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.