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.
Interesting that after all these years I remember hand writing down each sale on a "pull sheet" as it was sold, much better than I remember the months researching and installing the POS system. (The pull sheet was used to look for duplicate copies in overstock to pull and replace into the stock for sale).
Not having grown up with personal computers, learning to use them, and finding out that I had an aptitude for learning to deal with them and for graphics, pretty much changed my life. It was HJ's mom Laura who gave me my first job as a graphic artist which lead to a new career… now 33 years later I'm looking forward to retirement (next year?) for my 1-man company Feedback Graphics.
Cello was my first introduction to using a computer on a daily basis. My dad had computers since 1980 but they were a mystery to me and I only ever used them to play games. Cellophane is where I really learned how to use one and those little Macs were the perfect introduction.
Three computer "firsts" that stand out to me: 1.) JJ sitting me down at the Mac for the first time and opening up the books on an Excel spreadsheet. I had no idea what I was looking at and recall saying, as she's scrolling through, "It goes on forever?!" The concept that there was this sheet of "paper" that never ended blew my mind and I fell in love with Excel from that moment on. 2.) The first email system installed in, I think, 1994 (it was still the old location) and watching both you and ST emailing each other while sitting mere feet away. I recall thinking, "Why don't they just turn around and talk to each other?" and then it hit me that I was seeing the future of communication. 3.) The first downloaded photo I ever saw from DR in the office in 1995, one slow pixelated line at a time, was a photo of little goats that stand on the tops of trees in Morocco. It felt magical!
Wow. So fascinating to read Hugh's fabulous memories about those formative years for all of us at Cellophane back in the 90's! It was a great time for me, and I totally remember meeting Jim P and how excited I was that he offered me a job. I remember getting interviewed by Hugh, ST, DC, M and being asked who my top 3 favorite guitar players were. It was my dream job! I don't remember feeling like an outsider at all, I felt welcomed by everyone. Shannon even made me a mix tape cassette and turned me on to some new music. I got to play music with Hugh and other staff. I was excited to witness many up close and personal in-store music performances by lots of awesome PNW bands like The Melvins, The Posies, Everclear, and many others. I remember when I first started, Jim P had already purchased an expensive POS system, but DC was struggling to install it and getting it to work. Plus DC lived in Seattle, but Jim P had the new POS in Bellingham so DC had to commute 3 or 4 hours a day to work on the install and configuration set up. That particular POS was not a Point-Of-Sale system but rather a Piece-Of-Sh*t system, so I had to convince Jim P to scrap it and buy a better (but even more expensive) POS, which was specifically designed for used record stores, and came with bar coding capabilities. He was not happy about that but he did it, and not only did we get all the stores up and going with the new POS, we also had several marathon inventory sessions, where staff would stay up all night scanning each CD into the system with Star Trek tricoder-like hand held bar code reading devices. I got the system to automatically send sales data to Soundscan, and they would actually pay us for reporting sales data. I remember we even procured the domain name 'cellophane.com' (this was in the mid-90's internet free-for-all) and Jim let me hire a consultant who helped create a web site where online customers from around the world could search the Cellophane stock for rare and out of print collectibles. Thank you for the memories, Hugh!!!
Thanks for commenting Dave, and clarifying some of those memories. Funny you had to run the ‘top 3 guitar players’ question gauntlet in your interview!
I forgot that we scrapped the first “Piece of Sh*t” system and started over, but it’s all coming back to me now. . .
Cellophane Square sounds like it was actually quite on the ball. I was working in a big nonprofit in 1985 where there were few computers and my department had just one PC and printer comtrolled by one guy. (I also remember sharing a small office with three smokers. How times change.) A year later we all started to get PCs but had a shared a printer that kept jamming.
Rolodexes were great. Then they came out with the business card trays. I don't think they really went by the wayside until online networks took off, and I held on to mine far beyond that. I still keep a paper address book!
Very interesting to read about Soundscan from the record store perspective. Seems to have been a major development in the industry that often gets ignored.
Interesting that after all these years I remember hand writing down each sale on a "pull sheet" as it was sold, much better than I remember the months researching and installing the POS system. (The pull sheet was used to look for duplicate copies in overstock to pull and replace into the stock for sale).
Not having grown up with personal computers, learning to use them, and finding out that I had an aptitude for learning to deal with them and for graphics, pretty much changed my life. It was HJ's mom Laura who gave me my first job as a graphic artist which lead to a new career… now 33 years later I'm looking forward to retirement (next year?) for my 1-man company Feedback Graphics.
Cello was my first introduction to using a computer on a daily basis. My dad had computers since 1980 but they were a mystery to me and I only ever used them to play games. Cellophane is where I really learned how to use one and those little Macs were the perfect introduction.
Three computer "firsts" that stand out to me: 1.) JJ sitting me down at the Mac for the first time and opening up the books on an Excel spreadsheet. I had no idea what I was looking at and recall saying, as she's scrolling through, "It goes on forever?!" The concept that there was this sheet of "paper" that never ended blew my mind and I fell in love with Excel from that moment on. 2.) The first email system installed in, I think, 1994 (it was still the old location) and watching both you and ST emailing each other while sitting mere feet away. I recall thinking, "Why don't they just turn around and talk to each other?" and then it hit me that I was seeing the future of communication. 3.) The first downloaded photo I ever saw from DR in the office in 1995, one slow pixelated line at a time, was a photo of little goats that stand on the tops of trees in Morocco. It felt magical!
Wow. So fascinating to read Hugh's fabulous memories about those formative years for all of us at Cellophane back in the 90's! It was a great time for me, and I totally remember meeting Jim P and how excited I was that he offered me a job. I remember getting interviewed by Hugh, ST, DC, M and being asked who my top 3 favorite guitar players were. It was my dream job! I don't remember feeling like an outsider at all, I felt welcomed by everyone. Shannon even made me a mix tape cassette and turned me on to some new music. I got to play music with Hugh and other staff. I was excited to witness many up close and personal in-store music performances by lots of awesome PNW bands like The Melvins, The Posies, Everclear, and many others. I remember when I first started, Jim P had already purchased an expensive POS system, but DC was struggling to install it and getting it to work. Plus DC lived in Seattle, but Jim P had the new POS in Bellingham so DC had to commute 3 or 4 hours a day to work on the install and configuration set up. That particular POS was not a Point-Of-Sale system but rather a Piece-Of-Sh*t system, so I had to convince Jim P to scrap it and buy a better (but even more expensive) POS, which was specifically designed for used record stores, and came with bar coding capabilities. He was not happy about that but he did it, and not only did we get all the stores up and going with the new POS, we also had several marathon inventory sessions, where staff would stay up all night scanning each CD into the system with Star Trek tricoder-like hand held bar code reading devices. I got the system to automatically send sales data to Soundscan, and they would actually pay us for reporting sales data. I remember we even procured the domain name 'cellophane.com' (this was in the mid-90's internet free-for-all) and Jim let me hire a consultant who helped create a web site where online customers from around the world could search the Cellophane stock for rare and out of print collectibles. Thank you for the memories, Hugh!!!
Thanks for commenting Dave, and clarifying some of those memories. Funny you had to run the ‘top 3 guitar players’ question gauntlet in your interview!
I forgot that we scrapped the first “Piece of Sh*t” system and started over, but it’s all coming back to me now. . .
Cellophane Square sounds like it was actually quite on the ball. I was working in a big nonprofit in 1985 where there were few computers and my department had just one PC and printer comtrolled by one guy. (I also remember sharing a small office with three smokers. How times change.) A year later we all started to get PCs but had a shared a printer that kept jamming.
Rolodexes were great. Then they came out with the business card trays. I don't think they really went by the wayside until online networks took off, and I held on to mine far beyond that. I still keep a paper address book!
Very interesting to read about Soundscan from the record store perspective. Seems to have been a major development in the industry that often gets ignored.
I was gone before the computers showed up, I do remember the first barcode appearing on Elvis Costello 's "Armed Forces" LP.
If I remember the story right, Elvis wanted to be the first in the industry with a barcode.