Tucson Weekly: Remembering Brad (May 7

Brad Singer Was One Of Rock And Roll's Unsung Heroes.
By Fred Mills

Take me down to your dance floor/I won't mind the people when they stare/Paint a different color on your front door/And tomorrow we may still be there.
--Gram Parsons, "A Song For You"
(Ed. note: After four courageous days in intensive care, Brad Singer, age 46, owner and founder of Zia Record Exchange, died Sunday, May 3, of complications from a viral infection. He was surrounded by his family and children at the time of his death.)
NOT LONG AFTER I landed in Tucson in 1992, Brad Singer rescued me from what had promised to be a long hot summer's worth of job-hunting. He was opening his first Tucson Zia Record Exchange; I wanted a gig in my field of expertise; nearly six years later, I'm still with his company.
Music I mention that only as context, because my memories of Brad have less to do with the fact that he signed my paychecks, and more towards that indescribable sense of loss and sadness that always comes over me when I hear we've lost another one of us, the music community.
Brad always greeted me warmly, and he never seemed much inclined towards shop talk. Instead, we'd enthuse about the stuff that mattered: music. Like a lot of us, Brad grew up with rock and roll, and both his knowledge and love of bands from the '60s onward ran deep. For him, there was no aesthetic or moral line dividing then and now--between the hirsute combos of yore and the tattooed punks of the '90s. It was all rock and roll to him. And while that may seem self-evident and inconsequential, part of Brad's genius was to marry an egalitarian sensibility to business savvy in the form of a wholly unique retail operation whose aim was to make both a profit and a contribution to the larger music scenes of Phoenix and Tucson.
There are two things about Brad that I always admired. One, he realized something I'd always fantasized about: starting a record store from his own personal collection, and turning that hobby into a successful business. Let me tell you, there's not a record collector out there who'd turn down the opportunity to ditch the coat-and-tie lifestyle and surround himself with music from nine to five (or in Brad's case, 10 a.m. to midnight).
Secondly, after becoming a successful businessman, Brad chose to give something back. Any number of regional musicians have their own stories of Brad's assistance in finding them industry contacts and even financing their recording sessions. He was also instrumental in making the annual Tucson Area Music Awards and Club Crawl celebration a reality.
Plus, his setting up the Epiphany Records label a few years ago in order to put out CDs by young bands he dug was no vanity project--it was an article of faith, borne out from his coming-of-age during rock's idealistic era.
And I think he always carried that idealism with him. Brad once told me an off-color, slightly horrific story about an encounter he had with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. (I'm loathe to repeat it here as the Widow Cobain's lawyers have a reputation for fearlessness--but come to think of it, so did Brad. He'd probably just laugh and say, "So--let 'em sue!") Yet he didn't render the tale in tabloid terms; he seemed sad, almost paternal, reflecting on the doomed rock couple.
Another time, upon learning that we both had a mutual love for Gram Parsons (he got a big kick out of my recounting the pilgrimage I'd once made to a New Orleans memorial cemetery in search of Parsons' marker) he put me in charge of tracking down an elusive, out-of-print biography of the late country-rock singer. Which I gladly did, as one of the easiest joys in life is the sharing of music with fellow fans.
When Brad turned up one day sporting a Nudie-designed embroidered jacket, knowing that Parsons had also been smitten by the legendary Country-Western fashion tailor's custom creations, I just grinned and quipped, "Hey Gram, can I have your autograph?" Brad beamed like a kid who'd just pulled the prize from a cereal box.
I'm proud and honored to have known Brad. I'd like to think that he's up there somewhere right now, comparing Nudie outfits with Gram Parsons.

Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives