AADL Talks To: Paul Kahlenberg & Zac Johnson

Tue, 03/19/2024 - 8:45pm

When: March 4, 2024

In this episode, Paul Kahlenberg and Zac Johnson talk about managing Tower Records in Ann Arbor. They reminisce about the store's tight-knit staff, visits from bands both globally and locally famous, and selling concert tickets before the internet.

Find more about Tower Records in our archival collections.

Transcript

• [00:00:04] KATRINA SHAFER: Hi, this is Katrina.
• [00:00:06] DARLA WELSHONS: This is Darla.
• [00:00:07] KATRINA SHAFER: In this episode of AADL Talks To, we talked to Paul Kahlenberg and Zac Johnson. Paul was the general manager of Tower Records in Ann Arbor, and Zac was the record store manager. They talked to us about their memories of working at a record store in the '90s. Special events including a visit from the Smashing Pumpkins, concert ticket sales, midnight releases, the store's unfortunate closing, and how they moved on in their careers. Let's start with Paul.
• [00:00:37] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I was the store manager at Tower Records, here in Ann Arbor. It was 96-2000.
• [00:00:46] ZAC JOHNSON: Nope.
• [00:00:47] PAUL KAHLENBERG: One?
• [00:00:50] ZAC JOHNSON: Sorry.
• [00:00:50] PAUL KAHLENBERG: What?
• [00:00:51] ZAC JOHNSON: I was correcting you.
• [00:00:52] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Who are you?
• [00:00:53] ZAC JOHNSON: No, you're right, 96 .
• [00:00:55] PAUL KAHLENBERG: 96? I was here in Ann Arbor in 96-2000 at Tower Records. Before that, I actually worked with Zac in East Lansing, the store there. I got there in 96 as well, it was a very short stint, but it was lovely because we met and became friends. Before that I was in Los Angeles Tower Records, I was with Tower Records for a total of 11 years.
• [00:01:22] DARLA WELSHONS: Is 96 when the Ann Arbor store opened?
• [00:01:25] PAUL KAHLENBERG: No, 96 is when I got there. The store actually opened in 91, correct?
• [00:01:30] DARLA WELSHONS: 91.
• [00:01:32] ZAC JOHNSON: I'm Zac Johnson. I was the record sales manager at Tower Records in Ann Arbor from 97 till 2000. As Paul mentioned, he and I worked together in East Lansing before then and before then, I had also worked at the record store that has since become underground sounds. When it started in Ypsilani, it was called that Total Age Records and the guy, Matt Bradish hired me part time. He was doing something and he's still the guy who runs underground sounds, but he was doing, I think he was delivering for either DHL or UHF. No, that's the weird Al movie. DHL or UPS, I think it was. Or Fedex, something like that but he loved records. He wanted to work at a record store. He wanted to run a record store, but it was like the financials wouldn't work out unless he worked a full time job, and then had college kids come in and work at his record store. That's sort of where I started, moved up to East Lansing when they opened a Record Tower records up there. That's where Paul and I met, then he came down to be the general manager at the Ann Arbor store in 96. Then I ended up moving back to Ann Arbor in 97. Worked together until the store closed.
• [00:02:54] KATRINA SHAFER: Is it that what brought you both to Ann Arbor was Tower Records? Where did you both grow up?
• [00:03:01] ZAC JOHNSON: I grew up in Ann Arbor, and then my family moved outside of Ann Arbor when I was, in grade school. My wife was going to school after I graduated from Eastern, my now wife was going to school in East Lansing. I moved up there, got the job at the record store there, then we both loved Ann Arbor. That's why we ended up coming back here.
• [00:03:27] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I thought it was for me.
• [00:03:30] ZAC JOHNSON: This is officially on the record, I can't divulge all the secrets. Moving to Ann Arbor, it was Tower Records really 'cause I had been living in LA, as I mentioned, and my family is actually all in Ohio, or had been all in Ohio. After college, I moved out to LA Hooray. I graduated, I'm going to make it big. Then a few years later I'm like, I'm really homesick. I want to move back to Michigan, then the Lansing store opened up that in 96, and that was an opportunity to move across the country. Then the Ann Arbor store opened up looking for a store manager. I was able to come here and had to live in Ann Arbor ever since. If I remember correctly, the guy who opened the Ann Arbor store was Tom Rule. He was the first general manager and he ended up getting promoted to one of the stores outside of Chicago. He was leaving. Paul was in East Lansing as the assistant manager, the record store manager and then when that position opened up, Paul came down. Then when I wanted to move back to Ann Arbor, I said, hey, any room for me there? Squirreled me in.
• [00:04:45] DARLA WELSHONS: Excellent. Do you want to tell us about the early days of Tower, when I should say when you arrived, what was it like? Describe a store, the Ann Arbor scene in the '90s.
• [00:04:56] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Do you remember your first day? I just relistened to. We did a recording with Mariah. Had us come and do a recording here or do a presentation here for a couple of years ago and I listened to it today. You had a really great first day story, that first day Tower Records, Ann Arbor. I will remember forever. I'm a nervous guy, stuff like new gig. This is so exciting. I meet Tom Rule who was the manager and he started introducing me around to different people. I noticed like, it's very festive in the back room. Tower records, you've got a back room obviously, and they're like this is interesting. Everybody is really happy and smiling and, la. Then Tom's introducing me around, then we went back to the art room. For those who may not know, Tower Records had artists, actual real life people, artists doing all our artwork on the walls and the displays, what not? We went back there to meet the artists and there's just, I don't know, you could tell people had been drinking. People had been drinking a lot. Apparently, it was also my arrival also coincided with one of the record store, I think it was Nick, was Terry.
• [00:06:19] ZAC JOHNSON: Terry Perron.
• [00:06:20] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Terry Perron. He was leaving, so they were celebrating his departure, so I arrived. Everybody's wasted. Really wasted. Sorry. I could name names but I won't.
• [00:06:34] ZAC JOHNSON: But somebody did end up falling into a pile of foam core.
• [00:06:39] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah, that's right. Names to be named later.
• [00:06:44] ZAC JOHNSON: The record sales manager that was in Ann Arbor, he ended up being a general manager on a new store that was being opened in Argentina, I think. He knew people there where he had traveled there in the past. He's like I'm going to pick it up and move. That was kind of one of the interesting things about, the big corporate entity that was Tower Records was that, you did have the opportunity, like Paul said, he moved from Torrance to East Lansing because he wanted to be closer to family he had in the Midwest. Then, this opportunity opened up and I had the same option of, moving from East Lansing to Ann Arbor when I wanted to move. They didn't pay for my moving, to move all my stuff down to Ann Arbor.
• [00:07:27] PAUL KAHLENBERG: They paid for mine.
• [00:07:28] ZAC JOHNSON: I know from California?
• [00:07:30] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yes, and that's a story into itself.
• [00:07:35] ZAC JOHNSON: But yeah, early days. When I got there, it was a pretty well-oiled machine. The neat thing about Tower was, even though it was a big corporate entity, we had local buyers, we had a lot of autonomy so our main buyer, the pop buyer was what he was called, was a guy named Ian Trumbull. He was in a band called The Deterrents and a really great guy, and he was into Garage Rock before we knew to call it Garage Rock and he was into rockabilly. We would have a whole endcap, the thing at the end of the record store rack that was just Ian's picks, and it was stuff that he was into that he thought people would want to come in. We knew we had people, guys in leather jackets that would come in and with their greased back hair and come and just pick four or five things from that. There was another guy named Chad Burkhardt, he was really into the blues and things like that, and he jumped on this what he called jump blues, but it's like the pre-swingers, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, there's this whole revival of people doing that 1940s, '50s, horn-driven stuff, and he had a really well-stocked selection, so there'd be DJs coming from all over the Midwest just to see what had been picked up. It was a weird combination of getting paychecks from California, but everybody that worked there, very small paychecks from California I should mention. But everybody that worked there loved music and were people that you'd see at the Blind Pig or at the Elbow Room in Ypsi and stuff like that just music fans. It was one of those things where it's in a weird way, I see it as being similar to being a teacher or probably working at a library where you don't get paid very much and the job is really hard, but if you really love doing it, that's the reason why you stick around. Like you're not going to get rich being a record store clerk.
• [00:09:32] PAUL KAHLENBERG: No.
• [00:09:33] ZAC JOHNSON: You have to be willing to tolerate midnight sales of new releases and people wanted to do funky returns and the guys sitting at the listening station for 12 hours.
• [00:09:45] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Ticket master stories, we got so many stories.
• [00:09:47] DARLA WELSHONS: Ticket master was in Tower?
• [00:09:49] PAUL KAHLENBERG: We had a ticket master. Yes.
• [00:09:52] ZAC JOHNSON: It was a weird deal too because they didn't hire people to work at the ticket master booth. It just had to be record store employees and we didn't get paid anymore to work the ticket booth. The tower just thought, this is a great thing that's going to bring more people into the store to buy records, so we'll just set up a free almost like a kiosk or something like that, but it was a man.
• [00:10:20] PAUL KAHLENBERG: It was just behind the counter. If you were lucky, you got somebody who knew how to navigate the ticket master system. If you were unlucky, well, then one of us got a phone.
• [00:10:31] DARLA WELSHONS: That must have been crazy with you had ticket releasing for huge shows.
• [00:10:37] ZAC JOHNSON: Exactly. That would happen on Saturday mornings at ten o'clock and it was right when the store opened. The problem was, one of the things that was so weirdly unique about that store was it was huge and it had three separate entrances, and so many little weird pockets. If you didn't have enough people to run the ticket booth and put somebody at the main desk, look, you couldn't open the store. If so and so was late getting this coffee and wandered in at 10:05 to clock in, like they would have to fight through a whole group of people that were watching the Dave Matthews tickets just click by and you couldn't buy things online then, you couldn't even buy things over the phone then. Luckily, we didn't do any sales over the phone but we ended up having to figure out a whole new schedule where if you worked Saturday morning, you didn't come in at 10:00, you had to come in at 09:30 so that when the hungover people from Friday night who were working, who were supposed to be on the working in the register would end up there at 10 minutes to 10:00, then we could still open up and get tickets.
• [00:11:48] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I always liked it because if you recall those of who do remember the store, there were two, three entrances as Zac mentioned, and actually four, 1, 2, 3, 4. The elevator.
• [00:12:01] ZAC JOHNSON: Oh yeah, that's right.
• [00:12:03] PAUL KAHLENBERG: The elevator. But for tickets, it was always interesting coming in. There was a ramp from the store going to the parking garage behind. Awesome. Straight right into our store. How magical was that?
• [00:12:18] ZAC JOHNSON: Perfect.
• [00:12:20] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Tickets would go on sale, there'd be four or five guys there. Then if you also remember, the tower was in the Galleria, which is on South U, and there's an escalator. We were on the second floor. Escalator, oh, there's people lining up on there too for tickets. What did we do? I think I used to just go yell at the escalator people. It's like you got to go back to the ramp.
• [00:12:44] ZAC JOHNSON: Eventually, we got to a point where it was a pretty well-oiled machine because I think we ended up letting people in at like quarter till and they lined up and we would write down how many tickets you want, and best available or whatever. At that point, we would just have one person reading the sheet like 9:59, you'd just be hitting select two, select two, select two. Then it would click over to 10:00, and then just these tickets would start shooting out, and we'd try to get them in the amount and people would be like, I'm thinking balcony but baby mezzanine, we're like, nope, we're just going to get you four tickets and you're going to pay for them. We got a reputation for being at least efficient once we had enough people in the store to open the doors and to get stuff. It was very much almost like the soup Nazi thing, where if they really needed to adhere to the rules, stay in line. Tell us what you want. Do you want to have tickets? We will work on this for you.
• [00:13:45] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yes. Were you there for the one time there was a big ticket on sale and then some dude was in the middle of the line wanting red-wing tickets?
• [00:13:54] ZAC JOHNSON: Oh, that poor guy.
• [00:13:56] DARLA WELSHONS: What?
• [00:13:57] PAUL KAHLENBERG: He's like, yeah, I want red wing tickets. Hockey game, bla bla bla and all these kids are around us, I don't know what the show was, but they were just like he wanted to pick his seats. I don't know who was running it, but they're like, nope, stand over there.
• [00:14:13] ZAC JOHNSON: We'll get your ticket.
• [00:14:14] PAUL KAHLENBERG: We'll get you after this but.
• [00:14:16] KATRINA SHAFER: Do you remember one particular show where it was just huge lines that people were really in demand for?
• [00:14:28] ZAC JOHNSON: Dave Matthews band tickets were always really big. That was right when he was coming up. Pearl Jam was always really big. We had huge Pearl Jam fans. Oddly, the metal fans were usually pretty together. It was always better to sell tickets to a Metallica and Megadeth show than it was to like either a Garth Brooks or Ann Arbor's own Bob Seger or something like that. Because the people that were really into the music and were really following it, knew the rules and knew how it worked and then the folks. I think Garth Brooks did something like six shows in a row or something like that and it just ended up being a nightmare.
• [00:15:11] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I think you're right. People who know better fans and know how the system works. But yeah, it was always middle-aged people that would freak out the worst.
• [00:15:26] ZAC JOHNSON: I hope we're never middle age.
• [00:15:27] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I know.
• [00:15:27] KATRINA SHAFER: Can you tell us a little bit about any other special events that there were? I understand there was in-store music sometimes, was it midnight releases, anything that stands out from that?
• [00:15:42] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I was thinking about this a little bit, the first thing that popped in my mind is Safety Girl.
• [00:15:49] ZAC JOHNSON: I don't know how many people here will remember. I hope everyone will remember safety.
• [00:15:52] DARLA WELSHONS: I remember Safety Girl.
• [00:15:53] ZAC JOHNSON: Darla, you remember Safety Girl, that's true.
• [00:15:54] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know the story behind a Safety Girl.
• [00:15:56] ZAC JOHNSON: But she was an educator. She was.
• [00:15:58] PAUL KAHLENBERG: She was delightful. She had a compatriot with her, I can't remember her name.
• [00:16:08] ZAC JOHNSON: I'll call the library reference desk later in.
• [00:16:11] DARLA WELSHONS: Please do that.
• [00:16:12] PAUL KAHLENBERG: She was fantastic. She would come into the store and, basically, it was all about safe sex. She was always trying to have in stores with us and I think I eventually agreed.
• [00:16:27] ZAC JOHNSON: There are photos.
• [00:16:28] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Oh, yeah. Still? She came in with her friend and they just did like I can't remember if they did a talk or if they just were there just to meet people. It was fun.
• [00:16:41] ZAC JOHNSON: I think it was mostly about just awareness and things like that, but then she would have a goofy bunch of props like whips and crops and pink, fuzzy handcuffs, and stuff like that that she would get out and brandish to the "crowd."
• [00:16:54] PAUL KAHLENBERG: That's my first memory. What's yours?
• [00:16:57] ZAC JOHNSON: I think back to when the Smashing Pumpkins did an in-store signing, it wasn't a performance. But the weirdest thing about it was the day before, we just started getting phone calls from people that were like, hey, what time are Smashing Pumpkins going to be there? We were like, I don't know what you're talking about because we really were kept in the dark until I think the day before or maybe even that day, something like that. But it was right in the air when they were really super huge. They came in and we needed to find them, I think it was the same room where all the drunks were the first day that you got there. We need to find them a room where they could hang out and not be bothered by anything. I remember they came up the stairs and they were like, where do we go? I pointed them to where it was supposed to be and their manager big stuffed over me. He was like, Billy Corgan needs a bottle of water. I'm like, oh, good. We went to the village corner and got stuff ahead of time and he goes unopened.
• [00:18:01] ZAC JOHNSON: I promise not to poison Billy Corgan, in my store, but they were as kind as you could expect, Jimmy Chamberlain was there, Melissa Auf der Maur was there. James Iha was there.
• [00:18:12] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah.
• [00:18:13] ZAC JOHNSON: It was a cool line up, and we had kids lining up, fans lining up.
• [00:18:21] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Pretty far down the road, or down the street.
• [00:18:23] ZAC JOHNSON: Down the street, yeah, and lining up early too, and we had flats, like just promotional pieces of paper with their album cover on it, and they would sign it. Then you'd just see kids just crying and going down the stairs, Billy said hi to me.
• [00:18:35] PAUL KAHLENBERG: That was crazy. That was really fun.
• [00:18:37] DARLA WELSHONS: They didn't play?
• [00:18:37] ZAC JOHNSON: They didn't actually play.
• [00:18:38] DARLA WELSHONS: Okay.
• [00:18:39] ZAC JOHNSON: No. I remember, who else? They Might Be Giants did an in store, I think it was before I was there.
• [00:18:47] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I wasn't there.
• [00:18:47] ZAC JOHNSON: Evan Dando did an in store.
• [00:18:50] DARLA WELSHONS: You did have some performances?
• [00:18:51] ZAC JOHNSON: For sure, yeah. When I say in-store performances, so at Tower, when they built it, they built out a cool little stage that looks very much like a Nickelodeon set now, but it's got this weirdly shaped stage with this wavy backdrop behind it, with TV's in there that we could run videos and stuff like that. But yeah, they would bring in, I remember there's a band called Finger 11, and they were industrial bat rock band. They brought in enough equipment to play, The Palace or the Michigan Theater, and it was just like whoa.
• [00:19:33] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah.
• [00:19:34] ZAC JOHNSON: They were fine, but they had a whole tour bus and everything. I think they must have been going from Detroit to Chicago.
• [00:19:40] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Chicago or something.
• [00:19:40] ZAC JOHNSON: It was always a drag when somebody would come in with like a really big set up and then just 11 people would show up, or like they'd be trying to get past them to get to the world music section, and they're just playing guitars loud.
• [00:19:54] PAUL KAHLENBERG: That was fun. The Smashing Pumpkins was really fun.
• [00:19:56] ZAC JOHNSON: That was really big.
• [00:19:57] PAUL KAHLENBERG: It was a big deal. I remember at one point the police showed up and really, they just showed up just to meet Billy Corgan, [LAUGHTER] because he cut in line, totally.
• [00:20:07] ZAC JOHNSON: He's like, I got to get up there.
• [00:20:09] DARLA WELSHONS: The policeman cut in line?
• [00:20:10] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yes.
• [00:20:12] ZAC JOHNSON: Tax dollars.
• [00:20:14] KATRINA SHAFER: What determined whether something would have a midnight release? Was that something that came from corporate or?
• [00:20:24] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Our hours were 9:00 AM to midnight every single day of the year. Being open till midnight, we could sell our new releases on Monday night, Tuesday mornings.
• [00:20:42] ZAC JOHNSON: Because of weird reasons, records used to be released on Tuesdays. I think the thought was that, I don't know what the thought was. I was going somewhere. They changed it to Fridays several years ago, which is aggravating. But we would be open until midnight on Mondays, and then at 12:01 we could sell, or we'd be open past midnight on Mondays at 12:01 we could sell anything. If you were a really big fan of yodeling music, and there was a yodeling album that you loved that was coming out that Tuesday, you could come in and buy it, it wasn't anything specific, but it was almost always, Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam, Outkast, I remember having the big one.
• [00:21:21] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I remember being there one night, and it was a new Dave Matthews record. We somehow did not get enough quantities, and there were far more people there that midnight than we actually had copies. That was not pretty.
• [00:21:39] ZAC JOHNSON: No. [LAUGHTER] That's true. That was the other thing, we would do our best to say, the last album sold really well here, so let's make sure we get 90 copies or 120 copies. But there would be other things that all of a sudden that day we'd have 30 people come up and say, do you have the new whomever album? It'd be somebody that we never heard of was never brought up to us from the record labels or anything like that.
• [00:22:05] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah.
• [00:22:06] KATRINA SHAFER: You talked a little bit about some of the people that would have the displays or selections. Were there ways that Tower tried to differentiate itself from the other record stores in the area? I mean, obviously they were just large in comparison to some of the independent stores. But were there specialty areas that Tower had?
• [00:22:27] ZAC JOHNSON: One thing that really set Tower apart was that by the time, both of us, well, at least by the time I was there, they were really an international company, they had stores all over Europe, they had stores in Japan, they had stores in the Middle East and South America and everything like that. They had really good access to imports, so back in the days before streaming and Spotify and everything, a lot of times an Oasis album would come out or a U2 album would come out overseas that would have different B sides or a different cover or maybe come with a second bonus disc that was live or something like that. Since Tower had this big reach that would go beyond just what a mom-and-pop shop could get, we would end up being able to get access to a lot of imports. That was one thing. I should put on my Tower corporate hat, but they always said the difference is selection, that was their, their catchphrase for a long time, and I think just the sheer quantity that they could bring in at that level.
• [00:23:31] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Tower was unique simply because we were big, yes and we could afford to have deep catalog, we could afford to have imports, and I think that was really the fun part was, if people were asking for something, I remember a lot of times people would come back after spring break, and you'd always be like, give me that party train, whatever was during spring break, that was a big single, and then all of a sudden we would just get on the phone, real quick with the record company is like, I need 50 of this thing, and it would just happen. We had that, I don't want to say power.
• [00:24:17] ZAC JOHNSON: That connection, and that quick ability. The thing is that, kids, as students coming from U of M and going down to wherever they went and coming back, they might have had, there's a whole whoop, there it is, versus whood there it is, whether you're a 95 South fan, or I can't remember who the other group was.
• [00:24:37] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Loonies. Was it Loonies's?
• [00:24:38] ZAC JOHNSON: No. Loonies was, I got five on it.
• [00:24:40] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Okay, sorry. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:24:41] ZAC JOHNSON: We are two men in our 50s talking about Loonies here at HipHop 98 Hour.
• [00:24:47] DARLA WELSHONS: This is all I've ever wanted.
• [00:24:50] ZAC JOHNSON: Perfect. But we could dial, and then the Macarena was the other one that was really big, de Los Del Rio, Macarena. We had never heard it before. There were like three different versions and there was one version that everybody that went to Fort Lauderdale had to have, and if we tried to pawn off, one of the other ones, they're like, this isn't the right thing.
• [00:25:14] PAUL KAHLENBERG: But aside from the music, we had a fantastic magazine section.
• [00:25:19] DARLA WELSHONS: It was a huge magazine section.
• [00:25:21] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yes.
• [00:25:22] DARLA WELSHONS: I remember you guys had all kinds of obscure.
• [00:25:25] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Crazy stuff.
• [00:25:27] DARLA WELSHONS: Every niche.
• [00:25:28] ZAC JOHNSON: Right. Architecture, and guns, and ammo, and everything.
• [00:25:35] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Everything and anything.
• [00:25:36] ZAC JOHNSON: That's true. Literally, there was a lot of weird stuff that we had.
• [00:25:40] PAUL KAHLENBERG: The one thing our store in Ann Arbor we didn't do was we didn't do video rentals. A lot of tower stores around the country would have video rental stores, but ours did not, and that was okay with me because it was less of a headache.
• [00:25:57] ZAC JOHNSON: Do you have a good video rental return story?
• [00:26:00] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I do. Should I share?
• [00:26:02] DARLA WELSHONS: Yeah.
• [00:26:02] ZAC JOHNSON: I think you do.
• [00:26:03] DARLA WELSHONS: Oh, definitely. Now that you said that.
• [00:26:03] PAUL KAHLENBERG: This is when I was out in LA, actually in Northridge, California, so I worked at the Tower Video Store.
• [00:26:10] DARLA WELSHONS: This is the '90s?
• [00:26:11] PAUL KAHLENBERG: This is probably '90.
• [00:26:15] DARLA WELSHONS: Okay.
• [00:26:15] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Maybe '91.
• [00:26:16] DARLA WELSHONS: Okay. Early '90s, California.
• [00:26:18] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Early '90s, California. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:26:19] ZAC JOHNSON: Picture.
• [00:26:20] PAUL KAHLENBERG: At the time, I was a supervisor at the video store, and I was in charge of overdue rentals and calling the said people who were overdue.
• [00:26:29] DARLA WELSHONS: Oh no.
• [00:26:32] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I call this number repeatedly week after week after week, and slowly, you have to like, hey, we're going to charge your credit card, hey, this is really serious. Now, we're going to get the FBI involved. It just [LAUGHTER] escalated after a while. One night I'm working the night shift or whatnot, and I'm at the counter, and I'm facing the the door, and in walks this guy super tall, sunglasses, scarf on his head. I can't remember if it was red or yellow. I can't remember. It was Hulk Hogan. The person I had been calling was his wife, about a video overdue for his daughters.
• [00:27:22] PAUL KAHLENBERG: He was really nice. He had a stack of video. I'm bringing these back. I don't know what Hulk Hogan sound like, I'm bringing these back. I'm like, okay. He paid for them. He paid for the overdue fees and everything it was very pleasant. Then he got on his motorcycle and drove off.
• [00:27:45] DARLA WELSHONS: Wow.
• [00:27:46] PAUL KAHLENBERG: That was my Hulk Hogan whole story.
• [00:27:47] DARLA WELSHONS: Yeah.
• [00:27:48] ZAC JOHNSON: Everyone's got one.
• [00:27:49] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I'm sure they do.
• [00:27:52] KATRINA SHAFER: You didn't have to chase people down for video rentals because you simply were selling them?
• [00:27:57] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah.
• [00:27:57] KATRINA SHAFER: Although I'm sure you have some returns that.
• [00:28:00] ZAC JOHNSON: We would. There would be people would that would treat it like a video rental, but I think we ultimately end up saying unless it's broken, you can't return an open. But with albums, with CDs, we would, if I remember correctly.
• [00:28:22] PAUL KAHLENBERG: We would exchange it and then rewrap it and sell it.
• [00:28:25] ZAC JOHNSON: Sell it again . It was still good.
• [00:28:27] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Is that wrong? Did I say that out loud?
• [00:28:30] ZAC JOHNSON: I think the statute of limitations is up.
• [00:28:31] PAUL KAHLENBERG: No. Look, we did have a used section. We put them in the used section. If you bought a used copy there.
• [00:28:39] ZAC JOHNSON: Practically new.
• [00:28:42] DARLA WELSHONS: Was there anything really challenging about working at Tower or anything where you just dreaded dealing with it or?
• [00:28:49] ZAC JOHNSON: It was tough to hire quality people, I felt like we would end up going through a lot of because the hard part was that it really paid next to nothing. It was $5 an hour to start.
• [00:29:13] PAUL KAHLENBERG: We went through a lot of people.
• [00:29:14] ZAC JOHNSON: But when we got the people that wanted to be there and were willing, I mean, I think really the hard part was if we got somebody really good and we wanted to keep them, we could offer them a 15 cent raise or something like that. There were a lot of people that really wanted to work at a record store and then they would find out how little you would get paid. Paul and I had a method of if we were doing interviews and either of us could tell really early on that this person just was not going to work out for one reason or the other, we just put our thumb on the table. If either of us saw that the thumb was on the table, we're like, well, we'll let you go. We got a lot of people to get there.
• [00:29:52] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah, I forgot about that.
• [00:29:53] ZAC JOHNSON: But we ended up hiring a ton of great people.
• [00:29:56] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah, I mean, the town, we were lucky. I don't know if luck with the university being in town. We had some great people who were in theater departments and music departments and they just brought that passion with them. That was really cool. That was really nice. I mean, we had a pool of really young people that their hours were flexible. I mean, that's good on one hand, but also it was a struggle for us as managers to keep the schedule full. Also doing inventory was a pain in the butt. But if you've ever done inventory, you know what we mean.
• [00:30:34] ZAC JOHNSON: If you think about the sheer number of items that would be in a record store, the size of tower, books, movies. We did magazine slightly differently, but there would be a couple days, we would end up getting this big wheeled box that would get shipped around the country. Inside it were 100 different, almost like Star Trek scan or well, they're like the scanners that we all use at the checkout at the grocery store now. But back then they were pretty wild. You would end up opening the store 4 hours early, getting everybody in, trying to get coffee and donuts or something. Then beforehand you would go around, you'd number all the racks, and then you'd send somebody out and you say this scanner is for rack 104. They'd go to rack 104 and they'd scan every single barcode underneath and then bring that back and they'd put it into the computer and print out a sheet of what it was supposed to be. Then a second person would go out with those sheets of paper and check whether or not all those things were in there, for every single item in the store, it was obnoxious. Your brain would shut off and couldn't play any music, so it had to be totally silent. Then you'd open the store. It was always pretty weird because 10 o'clock would roll around or whatever and people would come in and they couldn't tell if we were open. There would just be all these drones walking around with these little lasers. Just zapping.
• [00:32:02] DARLA WELSHONS: You had to keep taking inventory while people were taking stuff off the shelves?
• [00:32:06] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Sure. Yes. We never closed.
• [00:32:09] DARLA WELSHONS: That sounds lovely.
• [00:32:11] PAUL KAHLENBERG: You know what? Though we did close, that was a power outage. I remember you and I sitting there for a couple of days. Do you remember that? Or was I imagining this? We sat in the store while we waited for the power to come back.
• [00:32:24] ZAC JOHNSON: Yeah. It wasn't the big.
• [00:32:28] PAUL KAHLENBERG: The big one.
• [00:32:29] ZAC JOHNSON: The big East Coast power, whatever. It was something with the building. What were they doing? Construction or something. Then something happened? That was weird.
• [00:32:39] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know.
• [00:32:40] KATRINA SHAFER: What was the most rewarding part about working there.
• [00:32:47] ZAC JOHNSON: I learned a ton about music just from, we would have to do shifts in the classical and jazz room as a clerk, or if you were a supervisor or something and there weren't enough people, you just have to go do your four hour shift on the register. Talking to the guy who was the classical buyer, who was the jazz buyer, the people that were there, you'd talk to them about what you like. They would say, well you should check these things out. We had big racks behind the counter. They'd be like, okay, well on your shift you should listen to these three records. I found of some of the albums I really loved the most. That way it really educated me.
• [00:33:22] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know. That's tough. I mean, there are so many wonderful things from that time. Obviously long lasting friendships and people getting to know them and the trials and tribulations of the stupid stuff and the great stuff. But also, it's funny, I think back on that now and a lot of interaction was with the community and I say that out loud and I totally go blank on exactly what we did.
• [00:33:53] ZAC JOHNSON: Well, we do stuff at the jazz and blues festival. We would actually bring a whole bunch of all the artists that were playing at the jazz and blues festival. We'd bring their CD's out and we'd have a cash register out there, so wow, Hubert Sumlin or Snooks Eaglin was playing. We'd try to get them to come over to the booth and they'd do signings and stuff like that. We always did stuff at art fair.
• [00:34:15] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Art fair,that was fun. That was always an adventure because if you're live in Ann Arbor, you know one day it's going to rain and storm and we would have probably six or seven huge long tables just full of CDs and stuff. The day that it would rain, it was like all right, running those inside trying to get everything dry. That was always fun. But the Jazz and Blues festival was always fun. I remember one year we were out there, so Tower would be. Where was that? It was at Gallup Park.
• [00:34:51] ZAC JOHNSON: Gallup Park, Highland Park maybe, one of the parks.
• [00:34:54] PAUL KAHLENBERG: It was at a park. There'd be the stage and then Tower, we would have our booth in the middle of the field, I guess, behind the people watching the show. I remember at one point, was it Michael Jewett maybe? Somebody says, and by the way, you can buy this so and so's album at Tower Records at the booths right there. Did we have any copies available? No. What did we see coming running at us? Like 50 people. It's like, my gosh. That was fun though. That was the first good time.
• [00:35:31] DARLA WELSHONS: Is there any music that you personally associate with a time when you think of Tower, when you think of the music that you were listening to over the music you were hearing in the store, or the something that really stands out to you, just that triggers a memory?
• [00:35:49] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Wilco.
• [00:35:50] ZAC JOHNSON: The other first two Wilco records.
• [00:35:55] PAUL KAHLENBERG: That's such an interesting question.
• [00:35:57] ZAC JOHNSON: That is a good question. It was funny because there were certain people that I knew that depending on usually who was running the register got to choose what music would get played and so you knew certain people if their taste was similar to yours, you'd have a much more enjoyable shift than other things. But at the same time, that's where you also hear stuff. But Hello Nasty, the Beastie Boys record, I remember when that came out. Our store artist James Welshons made a really cool, I don't know if you remember the album cover, but it's this Sardine Can with the three Beastie Boys guys in it and he made this massive. I can't remember if it was fully three, I think it was. He did it in such a way that it looked like it was popping out on 3D, but it looked terrific and then hung from the ceiling. But I do remember when that album came out, for that next week, everybody that was on register was like, I haven't heard the new Beastie Boys record, so they'd put it in a go. What else? Michael Predon would always play The Verve and Richard Ashcroft.
• [00:37:02] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yes.
• [00:37:03] DARLA WELSHONS: Is there anyone where you were like oh no, don't let that person on register. I don't want to hear what they have to play.
• [00:37:09] ZAC JOHNSON: There were times that we'd have to tamper it. There was one of the guys, Mario Sismondo, was a supervisor and a terrific guy, and he was really super into the darkest death metal that you could find. The Swedish and Norwegian death metal wasn't hard enough for him, so he was finding Malaysian death metal and Indonesian death metal. There's sometimes where you had to give them a little leash and everybody got to play some things.
• [00:37:40] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I remember that's such a great memory because he would open the store some days. He would be in the counting room, where the cash register drawers are and the safe. He would be in that room with a boombox, just cranking black metal. I would walk into the back room and it's, Mario's working today. It was ridiculous. I don't know how. I hope he still can hear today, but I don't know.
• [00:38:10] KATRINA SHAFER: Do you think part of the choice was to, maybe not welcome customers in the store so that be less to do?
• [00:38:18] ZAC JOHNSON: The opposite of what was it? The High Fidelity. I'll sell three copies of the Beta Bands album and just like I will now drive everyone from the store.
• [00:38:28] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know. It's interesting because I think about that time and I think about the Jump Blues era. I think about there was a rockabilly swing revival. There was also Ricky Martin. Freaking Ricky Martin. Do you remember the?
• [00:38:44] ZAC JOHNSON: Tell me a story.
• [00:38:46] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know if it was, we were watching the Grammys together, but he played on the Grammys one year and it just blew people's minds. The next day at Tower, everyone's like Ricky Martin.
• [00:38:57] DARLA WELSHONS: Is that like the La Vida Loca era?
• [00:38:59] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yes.
• [00:39:01] ZAC JOHNSON: Yes. That was interesting because there would be things like that where you'd see something on the Grammys or something like that or back when MTV played music videos, there'd be a big premiere and it'd be we got to make sure we've got to get that in stock.
• [00:39:17] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Candle In The Wind.
• [00:39:19] ZAC JOHNSON: RIP Princess Diana. Spoiler alert for anybody who didn't know that Princess Diana died.
• [00:39:28] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I remember that was a big deal and the song wasn't quite yet released in the US. We got a bunch of imports.
• [00:39:38] ZAC JOHNSON: We got like 150 import copies of that.
• [00:39:44] PAUL KAHLENBERG: That was a big thing.
• [00:39:46] ZAC JOHNSON: Those big global events were always interesting. Princess Diana, The Macarena.
• [00:39:56] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Loonies.
• [00:39:58] KATRINA SHAFER: You were both there when the store closed.
• [00:40:02] ZAC JOHNSON: Correct
• [00:40:02] KATRINA SHAFER: Can you tell us a little bit about that and what choices you made after it closed and what you then went on to do.
• [00:40:11] ZAC JOHNSON: Aside from the weeping.
• [00:40:12] DARLA WELSHONS: Was it a surprise?
• [00:40:14] ZAC JOHNSON: Do you remember how it happened? I remember the guy, Jeff Hopman, was our realtor and decent guy and did all the, real estate things you need to do in a commercial building. Then one day he was walking through with a group of people, He's like, we could take these walls out and we can put up walls here and if you need these to be individual offices and we're like, what is going on? I remember that we called the corporate office and they were well, we're thinking about some things, we're keeping our options open.
• [00:40:51] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Zac and I were not heavily involved with that decision. I wouldn't say heavily, we were not involved. It happened like you said. It happened, murky out of the blue.
• [00:41:10] ZAC JOHNSON: Different answers from different people and we ended up going to a conference in California and our regional manager was a guy that had just started.
• [00:41:20] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I think he just started. He was promoted.
• [00:41:21] ZAC JOHNSON: Something and we ended up having to sit him down and be like, listen, you just got to tell us what's going on. He's like, yeah, we're closing your store. I'm like oh man.
• [00:41:31] DARLA WELSHONS: Did he give you a reason.
• [00:41:34] ZAC JOHNSON: We only have an hour right. The bottom line was, there were a bunch of different things that were happening. First of all, the Ann Arbor store, if people remember, had that big parking structure attached to it and the parking structure was falling down. They ended up having to knock down the parking structure, which as an Ann Arborite. You could probably attest parking is a real big pain and especially around South U. The parking structure going away and not being rebuilt for a really long time. It took a long time for that thing to get built. Our revenue numbers were going down and then at the same time this was I've told this story a couple of different ways, but my sister was going to U of M at the time and I remember going to her dorm room and she was like, hey look. She opened up her computer and she had access to literally everybody's iTunes library on the entire floor, maybe in the entire dorm, so she could listen to literally anything before it came out or without buying it and things like that. This is the dawn of Kazaa and Limewire and Napster and those things. The file sharing was happening, our store, the traffic was way down. This was a trend that started happening across Tower in general, where in a lot of college towns, those were the first stores to go.
• [00:43:03] PAUL KAHLENBERG: It's funny, it's thinking about Ann Arbor and all the record stores. There were some fantastic record stores and we came in, Tower was big. What the interesting thing is what happened to Tower was that Best Buy also came around and Totally. They just sold CDs and records for far cheaper than we could because it was a loss leader. They just wanted people in the store to buy a fridge.
• [00:43:32] ZAC JOHNSON: You come in to buy the new Stabbing Westward record and then you end up walking out with a refrigerator.
• [00:43:37] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Stabbing Westward you went there.
• [00:43:39] ZAC JOHNSON: That's to think of the West ban, I can think of.
• [00:43:42] KATRINA SHAFER: What did you both end up doing, Tower's closing.
• [00:43:47] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I remember drinking.
• [00:43:50] DARLA WELSHONS: It started with drunk people.
• [00:43:54] ZAC JOHNSON: Came full circle. Paul and I were both lucky enough, at the time the tower was closing, was a time where the All Music Guide, which is a local Ann Arbor publication and website, they were really starting to ramp up. They had just moved from a small house in Big Rapids to Ann Arbor because they thought there would be a better pool of music writers, technology people. They were building up a really interesting business around making music information available at a time when a lot of online record stores or, things Borders.com, CD Now, Barnesandnoble.com, TowerRecords.com ironically, they all needed music information. This company, All Music Guide in Ann Arbor, published books about music. The All Music Guide to Jazz, the All Music Guide to Rock had a website, AllMusic.com, AllMovie.com, AllGame.com and then also licensed all of this music information to places like TowerRecords.com so that when you went to the website, you'd see the album cover image, you see the tracks, you'd be able to listen to it. Paul and I and a bunch of our friends all ended up, maybe 10 or 12 of us, ended up there. Which was really lucky because, the SS Tower was going down at the same time this other music company was coming up and I remember thinking before that I'll just run a record store for the rest of my life, I'll work at a record store. There will always be record stores and that's what I'll do and then Tower closed up. I remember thinking, I don't know what other jobs there are, I'll be a garbage man. That was the only other thing I could think of which would probably be pretty cool, so we both ended up there. I started as a writer, Paul ended up.
• [00:46:00] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I ended up in customer success. We were working with our clients, which I still do today. Not for AMG or All Music Guide, but, it was a funny time. It was everyone that worked at that store at the time, we were all angry.
• [00:46:20] PAUL KAHLENBERG: But the cool thing was, we all came together and shut it down the right way. It wasn't easy. I know a lot of people were freaked out, pissed off. But it was a cool experience, not that the closing of the store was a cool experience, but just the general. Everybody getting together and being like we got to do this, we're going to do. That was cool.
• [00:46:51] ZAC JOHNSON: Sort of the opposite of Empire Records, where everybody got together to save the record store. [LAUGHTER] Everybody got together to close the record store. [LAUGHTER] But Paul's right, I'm sure in much the same way that all the other record stores in town have their core group of people. When they're not working behind the counter, hanging out and, talking about music. We were able to do that. We'd always have parties at each other's houses, and we'd go see each other's bands and all that stuff. We're still friends with those people today.
• [00:47:21] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yes. Now I'm crying?
• [00:47:23] DARLA WELSHONS: Oh. [LAUGHTER] Is there anything that we've missed? Should we cover anything else? Are you feeling like you've skimmed all that you need to skim?
• [00:47:34] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Oh, no, it's funny. I think about when this opportunity came up. I thought, what are we going to talk about? But then in my head, I started putting together a list of all the record stores in town, and the early '90s, the music industry was changing, but also it was pretty cool being here in Ann Arbor and you had, I think on South University we had at least three stores.
• [00:48:07] ZAC JOHNSON: Yeah, there was a tower records warehouse.
• [00:48:09] PAUL KAHLENBERG: And there was what?
• [00:48:11] ZAC JOHNSON: There was another place to play it again. Play again.
• [00:48:14] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah, and then across town on State, we had Discount.
• [00:48:18] ZAC JOHNSON: Wazoo.
• [00:48:18] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Also yeah, Wazoo. Liberty was Schoolkids Encore.
• [00:48:26] ZAC JOHNSON: Can you remember, was it Liberty music then or was it Encore then? I mean, that's one of the things that's kind of crazy is that Encore space that was on Liberty. What used to be Liberty Music, and that was a record store. I'll have to consult my favorite website, old News.com from the AADL. But that was around in the '40s?
• [00:48:46] KATRINA SHAFER: Yeah. It's I think in that space that Encore was in, until they recently moved. It was a music store for at least 50 years.
• [00:48:55] ZAC JOHNSON: Yes, exactly.
• [00:48:56] KATRINA SHAFER: Yeah.
• [00:48:56] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Wow.
• [00:48:56] ZAC JOHNSON: So not necessarily a new thing. Iggy Pop worked at the discount records and you know, all these great connections. The one thing that I think is sort of interesting is how there were talking about Liberty Music, Liberty Records, and all these other places. You know, I grew up in the area, so I remember coming to the first album I ever bought was as I think a kid. I bought a copy of Black Sabbath Paranoid at Wazoo, and I still have the wazoo sticker on there. But there were all these mom-and-pop shops, there wasn't really such a thing, at least not in the area as a corporate record store. Warehouse came in, Tower came in places like Best Buy came in. Discount was a chain. Correct. But Discount didn't seem like a mega-chain in the same way that these other things did. Now slowly, you know, the circuit cities and just within the past month, best buys stopped carrying CDs and vinyl. So it all that is now. I don't know, rechargeable batteries or something like that. But the big mega stores have gone away. Tower went out of business. I think there are maybe two tower stores left, one in Japan and one in Dublin, I think. Dublin independently run anyway, but the mom and pops. I mean some of the exact same mom-and-pop or I should say Indie record stores are still, they're still there. They weathered the storm of the big monoliths, coming in.
• [00:50:30] PAUL KAHLENBERG: It's pretty crazy because I don't know. It was always. I don't know how you felt about it. There was rivalries again between the stores.
• [00:50:39] ZAC JOHNSON: Sure.
• [00:50:39] PAUL KAHLENBERG: But it was never like, you know, it was like, you want to there was no we want to destroy them.
• [00:50:45] ZAC JOHNSON: There was no major levels of arson.
• [00:50:47] PAUL KAHLENBERG: There were no major levels of arson.
• [00:50:49] ZAC JOHNSON: I think there was still shopping at Encore. I was still shopping at Wazoo. Still shopping at Underground Sounds. At the same time that Tower was there? Because different stores filled different niches. If you wanted, you know, your Guns and Ammo magazine and Oasis Import, you could go to Tower, or if you wanted to find local music or stuff or weird indie stuff, you could find it at.
• [00:51:17] PAUL KAHLENBERG: You know what? I just thought it completely unrelated to all the wonderful record stores in Ann Arbor. But we did consignments.
• [00:51:24] ZAC JOHNSON: Yeah true.
• [00:51:25] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know how I would imagine other stores.
• [00:51:28] ZAC JOHNSON: They still do, yeah.
• [00:51:30] PAUL KAHLENBERG: We had a really good consignment section run by Mr. Zac Johnson. As far as I remember.
• [00:51:36] DARLA WELSHONS: Didn't you guys sell Calvin Klein cologne at one point too? I feel like there was something near the register.
• [00:51:43] ZAC JOHNSON: For the record for the record, no, we didn't. I don't think we ever sold it. It was there. Tower got into a weird thing where they needed. Where does this go? I don't know.
• [00:51:56] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know where you're going right now.
• [00:51:58] ZAC JOHNSON: A tower spread itself way too thin. They put too many stores in the borders story as well. Oh, borders was another one that was selling records. But along the same lines as the borders story, they spread themselves really thin, thinking that there was going to be this exponential growth. I think if they had kept a slower pace, it would have been better. Tower at least got to a point where the store needed to sell things at a higher profit margin. That ended up being cheap electronics like I remember selling by Boom Boxes has the exact same logo as Sony, but it said COBY.
• [00:52:41] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah. We sold turn tables for a while.
• [00:52:43] ZAC JOHNSON: For turn tables, we sold CK Cologne. There were some stores that sold clothes.
• [00:52:47] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah, clothes.
• [00:52:48] ZAC JOHNSON: We had just weird collectibles like kiss bobbleheads and stuff like that. It was just like all the stuff that they could get for pretty cheap and then sell for more money. Then people didn't come to Tower Records to buy cologne or incense or you know, or knockoff or electronics.
• [00:53:05] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I don't know unless you did, Darla.
• [00:53:06] DARLA WELSHONS: No, I do remember seeing it there.
• [00:53:08] ZAC JOHNSON: I remember smelling.
• [00:53:09] DARLA WELSHONS: I remember being really strange to see it there and wondering like what's that?
• [00:53:14] ZAC JOHNSON: Some kind of corporate buyer. I know none of our I know Ian Trumbull was not buying Todd Osborne was not putting in an order for CK one.
• [00:53:23] PAUL KAHLENBERG: No, but you touched on something interesting about Tower that you know, not that I ever worked for corporate or whatnot, but I think it really expanded really too fast, too far. They should have, you know. I don't know if there would be anything that could have not stopped the store from closing at that point. But anyway, now I'm babbling.
• [00:53:49] KATRINA SHAFER: Do you both still collect records or CDs?
• [00:53:55] ZAC JOHNSON: Paul does a lot more than I do. Paul has the largest collection of you to merchandise outside.
• [00:54:01] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I think about that.
• [00:54:02] KATRINA SHAFER: Have you been to the Sphere? To see them.
• [00:54:04] PAUL KAHLENBERG: You want to talk about it later?
• [00:54:06] KATRINA SHAFER: Yes.
• [00:54:06] ZAC JOHNSON: That's the next podcast you to talk with Paul Kahlenberg. It was fantastic.
• [00:54:10] KATRINA SHAFER: The band or the Sphere?
• [00:54:13] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Both, of course. Yeah. I still buy records. Just got the new Idles record and a very nice translucent orange vinyl. It's very lovely.
• [00:54:25] ZAC JOHNSON: I buy a lot of vintage records and stuff like that. Just weird stuff that I can find. Old yodeling records and Smithsonian Folk Ways albums and stuff like that, filling in weird corners, it's much more affordable to buy a scratchy old record for $3 than it is to buy $70 Limited edition. Yeah. Taylor Swift.
• [00:54:49] KATRINA SHAFER: Now that you don't have your Tower Discount anymore.
• [00:54:52] ZAC JOHNSON: I know that. Yeah, crassly, that was one of the great things because everybody at the store had just a huge stack of things behind the counter, stuff they wanted to buy. Then Payday would come around and then call a supervisor over and be like, you know, we were always telling people, you have 90 things in this collection, you know, you got to whittle it down. But yeah, that was great.
• [00:55:14] PAUL KAHLENBERG: Yeah, that was fun. But definitely, you know, I think the one thing that I got out of Tower is a broadening of musical knowledge for sure. No doubt at all.
• [00:55:26] ZAC JOHNSON: Definitely.
• [00:55:27] DARLA WELSHONS: Thank you so much for coming.
• [00:55:29] ZAC JOHNSON: It was fun
• [00:55:29] DARLA WELSHONS: Yeah.
• [00:55:30] PAUL KAHLENBERG: I could do this all day talking.
• [00:55:32] DARLA WELSHONS: Yeah, I mean, Ricky Martin, two mentions of yodeling. It's fun. It's good. Good stuff.
• [00:55:40] ZAC JOHNSON: Should we do our freestyle rap outro? Start that. Don't start that, we'll start.
• [00:55:49] DARLA WELSHONS: AADL talks to is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.