The Record Store Years 33) Window Displays

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.

All of the Cellophane Square stores had large display windows, and though I don’t recall specifically how they were handled when I first started in 1975, the general policy was that employees on all levels were allowed to come up with ideas for displays and create them – whether themed around a concept or a specific band, everyone was allowed to express their creativity in this area.

With the growth of the collector mentality that came in with Dick and myself, the displays were almost always devoted to a specific band and consisted of albums, singles and memorabilia – often quite rare and not for sale – by the artist or band. The idea was not so much to promote what was available in the store, but what might be available if you haunted the racks enough, or what existed in that band or artist’s canon that one could seek out or lust after as a collector. Sort of an educational concept, not to mention a bit of showing off in the sense of, check out my super cool collection!

To this end, Dick created a Beatles display that included a butcher cover plus many of their rarest LPs and U.S. picture sleeve singles from his collection, I put up a big Roxy Music display that included a super-rare 6-foot long promo poster of the infamous “Stranded” gatefold album cover which drew some justifiable complaints from female customers and was removed prematurely, and Brian created a stunning display of his Sex Pistols collection including some of the rarest, withdrawn U.K. singles from their initial blast of notoriety. A couple of shots of the Pistols display can be found in chapter 14 of TRSY, “The Big Guns 0f Record Retail Come To Seattle.”

One of the most popular early displays was a Led Zeppelin extravaganza that I created in the summer of 1977, just prior to their July 17^th performance at the Kingdome – which turned out to be their last in Seattle and their third-to-last ever in the United States. The Zep display was packed with rarities which at the time were valued in the hundreds of dollars, and today would be worth thousands.

Above: The Led Zeppelin window display, July 1977. A few of the now-priceless items fading in the summer sun: Physical Graffiti, Song Remains the Same & Presence promo standees, original Houses of The Holy “Effect Is Shattering” promo poster, hanging cardboard promo blimp ca. 1973.

Below: ca. 1970 inflatable promo blimp (approximately 3 feet long) that also hung in the U-District store for several years in the late ‘70s after the window display came down.

I was fortunate that the Zeppelin display survived undisturbed for the month or so that it was up, although some of my rarities did get faded a bit from exposure to the sun. Dick was not as lucky with the Beatles display he created around the same time – in his own words:

“Whenever a great band had a new album out or a show coming up, we filled the window(s) with cool stuff, none of which we had for sale. But we did it because we were superfans. One time this backfired: I filled the pinball room window with some of my rarest album covers (no discs). I even stupidly put how much they were worth. Butcher Cover. Two Virgins. “Can’t Buy Me Love” picture sleeve (don’t even ask). About 50 items worth at least a couple thousand dollars. Someone broke in and emptied the whole lot. Even though they were empty, my records were worthless without them. But they had also gone into the store and stolen a couple albums from behind the counter and about a year later, they tried to sell one of the LPs to [local store] Golden Oldies where a former Cellophane employee was now working, and he knew that was the stolen record. A couple calls later, I had all my album covers back.”

After this incident we were more careful and a little less blatant about flaunting our collections, but cool and unique window displays remained a hallmark of Cellophane Square right up until the end of my tenure.

One memorable display at the original UD store was created by Scott, who rounded up as many albums as he could by artists named “Barry.” He wrote short fictional descriptions for each one, somehow creating the fabrication that Barry White, Sgt. Barry Sadler, Barry Manilow and other ‘Barrys’ we considered somewhat lame were all the same artist. It gently poked fun in what can only be seen in hindsight as a ‘record store snob’ kind of way, and it was absolutely hilarious!

This concept then prompted me to create a display consisting of ‘album cover parodies’, where jacket art mimicking or parodying famous LP covers was displayed side by side with the original. Examples of this included Sgt Peppers, parodied by the Mothers of Invention with We’re Only In It For The Money (and many others), the first Elvis Presley album parodied by The Clash’s London Calling album, Abbey Road re-created by Booker T & The MG’s for their McElmore Avenue album of Beatles covers, and many others. This display also featured inadvertently similar album covers, all with humorous or snarky comments displayed with the artwork. I did several of these displays over the years and they were very popular – and in fact nowadays several websites can be found devoted to the same concept.

Above: Intentional parodies, Below: Coincidental similarities, probably.

In 1988 when Sub Pop put out their first music release – the 3-EP box set Sub Pop 200 – Bruce Pavitt approached me to see if we would let him put up a display at the UD store to promote it. We already knew Bruce & Jonathan [Poneman] from their Sub Pop ‘zine which we carried in the store, and of course I agreed to it. Bruce came in one afternoon and spent a few hours creating the display and we stocked and sold many copies of the set in the ensuing weeks, until the limited edition release was completely sold out - and the rest, as they say, is history.

Above: The original version of Sub Pop’s first release: a box set of three 12-inch EPs, limited to 5000 copies. We sold dozens of them for somewhere around $20 as I recall – these days you’d have to mortgage your house to buy a clean original copy, if you can find one.

In the 1990s we were much more tied in with the labels, both indie and major, and thus used more of the promotional materials that they provided for displays, though employees would still contribute items from their own collections to add interest. In this era I became a regular at the local copy shop, blowing up images from books and magazines on the color copy machine and creating graphics & custom foam-core standees or hanging displays for the windows.

After the U-District store moved on to the Ave and we started doing regular live in-store appearances, large displays would often be devoted to promoting the events. One of my favorites was in 1995 with the band X, who played in the store promoting their Unclogged album. The band was grateful for the promotion and all four members were extremely gracious and posed for some great photos standing in the display window surrounded by posters & memorabilia.

NEXT: Side Trip: Led Zeppelin at The Kingdome, July 1977

Below: X posing in the window of the Ave store, August 1995. Exene and John (flipping the bird) at center, Tony Gilkyson to the left, and D.J. Bonebrake upside down to the right of John.