JAM

This the only photo I have of JAM music. This is taken from the back of the store, from the Lloyd station. That is, in fact, an inside joke. Jeff, if you fucked up, called youLloyd.
Once Jeff took the register and I helped Chris check in the shipment. Jeff walks back and grabs an armful of CDs to keeper and put on the floor. Well he gets the discs and as he turns his arm gets caught and he drops all the CDs.
I look at Chris. He know's what I'm thinking.
Do you want to say it or should I?
No, you do it.
Lloyd.
I crack up and I musta laughed for 15 minutes. This eventually pissed off Jeff as he said if you keep it up you can go home.
I had tears in my eyes but it was worth it.
Good times at the end of the century.

Stroke of Genius

When you work with someone so intelligent, so creative, so aware it kinda sucks cos you realize how much you don't have those similar gifts. I will admit that I felt that was when working with Larry. Especially when it came down to his newsletter(hopefully one day we'll post one) and in other ways as well. Just a brilliant person to be around. I think this is a complete work of art, the Wherehouse Classical t-shirt. All these chariactures, from the pen and brain of Larry, each one different, each one carries the sense of greater meaning beneath the black line. I wore this shirt the last day that Wherehouse Records was open in East Lansing, I wore it to work at JAM. Jeff pointed it out and told me to turn it inside out. I responded that they were closing that day, it wasn't like we were in competition anymore. But I obliged and turned it inside out.
I also remember that Larry sent one to Denny. He wrote a note mentioning to get ready for people to stare at his chest.
I still have this shirt. Obviously. Enjoy the faces.

Staff

In these first two posts we see Jason, before he dove exclusively into haberdashery. On this summer Sunday I drove downtown to take pics with I think my Nikon F3(which I sold last year) with expired slide film that gave the pics a nice, cool color. I remember this Sunday cos I brought Jason a copy of the new 3-D National Geographic. The issue was devoted to the Mars Lander in 1997. So I think then these were taken in 1998. This explains the glasses under glasses he's wearing. The second shot is a kung fu out of focus elvis pic...which I think looks cool.


The always entertaining Doug Siwek here, at the Ticket counter. I took this from the classical desk as it was the desk I so loved from Store 6. The picture is quite black due to my not knowing not to shoot someone in front of windows as it'll black them out. Oh well. Live and learn.

I do not remember this phase of Siwek, the glasses wearing phase. The smoking phase, hell I remember that, shit I miss that! I remember at one point he was trying to quit. I walked to Campbells coming back from the bank and bought some singles for me and Doug. I bought him some Gitanes. Have you ever smoked those? I think I bought myself some as John Lennon and Serge Gainsbourg smoked them. I lit it up and hit it and I have never felt anything like that in all my life. You know that pins and needles feeling when your legs are coming back from falling asleep? Imagine that tingling slinking down your throat and into your lungs. It was the toughest smoke of my life. I remember this cos Doug hopped out from the register and hit it. He coughed right off the bat, I cannot describe it, but they were the heaviest fucking cigarettes I have ever smoked. Tremendous. When I ended up at the bookstore and Doug would hit the town I would see him at the store and even tho I had only been there five,ten minutes and had a register shift I'd go smoke with him. Great times.

Views

While waiting for a midnight release (to call them midnight sales by this point was foolish) i brought in my camera to take pics during the dead hours of operation, 9-11.55pm. The pics here are from that dead period. I had gotten a cable release and was enjoying taken night time long exposure photos. You have the storefront, pointing towards the stairwell leading to the Peanut Barrell where the bums would shit and sleep in their own piss.

This is the view from the stage. Slightly crooked, but then all my pictures are.

This is the street driven music sign that showed the customers where all the used music was. That entire wall was used disc, in the boxes under the racks were the initial discs that everyone bought when they came out and then sold when they got tired of it. I took this from the same angle as the previous picture.

And this here is one of the amazingly up-to-date cash registers that the store used. These have been referred to as an adding machine with a drawer. Worth remembering what we all used again and again.

More from the Archives...

I have complete my search, so far, thru my archives. I may need to double check through all my trays of slides but I did my best tonight and I may have reached the end here. Bits and pieces coming, tonight and probably tomorrow.
I have a thing or two more to upload, and then who knows?
Anyways, enjoy this next batch. Please let me know what you think...

In this photo we see the lovely Corinne sitting in the Jazz section watching the MSU-Duke basketball game in April 1999. This was the night of the riot after the MSU's loss. As one would imagine the store was dead, stone empty. The store had four television in it, allowing for the play of odd bits of videos and stuff to promote. The greatest tape we had was the Damn Yankees live from 1991. At the end of the tape ol' Ted Nugent shot a flaming arrow into a cardboard stand up of Saddam Hussein. After the first arrow you hear this high pitched screech imploring "Shoot the fucker again" and Ted did. Classic.
Notice in the background here four copies of Larry Young's terrific LP Unity, which may have just been reissued. There are also Verve records on display and a big thing for Quintology, which as a Jazz release featuring someone who used to work at store nine back when.
While slightly blurry I still like this pic.

Progress

A planned trip East today didn't happen so I am hanging around the house. When I get up the gumption to start walking around I am going to look through slides and then scan in ones that pertain to this site. I found something else to post, I have one other thing to do apart from the slides and then I am all out of my own memoribilia.
From there? I guess we'll see.

Something Odd

I dont know who brought this garish, lenticular representation of the walk to Golgatha into the store but I do know that we had it on display for some time. This photo was taken at Sharon's going to the warehouse party. Someone, I think it was me, doctored up this thing by adding a photo of the Rolling Stones' Ron Wood.
The picture really works in my opinion, as not only does it look like Woody is weighing down Jesus but to me he looks like a ruddy, rubber faced angel guiding Jesus to his fate!

Archive Part 11 - Fuck Phil Fulmer

And now we have my attorney Tom Hirsbrunner. Tom started at the Classical store and came over to store Number Nine in early 1997. Since that time I have been fortunate to call TH my friend. When I worked at the bookstore I was fortunate to have him come onto my staff and it is no shock to say that I thought of him as my most trusted ally at that store. This first photo is taken the day after the MSU riots, Tom is back at the Classical counter. Fantastic.

This photo was taken during the music week when I took many a snapshot.

In this photo, also taken during music week, shows Chris Petersen and Tom shooting the shit about Xenakis or some other avant thing. Chris was working in store 6 when I was hired there and I always enjoyed working with him. Dry as a bone when it came to humor I felt like Lewis to his Martin. While I was a spazzy, slobbering, vulgar piece of shit Chris was dry, calm and collected. Lessons to learn as a hilarious straight man.

Archive Part the 10th - Employees of Store 9

Here we have the ever fashionable, trendy and beat friendly Jason. A rock family tree in his own right Jason has been involved in his fare share of bands; now he spends his time with his wife and kids in their dope crib while studying up on holistic remedies and the benefits of a raw food diet.
You may have seent him in the band Calliope or spent time in the Trash 180 studies, which has just moved as I understand it into new California style accomodations.
If you are ever on the fence with a record just bring it to Jason and if he's loving the disc he'll bump it loud, almost act it out but convey an enthusiasm about the music that makes you enjoy the music more.
My image is still Jason putting on a Cardigans disc and then dancing up the aisle to it.

This is Jason with Sharon and They Might Be Giant's coffee cup after they had ran out of the store. Not much else to say about this photo is there? It is a fish-eye lens...

Archive Part 9 - Employees of Store 9

Three words: Mary Catherine Cusak aka Timmy Destructo. The boss. Cheap Trick fan, educated at Central Michigan, schooled on the hard streets of Ionia. Her father cut wood and put out fires as a hobby while Mother Cusak was wanted by a militia for some "crimes".

Our first photo I have up was taken on a Sunday morning. This Sunday was notable as it was the day after the MSU/Duke Final Four game, MSU's first final four in some time and their first or I think five straight appearences. Upon losing students went ape, lit shit on fire, punched out big panes of glass and were tear gassed. I closed that Saturday (look for slides coming) then went out to take photos. As everything got quiet I proved to be no war photographer and got the fuck out of dodge. Mary came downtown to ensure that the store was not looted, got tear gassed and then went home. When I came in the next morning, early, to take pics of the carnage I set off the store alarm before wandering the blistered streets. Mary came in with this edition of the State News and I snapped her picture.

This is a shot or Mary rocking the register during the "Live Music Week"...Mary looks much different now, check her out on the myspace...

This is from the They Might Be Giants event. Mary and Sharon were talking with the two Johns when I leaned out to check in and try to get a picture. As the boys in the band scurried like roaches I took this picture of them. THe band is hiding behind the door.

Archive Part 8 - Employees of Store 9

Here we have a photo from the They Might Be Giants in-store event. THe man in the center of the photo is Mr.Rich Carlson, who just finally finished his doctoral dissertation. I saw him and after being told how much I look like John Carter Cash, Johnny and June Carter Cash's song he told me that it felt like he finished his album, but it was a triple! In the background there is Mr.Chris Faulkner.

In these next photos we meet Chuck Sipperley aka the Sipp. Hired in 1996 Chuck stayed with the store until moving on to run the accounting department at the local bookstore Ned's. Chuck always had great hair, he now works at Encore Records in Ann Arbor and is still so much cooler than me it hurts me when I think about it.

This photo of Sharon and Chuck was taken right before I went to Australia in late 1997, just killing time on a slow day. An increasingly frequent occurance by that point in the store's history.

Archives Part 7 - They Might Be Giants

So here we go, my pics from the They Might Be Giants instore performance on (let me check the booklet: 10-18-1996). I remember a few things about this event. Before I move on I just wanna tell everyone to click on any of the pictures posted to get a better look. I scanned these slides at 1600 dpi and had to reduce them to 750 dpi to fit in the blog's capacity.
So if you didn't know you could I encourage everyone to click these pics to see the details I'm talking about.

I didn't know shit about taking pics nor did I own a camera so I borrowed my father's camera with a fish eye lens on it. This explains some of the odd perspective on some of the shots. I did manage at one point to get up close and snap some pics. They were pretty camera shy and all around shy before the event but they were awesome. I remember Chris Faulkner looking at the crowd and saying something along the line of look at all these geeks!
In this first strip you can see the picture of the stage I already posted, I hope that my attempt to correct the color cast of these pics turned out OK. The other pics show the size of the crowd; keep in mind that these are fish eye shots. The store was packed.

In this strip you can see a few interesting things. In the first frame the band are now on stage, they are barely visible in the pics but you can see them. In the second pic you can see the then girlfriend of an employee that will pop up later with long hair taking pics of the event. She took far better photos than me. You can also see our rolls of price stickers. See the yellows? Those were great deals, a yellow 11.99 costing us 7.00. Great damn deal. In the third frame you can see Jay taking more pics and more importantly you can see all the staff huddled around the CD player watching and listening. I can see the WEA rep leaning up against the promos, Frank Jenks with his hand on his face like someone farted on him and Jason smiling. Also of note in the photo are the lockers and the CASSETTE TAPE CASES!~ On the case front, I had all three models seen here: CP30, CL60 and CL120. They are now clogging the shelves of the Traverse Area Salvation Army. Chris Faulkner's water is on top of the lockers and at this time only two volumes of the Beatles Anthology had been released as there are only two of the cover posters on the wall. You can see the HUGE Johnny Cash poster of Frank's shoulder and a phat Whoomp! There is Is poster underneath the chair in the bottom right of the picture.

Here are two more pics. The first frame is from the front of the store looking back towards the stage. Again these are fish-eye pics but you can see the place is packed. Jason (with long rockstar hair) is talking with Jay in front of the kid on the shoulders. In the second pic I have waded into the fray near the back of the store. I think they were getting close to being done and I wanted to get some more photos.

Here are the two Johns. I thought I had a better photo and may have taken one but cannot find it at this time. I do not remember what was going on with the ballot box in the Accordian John's hand but I do remember that they asked someone out of the crowd to turn to their right and choose a CD and they would play a song from that disc. The kid yelled out Roundabout by Yes and they blanched, in a funny way. They ended up playing some Muddy Waters instead. I was geeked cos they played Ana Ng(slowed down) which is my favorite tune of theirs. You see that white paper near the drummer's foot? That is the set list. After they ran out of the store(see the next frame) I hopped on stage and saw that it was the playlist. I asked Sharon, who set up the stage, if she wanted it and she grabbed it like I was offering a million dollar bill. I wonder if she still has it?

In this final bit of film I have, in the first frame, waded back out into the crowd. YoU can see the band on the stage, trading the ballot box. In the next song they are making like the Beatles and running the hell out of the store. Sharon is to the left, Frank is to the right looking HUGE. That is the fish-eye making her look scrawny and him brawny. Sharon at the time these were developed was super excited cos she was in a picture with the band and the way the picture was printed made it look like her shirt said HELL. You can see Jay, with a flash on her camera, right in the action taking snaps. I tore that Lanois poster down that is over the door and still feel guilty about it. And in the last frame is the aftermath, dig the zoot suit on the one guy. Good Lord.

Archives Part 6 - Employees of Store 9

In these photos we see the first documented pictures of Mr.Doug "Kid Fresh" Siwek. I first came to know Doug through his work as a label rep thru BMG records. Always made great displays, always wanted to help the store. When I went to Australia in early 1998 he came onto the staff and stayed until close to the end. Great love of music, similar tastes as myself and thus felt like a kindred spirit. Now living in Royal Oak and rocking the real career Doug remains a person I wish I was in better contact with.
I always trust his musical opinion and if I have doubts nowadays about something I e-mail him first.
So here he is, probably enjoying a smoke break while watching the people down below.

Another Doug shot, of him goofing around on-stage during our 'Live Music Week' that Marilyn put on as a week long welcome back students type thing. Siwek always cheered me up. ONce while in a foul mood he got this look on his face, put both hands ot mouth and made a tremendous wet fart noise. I think I replied a la Eddie Murphy, "Quit trying to make me smile" with a big grin on my face.

Archives Part 5 - Employees of Store 9

Here we have two photos of the Larry. The first photo is probably from early 1999, I'm not 100%. We observe him back at the 'check in area' of the store, so it must then be a weekday when a shipment would arrive.

This is Larry with his huge coffee cup. Things I think of when I think of Larry are: Jazz, Kelly, Russia, Peanut Butter, Coffee, Cigars, Scrabble, and falling asleep outside beneath the store(tho I was not there to witness that in person).
Of my favorite Larry memories was when we got rid of this ratty vinyl chair that had been behind the classical desk. We acted out scenes from the Godfather, when DeNiro stabs the man who killed his father. So here we were, two grown men, stabbing a chair and making hideous sound effects in the store.

I'll share another Larry memory and it was something I was more proud of than anything, it came from his reaction.
I was sitting in the red chair that I eventually took home (I parted ways with the chair in 2005, 6 years after bringing it home from WHR) and reading something. I think I was reading some woman's magazine, I'm not sure. But I do remember that there was some sex survey in there and I think 5% made some mention of doing it 10 times a day. I commented on it...paused...and said something about 20 times! Again the joke is lost to time. I do remember hearing Larry laugh and then looking up through my laughter to see that he had disappeared. He was laying on the filthy carpet behind the register laughin his ass off. A geeky man with thinning hair and a Kraftwerk shirt came up to the counter and I got up to ring him up while Larry was on the floor. I commented to pardon the man on the floor, he just heard something funny.
The geek said nothing, bought his tapes and left.

Archives Part 4 - Employees at Store 9

In this first photo that I scanned into the computer we Mr.Larry Cosentino and William "Bill" Tennant. I am not 100% of their time spent within the chain, I know that they were there before me for what that's worth. This photo had to have been taken in 1998(I'll explain why in I can tell in the next photo) as the Classical store moved into store 9 in early 1997. Bill is now in charge of the re-issue lablel Opera D'Oro (http://www.allegro-music.com/opd/) out in Oregon. You can find him on mspace...

Now I know that these photos date from 1998 as in this photo the world can see my nubby little chin. Looks like a fucking knee cap but it's mine and now hidden beneath a ginger beard. I like the look on Bill's face in this picture. To me it says, "Why the hell did Randy hire this mook?"

Archives Part 3

Ok, color correcting negatives scanned into the computer sucks. I am not very well versed in the process so if some of you that are in these pictures look sickly I apologize.
This is the bare stage, before the arrival of They Might Be Giants. This photo was taken in 1996 and I was delighted upon getting TMBG's greatest hits collection(viva le promos) to see that the date is listed in their offical tour gigography.

To clarify on my earlier, edited, post in which I spoke harshly about the music wall.
In my eye the "big" local bands earned a spot in the regular racks while other groups ended up on the wall.
I got this confused with my other store and my mistake was an honest one.
Marilyn I hope that this soothes the pain I caused.
And I was not talking about the Foster Kids....

Archive part 2

Now onto the new stuff...
This is the "backroom" or "check in area" at the back of the 515 Grand River store. Not the local music sign, that's where we kept all the consignments that anyone would drop off. Which was a nice service for us to have as it allowed many struggling musicians to earn a few bucks. One name comes to mind: Fat Amy. Can you believe that guy was on television? As a matter of trivia I have that Beatles poster rolled up next to my desk at home.


The pianist Robert Taub became if not quite a fixture in 1998/1999 then at least a friend of the store. To hype that he would be in store shooting the shit with the common folk Larry's brilliant and frighteningly creative mind conceived the "head". Made of cardboard, yarn and sandpaper this was on display until Mr.Taub visited us. I think he saw it once and I was told when he did that he fixed his hair. His own hair, not the head's.

The real Bob Taub...


In 1998 the Beastie Boys released their CD Hello Nasty. While we didn't have a "midnight sale" at that point due to those crooked fuckers at Tower we did stay open until midnight for this release. For reasons that I cannot remember I cajolled Larry, he of the Classical Newletter fame(which I hope to get one or two of at some point and post, the man's a genius),, into creating a Russian announcement poster. We had one in english and one in Russian.