Autographs

Store 9 had a stage located at the back of the space. THere were three windows on the stage that looked out at the alley and the grubby rental houses that housed students behind the peanut barell. When I got the store 9 the stage was full of signatures, from all the bands that had gigged on stage and recorded it in silver ink. It was something to see, very impressive in my eyes, and I can remember the day that I peered into the old store space and saw that they had painted over all that history. Sad day.
We had our share of people there, not as many as the old corner store, but enough. One band that played on the stage was Train, who at that point had yet to have any radio hits. I don't know what casino they're playing in now but at the time they played and did a good job, 19 Wheels was their opening act, and they did a great little set, nice bunch of guys, signed some shit and were off to someplace I've forgotten. I snagged this picture, signed, and when Meet Virginia and the rest of their songs became hits I would remember that they played in our store. I always thought that was cool.

This obviously came from the epochal Verve Pipe event that started the beginning of the end of the chain. THink about it. Huge event, huge turnout. But the chain was splintering and by the early 1997 there were 6 stores and things just weren't the same. The only thing that seemed to be keeping us afloat were the amazing silver disc bootlegs that chris managed to get into the store. At 24.99 a pop we were turing over quite a few a week, which helped tremendously. So that instore was a high water mark, when people in East Lansing, students, still believed in buying music at local shops in great quantities.

Of all these guys the ones that we saw the most of were Donny Brown and downtown Doug Corella. They were actually great customers who got the discount(we were liberal with who got that treat) and were around quite a bit. Donny Brown was always mr.talk talk talk. My favorite memory is him coming in the store, jawing with mary for a while and then getting ready to leave. He said goodbye mary looked at me, paused, and then said take care man and split. THe next time he came in all he did was call me by my name. Mike this Mike that...I wanted to call him drummer, or something, repeatedly. I get it I get it. You learned my name congrats! I just remember it being a funny story that revolved around those guys, back when there were local legends.