Wow, that’s a big task.  But if you’ve followed Hoodlum’s social media sites, or my little Random Babblings of a Record Store Geek blog, you’ve probably read blogs or seen video explaining “why I own a record store”… and you know I’m constantly analyzing my whacky little world… so I’ll give it a shot.

Random observations and opinions from a Record Store Geek:

It takes more than one hoodlum to run an indie business in a corporatocracy.  Luckily, my partner Kristian has been here for thirteen years to share the load.  Because I write, tweet, post, and do the marketing, I tend to be the more-visible of the hoods, but anyone who really knows the store knows that Kristian is a music-lovin’ force-of-nature. I could do a whole article on his talents and hard work alone.  I can never thank him enough.   (Big thanks also to Joe, Andy, and the many other hoodlums who make up our Hood Hall of Fame.)

The rise of digital music has had a far-less negative affect on the music industry than the idiotic decision-making of the record labels. High-prices, customer lawsuits, substandard artist development, corporate-retail subsidies, and a continual overdose of hype have killed off a ton of indie record stores and an entire generation of potential customers.  If the major labels would have embraced digital music, and found a way to monetize it, rather than waiting for Apple to change the rules of the game, the music business would be infinitely more healthy.

I personally think digital-only music is a rip-off.  Although Kristian and I have never been on a crusade to stop illegal downloading, I don’t do it.  So if I want to own a piece of music, I pay for it by buying the CD or the LP/mp3 combo.  I’m a collector.  If I like an album, I want to have it in my collection, and to me “owning” a file is like owning air. The music in my iTunes, iPhone, and iPod is an important part of my collection, but that part is about convenience.  I still get the files with a CD, so to me it’s a win-win.  When Hoodlums was on hiatus after the M.U. Fire, I went to the other indie stores to shop, because I need a record store.  Kristian did too.  That’s why we reopened… because we’re not the only ones that feel like this.

Not giving in to the fear of a digital future has allowed us to feed our families for thirteen years.  Thanks, thanks, thanks to each and every person that has spent a cent in our store for making that possible. I still recall our Sony rep warning us about Napster before we started.  Little did he know that Napster was just the tip of the digital iceberg… and yet we are still here.

I wish I could have another conversation with Brad Singer.  Brad was my old boss at Zia; the guy who started it.  As GM, I would go into his office daily and report on the stores, and then he and I would discuss/debate/argue about our ideas for the company.  A lot of our debate centered around my opinion that some of the things he felt most strongly about applied to owning/running one store, but not eight.  His unfortunate passing led to the formation of Hoodlums, and since then, as the co-owner of one store, I have come to understand his feelings a lot better.  I wish I could tell him that, as well how thankful I am for saving me from corporate hell (and a thousand other things).

Downloading has weened the “lightweight” music fans out of record stores.  You know, people that just want singles, the ones who “like the song but don’t know who sings it”… that sort of music fan.  Don’t get me wrong, we don’t have anything against music lightweights (every good party needs lightweights), in fact we understand.  The labels have falsely inflated album sales for years by not giving them the option to just buy the song, so the new digital world is perfect for them.  If they get turned on and want the album (or they don’t want to download for whatever reason), we’re here to help them, but the majority of the people we serve these days are serious music fans.  Junkies like us.

Most of my fellow record store geeks feel that at this point the economy is tougher to deal with than the industry and technology.  We feel that way too.  Ask almost any other type of shopkeeper, and they’ll tell you how much of a battle it is these days.  The only good side of the sad economy is that the guys in the Ivory Towers (Label bean counters, errr, Presidents) have finally started dropping prices.

I still love music more than any non-human thing on this Earth.  It is my passion. It is a part of my soul and my spirituality. I feel that spreading music to my fellow Earthlings is a very important job, because without it this would be a pretty sad place to live.  I couldn’t sell you cars, or homes, or clothes… because although those things are important, I’m not passionate about them.  But I can sell you music, because I believe in music.  I spread it around when I was younger, so Hoodlums is just a “business continuation” of what I was already doing.

I’ll stop there, although I could give you impressions all day (buy me a drink after the birthday party and I’ll answer whatever questions you’ve got).  Thanks again to everyone for your support.

Random Hood Facts: 

Steve/Favorite In-store: Michael Franti and Spearhead (although I was radically hung over from the Bowie show the night before… I loved the album, my 6-year old son was in the front row, and Michael was a free-spirited champ.)

Kristian/Favorite in-store: Ben Kweller (playing piano in the store with Jason Schwartzmann of Phantom Planet, making up songs and goofing around)

Andy’s Favorite in-store: Greg Graffin of Bad Religion (hanging with Professor Graffin was super-cool, especially for the store’s biggest BR fan).

Most people in an autograph line at an in-store: Weezer (650 preorders was all we could do in their allotted time)

Biggest single-day sales on a record: Format – Dog Problems (500 copies, all we had, during a street-date in-store performance).

Biggest single sales day: Record Store Day 2011.

Some things never change… and the poor major label decision-making continues with the new Kanye/Jay-Z release (in this case, exclusivity windows for corporate joints).  As the video says, it’s not like we think things are going to change now… but we got a package in the mail this week that was just too stupid not to mock.  I threw on the glasses and made it “Music 101″ because I’m a goof.

To those of you that have only shopped at our current location, and haven’t heard us speak out on industry issues, a small explanation:

We used to speak out all the time about crazy industry decisions and policies (some examples are still linked on our press page) .  While our complaints and observations, and those of our fellow outspoken indie friends, often garnered attention and perhaps even slowed down the complete corporate takeover of our industry, they really didn’t stop any of the practices we opposed (inflated list prices, exclusive releases, multiple versions, suing customers, not monetizing file-trading, etc.)

At the time, we were a member of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS), so we were more involved in the industry.  When our ASU store closed, we were no longer in CIMS, so when reopened as a “coalition-less” indie, we were sort of “not in the industry”.  That was totally fine, because as I said, the industry hadn’t shown any signs of sanity, and we had thrown our hands up in terms of trying to change things.  We figured we’d just do our thing and take care of the customers in the store.

Three years later, we’re back in the Coalition (see the blog for more info).  That puts us back in the industry.  As our industry “reps”, our leaders at CIMS made us aware of the Kanye/Jay-Z hilarity, or I’m not sure we’d have even known, to be honest.  Of course, we instantly said we were in agreement with the indie-store letter to the label and artists… but we didn’t have any plans to speak out directly.

Then we got that silly banner in the mail… and I couldn’t contain myself.

Have a great day.

Steve, Kristian, and the hoodlums at Hoodlums

Music: “Move on Up” by Curtis Mayfield.  Available at Hoodlums.

Yeah, we hate ‘em too.

That’s why we won’t be selling tickets to the upcoming Phoenix show at the Marquee Theater.  Because the co-promoter/venue (Luckyman/Marqee) is asking us to collect an unwarranted and in our opinion, excessive, service charge above the advertised ticket price.

We are sorry to inconvenience you.  We understand that some websites (like AZCentral.com) have us listed us as a place to buy tickets.  However, the tickets are advertised as $25… and we are being asked to collect $28 from you.  That’s just not the way we do it.

We aren’t shocked about this development.  We didn’t just fall off the concert industry turnip truck or anything.  We understand various levels of service charge hilarities have been going on forever in the concert biz.  Nevertheless, we think its bullshit. That’s one of the reasons we hoodlums don’t personally buy a lot of tickets to the corporate shows (the other being the normally-excessive price of the ticket itself). It’s for sure why we don’t sell tickets for the corporate venues and shows.

If you’ve done business with the corporate ticket sellers and promoters in this town (and anywhere in the country, since a handful of corporate giants basically control the industry), you probably know how the concert ticket turnip tastes as well:  The ticket buyer, trapped in a tightly-controlled industry, gets ambushed with a ton of extra “service” charges as the ticket buy proceeds, levied by anyone from the venue to the promoter.  Good ol’ corporate greed doesn’t stop with Wall Street.

But we ain’t corporate, baby… we’re indie. We put our cards on the table. Our philosophy is that a person should get some extra service above and beyond what their basic purchase if they are going to have to pay extra.  In addition, we believe the charge should accurately reflect the level of extra service.  In our opinion, that’s not the case with this Phoenix show.

Are we entirely against service fees?  Of course not.  As an indie ticket seller, we have to charge them. But the fee has to be reasonable… and it should be charged and collected by the person providing the service.

If you buy tickets at our store, you know that we only charge a ONE dollar service fee.  We know of none lower.  We feel that is a fair price for our customers to pay for the convenience of not having to travel to the venue, and it covers the time and effort we put into the organizing, promoting, and selling the tickets.  We aren’t involved in the contract, the show itself, or any of its proceeds… so that one little dollar is all we collect on tickets sales.

We think that’s fair.  Our customers agree.  They don’t mind paying a fair price for a little extra service… and we give them one more reason to visit the hoodlums at Hoodlums.  We certainly aren’t in the ticket business to make money, we are in the ticket selling business to provide a service to our customers… so it works for everyone.

Normally, the whole process is smooth.  We only sell tickets for indie shows and indie promoters, mainly with our buddies at Stateside Productions. They find the venue, they find the band, and they price the tickets as high or low as they want.  Once they negotiate the price of the tickets, they print the price on the ticket, and give them to us to sell.  We add on our dollar, and everyone is happy.  No deception.  No service charge for anything other than actual service.

Then we get our Phoenix tickets, and we are being asked to start collecting three bucks above the advertised ticket price?  Like we said: We don’t do that.  We charge ticket price plus a buck, not ticket price plus four bucks.  That’s not a fair price.  Besides,why would we collect an extra service fee for someone else’s service, especially when that “someone else” hasn’t provided ANY extra service.

If the venue wants to charge extra for their service, that’s their prerogative to negotiate the higher ticket price.  If the venue wants to charge extra at its own box office, so be it.  If the promoter, or the artist, or management, or anyone involved in the negotiations needs to charge $28 for the tickets in order to make ends meet, we aren’t in a position to debate that either.  While it is our sincere belief that concerts in general need to be cheaper in order for the concert industry to thrive again, setting the ticket price is none of our business.  You need to make an extra three bucks?  Make it a $28 ticket.  Don’t make it a $25 ticket and ask us to collect $28.

So to those of you that expected to be able to buy Phoenix tickets at Hoodlums, sorry.  They are a great band, and we are sure that you will enjoy the show… but we just can’t bear the thought of charging you an excessive fee for “ghost” service.

We will still proudly sell tickets for Stateside shows, but unless the Marquee relents and loses the extra fees, we will not be able to sell for that venue.  We realize the Marquee gets a lot of great bands, bands that our customers dig, and we hope to be able to continue to provide the extra service of saving you the drive to Tempe Town Lake, but we have to stick to our principles on this one. Hopefully you understand.

Have a great day.

Hello fellow music biz geeks,

Are we still in this crazy business?  Man, it seems like forever since we talked.  Back in the old days, back in the time when we thought we understood the phrase “uncharted waters”, we used to send charts out every week.

Anyway, down there you will find a chart.  It’s our top 99 of our first full year at the new store.  Although the old store has a totally new personality, mine is still the same (insert smart-ass comment here), so I figured I’d comment on some of the industry-related things we noticed in our 1st year at the new joint.  If you want to scroll down and skip the babble… we’ll never know.

So what’s been going on at Hoodlums, you ask?  How’s biz and all that?

Well, we are officially a year old.  If you remember, we soft-opened on Saturday, September 20th, and our grand opening was in early October.  Two days later the stock market dove, officially signaling the start of the freakshow economy.

Since then we’ve had our first real holiday season, six art shows, and Hoodstock.  We’ve stirred up conservative radio hosts, interacted with our community, learned how to buy used vinyl, and watched another unbelievable year’s worth of changes in the music industry.  Joey Kramer used our bathroom.  So did Peter Yarrow.

We haven’t sent you charts because we’ve been focused on the customers and building up the store.  It isn’t cause we haven’t been paying attention to this crazy $#%& (I haven’t turned anti-vulgarity, I have to do that in case customers are on the list) industry.  As usual, we can’t speak for other stores, or any of you cats, but we can tell you how the music biz looks from our tiny little vantage point.

1. Prices are getting better on catalog.

Let’s start positive.  Those WEA 7.99 titles (Talking Heads, ZZ Top, Bonnie Raitt, Faith No More, etc.) and those Sony 6.99 (Ten Years After, Mike Bloomfield, Milt Jackson, etc) titles have been huge sellers.  We brought a bunch in around February and they have been moving along better than we had hoped.  For 6.99 new, people will buy that David Bromberg album they used to love.  Now, with most of those great Sony 11.99 titles selling at 9.99 (don’t give me that “we don’t have a list price” bullshit, we still base price on cost, not the margin Sony decides we should lose), we are sporting a pretty mean selection of classic CDs at ten or less.  That’s what we’ve been talking about for eleven years: Cheaper prices = More sales.

2. Prices are still too high on catalog.

In the meantime, I shudder to think of how many CSN, Radiohead, or Led Zeppelin CDs we could sell at a realistic list.  18.98?  17.98?  In this day and age?  I can’t even believe those are still a price points.  Is there an economist in the house over in those Ivory Towers?  There must be someone who understands supply and demand.  Call me crazy, but since I’ve been lobbying lower prices to the industry for years to little avail, I’ve decided to make a plea to the artist.  Read the “Robert Plant – A Story and Video Plea” blog here.

3. High list prices more or less kill plans to develop and sell newer jazz, blues, and world.

While the catalog pricing offers some reasonable options in these genres, when it comes to new releases, who can afford it?  Note to the Ivory Tower: After years of watching the way you market these genres, we assume that you don’t ever want to target any young adults at all… but we should at least mention that baby boomers are price conscious too, and pricing every artist on every adult genre at 17.98 or 18.98 list is a bad idea.  I’d love to turn someone, young or old, on to a new Joe Lovano or Roy Hargrove CD, but why bother trying when you can turn them on to a classic Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, or Sonny Rollins CD for under ten bucks?

4. Hang on to your obscure, and not so obscure, CDs.

We are starting to see a lot of CDs go out of print.  Speaking of supply and demand, you want LeRoy Hutson’s Greatest Hits?  It’s gonna cost you no less than $150 on Amazon (pretty much the same price they wanted for the Beatles boxes, isn’t it?).  That plays right into our little hands, because when it comes to finding special orders… a scrappy little joint like ours is the place to go.

5. Label reps that set up records are a dying breed.

It may be because we are just a little joint – but we rarely see a label rep set up new releases any more.  There’s still a few out there that can be counted on to consistently do so (Jay from Sony/now Nettwerk, Melissa from Epitaph/Anti, and the gang at Fearless come to mind), and some that are starting to come on board, but for the most part it feels like we are on our own when it comes to deciding what it worthy of promoting or not.

That’s not all bad, and we aren’t necessarily upset.  After all, we are more than capable of finding stuff for the posts.  But for sure on the right releases a great set-up makes a huge difference… and for sure a great rep that know what to push at your store (or in this day and age, one that pushes at all) can make all the difference.  Look at all the Sony and Epitaph stuff that made the chart.  There’s no way that NASA makes this chart without support.  Would we have brought it in?  Sure.  One copy.  Would we have put it in the post?  Probably not.

How does the lack of set-up hurt?  If someone would have worked with us on the recent Noisettes or Raveonettes CDs, we probably would have quadrupled sales so far.  Do we react once we see demand?  Sure, but it hurts at first, when it matters most.  In this economy, in this industry, we do our new release buying with caution.  Often, we aren’t quite sure what customers are going to want (since the internet has given every customer the ability to find out their own street dates, we don’t quite get the “pre-buzz” like the old days).  People just sorta show up on street date and buy.  It’s easy with proven champs like Flaming Lips or Built to Spill, but since we don’t listen to the radio or monitor internet activity, its tough to judge whether those mid-level groups still have interested fans.  If we don’t hear from anyone at the label, we assume the label isn’t really behind them anymore.  If we buy the CD at all, we buy one.

Like I said, our little store may not rate the coverage… and we can live with that, but I don’t think that’s it.  We seem to be on the radar still.  We still get visits from out-of-town Music Biz Bigshots.  We still get stuff in the mail.  It seems more likely that either: a) there aren’t enough label reps (Phoenix doesn’t have a WEA, Sony, or EMD sales rep – and our UNI sales rep is covering like 32 states or something);  b) many of the labels out there aren’t focused on on physical product at the indie stores; or c) lack of accountability and direction are at an all time high.  Probably a little of everything.

6. Everything is still free on the Internet.

Somehow in spite of those FBI stickers… in spite of the lawsuits… in spite of the “switched” street dates, the branded play copies, and the Congressional testimony… every release is still out there for a grand total of nothing.   I know because we have to get a lot of our play copies, the ones we need to help sell your CDs, the same way that a huge portion of the rest of the world has been getting their music for twelve years now.

Can you guys finally relent and monetize the file-sharing?  Maybe that way CD prices will continue to fall and those who want to collect and peddle the hard copies can do so – while those that are content with files can do their thing legally.  While we are on the subject: A buck a song is still too much.

7. Labels, in true form, are already stifling the vinyl resurgence with ridiculous prices.

It was totally predictable.  Customers find value in LPs… so labels jack prices until the value goes away.  It’s the same Ivory Tower game plan that has helped kill CDs sales over the past twelve years.

It’s simple, anything over $20 is TOO MUCH for an LP.  Even if the digital file in included.  Each week, as we decide what to bring in… we simply look at the list price. These days, instead of 18.98, which is fine (with the digital info), we see lots of 24.98.  If the price is over twenty, unless it is something we can’t live without (like the Wilco releases), we don’t bring it in.  The biggest recent example is the Muse reissues.  Four releases from a very powerful band at Hoodlums, yet only one (Black Holes..) is priced under twenty.  We brought in Black Holes, and it is nearing double digit sales.  The other three have become special orders.

There is it: Our take on how the music biz decision-making is looking at this little store.  As always, we appreciate your support… and your taking the time to read our opinions.  Have a great day.

Steve, Kristian, and the hoodlums at Hoodlums.

The Top 99 of Hoodlums’ 1st year (September 2008 – September 2009)

The album is the latest release by the artist, unless specified.

1. Kings of Leon
2. Neko Case
3. Animal Collective
4. Black Carl
5. Darren Mahoney
6. Fleet Foxes
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
8. Phoenix
9. Wilco
10. Bon Iver
11. What Laura Says
12. Andrew Bird
13. Dead Weather
14. Green Day
15. Ray Lamontagne
16. Neil Young
17. TV on the Radio
18. Bruce Springsteen
19. Catfish Groove Farm
20. Calexico
21. Regina Spektor
22. U2
23. Kinch
24. Iron and Wine
25. Ben Harper & Relentless 7
26. Leonard Cohen
27. Bob Dylan
28. VA – Thank You, Goodnight
29. Fleet Foxes – EP
30. Iron & Wine
31. Decemberists
32. Lucinda Williams
33. Grizzly Bear
34. Silversun Pickups
35. Manchester Orchestra
36. She & Him
37. Sonic Youth
38. Jack Johnson/D. Frankenreiter/G. Love
39. Steve Earle
40. Vampire Weekend
41. Camera Obscura
42. St. Vincent
43. Adele
44. Kanye West
45. Fun
46. Dan Auerbach
47. Bloc Party
48. Beatles – Abbey
49. Of Montreal
50. Dinosaur Jr.
51. Arctic Monkeys
52. Ben Folds
53. Bob Dylan – Telltale Signs/Boot 8
54. Dave Matthews
55. Elvis Costello
56. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
57. Abba – Gold
58. Jolie Holland
59. Jenny Lewis
60. Beatles – Sgt. Peppers
61. Ryan Adams and Cardinals
62. Jeff Beck
63. Q-Tip
64. Death Cab for Cutie
65. Damien Rice – Live at Fingerprints
66. NASA
67. Bonnie Raitt – Give it Up
68. Mars Volta – Octahedron
69. Killers
70. Radiohead
71. Mgmt
72. Franz Ferdinand
73. Derek Trucks – Already Live
74. Milt Jackson – Sunflower
75. Ben Harper – Live at Twist and Shout
76. Interpol – Live
77. Son Volt
78. Peter Bjorn and John
79. Bob Marley & Wailers – Legend
80. Taj Mahal – Taj Mahal
81. Slumdog Millionaire OST
82. Byrne/Eno
83. Eminem
84. Robert Plant/Allison Krauss
85. Michael Franti
86. Black Keys
87. Talking Heads – Remain in Light
88. Clapton/Winwood – Madison Square
89. Coldplay
90. Lily Allen
91. Mark Olson/Gary Louris
92. Uncle Tupelo – No Depression
93. Kings of Leon – Youth and Young Manhood
94. John Mayer – Village Sessions
95. Chet Atkins/Les Paul – Chester and Lester
96. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
97. Pearl Jam – Live at Easy Street
98. VA – Vintage Verve (I love this, as I was on the panel that selected it)
99. Alejandro Escovedo

The morning of the show, I called our SonyBMG rep, Mary, to say thanks for the tickets, and I jokingly said, “Hey, why don’t you call the radio guys and get me some backstage passes to meet Robert”.  Mary had scored the tickets for me, and we were friends and long-time music biz geeks, so she knew what sort of pipedream it would be to arrange a meet and greet with a legend like Plant… especially on the day of the show.  Like I said, it was a joke.

Lo and behold, she called the radio guy anyway.  Amazingly, a couple of hours later Mary called me and said, “You aren’t going to believe this… but you are going to meet Robert Plant tonight.”

Now I’ve been in this wacky industry for 22 years, so I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a rock star or two over the years.  Not as many as a concert promoter, or a venue guy, or a radio geek, or a label geek (hmmm, I guess we are sorta at the bottom of the geek chain)… but it does happen.  Anyway, I always appreciate the opportunity, but I don’t get too worked up (you know, act like you’ve been here before).  But wow – when we’re talking about the front man for Led Zeppelin, we are talking about the upper echelon of rock royalty – so I was pretty damn excited.

My buddy Cheesy (I still use nicknames for all my friends… it’s a Nodak thing) was going to be joining me, but I decided not to tell him until the last minute.  Once we were in the car on the way to the venue, I sprung the good news. You think he was stoked?  Doy.

We got to the Dodge, and we tracked down our contact (Mary couldn’t make it… and yes, she was envious).  Stage left.  Before the show.  Nervously… nah, let’s just say excitedly… we waited.  And then they took us back.  Robert, and the entire band (Strange Sensation) came back and shook hands with everybody, and then we posed for a picture (it’s the one you see, obviously), which showed up in my inbox later that night (you have to love the digital age for actually seeing your pics with rock stars, but that’s a story for another blog).

As a super, not-like-normal-backstage bonus, I was lucky enough to get a minute of conversation with Robert, which, unbelievably, was started by Mr. Plant himself.

The rep introduced us (Rock Legend; Meet record store geek), and Robert said, “You own a record store, huh? Do you sell vinyl?”.  I said “Yeah”.  He said, “What’s your number one seller right now?”

This story takes place in July at the old store.  We only had a small new vinyl section at the time, and as any of our old summer school customers can tell you, the place didn’t exactly jam in July, so there weren’t a whole lot vinyl sales period.  In addition, we didn’t stock more than one copy of any given LP title at a given time, so our weekly charts weren’t exactly ranked… more like “these are the ones that sold last week”.

But somehow, on this particular week, I had reordered an album, and somehow we had happened to sell two copies in a week.

So I had my answer ready: “Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon“.

“No kidding?”, he said.  “That’s fantastic”.

He shook my hand and said he had to go do a show, and I said thanks for meeting with us, and he took off with the band.  We watched the show in a daze, and I haven’t shut about the meet and greet since… just ask my fellow hoodlums.

There’s my story.  Why am I sharing it? Two reasons: 1) Because I felt like writing, and I figured I’d save you from having to hear it at the counter; and 2) Because I wanted you to know that I love Robert before I make this video plea to him to lower the stinking prices on the Led Zeppelin CDs.