I'm a record store veteran from both sides of the counter, you might say.
I grew up out in West Chester when that area was all farmland, if you can imagine that. Before I could even drive my mom used to drop me off at Tri-County Mall and I started hanging around the Record Bar there. After a few years of my constant presence they finally said, "Why don't you just clock in?" That was late summer/early fall of 1984. I was still in high school. Ever since then I have almost always had some kinda job at a record store.
Record Bar in Tri-County was the last of the cool mall music stores in this area. When Musicland and Sam Goody and Camelot and a few other big chains all went bright white neon with futuristic fixtures, Record Bar still had a string of 60-watt bulbs suspended from the ceiling, dirty brown and frayed carpet underfoot, and cruddy wooden LP bins and cassette racks that were a guaranteed source of splinters. This was years before I had a drink or my first puff, but I was probably the only one on that staff that didn't party. Co-workers regularly returned from lunch breaks red-eyed and giggling. Our illustrious leader took long liquid lunches at a restaurant pub down the mall called The Public Landing. I was young and naïve, so it wasn't 'til years later that I figured out my mates had shit going up their noses pretty regular back then, too. (It was the 80s.) We had some crazy good times there, the highlight of which was undoubtedly an in-store we did with The Damned on March 14, 1986. The whole mall was packed with Punk Rock freaks thanks to our little party, and you gotta remember that in 1986 that was extremely unusual for Cincinnati, Ohio. During my tenure at Record Bar an older co-worker and good friend Paul Horton turned me on to Iggy & The Stooges, The Replacements, and The Jockey Club. There was a Punk Rock goddess who was a regular customer there that snared me with her wild charms and soon deflowered me. I knew then I never wanted to work anywhere but a record store for the rest of my life.
Still in my late teens, early 20s, I started venturing down to Clifton to check out Wizard's and Mole's on Short Vine. My first forays into the world of the independent record store were like re-conn missions to mecca. There were also quarterly record conventions in area hotels where you'd sometimes find bootleg vinyl LPs and similarly unauthorized concert films on VHS. Whenever I heard of a cool store in another town I would take a road trip to check it out the very next weekend. Dingleberry's in Dayton was pretty cool. There was a place in Oxford too that was alright. Along High Street in Columbus there were several indie record stores, my favorite always being Magnolia Thunderpussy.
When I was still young enough to tag along on family vacations I would often try to sneak away to find a cool record store. I was pretty pleased with myself after walking miles from our hotel in Laguna Beach one summer to find Licorice Pizza. (Prob'ly still my all-time favorite name for a record store.)
After 4 years of working at Record Bar I was pretty fried on the mall scene. Already a regular customer at Wizard Records in Corryville, John James brought me on there in 1988. We enjoyed some bizarre in-store appearances there too, including a surreal episode with The Great Kat. A classically trained violinist who took up speed metal in the 80s, Kat was a diminutive blond dervish who arrived 3 hours late and only after we had to send someone to pick her up at the Greyhound bus station. She burst through the doors in a delirious rage only to find the store almost completely empty except for a few random shoppers who had no idea who she was. She ranted and raved in a raspy Brooklyn accent and finally calmed down after we told her that if she been on time she would have seen there was a huge crowd waiting for her earlier in the day. Which was a lie, of course. The afternoon before a Soundgarden show next door at Bogart's Chris Cornell wandered into the store. He was a pompous ass. I told him, "It must be cool to walk into a record store and hear your record playing". And he said, real smug with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal his bare chest, "Meh… I'm gettin' used to it". John managed to get a bunch of us backstage to meet Jane's Addiction when they opened for Iggy in 1988. When the sound of Iggy and his band taking the stage began to shake the whole building we all just looked at each other bug-eyed and bolted back out into the club like, "See ya! It's showtime!" In spite of personal differences and unnecessary drama that eventually lead to my departure, John and I got along pretty well there for a couple years. I was always grateful to him for offering me the job in the first place as it got me out of the 'burbs and into a more urbane and urban existence in Clifton, where I still live.
After leaving Wizard's I eked out a living doing odd jobs for Bogart's, running errands, and working part-time on the production crew until I got hired on at Everybody's Records in Pleasant Ridge. I was only there for about a year but it was during this time that I began to realize that some of the best friendships I have are with people I met in record stores, be they regular customers or co-workers.
In the Spring of '92, after months of begging for a job, I finally convinced Dean Newman, owner/proprietor of Mole's Record Exchange on Short Vine, that he desperately needed my services because the back room there was a complete mess. There were LPs, 45s, posters, album flats, boxes, books, magazines and more, all covered with dust, stacked and piled all over the floor, tumbling out of closets, blocking doorways. It looked like a fucking bomb had gone off back there. "Come on, Dean… Dude - Seriously. You need somebody to get that shit in order!" When I started there it was like being handed the keys to the kingdom.
Truth is, all the aforementioned stores had their niche markets and specialties. If you wanted one of those giant, British-import subway-size posters of The Cramps for that cute little redhead you were courting, it was worth the drive to Magnolia's in Columbus. Curious about that new import-only Robyn Hitchcock LP? Hit Wizard's on your way home from work. Need to replace your roommate's Ice-T CD that you destroyed at a party? Everybody's stocked the whole Ice-T whole catalog. Even the cut-out bins of the farthest strip mall outposts often yielded a Frank Zappa LP or two.
But Mole's was always my favorite. Just 2 doors down from Bogart's in its original location, it was a mandatory stop before any show at the club or night of drinking and gigging at Sudsy's across the street. My memory of Short Vine's glory days invariably revolves around that funky little record store. Back in the day, their vinyl selection was tops. I always managed to expand my collection of Dylan or Stones or old Blues LPs when I shopped at Mole's. Dean and the other guys who worked there treated me like a baby brother from the first time I passed thru their doors. Even the gruff and grim Michael Riley turned out to be a Teddy Bear underneath an exterior that seemed more like a grizzly! Michael… Now there's a guy with some record store experience. He worked at Mole's over 20 years for 3 different owners! Michael has been a pillar of the musical community in this town since the early 60s. This cat is far and away the most interesting person I have ever met in all my years of hanging around record stores. The guy was at Woodstock and saw The Sex Pistols. Michael flew to London to see The Clash in 1977, he's been spotted in the back of limousines with Bette Midler, he's seen The Rolling Stones over a hundred times since 1963, and he sipped champagne with Muddy Waters in the office at Bogart's while the late show crowd filed in. Think you're cool? Think again.
Mole's back room became my domain and my mission in 1992 and shortly thereafter I went full-time. Off on Saturdays, I would still show up at Mole's for the weekly grill-out in the side alley by the store. Visited by friends and musicians from the neighborhood on a daily basis, I always made sure there was beer or something stronger in the fridge. Frustrated employees from the other record store in the neighborhood would often stop by on their lunch break to vent their spleens and wet their whistle. Our after-hours and Christmas parties at Mole's are the stuff of legend. Many late nights of smoke and guitars, friends and freaks, whiskey and women. Occasionally a regular customer would stop by with a joint during business hours so I would lock the door and put up the "Back In 5 Minutes" sign. More than once I was visited by a frisky girlfriend and up went the "Back In 5" sign again.
Things have changed. One-time Mole's employee Darren Blase went on to great success with Shake It Records, truly a world class record store right here in our midst. LPs gave way to CDs and now CD sales are in steady decline because mp3 downloads seem to be the preferred medium. You can't blame all popular trends on the record companies. If the kids wanna download just that one song they really like for 99 cents, well that's not really worlds apart from the 45s that I used to collect when I was younger. Whatever tiny vestige of artful packaging and the tactile sensation of handling a record cover that CDs clung to for a few years will soon be gone for good. But nothing will ever replace the record shopping experience. Some of us still chase that feeling of flipping thru a record bin and finding some long-lost gem. Different mediums come and go - VHS, Beta, cassettes, 8-tracks - remember reel-to-reel tapes? Ha! CDs may soon be put to pasture, but LPs still maintain an air of mystery and collectibility. Ain't nothing like that eureka moment when you find an album or 45 that you've been looking for for years. And no - finding it on eBay doesn't count.
In '96 Mole's moved across the street next to Subway and then in 2000 moved again up to Calhoun Street. Over the years my boss Dean Newman became one of the best friends I've ever had and later my landlord. After 10 years behind the counter there I put in my notice in 2002. Just ready for a change. Spent that Spring traveling, that Summer roofing. That Fall I landed a job at a great bookstore where my years of record store retail experience were called upon and utilized every day. In 2003 I started working part-time for Dean at Mole's again and I tried to quit last fall but you can still find me behind the counter there every once in a while. I still make sure there's beer in the fridge and I've still got that "Back In 5" sign at the ready.
- April 2008
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