Where Everybody Knew My Name Part 1: Eden Music Paradise Lost

By Colt

There have been many places that influenced the person that I have become today. I think that we all have restaurants, bars, stores, and friends houses that felt like home. Places that not only brought out different parts of our personalities, but helped shape and mold them. I am doing something new with the blog and I am writing a series of posts based around those places. It will be ongoing and in specific timeline. I am going to start with a place that I can never go back because it is gone. It was killed by Target, Best Buy and Itunes. It was Eden Music.

Eden Music was first located in a shopping center on Bluff Street in St George, it later moved to Tabernacle before ultimately becoming another victim of the St George population's love all things corporate. The first album I bought there was a used copy of House of Pain's debut album. This was because I had heard the song a lot on the radio, and watched the video on MTV. This was the main reason behind most the music I bought. I didn't really care where I got, I cared that it was used and therefore cheaper. As I grew older and started to care more about what I listened to Eden became more important.

It was run by someone who became my friend, Adam Mast. Adam took the time to get to know what I liked. He knew I liked movies and would always recommend the best stuff that was being made by independent film makers. He took the time to get know my musical tastes, and over time got to where I would by anything he suggested without listening to it first. He recommended albums that have become my some of my standard rotations on my Ipod. The Magic Numbers, Wilco, Eels, Uncle Tupelo, Super Fury Animals, Blanche, The Shins, and The Vandals are some of my favorite bands that I would never have heard of had I done my shopping at Best Buy. It was at Eden that I bought my first two Elvis Costello records(North and When I Was Cruel). It was at Eden I first heard American Idiot and thus started my belief that Green Day was one of the very very few transcendent bands of my generation. With out Eden Music and Adam I would most likely still be listening to what ever was on the radio, and would never have developed my vast appreciation for all types of music.

Eden was not just a place to buy music though, it was a place to chill and meet new people. You didn't have to buy anything to just hang out and talk music or movies. Who ever was hanging around the counter that day were your new friends. If I had an hour or two to kill before my shift at the Pizza Factory began, I just stopped into Eden till it was time to go.

When I came back to St George from Washington DC one of the first places I went was Eden and that is when Adam told me the store was closing. There was just no longer any room for the small independent music store in the crowded market. He told me that since he had decided to close up shop all of his regulars and stopped in to hear the news. I got in my truck and put the copy of Don McLean's American Pie and listened to those sad lyrics that perfectly fit the soundtrack of my life at that moment:

I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news but she just smiled and turned away I went down to the sacred store where I'd heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn't play ...the day the music died.

I have tried to find another place that fits me, and knows what I like. None of them have worked. I can't go to Best Buy and get a recommendation for a new band. I worked corporate retail sales I knew I was going try and sell you a Kenmore the minute you walked into Sears's Appliance section. I don't want to be sold on Katy Perry the moment I set foot in your area just because its whats being promoted this week. There is something just a little to 2001:A Space Odyssey about a Mac computer using Itunes to track my play history and recent downloads and then reading my mind to decide who else I would like. As a result I have had to try hard to find stuff I like. Getting recommendations from friends(who I trust) and listening to KUER(local NPR music station). When Eden closed its doors for the final time was the day the my music died.