62 new of 64 responses total.
The owner (I talked to him when I pelted down there at lunch) has been going through a bankruptcy and -- while I don't know the details -- has apparently been screwed by some less than scrupulous creditors/law-types. As well, he explained that they'd taken a big hit after Borders moved in across the street, a good 25% of business, and that if he'd realized it before, he might have stemmed the red ink, but he didn't, and if he'd had more cash or something, again, the tide might have turned, but it's too late now. I They will be closing next Friday. There's a letter up at each cash register explaining this. I am really bummed. He says that it would be best if people came in and bought their stuff now, because it will just all be liquidated by the bank. I have no idea how the bank will dispose of it, but it doesn't seem like it's a good day for Ann Arbor.
EEEEK! I almost never shop at Schoolkids anymore, because I almost never buy new CDs anymore, but this sounds like quite a blow to the non-chain-store music business in A2.
I'm sad, but not surprised. I'd been picking up vibrations of retail distress ever since Borders opened just across the street. The diversity of the stock had been slipping badly in the past couple of years. In my particular obsession, British Isles folk-ish music, Schoolkids just wasn't bringing in the import discs that I wanted. Ten years ago they were pretty reliable about it; even three years ago they got a lot in. As a consequence, I know that my own spending at Schoolkids slipped drastically in the last two years.
Even though I have the "It's always on sale at Borders card"
(Employee discount); I still cruise thru Schoolkids, as they have a
larger than usual Comedy section. Their folk music selection is good
to great, thanks to their working well with Ark artists. Before Borders,
I could easily do a $100 trip to Schoolkids each month. They seemed to
do quite well still when what's it music store was across the street
(over what is now Kinko's) and when Tower opened up with their large
square footage.
I will be sorry to see them go.
And that's a large chunk of retail space on Liberty street
that could be empty for a while.
I have to admit..., an Ann Arbor landmark leaving us. But I feel that Borders has had a much better selection lately than school kids. Although I usually spent most of my time in the Annex. The kind of music I listen to is sometimes hard to find, but Borders has been really stocking up on a wide variety of hard to finds. I wonder you is going to take over the spot>?
Bergman was not a good businessman. Case closed. As a local musician who knows others who signed with his "label", it was a joke. He didn't know what he was doing and the artists couldn't wait to get out of their contracts.
..
Re 6 and 7:
Jim Leonard, owner of SKR classical, is considering expanding the store
into at least part of the space formerly occupied by Schoolkids. I'm really
sad to see Schoolkids go, as they carried all of the non-classical music that
I listened to. Borders does too, but Schoolkids always had more albums of
the artists that I liked. Unfortunately, I didn't shop there frequently, as
I don't buy new CD's very often...
((Music #149 now linked as Summer Agora #151, thanks Katie!))
Did anybody notice the front page of today's _Ann Arbor News_ with the story on the demise of Schoolkids'?
People always decry the passing of these local bookstores/music stores, but in a good many of these cases, the problem is that the local person is just not a good businessperson. krj noted above that lately they had stopped stocking the CDs he would buy. If a merchant doesn't have the stock, how can people buy it? Another example of a "local" that just closed up is Main Street News. It seemed to me they were in the same boat as Schoolkids. Several times recently I saw a magazine in Borders that I wanted. Feeling like I'd rather support the local merchant, I would trek over to Main Street News only to find that they didn't have it on the shelves. What I wanted was not really exotic, either. One time it was Cook's Illustrated, another time it was San Francisco Magazine. Another time, I sent them an email before going in to ask them about a particular title. I never received a reply. My feeling is that the proprietor just wasn't on top of things.
It seems like the locusts have already made a good run at Schoolkids. I scribbled down a list of about ten discs to look for, all items I'd seen there two weeks ago, and all but one were gone on Saturday afternoon. I picked up four discs, might go back later to pick through the remains of the jazz section. What's left is 25 percent off. The Annex is closed. The stock from the Annex is being brought back into the main store.
I always tried to shop Schoolkids, but it was very iffy towards the last six months or so. I am still bummed.
Oh yeah. I was a locust. I admit it. :-(
danr in resp:13 : I don't know how much it would be being a "bad businessman." I think it was a classic cash flow crunch: once the well-capitalized new stores, in this case Tower and more importantly Borders, open up and siphon off business, the local independent has less and less money to use in reordering stock. I saw the same pattern with Jocundry's Books in East Lansing, after the Barnes & Noble opened nearby; the cycle just played out slower here in Ann Arbor. Schoolkids established its reputation in an era when it was a "destination store," clearly the best record store between Toronto and Chicago. But as Tower and Borders pushed into the Ann Arbor CD market, Schoolkids' margin of superiority over all other area shops vanished.
I used to go to Schoolkids occasionally, but I'd generally found it to be somewhat poorly organized, and it was never as easy to find what I was looking for as in Borders or Tower. The few times I did go there and buy stuff was when I had looked for it in Borders, found that Borders was out of stock, and had been told by the Borders salespeople to try Schoolkids.
I just got back from my trip to Schoolkids. Glad I had a chance
to talk to Steve Bergman. He said he recognized the face that was in
the store and bought lots in their 22 years there. The large type
letter on the door says it well. Said he was working over the past
months to get a buy-out, but that it fell thru by last Friday.
I wonder if having Schoolkids in Ann Arbor is why Ann Arbor does
not have a Harmonney House?
Did Schoolkids displace someone else in the local market when
they opened in 1976?
I came back with:
Greatest Hits - Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band
Mulling it Over - Martin Mull (a greatest hits package)
The KingBees (a SchoolKids Records CD issue of their LPs)
Wally World - Wally Pleasant
Tiptoe Through the Tulips/Resurrection - Tiny Tim (an import
CD]
Kay Starr Collectors Series (a very complete Capitol records
collection, put out in 1991, when CDs had finally
become established in the market
The 1950s, Volume 1 - hits from the era, the CD looks like
a good collection of tunes I may have scattered
elsewhere, and maybe only on LP.
As you can probably figure out from my reactions and Twila's, folk music will be one of the fields where Schoolkids' loss will be felt most sharply. Schoolkids was an avid supporter of the city's folk venue, The Ark: they promoted many concerts in the store with posters and special displays of CDs, they handled advance ticket sales, and they sponsored free concerts. Even in the period of decline, they were generally the best folk music source in town. Borders hasn't really tried too hard -- it'll be interesting to see if they pick up the baton and try to run with it. And Tower is hopeless: I have shopped at maybe six different Tower stores around the country, over 15 years, and the chain simply doesn't seem to understand folk music. But for Twila and I, it looks like there is going to be a lot more mail order in our future.
Tower is overpriced. They have adequate selection and that's about it. You need to leave the country to really get good music at good prices anyway.
It depends on the genre. Tower has more selection for industrial,
reggae, ska/dub (not the American Third Wave stuff, either) and some local
indie bands (some of whom were on SKR's label).
Well, there are a good five or ten artists that I can never find any place but Schoolkids, or at least anything beyond a one-album token sop to the folkies who *might* shop at Towers or Borders. So I think I will have a lot more mail order in my future. Sob.
Talk to the folks at your second-favourite store and ask them to expand
their selection.
I have. In the past. It's hard. Very hard.
Picked up Dancehall Sweethearts by Horslips today. Wanted more, but was being a little reckless with that as it was. But oh, my, she says. Even in the current denuded state, S'kids has things other record stores never did.
Well, I stopped by to pick over the carrion and found a couple of things I'd been meaning to get and a few others I'd been thinking of trying, most notably Muszikas' "Blues For Transylvania", Hedningarna's "Kaksi", and Massive Attack's "Protection".
Kaksi is GOOOOOOOD. I have a copy, and almost, almost, decided to buy another, so I could have one at home and one at work, but decided that this would be folly.
I found out, suddenly, this weekend, that Schoolkids' Records was closing when I stopped in to look around for something. I was stunned. I've shopped there for over ten years. I milled around for a while, but it felt funny, like getting a stuffed dog for your birthday, instead of a real one, like you wanted. So, I went home and tried to remember what it was that made going there special, before soaped windows would wash it away for good. Although I never did get a dog when I was a kid, like I wanted, I did get to go on a class trip to somebody's farm. I guess going to Schoolkids' was a lot like the class trip to a petting zoo. Schoolkids' had a good selection of earthy ethnic music, American and foreign, and you could reach out and touch it. It was always a pleasure hearing about various albums from the salespeople, hearing them in the store, and sometimes, even hearing them *perform* in the store. In fact, I visited Schoolkids' the day I saw my first concert at the Michigan Theater, back in 1991, to catch a glimpse of my favorite British folk rocker, Billy Bragg. I remember Billy, all set with his scones and tea, equally as ready to belt out verses of "The Internationale" as "Greetings to the New Brunette", posing for pictures and giving people hugs. I recall stumbling across Bill Miller, a Native American folk musician, there, while shopping for something else. I was so enthralled with the performance, I stopped what I was doing and just listened. It was a place where, after visiting the library and picking up a copy of the music of the legendary 1930s Egyptian composer Mohamed Abdel Wahab as performed by Simon Shaheen, a virtuoso violinist and oud player, you could, as I did, see Shaheen perform there, the following week. Schoolkids' was a place where the music was alive, and you couldn't help but enjoy it. Now, I'm afraid all we've got left is stuffed animals with cute names, free with the purchase of a combo meal at the local fast food joint. _________________________________________________________________________ Mark, who's been retailing music for five years, listening to it and even making a little of it for nearly two decades, and generally enjoying it all his life, will be holding a memorial service this weekend for his favorite local music store with his stuffed animal collection.
News from tonight's visit to Schoolkids:
Schoolkids now expects to be open one extra week.
(This had been mentioned as a possibility in the posted note
which announced the store's closing.)
A party is planned for 9-midnight this Friday, featuring
live music from Mr. B.
When I was in Ann Arbor I visited Schoolkids in order to buy some alleged 'famous cheap' cd's. That point was a disappointment: cd's in the US aren't that cheap anymore compared to the Netherlands. I had been told that Tower was a sound alternative, but with tempratures rising up to 96 I walked right past it, sweating and sweating. Around the corner at the end of Liberty (some 100 ft from the cinema across the street) I finally found a small shop that has a fair good collection in alternative music, since Schoolkids didn't have the titles I desired. The shop doesn't look all that savoury, the people serving certainly live up to their status of being alternative and seperate from the rest of the world (i.o.w.: rude and obnoxious), but I bought Reload by Metallica and Mezzanine by Massive Attack. When Schoolkids dies, you might check that shop out. Don't ask me for its name however.
That would be Discount Records, I think. It tends to have "the hits" only, but at decent prices. The staff varies in personality.
Actually, I go in there quite a bit, if I want something "popular". Their prices are good, and *grin* they never seem rude to me, even if I am a middle-aged Mom type that must give their pierced little brains a twinge of misery by reminding them of the middle-class respectable (why is it I can't spell French words. Arrgh.) bourgeous folk that many of them must be rebelling against. I have always been happy with the service at Discount Records and with what I've found there.
Oh, and I never knew that S'kids carried 'Fameous cheap' recordings. As far as I'm aware, Clees, it was good for getting in things that were obscure and unlikely to be found at a mall-type record store, and for charging obscene prices for same. (Not that I minded, too much, since it's better to pay $18 for a British recording at S'kids than $18 at a mall shop for something I could find at Best Buy for $12...) If it was something that Borders might carry, I'd usually wait to see if it turned up there (like anything remotely popular), but if it was at all unlikely, S'kids would have it. (E.g., where am I going to find a source of James Keelaghan recordings now? Or Garnet Rogers? Or, Horslips? Or Old Blind Dogs? Or Great Big Sea? Or any of a thousand wonderful bands/performers who aren't signed to a label that can distribute them in the States?)
(you convince me to send them to you if ever I can...but I charge obscene amounts f comission ;)
re 34: Try the selection at Borders.com. Our on-line ordering has been open for awhile, but expect a Grand Opening next week, when you all will probably hear more about it. Instead of one copy of Keelaghan at 225 stores, five copies sitting in the on-line order fullfillment center provides service without overstocking stores. Actually, I would hope a name like Keelaghan would be in the Borders folk racks.
Borders.com shows:
2 James Keelaghan discs -- I don't know his catalog to know how good that
is. "A Recent Future" and "My Skies."
0 solo albums by Garnet Rogers, just two collaboration/anthology discs
1 album by Horslips -- a "greatest hits." None of the catalog albums.
1 disc by Old Blind Dogs, "Legacy." They have five in print.
1 disc by Great Big Sea -- their US compilation release. But not
the original Canadian issues.
That's the online store's stock for the artists Twila mentioned.
One more:
1 Runrig album, "Mara," their only current USA release. None of the
dozen or so British imports.
What this tells me is that Borders.com is not in the folk import CD
business.
'Zactly. The two Keelaghan are his two on Green Linnet, which put him out for a while (dunno if they still are, but he *said* at his last concert that he'd have one out this fall, yes yes yes) -- he's got five in total. And Garnet Rogers is totally self-produced/distributed, although I could always find him at S'kids. Now, yes, I *can* do a lot of mail-order, and a lot of waiting for gigs so I can get the albums, but I really liked being able to call up S'kids and have something held for me (oh God, what I am I going to do about the Oysterband?! Or Dougie MacLean -- who did finally have his latest disc show up at Borders about a year and a half after I just ordered it straight from his website...)
Sigh. In the mid-eighties, I lived in Tower Plaza, and half my life centered around three near-by institutions: Borders Books, Schoolkids Records, and the Michigan Theater. I could get the best in books, music and movies, in local stores with amazingly knowledgable staff people, and I could get it all within a block of my front door. I loved it. Borders died years ago, slowly fading away into just another book mall. Nothing of what once made it special survives today, except for a large stock. Used to be each section was obviously maintained by people who knew the genre. The books that mattered were the books that were given prominent display, and if you asked questions, it was clear that people actually had read many of the books. Those people have mostly vanished with the culture that welcomed them. Who needs an intelligent person shelving books when the publisher's publicity campaigns determine what goes where? To loose Schoolkids too is awfully depressing. I was pissed when Borders reorganized and added the music department. Borders was still a perfectly good book store then, but why would undercutting Schoolkids make them better? What's wrong with having a perfectly good bookstore across from a perfectly good record store? I think it was a decision dictated by some corporate management far from Ann Arbor that had no interest in the health of Ann Arbor's retail community. So they built an average record store and killed a great one, while letting their great bookstore lapse into averageness. Fooey. Sure, Schoolkid's quality has been lapsing a lot over the last year, but plainly they were facing financial problems. Sure, in the best of all worlds, the people who knew how to put together a brilliant record store would also have the business sharps to keep it profitable in the face of corporate competition. But do the McDonald's and the Microsoft's always have to beat out the people who actually have good products? Well at least the Michigan Theater still exists.
And may it last.
Well, I hope y'all are ready for the disappearance of the Michigan Theater marquee.
re #39: If Schoolkids' had remained as notable a record store as many people seem to remember it being I think it would've survived. In recent years, though, there seemed to be little reason for me to shop there -- their selection (at least in the areas I shopped for) was not notably better than other stores in town and in fact was substantially inferior in a couple of the specialty niches that *I* desired, though I'm willing to grant that they probably had a fine selection of records in some of the sections I never wandered into. As for Borders being responsible for killing them off, if there was a record store in town being capable of killed off by Borders' music section with its very high prices and middle-of-the-road selection then I'd have to say that store was alreasdy in big trouble..
One thing I remember from my last trip to SKR. I was looking for some Marillion albums, and they had them- for upwards of twenty bucks. They didn't have one I wanted, so I enquired at the desk for ordering info. The price on what I wanted was far lower than anything on the shelves, which were "imports". So I enquired as to the catoloug prices for the items on the shelves, and they were about $5 cheaper to order than to buy right there. Why? Because the stuff on the shelves were imported, while the stuff in the catologe from a domestic distributer. Does this strike anyone else as an odd way to do buisness?
Um, why is the Michigan Theater marque going away, Larry?
I've heard that there was talk of exterior renovations, to make the marquee look more like it did in the 20s/30s.
They're renovating the facade of the Michigan Theater to return it to its original "feel."
whee..
We had a fairly contentious hearing about this at the Historic District Commission. In the end we voted to let them do it.
I walked by Schoolkids this afternoon. There's now yet another long note from Steve Bergman posted on the door. This one says that there will be a new independant music store opening in their space when they close (which he will not be involved with), and that he will be opening a much smaller record store somewhere else downtown.
Perhaps what I will miss the most from Schoolkids is the loss of their "editorial view." In some ways the store was like a music magazine. Mark Ziemba expressed their biases well in resp:29 -- "earthy ethnic music, American and foreign" -- and from what I see in the responses here, I suspect your alignment with that bias determines how sad you are about the end of the store. Schoolkids expressed its editorial view in a number of ways. Most obvious would be the reviews they whipped up and pasted on the fronts of CDs they were pushing. I never read them uncritically -- Schoolkids was much more enthusiastic about singer-songwriters than I am -- but they were always pointers to albums I might want to at least know about, if not own. For some really obscure items, occasionally the store would just cut out reviews from other sources and paste them on the disc. On some discs, this at least gave you a clue of what to expect, more so than the murky artwork. More than anywhere else, Schoolkids is where I would go up to the counter and ask to buy whatever they were playing in the store. It might have been some folk singers from Corsica; it might have been Kim Richey. Earlier this year it was Freakwater -- I was never going to buy another Freakwater cd, as I'd felt burned by several of their older discs, but their new release SPRINGTIME is pretty good. Many of my jazz and blues buys have been chosen based on Schoolkids in-store play, because I don't track those genres closely. On one of my last trips to the store, the disc which was being played on the jazz side was Ray Bailey/SATAN'S HORN, a rather nice electric blues set. It was out of stock; the clerk offered to special order it for me, but it turns out the disc is out of print, and the whole record label has been shut down. Some people might think it was pretty odd of a record store to give in-store play to a disc they could not sell you, and some people might have been annoyed. Me, I was just happy to make the introduction of Mr. Bailey; I scribbled down the info about the disc and found a copy a few days later at a Wazoo shop. And that's what I'll miss the most about Schoolkids: the hopeful optimism that on every trip there, the store will introduce me to something new and interesting.
Yeah.... Oh. Did you get Red Rice, Ken? It's pretty good.
On a hand written divider in the pop section, I saw Mr.Michael Bolton,Esq. I don't think I'll see anything like that in a corp store.
Michael Bolton is a lawyer? I always thought he needed a backup career for when he stops recording albums. ;)
It was Discount records. Popular? Hmmm, makes me wonder whether my taste for 'alternative' music (which distinguishes me from the Dutch massess) isn't that alternative when it comes to comparing it to Americans. But the fact that I was very pleased to notice radio stations that actually don't play house, but rock, adds seriously to the impression. I can tell you that almost all radio stations in the Netherlands only differ in the wavelength they're broadcasting on. *uch*
I definitely wouldn't call Metallica alternative. Popular, definitely. Don't know about Massive Attack. But hey -- *I* even like Metallica. And every store in the US has it -- I mean, even Target and K-mart and Walmarts carry a group like Metallica. So that's not what I'd call anything hard to find. Now, me, I like hard to find stuff.
Discount Records is a Sam Goody store, a.k.a. Musicland. Those are both chain stores.
Interestingly, though, Discount Records isn't as ... icky as the Sam Goody's or Musicland's that I've been to. Maybe because it's smaller, not in a mall, and has had to compete with both Skids and Borders and other stores in the area -- the prices aren't as high, and the staff have always been genuinely helpful to me. Even going so far as to recommend new artists that I really liked and would never have heard.
I've started a new Schoolkids item for the new Agora conference. Fall Agora #25 / Music #154.
re: 55 Not all of Metallica is easy to find. (Scott's favorite band....sigh) So is Schoolkids all shut down now?
Steve Bergman's Schoolkids, according to the ads in the Ann Arbor News, continues limited operations in Oz's Music on Packard. Jim Leonard's new SKR stores are being cleaned and repainted; there seemed to be quite a bit of activity when I was downtown this past weekend. (This is in the old Schoolkids storefronts.) More updates in the new item #154 in Music.
perhaps as an homage to the old Schoolkids', SKR is having a 20% off sale, tonight until 9pm only..
shoot, and I was out that way just yesterday too.
No, it was the annual December Midnight Madness sale. Many stores on Main Street and in the State & Liberty area were open until 11 or midnight; there were a couple of brass bands wandering around playing carols; and the streets and sidewalks were packed. Leslie was stuck at a rehearsal; with her visiting family I stopped in at SKR after I took them to the Ark. I didn't find anything of interest; I feel like my CD buying software has crashed and is waiting for a reboot. :/ Leslie's mom picked up a couple of items, but the SKR folk bins were not as useful to her as the old Schoolkids ones would have been, I think.
I pretty much remember the opening of Schoolkids; I spent a long time there over the years, looking at the cut-out bins and such. I didn't go there for any one specific type of music, but let myself discover new things as I heard them played in the store, and read the little reviews they made for certain disks. I have no doubt that Border's did a lot of damnage to them, but equally true I think is that we consumers played a large role. In the era of mega-stores people look for the cheapest possible source of commodities regardless of anything else. The people here in this conference are the fringe I'll bet, with their tastes and desires to support that which is local. Schoolkids. RIP.
You have several choices: