. The Broken Records store was the backdrop.

The importance to her of the time spent working at Broken Records and the relationships formed with co-workers is obvious as she writes of the problem of CD trade-ins, memorable sales of pornography and a hilarious late night road trip with the life size cardboard version of the local Elvis impersonator.
The characters of her co-workers and regular customers also come under scrutiny. A roll-call of fellow employees (they all love Star Wars) are introduced alongside store regulars the Prog and Porn Guy and the Aging Hipster.

Jessica writes with a fury of wit and inspiring honesty about the everyday life of a record store clerk. Whether the daily task or the 'did that just happen?' ridiculous, her individual style makes this zine impossible to put down until the end.

Broken Records even comes with its own soundtrack. The 17 track CD compiled by Jessica herself features many of the bands/artists mentioned in the zine (disappointingly Barbara Streisand, Genesis and Chicago aren’t included!). The CD does include Throwing Muses, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, The Cure and The Clash. Each track comes with a short explanationto its importance.

By the end of this zine you may have learned that despite previous media representations, there are women out there who make damn good record store clerks, do own every Clash album on vinyl and happen to posses a far superior musical knowledge than their average male counterpart.

Broken Records is available at all good distros. For a full list visit the Broken Records MySpace page.