response 159 of 247:

Feb 2 10:00 UTC 2000

A response unlikely to interest anyone except Twila and maybe David Bratman:

Cruising the Usenet folk music newsgroups, I came upon the news that 
ADA Music has been sold.  ADA is one of the two largest distributors of 
folk music in the UK, and since about 1990 they had been my primary
source for British Isles and European folk music.
 
I'd heard from a friend that the proprietor had been sick.  The fill 
rate on my orders had been declining -- it used to be that any folk CDs 
which ADA couldn't get, you had to mail order direct from the band.
And ADA only managed to get out one catalog flyer in all of 1999.
 
The last straw was that ADA was not available via the Internet, 
at all.  In the early 1990s I didn't mind getting up at 0500 to telephone 
England -- I enjoyed chatting with the owner and gossiping about various
albums and artists -- but by the late 1990s it was getting hard to get up 
so early just to order CDs, and then the owner started trying to 
discourage small-order phone calls because it was taking up too much 
of his time.
More of my business was shifting to companies with an Internet presence.

The new ADA already has a small web page up.  I hope it's just a teaser;
I'm not finding much of interest on it.   Sigh sigh sigh.
I will miss those early morning phone chats.

response 161 of 247:

Apr 16 01:53 UTC 2000

(damn. and two weeks before I return to A2, too...)

response 163 of 247:

Apr 17 00:49 UTC 2000

That store has closed ALREADY??  Damn... I knew one of the guys
who helped run the place - he's a music director at WCBN - and he
was so excited when it opened up.  He must be really upset now.
Too bad.

response 165 of 247:

Apr 20 04:42 UTC 2000

Carlos Souffrant, a.k.a. "the Dark Lord of House."

response 167 of 247:

Apr 20 18:08 UTC 2000

Yeah, he does.  Though he's not a music director.

response 169 of 247:

Apr 21 07:06 UTC 2000

Well yeah, you could hardly be expected to know the incredibly
elaborate and baroque power structure at WCBN... :)

response 171 of 247:

Apr 21 18:45 UTC 2000

There's a receptionist at WCBN?

response 173 of 247:

Apr 22 17:19 UTC 2000

  perhaps there *is* someone with the title "receptionist", but under the
  incredibly elaborate and baroque power structure perhaps their duties are 
  something else entirely..

  

response 175 of 247:

Apr 22 20:20 UTC 2000

i adore mike perini
i cant believe you know him carla!
i was in the fantastiks witgh him

response 177 of 247:

Apr 29 01:59 UTC 2000

Time to write another record store obituary.   Where House Records 
in East Lansing is closing on May 6, as the students depart.  
The month-long 30% off sale should have tipped me off.  What's left
in the store is 40% off, but the pop/rock stuff has been pretty well
combed over.  There's a lot left in the classical bins, though, and 
some in the world music bins.

Where House's MSU store opened around 1978 in the University Mall on 
MAC Avenue, and it moved twice over the years until 
it settled into the Jocundry's Books building about five? years 
ago.  Where House was originally the cooler record store in town after
the demise of The Disc Shop; one of my memories from the 70s is making 
a distinct pest of myself returning about every third LP that I bought
in the oil-shock era of blighted vinyl quality.

In the mid-80s the Discount Records chain pulled out of East Lansing, and 
this left Where House with a near-monopoly on the Michigan State campus
CD trade.  They didn't do well with this, however, as the selection
got less and less interesting.  I lived in East Lansing through 
this period, and I would generally resort to mail order, or to shopping 
on trips, for anything I wanted which was at all obscure.
A MSU acquaintance who was on the 
Bitnet ALLMUSIC mailing list would regularly write entertaining rants
about the cluelessness of the staff and the insufficiency of the stock.
They rallied a little bit in the early 1990s, opening a classical 
shop (later folded back into the main store)
and getting a little better about stocking obscure stuff.

But their monopoly ended around 1996 when Tower Records opened a 
store three blocks away, the largest music shop which East Lansing
had ever seen.   Where House did a valiant job of trying to compete 
against Tower: they consistently undercut Tower's price by a buck and 
they bulked up the classical and world music sections.  And they 
stocked & promoted alt.country music in conjunction with the 
popular "Progressive Torch & Twang" show on MSU's student radio
station.  I made an effort to support them by shopping there first for 
popular items which it was likely they would carry; I was fond of 
their Tuesday $2 discount sale.
 
Now it will be Tower which has the monopoly on new CD sales in 
East Lansing.

response 179 of 247:

Apr 29 17:35 UTC 2000

  I quite liked the Michigan Wherehouse Records in Ann Arbor, though that
  may have been largely because they had at least one buyer whose tastes
  overlapped significantly with mine.  

  Tower's post-Wherehouse behavior in Ann Arbor was not encouraging.  
  Record buyers in East Lansing should prepare themselves for sticker shock.

response 181 of 247:

Apr 29 19:23 UTC 2000

When did Tower undercut anyone on price in East Lansing?  (Or Ann Arbor.)
I never saw it.  Tower is at $17.99 for most discs, maybe $16.99 in 
more obscure titles.  Where House was almost always a dollar 
cheaper.

response 183 of 247:

Apr 29 21:37 UTC 2000

Tower undercut in East Lansing for a good year or so after it opened in E
Lansing. Price differences between the Tower in E Lansing and the Tower in
A2 for the same disc were around $2-3.