JB (Jon) Carpenter:
CLASS OF 1985
Davis High SchoolClass of 1985
Davis, CA
JB (Jon)'s Story
This is not "soon to be a major motion picture" type stuff here, so I don't know about a story, but maybe a few basic details.
1985-1987 Adrift post-high school. Much stupidity. Live in Sweden for a bit and it nearly destroys me. Come back to Davis,and for different reasons, it nearly destroys me. Work in cool record store.
1988-1989 Move to Los Angeles and attend Jr College in Santa Monica. In this city of cars, I must ride the bus. Work in lousy record store.
1989-1990 Back in Davis for a year. Stumble through a semester at Sac State and hang out with old friends as they pursue a real education at UCD. Work in cool record store.
1990-1993 Go to school at Chico State. Decide my major is Sociology. I have no real passion for field and this training will have no bearing on anything work-related in my life up to now. I may as well of picked major from out of a hat. Make lots of friends. Attend lots of parties. Much stupidity and many good times. I think I even remember some of it. Do not work in record store, but do graduate with some bachelor degree thing that has not really mattered much but I am glad that I have.
1994-1996 Back to Davis to sing the post-collegiate blues. Totally lost. Reality check that I am unwilling to cash.Practically everyone I knew in Davis has flown the coop--bummer for me but I'm glad y'all got out. Work in lousy record store and work at great music distributor, but in a lowly, trained monkey could have done it, type of position.
1996-1999 Go to work for relatively cool record store chain (Virgin Megastore) and come to the
decision that I need to get serious about this or forget it. Go from clerk, to buyer, to Senior Buyer in a year and a half. Win Employee of the Year in 98'. This is not the kind of accolade that opens doors but I like it all the same. Make the "big move" to Sacramento in early 99'. Chain decides to purchase centrally and the writing is on the wall for me. So...
1999-2006 I luck out and find a job with the once cool record store (Tower Records) chain's distribution company. Spend seven years as the primary buyer for company's web site (this does not mean I know jack about computers though) and experience (small scale) success with all the rasies, praises and dog bone prizes that entails. I have much responsibility and my apartment bursts at...Expand for more
the seams with cds and vinyl singles. However, by about 05' I begin to grow restless and want to learn more about the music industry and challenge myself to do something else in it. I begin to go back to school and take music biz courses at Sac City. But oh damn, the industry is in free-fall and then Tower (after five rocky years heading downwards) goes bankrupt and I'm left without a job and possibly a career. Or am I?
2007 Yeah, I guess I am. Spend the year trying in vain to find a similar job and get turned down by everyone. The industry is in trouble and jobs are hard to find. I don't know the right people and in many cases I am glad I don't. It is a year where I am an unemployed bum. Strange since I had been such a work-driven guy for so long. Lose my apartment, watch my savings dwindle and wonder what I did to deserve this. Some of you out there may say "Plenty". Lots of anger,bitterness and ill-advised bouts of self-loathing and finger pointing ensue. But then...I saw the light. Ok, not really, but I do pull myself together and go back to school, starting with an on-line course at UCLA.
2008 I throw what I can in my car and drive back to Los Angeles to go to school at UCLA-X full time to pursue a career certificate in the music business. I hope to parlay this education into a job down here in the music biz that doesn't involve the selling of the endangered species known as shiny silver discs or cds. Might work, might not. All I know is that I have to try.I got a studio apartment in (little rough around the edges) East Hollywood-Little Armenia. I can walk outside and see the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory looming in the hills above on a typical sunny day in the city of angels and it looks pretty sweet to me. To bring myself even more full circle, I am back at that relatively cool chain record store ( Virgin Megastore on Hollywood Boulevard) working part-time as a cashier. As I stroll towards work on the walk of fame where all those stars names really are written in concrete, the Kinks song "Celluloid Heroes" plays in my head every single time. "Everybody's a dreamer, everybody's a star,everybody's in showbiz, doesn't matter who you are".
Ok, so my story is not "soon to be a major motion picture", but I'm a work in progress and there is still work to do on the screenplay.
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