Brian Lipsin, resident vinyl virtuoso and owner of Brian’s Record Option on Princess St., treats the Journal to some Bob Dylan anecdotes in light of his pick this week, as told to Ally Hall.

“So this lady comes up to me and asks, ‘is it true that your mom threw Bob Dylan out of your store?’ She and I, since then we’ve had a relationship, a rapport I guess you’d say … I’ll tell you the full story … I’ve got two Bob Dylan stories, you could really use whichever record you want.

One, many years ago, there was a rumour that Bob Dylan was going to be playing at the Memorial Centre. This student calls and asks, ‘is it true that Bob Dylan is coming to Kingston?’ And I said to her, ‘don’t be so naïve! I mean, Bob Dylan coming to a dinky town like Kingston?’ The next week, it’s announced he’d be coming to Kingston … A few weeks later it was a busy Saturday and there was this woman who came in and was standing right over there just staring at me. I said to her, ‘can I help you?’ She said, ‘no it’s ok.’ An hour later she’s the only one in the store and she’s still looking at me and I said, ‘are you sure I can’t help you?’ and she said, ‘I just wanted to look at the person who called me naïve over the phone.’ And I just cracked up.

Now the second story happened in my brother’s store when he had Incredible Records in Toronto and it was in the summertime. It was this hot day and this guy comes into the store in a parka as if it was 20 below zero. He’s sort of looking around, shuffling around and my mother happened to be in the store. In a loud voice she yells out, ‘the guy must be mental! It’s 80 degrees and he’s wearing that?’ All of a sudden the guy looked up and heard, was probably reminded of his own mother and he ran out. It wasn’t until later on that it turned out that Bob Dylan was in town and was wearing a parka and it was in fact Bob Dylan, but he was just there for a movie and wandering around. So you know, I don’t think my brother ever forgave my mother—if she hadn’t opened up her mouth … ”