Cameron Novack

Cameron Novack calls his voice his number one instrument, and he has spent a life proving it. He sang with the St. Louis Children's Choir. He sang opera for the Pope at the Vatican. He teaches voice, and has for years.

He put out hip-hop records under the name Novocane.

Ask him what he actually does and the answer goes further than entertainer. He points to a story about David Bowie, whose Buddhist teacher told him that spirituality was moving into physical media and music — and that he was meant to be out in the world putting the message across rather than retreating from it.

Over ten years ago, Cameron started coming into the CD Warehouse that stood at this address. What pulled him back was what was on the shelves: the store always carried underground music other shops didn't — weird hip-hop, punk and metal.

He wanted to work there. Not full time — one day a week would have done it. He was already working three jobs: fitness instructor, iRock (a rock-and-roll-themed eyeglasses store in the Central West End), and Patricia. He just wanted to be inside a record store all day and see what happened.

He tried Vintage Vinyl. They never called him back.

So he filled out resumes here, and kept showing up, and eventually concluded he was never going to be hired. Then he kept showing up anyway.

He was standing at the wall holding an original copy of Black Sabbath's Masters of Reality — buying it again because his own copy was scratched and the record was worth owning twice — when the owner asked him if he wanted to work Saturday.

Within a couple of weeks he was the three-day-a-week guy. Within a couple of years he was the only full-timer. Within months he had a key, and he used it to stay late reorganising a store he did not yet own, because he wanted to.

Cameron is unambiguous about the man who hired him. Walter Ray never micromanaged him, let him spread his wings, and handed him a key within months.

When Walt saw him doing something well, he told him so, and told him to keep doing it. Cameron describes that as rare in his working life — the first place he had been where somebody wasn't threatened by him on some level.

On 25 January 2025, one store ended and another began without the room ever going dark.

CD Warehouse closed. The building's owner approached Cameron about starting something new in the space, and he said yes.

He had never seriously considered moving somewhere else. By then the place already felt like home, and he had been running it in every practical sense for years.

Cameron calls the changeover an absolutely fun challenge. He bought a handful of things. The rest came from what the previous owner was throwing out, and from friends who turned up with saws and offcuts because they wanted to help.

The fixtures were built from makeshift leftover material in almost no time, and he likes that you can tell. It gives the room a particular kind of vibe.

He also pushed movies far harder than the store ever had — the people who worked there before were music people more than film people.

He likes the isolation of a cave, and the comfort of music inside one. He has seen three concerts performed in actual caves. The first idea was Media Cave: somebody's home, underground, where you find things you won't find above water.

The domain was contested, so his mind jumped to Cavern — and he liked it better. It's an underused word. Its etymology runs back to cave but tangles with tavern, because t's and c's kept getting confused across Gaelic and Germanic tongues.

He is a poet, and he cares about where words come from.

He was 27, on holiday in Florida, when his father suggested he drive to Orlando and try out. He went with Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", Radiohead's "Creep", and an original of his own.

Five or six callbacks later they flew him to Los Angeles, and he made the top sixty who appeared on television. Of that sixty, he was the only one who came through an open call — every other contestant that season arrived as an industry reference.

Production wanted a sob story. They wanted him grieving on camera for his mother, who died when he was 19. He would not give it to them, because it wasn't true — he had made his peace, and said so.

So they built a different character instead. They cut and pasted his answers until he sounded like a man who talked about himself, labelled him "jack of all genres", and he was contractually bound to wear it. Seeing it broadcast was disconcerting.

No chair turned. He was giving the other contestants voice lessons before their performances, and he says plainly that he never understood it.

He has no regrets. He is glad he went through it.

He curates it himself. He goes through the boxes people bring in rather than buying blind, which is why he can hold a conversation about anything on the shelves. He says you can test him on that.

The categories collide on purpose: music, movies, audio video equipment, collectibles, oddities, clothing, and live events. Someone walks in for a movie and leaves talking about a receiver.

And the thing he sells is not really the product.

Live music in the shop was the thing he pushed for and kept being told no. So while the answer was still no, he went and talked to everyone else in the plaza, and started calling the local bands whose records he'd been selling.

The second he took over, the ball was already rolling — around fifteen bands were ready to play.

He is chasing a specific memory. Twelve or thirteen years old, walking into Street Side Records while a band played, his whole body shaken by bass louder than it had any business being. He wants people to get that every so often.

It isn't only bands. There have been movie nights, and a poetry night for his friend Paul.

There is a mahogany grand piano on the floor with the lid up.

His mother was a phenomenal piano player. She sang him to sleep, played guitar for him, played piano while he sang. He took up guitar and bass instead, the way you do when a thing is your parent's. She died when he was 19.

The piano in the store is not hers. But it is out on the floor, in tune, and available — and if you know how to play, you're welcome to ask.

Ask him how people find the place and the answer is other people. Every day someone new tells him a friend sent them, and he says it makes him elated that word of mouth still works that way.

Media Cavern is a proud member of the South County Chamber.

For Cameron, being part of South County is more than an address. It means the businesses, the people, the artists and the customers who give this part of St. Louis its identity.