The Rise and Fall of Little Gem Records

by Rachel Levine

These were the happiest days of my life and it didn’t matter how certainly, how securely I fell, coming down hard, coming down fast, coming down with the shakes or paranoia like trying to slough off a three month long bender or maybe it was more than a three month long bender at that point because there was a lot of liquor and other odd recreational pharmaceutical things, but hitting that wall, slamming face first into the bricks, taking some punches, swallowing my pill, isn’t it ironic – wait, no not that song, but it ended being in the shitter or the crapper and reaching rock bottom would probably be reaching up the way things were at that point, and yes it was bound to end, coming to its inevitable, humbling conclusive decrescendo, the furious march of time trampling me along to obscurity and my inevitable disappearance, yes my time came, and I lay down with dogs came up with fleas, and all great things rise and fall including Rome that wasn’t built in a day but little gem was built in a few months so perhaps not as great as Rome, but ruined like the old stones of Rome because everything crumbles my dentist tells me, everything has its season, everything has its time, everything changes I am guaranteed of that and death and taxes, time heals all wounds so I hope, bidding so long, sayonara, ciao bella ciao, fare thee well, au revoir, goodnight you sweet princes of Maine, take your bow, curtain, exit stage right, this tragic ending, Elvis has left the building, the sweet smell of defeat, and all human fortune is a wheel says Herodotus and sometimes you’re at the bottom I suppose. So yes, those were the happiest days of my life coming down as assuredly as any Babel Tower because I was trying to overshoot the limits imposed by external forces. In this world, in this situation, though, you’d hardly pick God to be the responsible party, unless you’re an insurance company and acts of God are written into your policy, but not in this case. No, in this world, you’d say it was either bad luck or something tangible and blame bad marketing or the press or the rise or fall of the dollar or maybe the evil eye or some bad Feng Shui arrows or misjudging the target audience or a bad day for the PR person or because you had to spend money to make money or you weren’t cautious enough about the bottom line and that’s what business is isn’t it? Or you could blame the failure of the peace process in the middle east or the fact you could now download music and no one bought CDs anymore except me and most everyone else I know and you could blame Hollywood or the fact that Saturn just moved into a conjunction with Capricorn or the fact they changed the USDA food recommendations last week or the fact we were out of touch with youth culture or maybe we were in touch with them or that they turned against us or maybe they never with us to begin with or bad karma or the fact the loan didn’t come through in time or the check was in the mail and the rising price of rent on Main Street or the industry or the industry watch dogs or those stupid labels that rate records 18 plus if there’s any words like poontang or a lack of talent or perhaps too much talent and too many cooks and cocks spoil the stew or maybe we didn’t try hard enough or maybe we were painting our faces with lead and suffered brain damage or maybe it was asbestos in the ceiling or maybe it was never meant to be or maybe we didn’t tap into the cosmic flow of things or nothing comes from nothing or it was a pipe dream really or a dream deferred or a raisin in the sun or dogs eating dogs or any platitude you can pick to explain or mitigate the randomness of almost all events or I’d like to blame my lack of judgment and experience that made me reckless, but it also made me take the kinds of risks that, to quote Mr. Matt Leger, “let 30% carry the other 70%.”

Cry me a river, you know. Little Gem Records closed its doors and those were the happiest days of my life.

©Rachel Levine 2006