Music has always been an integral part of my life. It’s probably my parents fault. They were both music majors in college, and after college my dad played trumpet at The White House. Early in my childhood he sold musical instruments to schools.
I’ve always been drawn to all genres of music, I remember my first Columbia House twelve pack included Anthrax & Metallica, Run D.M.C. & Beastie Boys, U2 & Dire Straits.
In grade school I played flute in the jr. high band. In jr. high I played trumpet, and in high school I switched to the drums.
When I got out of high school, I worked as a manager at a bookstore, which I loved, but every chance I got, I put in an application at any store that sold music. I was turned down every time.
Around that time, my best friend and I decided that we should start a record label, called MF Entertainment. We saw a local band of high school students called Gypsi’s Ritual, and thought that they were amazing, and released a 4-track EP (on cassette).
I have no idea why, but we got it in our head that for MF merch, we should get lighters with the label printed on it. Neither of us smoked, but it was a great idea. We might have sold more lighters than cassettes.
My best friend wound up not being involved with the label anymore, but while working at the bookstore, I was constantly going to local shows (usually in Elmhurst), and befriending several bands.
For my 21st birthday, I bought myself a camcorder, and started filming most of the shows I went to.
Where I grew up (Lake County), there wasn’t nearly as many shows as in the city, or down in Elmhurst, but there was a band from Zion that has just released an album on a MAJOR LABEL. I picked it up at the same time that I bought my camcorder and thought that it was amazing.
On May 26, 1995, I went to a local club where Local H was playing, and asked them if they minded if I filmed them. They said sure. I hit record, and as the show started, I wandered down to the front of the stage. I haven’t seen this footage in 15 years, but I remember loving how raw it was.
Later, they came to my apartment, and I pitched them the idea of selling the tape. While The Grateful Dead, Phish, and others had a long history of allowing taping and encouraging trading, Pearl Jam had recently been flirting with the idea of releasing a lot of shows. I told them I had this idea of filming a lot of shows, and selling them for $5. They were in, and I started copying the tapes and printing the sleeves and stickers. MF Video was born.
I ended up filming Local H well over 20 times, and hanging out with them around gigs a bunch.
A few months earlier, I had signed on to co-release a full-length album by Herbal Flesh Tea, and I started filming a LOT of their shows. I ended up releasing a video of theirs, as well as co-releasing their full-length album The Whole Nine Yards. One of the tracks on the album was even taken from my one of my live videos.
I also put out videos of foo, whose album Fix Your Snack was a favorite, and Gila Bend.
I had some more videos in the works. I remember meeting with 30secondsdeep, and even talking to the Blue Meanies about it (I did work camera at a multi-camera Metro gig that they released), but something happened that changed everything.
Since my numerous attempts to get hired at area record stores didn’t pan out, I had put my effort into the label instead, but by 1996, I had been regularly selling tapes and videos to a local independent store called Dog Ear, and gotten friendly with the manager, named Jack Thomas. In August 1996, he offered me a job as a regular employee. I didn’t want to quit my stable job at the bookstore, so I started doing both, working a solid 65-70 hours a week.
Jack’s plan was to quit Dog Ear and hit the road for California. I’m sure he had dreams about making it as a musician, but they didn’t seem like big plans, I think just being there was good enough for him.
So, on January 1st, 1997, I took over as manager of Dog Ear Music & Movies, bought Jack’s car, and took over his lease on the top half of a house, 3 doors from Dog Ear. I could actually look out my back window and see straight into the front window of the store.
I kept working as a manager of both stores for a while. The bookstore went through some management changes, and I hated the new manager. The record store job came with perks, and when the bookstore manager scheduled me the night I had VIP tickets to see Morphine after I asked for the night off, I strolled right in and quit.
I’d always been the type to explore as much new music as possible, and in 96 when I started working there I already had well over 1,000 cds. Now, however, all the labels were sending me promo copies of everything, and from 1997 – 2017, I listened to well over 1,000 new albums released that year, every year.
My time at Dog Ear was everything I had dreamed about 10 years earlier. I cultivated a larger following with special events, started doing midnight sales. I even started a print newsletter each week. I started making yearly mix cds with songs from my favorite albums that I would loan out to people with their video rentals. I would hand-sell stuff by the dozens. In 2003, when a deluxe version of Bloomfield/Kooper/Stills – Super Session came out, I played The Black Keys – Thickfreakness for each boomer that bought it, and almost every one bought it.
I could probably talk for days about Dog Ear, and might add more stories to the site later. I bought the store in 2002, but by 2008, the changes in the industry were just too much, and I had to close it. You can see some of the old website on The Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20151101000000*/dogear.biz
Some time since then I thought about what I really loved about Dog Ear, and I decided it was the aspect of absorbing so much art, and being able to highlight what I valued most, and exposing people to it. Unfortunately with computer algorithms, and media consolidation, this just wasn’t something anyone valued anymore. I started a website (entertain-me), to try to continue that mission, but it never really took off, and I let the domain lapse. You can still see some of it on The Wayback Machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20160313141732/http://entertain-me.net/
When I realized I had over one million songs, I started a project (amillionsongs.com) to start listening to them alphabetically, and build a site around the songs I like. Unfortunately I got hacked, and just haven’t gotten around to fixing the restored version. It’s ugly but functional at http://www.amillionsongs.com/selected-songs-text-version/
I still make some mixes, and put them on Mixcloud. I’m currently working on my Singles Project. I’ve been thinking about trying to get some older mixes organized and uploaded.