Tom T. Ball and #9

Ever have your life changed for the better by the actions of one person?

In the fall of 1990, I attended Central Michigan University as a 19-going-on-20-year-old academic junior(-ish) with one eye towards chemical engineering without really knowing what that was, living in the dorms with the slightly younger and significantly shorter kids, and going home most weekends to DJ high school dances and hang out with my girlfriend from my prior stint at Kirtland Community College. Until that point, my personal experience with record stores was slight; I typically hit Traverse City when I needed music for gigs -- Camelot Music in the Cherryland Mall, or New Moon when I ventured downtown -- and I had briefly worked at a Lansing area Believe In Music for a few weeks in the fall of 1988 while I half-assed stumbled my way through a term at Lansing Community College. 

But with my third-floor room in CMU's Herrig Hall being right around the corner from a honest-to-dog record store (or two, if you count Full Moon), I ended up becoming a frequent shopper at Michigan WhereHouse Records, where Tom T. Ball was the manager. Having that delightful blend of obnoxious entitlement and youthful ignorance that only the most piquant of jackasses can muster, I began pestering Tom for a job almost immediately, as in my eyes his store could only benefit from my vast musical knowledge and sterling retail acumen. Tom was resistant to my badgering for the better part of a year, but a brief stint DJ’ing at the Wayside coincided with exhausted resignation on Tom's part, and I was brought on staff just a few days before my 21st birthday, into a pop music retail environment that one could argue was more vibrant and compelling than any in recent memory.

Almost immediately, I alienated nearly all my fellow employees (ask Lisa or Jeff or Mary or Lori or Tom himself) with my general know-it-all obsequiousness, injecting myself into nearly every customer interaction in a pathetic attempt to justify my hiring and demonstrate my essential competence. While it was true that, unlike my contemporaries, I had a solid working knowledge of contemporary R&B and hip-hop – pulling the odd shift at CMU’s AM urban music radio station certainly helped – I quickly discovered just how much I didn’t know, and how that ignorance was both personally grating and ultimately not to the benefit of the customer or the co-worker.

That said, I was motivated to broaden my knowledge and get better as an employee, and to that end, Tom T. Ball helped me through that process. Through conversations and in-store play, Tom exposed me to different musical genres that had previously escaped my notice, and while I may have groused and groaned at first when listening to some of his choices, the inescapable variety of jazz and country and roots music worked through me -- psychologically, from compliance to tolerance to acceptance -- and gave me an education in music that worked in parallel to the psychology instruction I was now receiving at CMU. 

And what an education! It was midnight madness and store inventories, Saturday morning Ticketmaster on-sales and picking through promotional CD's, gangs and groups forming and dissolving while individuals passed through quickly without the desire or fit to stick, but through the majority of the '90s, it was Tom and me at MWHR #9, fighting the good fight one note at a time. In the pre-internet days of expert personal knowledge and CD-fueled record company budgets, it was the job I dreamed of as a kid made vibrant and real, the "job" that was and will always remain the most joyful work environment I’ve ever experienced, with one hell of a soundtrack throughout.

I worked at other record stores after my time at #9 – the summer of ’98 in the Ann Arbor MWHR location where I was almost universally dismissed and/or ignored, a few post-millennial years at Record World in Petoskey as music retail fell victim to internet piracy and the effacing of pop music’s impact on the interior worlds of the buying public – but without Tom T. Ball giving me the green light (most likely so I'd quit pestering him and shut the fuck up for a second), my life would have been both significantly different and experientially poorer. At the risk of sounding naïve and childlike, it’s the stuff that dreams are made of and a debt I can never repay. Tomorrow is my birthday, but living out my fondest desire to work and play in a wonderful record store gave me gifts I’ll spend the rest of my life unpacking. I’m not sure that I’ve ever sparked someone’s life the way that Tom T. Ball did three decades ago in October, but regardless, for that gift I’m eternally grateful.

Thanks, Tom.