A fair amount has changed in the short time since we (read: I) declared Turn It Up! the last game in town for buying music. In the last few months, we’ve seen a little bit of old, a little bit of new, and a little bit of corporate moving and shaking in our Happy Musical Valley.
Veteran retail man Dave Witthaus closed down his record shop in Hadley and, after a few months of dormancy, reopened as Platterpus, Too on Cottage Street in Easthampton.
Retail neophytes Ted Lee and Nick Williams took a bold step with the September launch of Feeding Tube Records on King Street in Northampton, a vinyl-rich shop that serves as an organic extension of their “weirdo” record label of the same name.
And Newbury Comics—long-standing titan of the Northeast music scene—transported its Amherst satellite nine miles down Route 9 and smack dab across the street from Northampton mainstay Turn It Up!
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Dave Witthaus, 52, has been in the music business in one way or another since the age of 15, when he lied to his would-be record store boss, claiming to be 16 so he could get the gig.
He opened Platterpus Records in Westfield in 1982. After a few moves around the Whip City, he decided to try his luck at the mall in Hadley.
“It’s weird,” he says, “because I don’t shop in malls. I’ve never shopped in malls. As a kid I didn’t hang out in malls. I don’t like malls. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I decided to work in a mall day in and day out.”
Witthaus compares the experience to being incarcerated. “I’ve never been arrested, but I swear I know what prison is like after being in the mall. No windows, you see the same people every day, the food sucks, and by the end of the day you want to kill everybody.”
He closed down that fourth iteration of the shop and, before the opportunity to reopen in Easthampton arrived, believed that his days running a music store were over.
“I didn’t think I’d end up here,” he says. “When I left the mall I thought I’d go work for somebody. I’d set aside enough money so I could go for two months without having to eat macaroni and cheese every night unless I wanted to, and then this came up.”
For Witthaus, the Cottage Street location holds a certain symmetry, as the building once housed Night Owl Records, a shop owned and operated by his former employee, Mark Schwaber.
“I hired Mark when he was a kid,” recalls Witthaus. “Then when I went to work at [radio station WRNX] as program director, he managed the store. When I left RNX and came back, he had gotten a taste or the bug of running a record store, so he opened up Night Owl. I basically gave him all my old fixtures and everything, and then it was really him who encouraged me to open up here and introduced me to the landlord, so it’s kind of come full circle.”
He talks about the night he spent four hours chatting with Schwaber and his wife Jen. They answered his barrage of questions and gave him the skinny on what sells and what doesn’t in Easthampton.
The new store, opened this summer, features used vinyl and CDs, a plethora of vintage rock T-shirts, posters, patches, banners, pins and more.
Witthaus is a great guy for conversation about music or any other topic, and has plenty of industry stories to tell. One thing that has remained constant throughout his journeys is his sharp sense of humor.
“I’ve spent my whole life in two industries that, for all intents and purposes, don’t exist anymore: radio and music retail,” he jokes. “Everybody on radio’s voice-tracked now—RNX for all intents and purposes is programmed out in Texas, where Clear Channel is located. So being program director at a radio station and running a record store is kind of like being a Yugo mechanic—cool stuff to talk about but not a lot of people looking for you.”
Nick Williams and Ted Lee opened Feeding Tube Records as part of their ongoing mission to promote and foster “old weird America to new weird America to weird worldwide.”
The duo partnered up a few years ago to found an indie music label of the same name, prodigiously putting out albums, seven-inches and cassettes by the likes of Zebu! and Flaming Dragons of Middle Earth.
They had been mulling over a physical place to host live events and to extend their vision and eclectic musical community outward, and because they needed an outlet for all of the unique, short-run product they were accumulating through the trading of their own releases with other boutique imprints throughout the world.
When Flywheel opened this past spring, they decided to focus more on the retail side of things, and began looking in earnest around downtown Northampton for a suitable space. They ended up at 90 King St., adjacent to Subway, in a move-in-ready multi-room space.
The duo’s inventory and knowledge base was instantly buoyed by the involvement of Ecstatic Yod, the vinyl-based partnership of music scribe Byron Coley and Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore.
“Having someone like Byron who’s been in the record business since 1969—having his guidance is really helpful,” says Williams. “They are bringing in a ton of their records here, and they’re going to be keeping it freshly rotating every few weeks.”
Along with the Yod’s vinyl, Feeding Tube features used and new CDs, cassettes, and plenty of wax from labels like Ultra Eczema, Night-People and Three Lobed, plus lots of free jazz, esoteric reissues, and African sounds. Top 40 it ain’t.
“We’re not really catering to people looking to find used classic rock,” Williams says. “Hopefully, we’ll have a section in the back room as we start collecting more stuff, but it’s really a place for people looking for something new and something rare.”
They also buy vinyl off the street with the help of Coley, and feature live performances of “moderate volume” from local and touring artists in one of the shop’s back rooms.
The duo promises a unique environment and good conversation, something they say can’t be duplicated by the Internet. “People are definitely not going to have [this experience] if they download or buy off the Internet,” says Williams. “One thing we’ve been trying to do is keep prices the same or cheaper than [on] the Internet, which we can do through trading—we’re competitive with the Internet and other shops.”
And Williams says they will help guide anyone who’s willing to give them a try.
“Every year another few thousand students come through here hungry to learn about music,” he says. “We’re definitely very friendly and want to talk to people, and we’ll always have great stuff playing in here on the stereo and live.
“If people are willing to open up their minds and come in and investigate, I think there’s something for everyone; it might not always be what you’re looking for, but they’ll find something.”
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Newbury Comics probably does not need much of an introduction. Since opening in 1978, it’s opened 28 shops throughout New England, including the Amherst outlet, which was born in 1995.
According to store representatives, the move to Northampton and Yes Computers’ old spot culminated a long-running flirtation with the town and its outdoor pedestrian mall-like atmosphere.
Like most in the biz, they are trying to figure out how to maximize their piece of a diminishing pie, offering competitive prices and ancillary merchandise and, in their particular case, action figures, sports-related items, and skimpy Halloween costumes.
Through all of this activity and all these openings and reopenings, the ultimate winner, if you’re in Northampton or Easthampton, at least, is the consumer.
Folks now have a multitude of shops in which to browse for that perfect album for fall. Sort of like the good old days.
