Former CD/Game Exchange (The Record Exchange), Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Formerly The Record Exchange on Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, here from about 1978 through 2010, a 32-year run.
Link to original signage (impossible to tell the year): photos.clevescene.com/amazing-vintage-photos-of-life-in-c…

Not much has been written about Record Ex, or about its owners. In fact, other than the novel "High Fidelity," there has been little writing about working in retail music. Two brothers who were Heights grads started their business as students at Ohio State around 1975, attained their degrees, then moved it home to Cleveland Heights. They must have started off doing what they loved, ostensibly trying to get admitted to law school, but instead convinced their disappointed parents that music retail would someday be profitable.

I worked here between 1984 and 1991. I was part-time during high school and college, then full time after I earned my own degree, also at Ohio State. Internally, we called it "RX1" (or the "main store"). RX1 carried a great selection of classic and obscure rock, and the best selection in town of pop/Top-40, R&B, classical, jazz, blues, world, and soundtracks. Almost no one else carried "world" music, or jazz, for that matter. Rap and hip-hop were in their infancy and, by today’s standards, were "clean."

When I started shopping here in early 1981, it was still a standalone store. I kept checking back before being offered a position as a high school senior; it was the best store of its kind around. Even working the floor was an unassailably cool job for a high schooler. I developed vast musical knowledge in my teens. By late 1984, when Record Exchange finally hired me, it was the place to buy music for reasons of service, selection, and price. This was made possible by volume of sales, inexpensive rent (for a time), an enthused teenaged crew of part-timers, great location not reliant on nearby parking, and everything inside the store done on the cheap, except for the wonderful sound system. Managers usually played in store the best condition used vinyl from the bins or vinyl that customers had returned–never cassette tapes–probably because of their inferior sound.

For sale: new and used albums (no 45s), needles and record washer, blank cassette tapes, no bongs or paraphernalia, no apparel, and no swag. The youngest baby boomers (b. 1946-64) were in prime music buying age and finishing college, with the oldest Generation X’ers (1965-1980) in high school or starting college. There was no shortage of foot traffic or demand. Around late 1984, we became large enough to order direct from the record labels. Stores with lower volume still had to go through "rack jobbers," also known as wholesalers.

A $50,000.00 mall store interior buildout we were not. Fluorescent lights hung under pressboard drop ceiling. The store was brightly-lit. Stuccoed walls of the 70-year-old building were painted over light blue, and on them hung tastefully-framed posters and memorabilia from the owners’ personal collections. All the bins were handmade or bought secondhand. Aside from the inventory, memorabilia and powerful sound system, I would be shocked if the store cost $10,000.00 to outfit. Hardwood, on a 25′ by 50′ sales floor, had not seen stain or poly in decades.
Mall rents were exorbitant and, unlike a mall store, they didn’t have a 50-page lease and they could run their store their way and without red tape.

This was part of my bosses’ marketing strategy. They did not want to be like Record Revolution or a head shop, which attracted teenage boys almost exclusively. The idea was also to attract teenage girls (and their parents). We had two women store managers at the main store, as well as the manager of the Jazz/Classical Annex. We could dress almost however we wanted, but we were required to be mannerly and professional at all times. We could wear any shirt so long as we tucked it in, but we had to wear long pants: no shorts and no hats. In my boss’ words, the stores (at least what customers saw) were rated "G," and the personalities behind it were big enough that the experience was far from sterile. Behind the counter, the owners were like two Jackie Gleasons. Environment was highly professional, and loud. We communicated by yelling over the music, except at customers.

I was proud to tell people I worked here and soaked up every bit of knowledge I could. Morale was positive and we were all treated as contributors. And I think, for various reasons, the owners and most of the managers enjoyed the vitality that comes only from young people. We worked very hard, especially on long Saturdays, and whenever else the store was packed. Busiest days of the year, by far, were the last Saturday before Christmas and Christmas Eve. Day after Christmas, and Saturday after Christmas, were packed, too, all over our slush-soaked hardwood floors. We understood our customers at least as well as the owners because the shoppers were our age. I read relatively current reviews of Record Exchange’s successor store and it is sad that people complain that the workers now are abrupt. That was impossible in the 1980s and early 1990s when all customers were greeted and made to feel at home as management was, if anything, effusively friendly and mannerly, and not in an insincere way.

Working at RX1 beat the hell out of what my friends were doing, by far: working at landscaping jobs, restaurants, malls, grocery stores and in other menial labor. There was a hierarchy of high school jobs and mine was at the top. For example, I went to school with a guy, Eric, who bussed the food court in Beachwood Place Mall. Beachwood Place Mall, which had just gone up around 1978, was upscale, just loaded with educated people with expensive tastes and, at the time, virtually crime-free. By 1984, the mall was no longer brand new, but it still felt like it. Eric bragged to me that he was bringing in $5.00/hour, not including tips. His older brother ran the pizza place in the food court at the mall and you had to know someone to get Eric’s job. Eric was earning almost 50% more than I was, what he was doing for pocket money was simple and easy, he was surrounded by pretty girls (though what he was doing wasn’t glamorous), and he had almost no oversight. Like all of us, though, he was on his feet all day. The mall was located near three terrific public high schools (Shaker, Beachwood and Orange), and near three exclusive one-sex-only schools (Hathaway Brown and Laurel (all girls), University School (all boys) plus nearby Hawken School was co-ed, as was Catholic Gilmour Academy. In spite of this, I would not have switched places with Eric. I could walk to work, and he had to have his brother drive him from Cleveland Heights several miles out Cedar to Beachwood.

Many of students at these great private and public schools were also customers of ours. Their tastes and clothing often ran a little more avant garde, the rest were preppy. Watch a John Hughes film from the 1980s for accuracy: nearly all were set and filmed in the northern suburbs of Chicago with local extras and they very closely show how teens of the era looked, spoke and acted: "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," or "Pretty in Pink." Yet another brother of Eric’s, Pete, made fun of me within the last year or so for not working in retail yet. I wasn’t old enough for my work permit and was still mowing lawns, babysitting and housesitting, etc. Work permits, by the way, were issued by the Board of Education, no matter where you want to school. Many employers required them. Pete worked at Gale’s Bi-Rite on Lee Road (later Zagara’s). When Record Ex hired me, he sure did shut up. I took a pay cut to work here, and I was told right off the bat that mine would not be a "glamor job." They were right.

Our managers, all trained to act as buyers, would take in used records or cassette tapes in trades (or pay cash), put the first and cheapest copy of what we had on the floor, and store duplicates of each title downstairs; other than best sellers, there was no need to have more than one copy upstairs. When we sold something, it appeared on a 14" long handwritten list created at the checkout, with many abbreviations, and we went downstairs in the storage area to pull the list once the sheet was full.

If someone wanted something at Record Ex, we physically brought the customer over to the music he or she wanted, and handed them a copy. Not telling them "Look in the L’s." Or referring to a customer, not "the guy…" but "the gentleman in front of the cassette case." Or in speaking to one of them, "please," "thank you," "Sir," "Ma’am." There were a few idiosyncrasies in our filing: Elton John and Elvis Presley were under "E." Elvis Costello was under "C." Mick Jagger’s solo album was filed with the Rolling Stones (under "R").

One of my favorite parts of my job was finding out exactly what music customers came for, when they didn’t necessarily know. Usually if someone liked one song, they would purchase the whole album. By today’s standards, that’s insane. It’s like paying $15.00 for one song, if the rest of the album is mediocre. LPs that were consistently good throughout (plus a radio-played single or two) would sell many copies for a long time. Those albums with only one good song–and there were many–fizzled quickly once word got around. There was no Google or Shazam. Usually one of the managers could figure out what the customer wanted if I didn’t know it. If we still didn’t recognize what the customer was asking for by name (or hearing a snippet of the chorus), we had a copy of the Billboard Top 100 chart hung up. We also had a Phonolog, which was a huge looseleaf yellow-paged catalog that sat on the end of the counter on a metal rack. I not uncommonly had people sing what they wanted to me. One fairly normal blue collar guy, probably late 20s, kept mumbling and singing to me "That’s Amore" (by Dean Martin). "What the hell is he talking about?" I wondered, not realizing that the song includes Italian (and not knowing Italian). About five minutes later (and about eight garbled versions of "That’s Amore") I saw the title "That’s Amore" on a greatest hits album, and figured out what he wanted. If they want it bad enough, they will sing it to you. The Dean Martin fan was functionally illiterate, probably severely dyslexic, as I had to read song titles to him. Yet another Dean Martin fan, Isaac, was in all the time and once told me Dino had cut about 60 LPs. Isaac was missing only three of them. He came in every couple weeks looking for one of the three. Only the rare customer went home empty. (Coincidentally, for about two years many decades before, Dean Martin had lived with his first wife, Betty McDonald, just steps up the street in a furnished apartment in 2820 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118. They were in their twenties and Dino was unknown outside of his big band singer gig at the Hollenden House Hotel at E. 6th St. and Superior Ave, which is where he met Betty. )

Speaking of Billboard, it was published and mailed to us weekly, but by today’s standards, there was information lag. The hottest selling albums were on the Billboard charts between positions 10 and 20 or 25. By the time something reached Number 1, usually it had already peaked, and would still be selling very respectably, but our customers and the hubbub of activity surrounding the hottest sellers had moved on to other things weeks before.

We brought cassettes, once selected, to the counter from the locked case at the rear. We experienced very little theft, though the area north of us was in decline. If someone was suspected of packing albums in his pants, one of our associates, Bob (who was large and might appear buffoonish–and was–so played it off perfectly), would "accidentally" bump into him, to see if he felt anything. I missed any shoplifter apprehensions. Once a group of very capable kids succeeded. They knew exactly how to stay on my periphery and somehow escape everyone’s notice, because they did not stand out, other than not being from around here. Their mannerisms and how they talked was very different from how we spoke on the east side; they probably drove in from 90 minutes away to see a show. But Sgt. Mark Lovequist of Cleveland Heights Police Department grilled me about whether I knew the thieves or had ever seen them before, to make sure I wasn’t conspiring. I wasn’t in on it, of course, but he scared the crap out of me.

If a customer was dishonest or unreasonable in his expectations, his album sticker (also functioned as the receipt) was starred with a pen as a reminder to give no future latitude if he came back complaining. This was uncommon, and the customer had to be pretty awful; 99% of our customers were great. My boss enjoyed repeating the story of how he bellowed to an annoyed one-percenter wondering what his "star" was for: "You earned it, sir!"

There was the choice of paying mall prices of $8.98/ single album elsewhere, or $6.50 at Record Ex for sealed albums, or usually $5.00 for a used mint copy (cosmetically perfect, no audible wear); $4.50 VG+ (cosmetically imperfect, no audible wear); $4.00 VG (slight audible wear); $3.50 no grade (significant audible wear, but plays through). This was in 1984 dollars, by the way. The grades were visual only. We cleaned used vinyl with a high-quality paper towel dampened with tap water we kept in a tea kettle. Damp enough to clean the dust; not so damp as to leave streaks or water marks. (I sampled the Diskwasher fluid we sold in little red bottles, and it was stagnant water. It may, in fairness, have been distilled, albeit with 10 or 20x markup.) Only VG+ and mint albums, or returns in good condition, were played in store. We advised customers with high-quality needles to only play new or used albums graded mint or VG+. Roughly double these numbers to account for inflation. A common single LP wholesale price was about $5.55, and almost all new albums we sold we priced at $5.99 or $6.50 ($8.98 suggested retail), and certain close-outs were priced as low as $2.25 wholesale, $4.99 sealed. Stickers for new albums were preprinted; used prices and conditions were hand printed in blue ink on the sticker, and repeated on the inside label on the vinyl in pencil. Manager Kelly had by far the neatest, stylized, almost elegant lettering, at odds with his twisted, caustic wit. We also sold a lot of similarly-priced "cut-outs," i.e., the LP cover had a slice or punch through it, so it could not be returned at full price, though the vinyl was new. These were pressing plant overruns or close-outs. Record Ex did not sell vinyl 45s, which sold elsewhere for about $1.49 retail. 45s were usually kids’ stuff, or jukebox owners.’ We made almost all of our money on used vinyl LPs and cassettes; we sold new LPs and cassettes to get people into the store, and barely broke even on them; we carried but did not emphasize new. We sold cassingles from the late 1980s through 1990 and 1991 (about $3.00), and 12" singles (extended editions), usually for $3.50-4.00.

We also rarely, if ever, advertised, at least not in print, once the store was well-established. If "Record Exchange" appeared in a newspaper or magazine ad by the mid-1980s, a record company was paying for the ad. The annual Coventry Street Fairs reportedly brought increased foot traffic, but brought no more music buyers into the store than would have been there on any other weekend.

Record Ex was mostly a cash business when I started. We also accepted personal checks. Around 1985 we started accepting Visa and Mastercard. It was a big deal at first; most people didn’t have credit cards, and debit cards were unheard of until the 2000s. I myself didn’t obtain a credit card until 1990. The whole credit card number and expiration used to appear on the receipt (there were no CVV values on the reverse). We used to accept checks if the person wrote their social on the check, which was soon outlawed. This wasn’t just at Record Ex; it was done this way everywhere. People who bounced checks received a call from our management. If they ignored the call or no one answered, their name appeared on a large magic-markered dishonored check list above the counter. Record Ex was not the only store to do this, but only small stores did do this, not the Sears and J.C. Penneys of the world. Occasionally his or her presence on the list would get back to the person who wrote the dishonored check and, mortified, they would return to the store and pay up (in cash). Banks would not charge bounced check fees for another 10 years or so. Having a posted list of people who bounce checks seems cruel, but it was perfectly legal. There is no excuse for paying for music with a bad check or, worse, a check on a closed account; music is a luxury item.

Unauthorized concert recordings, known as "bootlegs," were always sold as unsealed used, and were denoted on the sticker with the euphemism "Rare." Likewise highly collectible used catalog albums were denoted "Rare" when we took them in. As a trading store with a lot of volume, we did not take in many collectibles; there were stores that dealt in them and probably offered better trade values than us. (The by now long-gone Capitol City Records in Columbus comes to mind.) "Out of Print" albums were likewise denoted. Several customers often asked me about were "Blowin’ Your Mind" by Van Morrison, "Spill the Wine" by Eric Burdon and War, and "Maggot Brain" by Funkadelic. Two others were the soundtrack for "Valley Girl" (highly coveted and rare even then) and Johnnie Taylor’s "Eargasm." Morrison’s "Brown Eyed Girl" (on "Blowin’ Your Mind") was already a standard, in spite of being out of print, which made people interested in the album it came from. “Brown Eyed Girl” showed up on many compilations then in print. The other two songs were played all over radio, and BLF ("BLF Bash" or Bill Freeman) played a scratched vinyl version of "Maggot Brain" every Sunday around 1:30 a.m. on WMMS, through at least most of the 1980s. Probably BLF recorded "Maggot Brain" onto a cart ("carted it off") and played the cart over the air once he realized that the WMMS music library vinyl LP copy was irreplaceable though becoming increasingly scratched. (A "cart" was a plastic cartridge, similar to an eight-track tape, that contained a short tape loop used in radio, which does not require rewinding. They were a step or two down in sound quality from vinyl in good condition.) R&B, soul and rap music, other than established classics still receiving airplay, tended to be forgotten quickly and deleted off the labels’ catalogs more quickly than other forms of music, and much of the out-of-print music in these areas was obscure.

Our best employee benefit (the only benefit, actually) was being allowed to borrow up to five used albums/cassettes from the store at any given time. The savings to a music buff would be significant, as it was easy to spend a small fortune on music. Each employee had a tiny ledger, which was known as our "card." If you liked what you borrowed, you taped it. We also could pay off what we took home, gradually or all at once. I wasn’t aware of the limit, at first, and borrowed a sixth album once. The price of all the albums I was borrowing right then was $1.00 each. Certainly I was not abusing the privilege. But I was taken aside. I pointed out that a co-worker, a college student, had borrowed five Grateful Dead boots (too stoned and lazy to tape them, I suppose), mint and priced at $20.00 each–a lot of money for a kid then–and perhaps the limit should be monetary. Dead boots, Stones boots, Dylan boots, all flew off the shelves and were marked up significantly. Of course they were. No one was paying the artists, the publisher, the songwriters or the labels. (This Dead or even Dylan vinyl–if anywhere to be found and still mint–would be worth a fortune today.) My co-worker was taking advantage, and kept these hot sellers out a long time. The manager that evening saw my point and changed the limit. Or my co-worker had to bring some back. There was one other benefit: we (part-timers) were paid weekly and a manager would cash our checks for us out of the drawer. It was usually only something like $50.00-60.00/week per employee.

We had catalog depth like no other shop I ever saw. (The only other store coming close to the selection our customers were accustomed to was mega-chain Tower Records, and this was a decade or more later. Tower had ten times our square footage.) For example, Yes, a well-established classic rock band, had a "comeback" LP come out in 1983, which sold very respectably. If Yes had released 13 LPs as of 1983, for example, we would typically have at least 10 or 11 of those in stock, new or used, or both. Why not all thirteen? First, because of natural oversight, and some LPs (even old ones) unexpectedly get hot for a couple weeks and sell out, and it could take a couple weeks to get another in. Probably no one else in town carried all 13 LPs, either. Second, many a time we did have all thirteen.

If the store phone rang, it was ignored if there was a customer at the counter, especially if he or she was paying. If the store was full, the phone was left off the hook altogether. This made excellent business sense, yet even today few retailers understand this. If you have to distill any service business to one important objective, it is a customer is handing you money. How can a ringing phone be more important than that? My bosses explained this to paying customers many times, in nicer terms. Think about this for a second, especially if you have worked in retail music: the person on the other end of ringing phone at a record store is not dying of a heart attack. Yet cashiers often jump to the ring of the phone as if it is and make you wait before taking your money. (I mentioned before how everything in the store was handled on the cheap. When a manager wanted one of the other managers to call back from elsewhere, they would call that number, allow it to ring twice, and hang up to save the $0.07 for the outgoing call. The person who received the mysterious rings knew to immediately phone the store. I swear this is true.)

My bosses, weary of continually escalating rent, tried for years to buy this building, one of them told me. The building owner, Mrs. Tyler, enjoying her gush of rental income, refused. It appears that she and her husband owned a grocery/deli on the spot that is now Grum’s (1776 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, OH 44106). clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/448

When I started, Record Ex had just opened their second store in Maple Heights (RX2). RX2 shoppers, being part of the surrounding demographic, apparently had a huge appetite for classic hard rock, metal, and R & B, based on what we sent over there at the request of their customers. Eventually the owners grew to about 24 corporate-owned stores, plus they sold franchises to others. In the late 1990s, in a business breakup that required both owners to stop using the name "Record Exchange," one took the name CD/Game Exchange, the other "The Exchange." I understand CD/Game Exchange stores, which are pocketed in the Pacific Northwest, for example, to be owned by these franchisees. "The Exchange" stores appear to be concentrated in northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

The legacy of the Coventry Record Exchange seems to be "The Exchange" store located at the corner of Coventry and Lancashire in the ornate, white terra cotta Betty Burke Building. The Exchange took over the Coventry Record Exchange phone number 216-321-1887, though ownership info is not public. Used CDs and vinyl albums with Record Exchange stickers may still be found in other regions of the U.S., notably the southeast. This is attributable to the "brain drain" that has afflicted greater Cleveland for decades, influencing educated young Clevelanders to make their futures elsewhere (especially during recessions that seem to last twice as long in Cleveland as they do in warmer and less expensive areas of the country, sorry to say).

But back to the early 1990s. There were three Record Exchange stores on Coventry Road in 1990 and 1991, all at once: The main store at 1780, the Jazz/Classical Annex, and the Album Store. This was amidst the early 1990s recession.

The Record Exchange Album Store was across Coventry from RX1 (southeast corner of Coventry and Mayfield Roads). Link to the store from early 1991: photos.clevescene.com/amazing-vintage-photos-of-life-in-c… (The City’s date estimate of 1985 is off by about six years.) The cool job of a lifetime. I personally ran the Album Store for about six months in 1990-1991. As the name suggests, they moved all of their vinyl there, out of other stores (not jazz or classical); by then there were probably six or seven stores outside of Coventry. The store was well-stocked with any vinyl you could want, yet the space was roomy, airy, let a lot of light in and you could even watch the sun set over the cemetery, which was cater corner. I kept the place clean and organized, played whatever I could find in the store, and nodded my head up and down when the occasional music-obsessed and slightly demented customer would talk my ear off. That, and I had to keep my weekly hours under 40. Store had no bathroom or basement access and was suffused with a curry smell from the Indian place then next door (Taj Mahal, now Pacific East). It was an organized storage area of truckloads of vinyl that ownership decided to try to very gradually sell rather than warehouse. The world had fallen in love with CDs and vinyl was the forgotten, fading older sister (or at least it was in 1990). Store lost money or barely broke even. We pulled in a little more than it cost to pay me to run it, plus electricity (no water/sewer, though heat was included). I played the radio news talking about the U.S. Army overrunning Baghdad and quickly routing Iraqi troops in January 1991, and my manager Kelly stopped by from the main store across the street. The atmosphere was so casual that Kelly ordered me to turn the news off and play music. In fact, that was the only criticism I ever received from management–I gave them no reason to–and management here was on top of everything. Someone from the main store would swing by to "relieve" me while I grabbed a meal/restroom break; both were only available across the street, unless you wanted Indian at Taj Mahal. I was not going to go to Revolution Books next door to ask one of the political zealots there to use theirs. Pacific East restaurant recently expanded to take over the space.

The Record Exchange Jazz/Classical Annex was south of the main store on Coventry at Euclid Heights Blvd, same side of the street. Link to the storefront: photos.clevescene.com/amazing-vintage-photos-of-life-in-c… It was a few doors north of where the Inn on Coventry stands to this day. The Annex was never overly busy, but it was well-run, and one of the best outlets for jazz and classical music I’ve ever seen, though it was full of the acrid smell of roasting coffee beans. (Arabica rented nearby square footage for this purpose–must have been not much bigger than a closet in the basement–though I could never figure out exactly where because the storefront was 100′ away.) There was no mail order music market to speak of at the time (except perhaps for collectibles or imports through Goldmine Magazine), and downloading would not become an issue for another eight to 10 years. I was not buddy-buddy with my jazz and classical manager, but we usually got along well enough. But because our jazz and classical customers were well-educated and nicer to deal with there than the attitude-laden rap- and hip-hop rats who were by now dominating RX1, I specifically asked to be scheduled at the Annex. Very young people buy enough music to sustain a brick and mortar store (or they did at the time), aging hipsters never have. Plus jazz/classical customers couldn’t simply swing by on their skateboards. They usually came from University Circle, Shaker Square, the upscale parts of Cleveland and Shaker Heights or Beachwood/Orange/Pepper Pike/Chargin Valley and needed places to park their cars, of which there was a shortage, and no spaces were usually convenient. Basically, the parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents of the east sider kids who looked like they belonged in a John Hughes film. You had to cross Coventry and walk at least a couple of blocks and risk being ticketed. Throughout a warm, sunny day in November 1991, the surrounding building burned (electrical with no suspicious circumstances) and the owners did not rebuild, but they did expand elsewhere, which says everything: a noble failed experiment. This was a shame as, given the size of the inventory, no doubt a significant amount of collectible music was destroyed with it. A link to a shot of this fire is here: www.flickr.com/photos/chfd/558584818/in/photostream/

Nostalgia tidbit: Music is a dirty business. Did you ever wonder how that song from about ’85 "We Built This City" (Starship) became a number one hit, yet somehow everyone hated it, and still hates it?

One day, in the main store on Coventry (RX1) I notice stacks and stacks of boxed 45s (about four Bankers Boxes high) behind the counter. It was against a store commandment to keep anything on the floor behind the counter, because the space was cramped. We didn’t even carry 45s. I mention this to one of my bosses. He explains that he is being paid to hold many, many copies of "We Built This City" and soon ship them back as unsold. Music was sold on consignment. He was paid something $175 or $200, so I was surprised it was worth the trouble. (Why bother physically shipping them? Why not just acknowledge "receipt," and then "return" them on paper?) He was tickled at being paid not to sell them. The music buying economy was great, so no problem there. Returns were not accounted for then for purposes of chart position, so it was surprisingly simple to “game” the charts. Additionally, though sales was a factor in Billboard singles chart position, so was airplay. Once airplay was assured by "sales," presumably to independent shops like ours, the song started to sell–probably to 10 and 11 year olds who shopped for music at chain stores at malls. Sure enough, the 45s went back from where they came, two weeks later. I can’t leave this out, though: my two bosses were both scrupulous financially and "straight arrow" towards their customers.

Footnote. Payola: one piece of crap on the Billboard charts displaces another. Though payola is a "white collar crime," or used to be, personally I could care less and see no moral implications (this is a libertarian view). It is impossible to prevent promoters from rewarding broadcasters in any number of indirect and creative ways. Radio stations are commercial enterprises, not some arm of government, unlike county auditors who are sworn to protect us and inspect grocery scales and gas pumps for accuracy. The public isn’t cheated, radio listening is not mandatory, and music is not played on the radio based on “merit," anyway, whatever that is. If someone wants to pay a station to play their music, which is a form of advertising of that music, there should be no reason why they cannot. Payola can only do so much, though, because unlistenable music has no market; if it is played over the air, listeners tune out ads, too.

Nostalgia tidbit II: in the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of rap music, and some rock music, had "dirty" (profanity or sexually explicit) and "clean" album or cassette tape versions (safe for radio and for kids of involved parents). "Dirty" outsold "clean" 19-to-1. If you were out of "dirty" but had "clean" and the kid wanted "dirty," that kid waited until the next shipment of "dirty" was due in before coming back. We were also not allowed to sell LPs of comedian Rudy Ray Moore (or others like him) to minors. The giveaway was the album covers full of seminude 1970s people. This was no problem as no one under 40 had heard of Rudy (or wanted to look at the covers). (Great article about Rudy Ray Moore links here:
www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/g66l-2019/10/5287fb500…)

Our used music competition was Record Revolution (Record Rev) up Coventry Road. They had a much hipper, edgier reputation than we did: the ambience was goth/punk/club rat/head shop. The act of going in there–like being invited to enter an exclusive and hip club, or the black-painted basement apartment of a musician/artist older brother of a friend, who also liked to party, and with a suggestion of lawlessness–was by itself an experience. Experience is a huge asset in retail. Record Rev was far ahead of us in style points, and in in-store visits by hugely popular musicians, but they were almost never crowded and we often were; they had more customer window shopping and aloof staff and we had lower prices, better attitudes and more sales. Record Rev’s original owner, to be fair, had died in an accident while still a relatively young guy, and our owners were still around to be hands on. Used music selection there wasn’t as good as Record Ex, and they neglected to cull out non-selling used albums as often as they should have, but occasionally you could pick up a gem cheaply. I’m sure they thought of us as a "sausage factory." They also sold new music but their selection was not as good as Record Ex. They did sell many offbeat imports, presumably music being played in clubs downtown and on college stations, such as WRUW (Case), WUJC (JCU) or WCSB (CSU). In that regard, they were way ahead of us; though we ordered and also sold imports, we were far more commercial, if stuck in the 1980s version of classic/AOR (album-oriented rock radio) mode. Record Rev also briefly advertised on cable television. The used department in the Record Rev basement seemed to be fed by radio station libraries and many promo album copies from record companies (almost always in mint condition if you were the first owner), along with the occasional music collection culling. Record Rev receives its own separate photo and commentary in this collection because of its notable, unusual, and tragic history.

Wax Stacks on Lee Road near Meadowbrook, also in Cleveland Heights (long since closed), was a low-key and successful copycat to Record Ex, with even less emphasis than us on new vinyl (if they sold any at all). I have to admit they also got it right. It was a very good store, but I would not have wanted to work there as management was not especially personable.

For perhaps a year or two (1982-83) Coventry Road RX1 had additional competition in Rena Rent-A-Record, located in the basement of Coventryard Mall, which was a horrible location with no foot traffic, especially for a new business concept. Rena, from Canada, was sued out of existence by the RIAA because of copyright violation inherent in its business model.

Chris’ Warped Records on the near west side also had a great reputation. I only went there once but I was impressed.

Nearest new-only music competition was Record Theatre at Severance Mall (enclosed portion closed decades ago). There was also, if I recall correctly, a Record Den at Severance in the 1980s and early 1990s. By 1990, Record Den, too, had made the switch to "CD only." I knew the manager at Record Den, Marguerite. Not very well, just enough to say "hi." One morning in 1990, I will never forget, I had a day off my office job and went to Severance. I walked into Record Den and Marguerite, the only one there, was not her usual outgoing self. I asked her if everything was okay. She wasn’t: Stevie Ray Vaughn had just died in a helicopter crash. If you bought music in any volume, you went to Record Ex, or a store that sold used. Mall stores were for very casual buyers, 12-year-olds and their parents, or someone buying new music as a last-minute gift, and didn’t want to deal with trying to park at Coventry. I assume that mall stores never sold secondhand albums and cassettes because their leases prohibited it; there is no other reason why a huge mall chain could not have competed with us.

Another new music competitor, Camelot Music, ordered their employees chainwide to wear dress shirts and ties in the early 1990s to appeal to the "upscale masses” (i.e.,professional young adults and middle aged people with good incomes, who spend a sizable portion of that income on recorded music, which is to say a herd of "rainbow unicorns”). I mentioned before that this demographic buys comparatively little music, so this didn’t work, of course. Their true demo was 13-year old gangsta’-ed up Italian kids in Mayfield Heights buying NWA cassettes. Camelot really needed knowledgeable music geeks with piercings in their faces and blue hair in an edgy atmosphere: the musical equivalent of Spencer’s Gifts (that was never me; my type of “edgy” was vintage clothes). Camelot was a several-hundred-store chain (all CDs and cassettes by this time—no vinyl), though no one else I could find has written about their experience. I left Record Ex in early 1991 for another job with health insurance, got canned from there (I was an idiot to leave for that job, and a bigger idiot to get myself canned), and was too prideful to ask Record Ex for my old job back (also idiotic). I wound up at Camelot in Richmond Mall for several months in mid-1991 before starting grad school. There was no "pride of ownership" among the employees there and only one or two of my co-workers (and I) knew more than squat about music.

Camelot used to drill us with videos of loss prevention, employee theft, etc. Camelot upper management was obsessed with shrinkage, but guess who used to force us (another male employee or me) to escort the girl manager to drop the night deposit off the clock? It was a 20 minute waiting around plus walk, and a risky (unarmed) errand. If it was a "safe" errand, of course, no escort would be needed. Though we had a safe, they were too cheap to use an (armed) Brinks driver, and didn’t have the sense to have us make the deposit during daylight. It would have been very easy to hide in a restroom, wait for the mall to close, and stick us up. As with Record Exchange (Camelot at Richmond Mall was nearly due east) the area to the north was in decline. With no weapon, and no witnesses in the empty mall (no portable cell phones yet in 1991), we were defenseless. I was not going to play "hero" to save the night deposit, and I’m not sure about whether the “off the clock” part, or the fact that we were defenseless, irritated me more. As it turned out, Camelot probably had life insurance taken out on me and many others for their benefit and neither we nor our families had any idea. All Camelot needed to do was buy the manager a cheap purse or briefcase–not the obvious rubber zippered satchel with the bank’s name on it–that wouldn’t stand out and have her or one of us discreetly handle the deposit with mall open an hour before closing. If the store was robbed between 8:00 and 9:00 pm, then they only lose an hour’s worth of cash receipts, perhaps $300.00 at most on a busy weeknight. Who shortly thereafter bit the dust and was then sued by Uncle Sam for secretly taking out life insurance policies on their minimum wage employees for years as a sham expense to hide taxable gains? You got it: The same company so obsessed with honest dealing. They lost big and must have stroked a check to match. In the spirit of fairness, though, ex-Camelot employees on a dedicated Facebook page (and elsewhere) almost all talk about their time with great fondness. My discontent, which was very short-term, was atypical. There was a sale of the business in the mid-1990s (followed by a Chapter 11 bankruptcy), and this changed the viewpoint of many of them.

My time at Record Ex was a formative experience. As the old Record Exchange alumni Facebook page says: "We were yelled at. A lot." I got it more than a few times, deservedly. I was yelled at once, for example, for confusing Joni Mitchell with Ricki Lee Jones (a blatant imitator), and bringing the wrong album up from downstairs. (I love Joni Mitchell but I still occasionally confuse the two.) One of the best pieces of advice my boss gave me was: "You only have to concentrate for two seconds. You just need to choose those two seconds." We were specifically told that we would be yelled at when we started, and not to take it personally, the idea being to motivate and improve. When boss yelled, it was angry, cutting, and fearsome. It was, to say the least, motivating. Then, two minutes later, he was over it. They let up a little once they could see it had an effect. Yelling may have become more commonplace once the fortunes of the business declined with the advent of digital downloading in the late 1990s and 2000s.

While still in college, I had higher educational aspirations. I took aside one of the Record Ex owners and told him that I would like to manage a store after college graduation and put myself through grad school. He told me that I was "innately intelligent," and suggested that managing a store was not for me, as it would not move me forward in life. For one thing, unlike many other employees, and some managers, I didn’t do drugs. And, unlike still others, I had enough sense to know that they were foolish to partake in front of either owner. He acted as if he would still consider me, but this was a gracious rejection. Years later, though, I grasped that he was looking out for me in his own way; what he said was flattering but he was also trying to tell me that there was no true upward mobility (in the sense that he had it) unless you own your own business, and a very long time passed before I fully appreciated that. Also, store management in that chain seems to have been all-consuming, with poor per-hour pay, and no long-term opportunity. There was no time left over for education or self-improvement. Boss achieved "upward mobility" with each new successful store. I didn’t work anywhere through grad school, anyway, except during summer breaks.

Every 15 years music retailers have a new generation of customers. The largest bloc of music buyers (or at least music consumers, measured by hours spent listening), is concentrated in young people between ages 10 and 25. Older buyers are a significant market, but nowhere near the force driving multi-platinum sales in the 1970s and early to mid-80s, which was all high school and college aged-kids. There is a secondary demand from music buyers switching media from cassettes and vinyl to CDs, from CDs to downloads, or sometimes, streaming music (and now back to vinyl). The switch of media from vinyl and cassettes to CDs of the late 1980s, was profitable and offset the contraction of sales of new music occurring as baby boomers aged out of prime demographic. (Personally I enjoyed vinyl, and throughout the late 80s, vinyl became increasingly affordable to own, especially used. I did not switch to CDs until mid-1990. I have a small quantity of vinyl now, mostly of obscure and inexpensive music that was deleted off record company catalogs before CDs ever existed. Records do sound warmer than CDs but the sound produced is not as true to life as CDs, CDs are portable and, even if you handle vinyl professionally, vinyl is far more delicate).

Longtime area resident and late comic book publisher Harvey Pekar, now revered, was a serious jazz fan, frequent customer of ours and was, shall we say, notoriously "frugal." Former employee Kenny Dixon, writing for his Cleveland Live Music YouTube channel, remembers Harvey this way: " I first met Harvey when I worked at Record Exchange on Coventry Road in the 1970’s. He would come in daily and flip through the dollar bin and bitch there was nothing new even though I would be filing new titles as he spoke. He often got thrown out of the store. My most intense Harvey day was sitting next to him for a 6 hour long Woody Guthrie series of lectures the Rock Hall organized." (Author’s note: it took a lot to get thrown out of the store.) I read recently that the shelves holding Harvey’s jazz LP collection, which he kept in a huge and cheap but old and solidly-built apartment, sagged the floor! (RX1 had jazz albums until the jazz and classical sections were expanded and given their own annex in 1989, mentioned above. It would not surprise me at all if Harvey owned more jazz albums than we did at RX1 in the mid-1980s, which took up about half the island of record bins in the center of the store, upper and lower.) I was familiar with his appearances on "Letterman" in the second half of the 1980s and don’t remember Harvey, and if I had any contact with him at all, it was very low-key; he minded his own business. Harvey was an eccentric guy (even relatively eccentric for Coventry, and that is saying something).

But to my point: Harvey gave a video interview about the history of Coventry Road, in the last several years of his life. About the owners of The Record Exchange, he said: "Everything they touched turned to gold." It may have seemed that way because they eventually opened about two dozen stores, but they worked very long hours, and they had a significant payroll. Plus, they and everyone else selling retail music experienced a major collapse (an investment banker might call it a "correction") around 2000. I am pleased to notice that they recovered.

A customer asked why we did not have a worn out dollar bill hanging up behind the counter–the first dollar earned–as are common in small retail business. My boss’ reply? "We spent it!" Another customer thanked him as he was leaving. Boss (loudly): "Thank YOU. If it wasn’t for you, there would be no us!"

In 2010, a spa business took over CD/Game Exchange at 1780, which went bust. Until recently it was a womens’ clothing store, "Winds of Change." That, too, closed. 1780 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44106. At last check it was an Asian restaurant.

The previous signage, photographed in the early 1980s, may be viewed here: images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/cl… And as of 2012, follow this link: www.yelp.com/biz_photos/oi7md_T5_zlZthrGCiUTYA?select=IGM...

Posted by Disappearing Atlanta on 2008-11-09 04:19:05

Tagged: , CD/Game Exchange , Record Exchange , Cleveland Heights , Cleveland Hts. , Coventry Village , Coventry Road , music store , record store , Ohio , Cleveland, Ohio , vinyl , Record Store Day , storefront , Camelot Music , sticker , used , Grum’s , Tyler , Tyler’s , Delicatessen , ABC , Appliance , CDs , Starship , We Built This City , payola , The Exchange , coventry , cassettes , history , LP