The Record Store Years 13) The "Great Melts Scam" of 1979

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

Of the three original stores on The Ave that carried new product, Campus Music was by far the coolest, and in my opinion the best. I believe the store had been in existence under the same name since the 1940’s, and in the late 70’s it was operated by a very hip and knowledgeable staff - “cool” guys not always warm & fuzzy with the customer service but very into music, especially whatever was cutting edge and outside the mainstream. The store was fairly small and carried a well-curated selection of current rock & pop, a large import section, and had a ticket agency for concert and show tickets at the back.

The ticket agency was run by a charming couple of white-haired guys named Jim and Jimmy - both considerably older than anyone else involved in the business, and absolute pros at the work they did. Computer-generated tickets were starting to come in, but promoters also still printed custom old-style tickets for their events which went to select outlets that didn’t have the computer setup, and this included Jim & Jimmy’s operation.

I bought my tickets for Led Zeppelin’s two 1975 Seattle shows at their little window counter at the back of Campus Music - those two shows were general admission, but I also remember many times showing up at the ticket window right at 10:00 a.m. opening on the morning a reserved seating show went on sale, and scoring 2nd or 3rd row tix for concerts like Peter Gabriel, King Crimson and many others.

Above: A Campus Music ad from local fanzine Chatterbox circa 1976.

Once I started working at Cellophane Square, Campus Music became a regular stop for me to browse and occasionally buy imports and new releases that we didn’t carry. I got to know most of the guys (and they were all guys) working the counter, with Steve and Gary being particular favorites. They of course knew I worked across the street and I stopped in at least a few times a week, and as my reputation with the ‘cool guys’ evolved they eventually took me seriously has a hardcore music fan and regular customer. In one case I recall Steve giving me a call the minute a particular new release came out of the shipping box - it was Tommy Bolin’s Private Eyes LP - knowing that I’d be there in minutes to buy it since Cellophane was not bringing in new product at the time and I had not been lucky enough to land an advance promo of that one.

One of the coolest Zeppelin promo items in my collection came from Campus Music - a 24 by 36-inch three dimensional cardboard ‘window’ created by Swan Song Records for the Physical Graffiti album in 1975. It stood in their window for many months and I expressed interest in it enough times that they eventually gave it to me. I’m sure I was far from the only person bugging them about it, so it was an especially generous gesture that I’m still grateful for.

Even as I got to know the Campus Music staff better, I still found the owner somewhat intimidating – he could be a bit gruff and certainly didn’t suffer fools gladly – but eventually we got to know each other and I came to realize he was a great guy. One thing we had in common was a dislike of Wes TBM (see previous chapter). I don’t remember any specific reason why he had a problem with him, but he did not suffer bullies any more gladly than fools and I think he regarded Wes as both of those things.

Around 1979 it was announced that Campus Music would be closing, and Wes negotiated with the landlord to take over the location for a new store to be called ‘Roxy Music.’ As part of the deal he also bought the store fixtures and some of the existing stock, basically a large quantity of new (i.e. shrink-wrapped) LPs to sell in the new location.

The idea was hatched – and I honestly don’t recall by whom – to take all of those empty LP covers that Cellophane Square had acquired from promo man Barney Gibbs mentioned previously (these would be Saturday Night Fever and Grease double-albums), insert scratched & worthless used LPs (known as ‘Melts’ in our lingo, more on that later) into them, shrink-wrap them to appear new and put them in the new store’s racks for Wes to discover.

There was a tight timeline for this, and of course it had to be done surreptitiously. By this time we had acquired our own shrink-wrapper at Cellophane, and I recall a late night stuffing crappy LPs into those covers and wrapping them, then carting them across the street to put in the new store’s racks, all the while cackling hysterically over our revenge prank and imagining the look on Wes’ face when he figured out the scam.

What can I say? It was a childish and lousy thing to do, but we were young, impulsive, and pretty pissed off at Wes and his ways of doing business.

Karma is real and paybacks are hell, as they say, and we got ours a few days later when the scam was discovered and one night a brick was thrown through one of Cellophane’s big plate glass windows. Obviously there was no mystery as to its source, but nothing further was done or said and on balance it was a small price to pay for the satisfaction of knowing we’d given the guy a bit of his own medicine.

Not my proudest moment, but I have no regrets!

NEXT: Side Trip: Tommy Bolin 1976