Dave Sink, who for many years was the owner of Antiquarium Records in Omaha, Neb., died earlier this year at age 63. He played a big role in the development of my musical tastes, and I owe him a long-overdue tribute.

I was 14 when I first ventured into the musty basement of the Antiquarium. Dave was there behind the counter with a couple of kids roughly my age, smoking a cigarette and holding forth on a topic I can’t remember, but which was almost certainly either baseball or the current state of indie music. Behind him on the wall was a handmade sign that neatly summed things up: “Dave Is Punk Rock.”

Dave was an imposing presence, partly because he was tall and hunched over, like an older, grumpier Joey Ramone, but also because he had no qualms about sharing his unsolicited opinion of the music you were buying from him.

All of the cassettes for sale (this was the early ’90s) were in locked cases along the walls, so you had to ask Dave to open a case for you if you wanted to buy something. This was an unnerving ritual.

I wanted to buy a Danzig album called How the Gods Kill, because I was just getting into metal and loved Glenn Danzig’s former band, The Misfits. Without a word, Dave led me over to the cassette case, retrieved the album and handed it to me. Then, bam:

“The Misfits were a good band. Glenn Danzig is a shithead.”

What an asshole. But what can I say — I was young and impressionable, and he seemed so knowledgeable and cool.

The Danzig tape ended up not being that good. Anyway, I kept going to the Antiquarium, and after a while, Dave and I became friendly. As I watched his encounters with other similarly hapless customers, I started to understand his philosophy: If they wanted to buy shitty music, he was happy to sell it to them. But if they were interested in expanding their tastes, he had plenty of suggestions.

Not long after that, Dave started to occasionally throw in extra music with my purchases, free of charge. It was always good stuff, too. When I went in to buy a Doors CD, he sent me home with R.E.M.’s Murmur and Life’s Rich Pageant. When I picked up Nirvana’s Incesticide, he slipped in a copy of Fugazi’s Repeater.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On one visit, he gave me the cassette pictured above, a mixtape that was labeled Of a Continuing Series. This week, I listened to it for the first time in many years, on my old Sony Walkman that hadn’t been used in roughly the same amount of time. Simultaneously, I researched the names of the songs, which, for the most part, I never knew until now.

Side A:
Lungfish/Put Your Hand In My Hand
Sugar/If I Can’t Change Your Mind (Acoustic)
The Fall/Return
Bob Dylan/Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
Mousetrap/Wired
Grant Hart/All of My Senses
Autoclave/Dr. Seuss
Felt/Dismantled King Is Off the Throne
Simon Joyner/Gone Wrong Love Tune
Sonic Youth/Dirty Boots
Hammerbox/Size of the World
Bongwater/Chicken Pussy
Minutemen/Little Man With a Gun in His Hand

Side B:
Mousetrap/FUBAR (recorded off the John Peel show)
Ditch Witch/If I Lose
Lou Reed/New York Telephone Conversation
Volcano Suns/Punching Bag
The Pogues/The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn
The Vibrators/Sweet Sweet Heart
Culture Fire/Release
Talking Heads/Paper
Mecca Normal/Armchairs Fit
The Godfathers/Birth, School, Work, Death
The Stooges/Search and Destroy
Billy Bragg/Levi Stubbs’ Tears
Poster Children/Love
R.E.M./1,000,000
Mousetrap/Train

Over the years, this tape has provided an occasional litmus test for my broadening musical tastes. Initially, of the artists featured on the tape, I had heard of Bob Dylan, R.E.M. and the Talking Heads, and that was basically it. Today, I recognize a few more of the artist names, but by no means all of them. I love the Stooges and Lou Reed, and I’m acquainted enough with Hüsker Dü to realize that Dave must’ve been a fan, since two of its former members (Grant Hart and Bob Mould, as a member of Sugar) are included.

Many of the other bands have faded into obscurity — a few I couldn’t even find YouTube links for, especially the Omaha musicians: Mousetrap, Simon Joyner, and Culture Fire. So it’s safe to say that without this tape, I never would have heard of them.

Hearing the songs today, what struck me about them was that they’re not nearly as weird as I remembered. Now, there are exceptions — Bongwater’s “Chicken Pussy” being the primary example — but overall, I found the music fairly… catchy. I especially like Autoclave’s “Dr. Seuss,” which has a poppy, almost new wave beat; Hammerbox’s “Size of the World,” a slab of female-fronted grunge that prefigures Hole and Veruca Salt; and Grant Hart’s “All of My Senses,” a trance-like melody accentuated by electronic drums and prominent, silvery organ.

I left Omaha for college, and in the years after, only visited the Antiquarium during occasional visits home. During that time, Omaha’s indie-rock scene — which Dave, it should be said, played a large role in nurturing — began to take off, with bands like Bright Eyes and The Faint gaining national recognition. Working at a newspaper a couple of hours south of Omaha, I decided to write a story about the local music scene, for which I interviewed Dave.

He was surprisingly easy to interview, and very quotable. As always, he cut through the bullshit, pointing out that the “scene” being written about was no new thing, and had possibly even peaked a few years earlier, when all the bands being written about still spent most of their time in Omaha, instead of touring nationally.

I showed him the finished article on my next trip to Omaha. I was prepared to have him rip it apart, but he was actually really nice about it: He said he thought it captured the scene well. And he was happy that I quoted him accurately.

That may have been the last time I saw Dave; I moved to New York City not long afterward, and in 2007 or so, his health took a downturn, forcing him to leave the Antiquarium.

Age didn’t seem to mellow Dave, or make him any less likely to share his unvarnished opinions, which was ultimately what I liked about him. When I mentioned I was moving, all he said was that he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in New York City.

Dave is punk rock.