The Record Store Years: 1) Introduction

A memoir of 25 years (1975-2000) spent working in the world of records & music in Seattle, Washington, with side trips into writings on Led Zeppelin and other adventures from my musical life.

1) Introduction

Welcome to ‘The Record Store Years’. While the majority of this epistle is a memoir of my experiences working in the record biz from 1975 to 2000, today at age 67 I am blessed to say that I can look back on a musical and creative life that also included first generation Beatlemania and shows at the Fillmore East while growing up near NYC; fanaticism for and a fanzine about Led Zeppelin that eventually resulted in recognition from the band itself; playing with and recording various bands and artists in and around Seattle; launching a successful second career as a carpenter & contractor after 25 years working in a record store; sustaining a great 40-year marriage that’s still going strong, and raising two great kids and launching them successfully into exciting and creative lives of their own; like I say – blessed!

As I look back on all this and observe the ongoing interest in records, ‘classic rock’ and all things pop culture, it just seems too good not to share. I started writing the record store memoir a few years ago with no real idea of what I was going to do with it. I considered trying to shop the full manuscript as a book or self-publish it, only share it with family and a few friends, or just shelve it for someone to find after I’ve left this mortal plane – and then along came Substack, which seems like the perfect venue for it.

Regarding the record store specifically, I am not attempting any kind of definitive historical document of Cellophane Square here. I can only tell its story through the lens of my own experiences and to the best of my recollection which is no doubt colored by emotions, the passage of many years, and probably a variety of substances consumed at the time. If I’ve missed anything important or not mentioned someone who was involved and has their own memories, sorry about that!

To this day people still occasionally introduce me as “. . . the guy that used to own Cellophane Square,” but I was never even partial owner - always an hourly or salaried employee of the company. The reason that I am so identified with the store has more to do with the 25 years I put in and the fact that as a sales clerk, manager, and later marketing director I was to some degree the public face of the outfit.

For the most part it was a joyous experience for me, and in hindsight I realize what a unique period of time my retail career spanned. It was an era that saw the advent and heyday of the collector’s market for records and the explosion, peaks, and eventual decline of the record business itself. And along with that came the transition of retail business from independent, entrepreneur-driven shops to national retailers, mall culture, and eventually the internet and the monster that Amazon has become.

It is a story populated with inspiring mentors and equally inspiring proteges, beloved long-time friends, great musicians and artists, textbook record-biz assholes, and some honest-to-goodness lowlife criminals - to name just a few.

Whether the mythic status of those years is justified or not, it gives me pleasure to know that what is now heralded as ‘Record Store Culture’ is something that I was a part of developing – albeit unwittingly – and that so many people consider that era in general and Cellophane Square in particular as important in their lives.

We’ll be starting with my formative years and moving forward more or less chronologically, however I intend to take side-trips periodically where I can tell other stories that may be outside the timeline and/or only tangentially related to the main narrative. The beauty of Substack is that thoughts can be related in small, easily-digestible chunks (so 21^st century!), and if a reader gets bogged down on a particular topic they can always skip it and move on to the next one.

I hope you enjoy the ride!

NEXT: How I Got There

And before I get underway, a few quick acknowledgements:

THANKS:

-        To Shannon Callin, for giving me the idea to write a memoir in the first place

-        To Marilyn Katz, for encouraging me as a writer

-        To Lesley Petty Jones, for encouraging me to post on Substack and for being there the whole time