May 2016

RIP Gary Sperrazza - I still fondly recall being yelled at by him while browsing at Apollo Records for not putting records back in their sleeves correctly. I think I still have some of the mixtapes you could order through the catalog at the counter (I remember some hot early hip hop tapes and a Scientists compilation when their records were pretty hard to find). He was intimidating but a nice guy with a vast wealth of knowledge once he realized you kept coming back. For those who don't know, not only was he a Buffalo music legend, editor of Shakin' Street Gazzette (which first published Bangs' "How To Be A Rock Critic"), and was a steady contributor to Bomp (among other fanzines) and was instrumental in laying out/curating the seminal Power Pop issue. He was also a huge force on early hip hop and KRS-ONE supposedly pulled some beats out of the back room records at Apollo. His influence was much larger than I ever realized back then, and I'm glad I learned some things from him just from overhearing his conversations, asking some dumb questions and through the osmosis of browsing his store and ordering tapes from him (you'd bring him some blanks to the shop and pick them up the next week after you picked out some selections). Here he is eulogized far better than what I wrote above: