First, the name, as it was no small confusion back in the day -- Michigan WhereHouse Records (or WHR), the small chain of Michigan music retailers, is not to be confused with the national, primarily California based Wherehouse Entertainment. Except that both entities are long dead, for what that's worth.
Second, the location -- I spent the large part of a decade with the Mount Pleasant branch of WHR (store #9, to be precise), with a few months in the summer of '98 at the Ann Arbor branch. Aside from those few weeks, I was part of the northernmost outpost, never to be as cool as the AA gang or as numerous as the cluster of Lansing flagship locations. We were in the hinterlands of culture, but at least we weren't WHR Jackson.
Now, with those two items out of the way, what can I say about the best job I ever had or ever will have? How might I accurately convey the sheer fucking joy, day in and day out, of a situation where a skill set meets a set of challenges? It's been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, so I guess writing about music stores is somewhere along that spectrum of impossibility, like successfully explaining calculus to dogs or understanding the continuing job opportunities of Tim Allen.
I got my job at WHR just like I got my job DJ'ing at The Wayside in Mount Pleasant -- I told anyone who would listen that I was better than whomever was currently working, and that I should be hired immediately for the sake of the customers. While this engaging stratagem worked pretty quickly at The Wayside, it took me a while to whittle away the resolve of Tom T. Ball, the manager at WHR. And while my near-constant nagging was happening, the current staff -- all of whom were perfectly competent, mind you -- didn't really dig this obnoxious prick sniffing around who thought he was better than everyone. So when I was finally hired a few days before my 21st birthday (and three weeks after Nevermind by Nirvana was released), the staff didn't exactly welcome me with open arms.
However, and this is as delicately put as possible, I didn't give a fuck.
You see, as I explained before, I deeply wanted this job, especially after the truncated taste of the record store life in '88 (see 7 Jobs, Part Two), and so long as Tom was happy with my work and I was moving units, that was all that mattered. And for weeks, that was the dynamic -- I threw my knowledge all around the store and all over the other staff like a Level Seven Mansplainer, and since I was able to kick around in the R&B/Hip-Hop/Dance genres, I filled a heretofore underutilized niche and helped to sell product. Slowly but surely, I was able to get others to tolerate me, and the job became more and more fun. Fun with a soundtrack, which is even better.
And what a soundtrack! Tom played jazz and blues and bluegrass and country, and although I publicly carped at what I considered to be old people music, he rarely failed to play good stuff, which helped me appreciate both the different genres and the different people who liked those genres. The other staff did the same, in their own ways, and I got the education in the vast diaspora of popular music I so desperately wanted. So much so, in fact, that my primary education seemed less important for a time, only snapping into better focus a few years later.
WHR became the stable framework upon which I hung my life's accomplishments and moments. Working there helped to pay for my Bachelor's degree as well as my first Master's degree. I became an uncle while working there; I can vividly remember getting the phone call from my mom to tell me the news. I started and ended romantic entanglements inside the walls, though never of the physical variety. There were midnight sales and bank deposits and all night inventories and Saturday morning Ticketmaster clusterfucks and promotional copies galore and grunge and Britpop and sewage mop-ups and inappropriate jokes and shoplifters and fake signed Insane Clown Posse glossies and kids that became customers that became co-workers that became friends. I watched the '90s go by as the music played, and just like your favorite records, there came a time when you could watch the countdown on the last song get closer and closer to the end.
For me, there were two endings -- the first came when I got my full-time job at North Central Michigan College in August '98, and the last came when WHR #9 closed for good with little warning sometime in 2001, if my memory serves. I don't get down to Mount Pleasant that much, but when I do, it's hard not to drive past 2212 South Mission and look at the old footprint in the Stadium Mall and feel the tsunami of emotion swell and envelope me. When Christmas comes, I still feel the pull towards music retail, the desire to help regulars and newbies alike almost real enough to grasp, like the last candy cane from an old forgotten pack of decorations.
I'm well aware that I'm still a 20th Century relic, habitually buying physical media in a virtual world while pining for greater meaning and value in that media besides base ownership. However, if record stores meant something to the majority, they would still be around in abundance; after all, I teach in a town with two different thriving book stores. But I know from my time in WHR that record stores meant a lot to an ever-shrinking minority of people looking for communities and experiences beyond their own, and I mourn the loss of that important cultural artifact.
I'm just glad that, to paraphrase the last Warren Zevon:
"I had the shit till it all got smoked / I kept the promise till the vow got broke / I had to drink from the lovin' cup / I stood on the banks till the river rose up / I saw the bride in her wedding gown / I was in the house when the house burned down"
Second, the location -- I spent the large part of a decade with the Mount Pleasant branch of WHR (store #9, to be precise), with a few months in the summer of '98 at the Ann Arbor branch. Aside from those few weeks, I was part of the northernmost outpost, never to be as cool as the AA gang or as numerous as the cluster of Lansing flagship locations. We were in the hinterlands of culture, but at least we weren't WHR Jackson.
Now, with those two items out of the way, what can I say about the best job I ever had or ever will have? How might I accurately convey the sheer fucking joy, day in and day out, of a situation where a skill set meets a set of challenges? It's been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, so I guess writing about music stores is somewhere along that spectrum of impossibility, like successfully explaining calculus to dogs or understanding the continuing job opportunities of Tim Allen.
I got my job at WHR just like I got my job DJ'ing at The Wayside in Mount Pleasant -- I told anyone who would listen that I was better than whomever was currently working, and that I should be hired immediately for the sake of the customers. While this engaging stratagem worked pretty quickly at The Wayside, it took me a while to whittle away the resolve of Tom T. Ball, the manager at WHR. And while my near-constant nagging was happening, the current staff -- all of whom were perfectly competent, mind you -- didn't really dig this obnoxious prick sniffing around who thought he was better than everyone. So when I was finally hired a few days before my 21st birthday (and three weeks after Nevermind by Nirvana was released), the staff didn't exactly welcome me with open arms.
However, and this is as delicately put as possible, I didn't give a fuck.
You see, as I explained before, I deeply wanted this job, especially after the truncated taste of the record store life in '88 (see 7 Jobs, Part Two), and so long as Tom was happy with my work and I was moving units, that was all that mattered. And for weeks, that was the dynamic -- I threw my knowledge all around the store and all over the other staff like a Level Seven Mansplainer, and since I was able to kick around in the R&B/Hip-Hop/Dance genres, I filled a heretofore underutilized niche and helped to sell product. Slowly but surely, I was able to get others to tolerate me, and the job became more and more fun. Fun with a soundtrack, which is even better.
And what a soundtrack! Tom played jazz and blues and bluegrass and country, and although I publicly carped at what I considered to be old people music, he rarely failed to play good stuff, which helped me appreciate both the different genres and the different people who liked those genres. The other staff did the same, in their own ways, and I got the education in the vast diaspora of popular music I so desperately wanted. So much so, in fact, that my primary education seemed less important for a time, only snapping into better focus a few years later.
WHR became the stable framework upon which I hung my life's accomplishments and moments. Working there helped to pay for my Bachelor's degree as well as my first Master's degree. I became an uncle while working there; I can vividly remember getting the phone call from my mom to tell me the news. I started and ended romantic entanglements inside the walls, though never of the physical variety. There were midnight sales and bank deposits and all night inventories and Saturday morning Ticketmaster clusterfucks and promotional copies galore and grunge and Britpop and sewage mop-ups and inappropriate jokes and shoplifters and fake signed Insane Clown Posse glossies and kids that became customers that became co-workers that became friends. I watched the '90s go by as the music played, and just like your favorite records, there came a time when you could watch the countdown on the last song get closer and closer to the end.
For me, there were two endings -- the first came when I got my full-time job at North Central Michigan College in August '98, and the last came when WHR #9 closed for good with little warning sometime in 2001, if my memory serves. I don't get down to Mount Pleasant that much, but when I do, it's hard not to drive past 2212 South Mission and look at the old footprint in the Stadium Mall and feel the tsunami of emotion swell and envelope me. When Christmas comes, I still feel the pull towards music retail, the desire to help regulars and newbies alike almost real enough to grasp, like the last candy cane from an old forgotten pack of decorations.
I'm well aware that I'm still a 20th Century relic, habitually buying physical media in a virtual world while pining for greater meaning and value in that media besides base ownership. However, if record stores meant something to the majority, they would still be around in abundance; after all, I teach in a town with two different thriving book stores. But I know from my time in WHR that record stores meant a lot to an ever-shrinking minority of people looking for communities and experiences beyond their own, and I mourn the loss of that important cultural artifact.
I'm just glad that, to paraphrase the last Warren Zevon:
"I had the shit till it all got smoked / I kept the promise till the vow got broke / I had to drink from the lovin' cup / I stood on the banks till the river rose up / I saw the bride in her wedding gown / I was in the house when the house burned down"
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