Tim Haslett RIP

By dayvidday on Wed, Mar 19, 2008 10:47 am

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It is impossible to explain Tim Haslett to those who did not know him, but I will try. Tim worked at various record stores all around Boston. Boston Beat, Biscuithead, Other Music, Twisted Village, Planet, you name it. He knew so much. Tim knew what was going to be big. Always. He taught me personally about labels like Kompakt and BPitch Control. His descriptions on records were worth more than the records. He told me all about Lil Jon and how big Lil Jon was going to be. I did not believe him for one second. He used words like sawtooth. He loved Thomas Brinkmann. He spent endless hours tracking down DJ Screw CDRs, eventually finding a distributor in the depths of the Bayou. He bought 40 DJ Screw CDRs. They sold out in one day. There are thousands of stories like this and they can be told by thousands of people.

Tim was about as special as a person could be. I will never know anyone with such a devotion to music, a knowledge of music, a passion for music. I worked with Tim for many years and learned quickly that when he opened his mouth, you just stopped what you were doing and listened. Intently. I follow his advice to this day. I moved here in part because of him. His aesthetic is mine. His passion is mine. He was a maven of mavens, a dream in a world of nightmares. He was, in his own words and in his own way, the Angel of History. He will be missed by many many different people from all over the world. He is the kind of person you miss so dearly, you are overcome with grief. He was ours ... and now he is gone.

And while he may be gone, he lives on in our hearts, our minds and--more than anything--inside of the music we listen to every single day of our lives.

There will be a memorial service Friday, March 21st at the Friends Meeting, 5 Long Fellow Park (off Brattle, near Harvard Square) at 3PM.

"This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." -- Walter Benjamin