Ames
Sometime in the late 1990s, my neighbor came over to our house and told us that Ames was on fire. They were a couple years older than I was and could drive and asked if I wanted to ride with them to watch it burn down. How could I refuse?
Ames was a regional department store that grew to prominence during the 20th century. With the bulk of its stores in the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States, it’s possible that you may not have come across one unless you spent time in that part of the country. It was “the” store in my community for much of the 90s, until, inevitably, Walmart came to town. It wasn’t long after this happened that the fire occurred.
I spent a lot of time in Ames as a kid, mostly with my mom. She would take me there and let me buy an album on audio cassette. Even though it wasn’t much different from any other department store of its time, it was mine and I developed a fondness for it.
It’s probably why I enjoyed finding employee training videos from the store. I don’t think it exists anymore, but at one point there was a small “Ames Fan Club” online and they collected ephemera from the store such as this.
It was this community that actually inspired me to try my hand at making vaporwave music, leading to my first album titled “New Hire Orientation.” There are audio snippets from some of the recordings archived by this community used on the album.
Not only that, but the cover art for the album is a screenshot of the Google Street View outside of the former Ames corporate headquarters. It’s far and away the sloppiest work I’ve ever done in terms of production, but it got the job done and it got me into making music. I’m happy I made it.