Grumpy record store guys
June 10, 2011—
What’s up with grumpy record store guys?
Everyone has a bad day, but I’ve visited three record stores in three states this year and each experience was as uplifting as walking into an H&R Block office.
This cannot be a coincidence.
My conclusion was drawn at Magnolia Thunderpussy on High Street in Columbus, Ohio. It was around 11 a.m. a few Mondays ago, I was jacked up on coffee and Mountain Dew, the sun was shining and I was in a good mood. When I am on the road I go to record stores with the same M.O. as a visit to a Farmer’s Market. I ask questions about local stuff. I pick up newspapers, fanzines and buttons.
And I look for regional music.
I was trying to find the Chrissie Hynde-J.P. Jones and the Fairground Boys collaboration. I gingerly told the old bald dude I wanted some Ohio music for my drive back to Chicago. I understand that Hynde is from Akron and realize Akron is 120 miles from Columbus.
“SHE’S NOT FROM HERE!,” he snarled. I did know David Allan Coe once did prison time in Mansfield, Ohio, Maybe he shot a grumpy record store guy.
Although I was a taken aback by his attitude I later asked about locating calypso and She & Him vinyl. “That’s all vinyl over there,” and he nodded over to a section of mostly dusty metal vinyl I had already perused. No one was in the store but him and me.
He declined to help me out.
I just left. He lost a sale and the assurance of a no-return visit when I come back to Columbus.
This behavior also happened to me at B-Side Records on State Street in Madison, Wis. and Streetside Records on Broadway in Kansas City, Mo. I was telling my retired Pabst Blue Ribbon pal Kyle Wortham these stories over a beer at the Black Beetle in Chicago. In the middle of our conversation I realized what all three of my experience had in common: each store was empty during my visit. And guys my age or older were on duty.
Wortham said The Numero Group in Chicago got called out by one of the co-founders of Record Store Day for opening a one-day pop-up store in a Wicker Park storefront during this year’s Record Store Day. (I was in Atlantic City on Record Store Day, where there are no record stores.)
I have spent most of my life playing records.
Vinyl fosters community and conversation, they’re more fun to bring out at parties than CDs or MP3s, and back in the day we rolled great joints on the inside of double albums like the Allman Brothers’ “Eat a Peach.”
Now many record store people are just no fun.
“It depends on the kind of record store it is,” said Ken Shipley, co-founder of The Numero Group. “If you have a record store that’s being run by people in their ’50s and ’60s who are dying to get out of the business, the record experience will be from someone who is burned out. Its tough to be a record store owner when the entire business is basically collapsing around you. But there’s a lot of younger people who are starting record stores where there’s a lot of positive energy going on.
“I’ve noticed the stores that are going to survive are the stores who have an older owner who lets go. And says, ‘I’m not capable of keeping up with all the new records and I need to find somebody who is going to do this younger stuff’ in the way that Reckless (in Chicago) does. They’re hands off. They’re letting the people manage the stores make decisions about whats going to come in and the people managing the stores are getting talented buyers to come in. Rick (Wojick) from Dusty Groove is another great example. He’s a family guy. He can’t be living and breathing records seven days a week any more and its that kind of key to not burning out entirely.
“You have to learn to let go.”
Ironically, last week I went to see “Everything Must Go” (with the Numero Group release
Group release “Traigo Montuno” by La Solucion on the soundtrack) for my birthday.
The Will Ferrell character based on the Raymond Carver short story found it difficult to part with his records.
After the rather dark movie I went to buy some calypso LPs at Dave’s Records in Chicago. It was about 6:30 p.m. on a Thursday. There were about 10 young people in the store, which carries more than 40,000 pieces of vinyl including ’45s and ’78s.
Owner Dave Crain was happy. The record store dates back to the late 1970s and he has worked in the same space for 27 years. Crain, 51, bought the former 2nd Hand Tunes store in 2002 and renamed it Dave’s.
“You don’t want to see an empty record store,” Shipley said. “Dave’s riding this wave he’s probably been waiting for the last decade. You have to give people an experience they can’t get online. It has to be something more.”
HAPPY TIMES AT DAVE’S
That’s sort of how Record Store Day spun out, but the event bothers me as someone who buys vinyl all the time, Why is it such a big deal once a year? I sent two proxies to Laurie’s to fetch a Steve Earle record (New West) on this year’s record store day and they were sold out by 10 a.m. I knew I would be out of town and called the store offering to pay for one in advance but I was nicely told that was “against the rules.”
Shipley told me “The Record Store Day people were upset with Numero’s custom release “Pressed at Boddie,” which was made just for Record Store Day. I didn’t even know there was a Record Store Day governing body. I thought it was some organic thing, like Boddie.,
Boddie was a one-stop recording and production plant that flourished between 1969 and 1987 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Like a smaller version of King Records in Cincinnati, artists could cut a record, have it pressed and printed all in one day. Boddie grinded out gospel, soul, New Wave (Devo) and punk records. Boddie was the first to record the O’Jays live.
The love train has no room for grumpy record store guys.
The storefront label was owned and operated by Louise and Thomas Boddie. Thomas Boddie died in 2006. On Record Store Day Numero Group sold out 1,000 LPs, 1,000 CDs and 300 cassettes of “Local Customs: Pressed at Boddie.” Some CDs are still available on The Numero Group website.
“On Record Store Day the competition was colored vinyl versions of records that already exist, Death Cab From Cutie made a record that was a seven inch needle drop, so there was 30 second samples of their record on a seven inch which is absoultely stupid,” Shipley explained. [It was the band’s idea.]
“We wanted to make a record that people would want to buy every day instead of this panic and purchase mindset. There’s never been a reissue label who has participated in Record Store Day like this, making a full fledged release.
“It was not tossed off.”
“Michael Kurtz (Record Store Day co-founder and president of the Music Monitor Network marketing company) was very upset about this. He didn’t bother to do any research on Numero, He decided to type in Boddie Recording Company and calls up this 80-year-old woman (Louise) who ran this label with her now-deceased husband. And he starts railing against her about Record Store Day. He didn’t understand this woman had no concept what Record Store Day is. Then he put a note on our blog that it was a hoax release, Its not the Record Store Day business we had a probem with, but it was with him. He went way over with what was okay.”
In a phone conversation from Los Angeles Kurtz said, “I’m not upset. I never was upset. I did call Louise because someone forwarded me the link on what they were doing. As coordinator of record store day, stores depend on me to find out what’s available, what’s not. I wasn’t familiar with the record. It was a real innocent thing for me. She was very nice. It was like talking to my Mom.
“Then I typed an e-mail to The Numero Group saying I called her. And Numero Group got real mad, They went off on how record labels were whoring out vinyl . We asked them (artists) to do a lot of this. Its important for us to connect with the Lady Gaga fan as much as it is to connect with Big Star or some obscure new band. Record Store Day is not agnostic when it comes to that.
“Record Store Day is all about the stores and celebrating the culture of the stores. They’re mainly family owned businesses that are there for the community. Its not about someone trying to use it for their own marketing purposes. If they are so unhappy about Record Store Day, why are they marrying their name to it? Why don’t they do their own thing and call it ‘Numero Day’ or whatever. That’s cool.”
Kurtz said opening a pop-up store is a trick that takes advantage of Record Store Day, but added “that’s just life.” Kurtz learned about The Numero Group pop-up store because other record stores e-mailed him.
“Jack White opened a pop-up store, too,”: Kurtz said. “Any time something this cool occurs people are going to ride it different ways.”
Kurtz was happy I was writing about grumpy record store owners.
“When I started working on Record Store Day five years ago I ran into a lot of that,” he said. “It was very discouraging. All the bad decisions the music business made like giving marketing dollars to the mass merchants so they could sell CDs cheaper than the stores could buy then, that was the biggest example of disenfranchsiing a business. And they’re still bitter about it. Record Store Day has gone a long way to heal some of those wounds.
“But, man there’s a lot of people who are not happy campers.”
According to Record Store Day research, in 2008 there were 429 stores worldwide that participated in Record Store Day. In 2011 there are 1,967 stores registered on the site (1,117 in the United States, the U.K. next at 173).
“Pressed at Boddie” is just the tip of the iceberg for The Numero Group. The label is doing a 3-CD, 5 LP box set later this year that will tell the full story of the label. Shipley said, “The CD’s material that won’t appear on the box set. Its exclusive to the record. We wanted to do something that was an alternative to the madness of people trying to buy exclusive records that were coming out on Record Store Day. We wanted to give people who like to shop for records 365 days a year a place to do so without standing in line just to get inside. Circus tricks and in-stores has its place and I Iove that Dusty Groove, Reckless, Laurie’s and Permanent all have their best days of the year, but that shopping experience isn’t one I consider to be very fun.”
I concur.
Dance to the music.
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