Tales From the Dark Side of the Record Store
How Analog Search Technology Nearly Maimed A Generation of Music Clerks
No greater danger lurked in a mall record store during the 1980s than the PhonoLog.
As a fresh-faced Sam Goody staff member in early 1984, store manager Gil instructed me to exercise restraint in reliance on my product knowledge when answering customer questions. “The home office likes to see upsell at work—don’t let your personal opinions or agenda prevent a potential sale!” I wonder if Gil ever saw High Fidelity…
Gil explained that the PhonoLog was like the love child of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the public library, and the Yellow Pages. I know—it’s hard to imagine how we ever lived without The Internet—but back in the day, PhonoLog was the closest we had to a search engine for music. It contained thousands of pages with every known artist, album, and single, cross-referenced by label, format, whether it was in print, and where it could be ordered if we didn’t have it in stock.
It was huge and heavy, over two feet wide when sitting in its custom metal stand of connected three-ring binders, and probably weighed 60+ pounds. While the PhonoLog was supposed to be a helpful resource, flipping back and forth through hundreds of pages was cumbersome, and it sure wasn’t fast. As the paper wasn’t heavy stock, pages were frequently ripped, jammed back in the wrong place, or discarded—every PhonoLog traveled a long road from resource to rubbish. Between the awkwardness of the UX/UI and missing/outdated information, using the PhonoLog was a coin toss—your customer might be delighted. Or, after 20 minutes of the paper chase, they might want to see if they could fit your Sam Goody name badge up your nose before mall security arrived.
Store manager Gil had another news flash for me—as the new guy, I’d be responsible for updating the PhonoLog weekly. I took this in stride, asking aloud some variation of “How hard could that be?” But when I looked past Gil at my new co-workers, I could tell by their faces that while glad this task was no longer their responsibility, I had NO idea how naive my question was.
I preferred working the Sam Goody floor instead of the cash register. Especially when customers would come in to buy an album or single after hearing it on the radio (or seeing an MTV video) but couldn’t remember exactly what. I would have a BLAST with these impromptu games of 20 Questions—group or solo artist? Was the singer a man or a woman? Can you remember what the song was about? What radio station were you listening to, and when? I did my best to be helpful, though occasionally a customer was SO passive it was challenging to keep irritation at bay. For example:
I heard this song on the radio the other day. I don’t know who sings it or what it's called. But I heard it last week or yesterday, and the song had the word “love” somewhere in the chorus. Or maybe it was the verse. Can you tell me what it is and whether you have it? I’m in a big hurry! —Anonymous Sam Goody customer circa 1985 (true story)
I’d counter such inanity by asking them if they could sing or hum what they could remember and summon a co-worker to join me in listening to enhance the customer’s embarrassment whenever possible. But then Gil busted me (in my defense since I knew what she was asking for based on the clues she’d already provided, I had no intention of asking Mayor Serrani’s wife to sing Prince’s “Darling Nikki” out loud. But it was fun to consider…) and reminded me that I should use the PhonoLog. Which I hadn’t been doing, as most customer questions were quickly answered:
Yes, sir, we have Van Morrison in the rock section. M. No, sir, we didn’t misfile Van Halen; it’s supposed to be in the rock section. V. No, sir, nobody is trying to make you look stupid.
No, ma’am, that’s not a typo. Def Leppard isn’t a charity album for handicapped zoo felines. Yes, ma’am, I’m aware that could be very confusing.
No, your copy of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album isn’t defective. “Have a Cigar” is supposed to end that way. Yes, I’ll speak to the manager about putting up a sign.
But when the nice woman planning her daughter’s wedding arrived asking for a collection of appropriate music—a playlist I’d be able to recite from memory by the end of that year but not yet etched into my memory banks—I asked her to join me at the PhonoLog to build a stack of purchases for her daughter’s big day.
It didn’t go well.
It was fine initially—we had plenty of Handel’s Water Music in the classical room. Along with the other incidental music she was looking for. But the problem started when she wanted a sizable list of singles—our stock on non-current chart hits was variable. The first on her list was “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock n Roll.” So, for the first time, I opened the middle section of the PhonoLog to the alphabetical listing by song title. To my surprise and delight, I found the song right away.
I discovered that “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock n Roll” was written by Nick Lowe, so I turned about eleven pounds of paper to the ‘L’ section, where I didn’t find any mention of a single.
My customer insisted she’d heard it on the radio. Would I please check again? I flipped the pounds of paper back to their original position, paid more attention to the cross-reference, and saw that Dave Edmunds popularized the single while Nick Lowe was the writer. I needed both hands to flip several MORE inches of paper to the proper page to see if we had the Dave Edmunds single in stock. But now, a new problem presented itself—the page I needed didn’t seem to exist.
As my customer grew impatient, I was taken off the hook by Gil, who arrived in the nick of time with a couple of K-Tel compilations, including one I’d sell boatloads of in the ensuing years, The Wedding Collection. While it didn’t contain the Dave Edmunds track she wanted, it did check many other boxes for her, and her irritation quickly turned to joy. Gil took her info, insisted we’d have the single for her in a week or so, and took me off the hook. Then he told me to get the stack of outstanding updates and bring our PhonoLog up to speed. Pronto.
It’d only been a week or so since I first saw the pile of envelopes containing the PhonoLog pages, but either many more had arrived, or meiosis was underway—there were a LOT more than before. But regardless of quantity, those manilla envelopes should have come with warning labels.
Each envelope contained between ten and forty pages, with a cover sheet of instructions. “Open your PhonoLog to Pop Artists ‘All’. Remove pages 4, 13-22F, 49-51A, and 65B. Replace them with pages __, __, and __, while removing section VII entirely and swapping it for section XII, pages 394B-467C dated MM-DD-YY.”
The binder rings worked on a spring mechanism similar to a photo album, accounting ledger, or academic notebook. The manufacturers KNEW that frequent use meant they’d have to be more like a bear trap than a Trapper Keeper—when they snapped shut, it sounded like a gunshot. So picture holding a spring-loaded, three-ring binder open with one hand—as you balance the six pounds of paper on the left half of the open binder ring with your forearm—while swapping out the old/replacing with the new pages with your right. All the while ensuring page sequence continuity and data integrity while avoiding grievous bodily harm from the powerful, sharp metal menace to your hands, fingers, and necktie.
The acrobatics are hard to describe. It was like trying to place a bucket of oiled squid one by one into a mesh bag without any tentacles poking out while the squid tried to sting you. Updates were not to be rushed, and with CDs on the horizon, things were poised to get worse. I was happier than ever when I was no longer the new kid. The responsibility of updating the Phonolog passed to a new sucker eager staff member, leaving me wiser and reducing my weekly budget for gauze pads and cuticle scissors.
We’ve all become so accustomed to Google or more powerful AI-enhanced search in the modern era that it’s easy to forget that this tale about the comparatively primitive series of actions required to identify and obtain a song occurred only 40 years ago. That’s not ancient history. For context, if I stepped into my time machine back to Sam Goody, and were asked by a customer who was putting on a theme party for someone celebrating a 40th birthday and wanted music from 1944 as a soundtrack, I’d be thinking about Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and The Andrews Sisters. And I’d probably mentally note (because nerd then, nerd now) that in 1944, IBM had just invented the first calculator. It was 50 feet long, 8 feet high, weighed over 9,000 pounds and required 5 horsepower to run. Which sort of makes my bitching about a 2-foot-wide, 60-poound reference guide a little shallow.
Which, ultimately (I hope) also puts into perspective that many of us are walking around with a device in our pockets that can connect to pretty much all of the music in the world ever created, cross reference its entire history, research its context, and share it with the world. Maybe even adding a little new context or storytelling along the way, which sometimes is the special sauce that can make older music feel new.
I’m all about the warm, analog sound of vinyl. But I also love an appreciate the advances in technology that bring me closer to music in additional ways, and make the discovery, listening, and sharing experiences even more special.
And my fingertips are eternally grateful.
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Jackie McLean Action
Forget solar, wind, or nuclear as alternatives to fossil fuels—Billy Higgins has the energy of a thousand suns, and just hearing his superhuman performance that kickstarts this record means I can skip arm AND leg day. The eleven-minute title track of Jackie McLean’s Action has closed all three activity rings on my Apple Watch, and I haven’t even gotten up from the couch. In fact, the only thing I’ve lifted is my jaw (from the floor) and my coffee mug—now empty because I need another, perhaps two. The need for additional caffeination has as much to do with my love of coffee as my desire to really know this record, as I have yet to have the relationship with it that I’ve got with other McLean Blue Notes from the era. His groundbreaking, piano-less inside/outside joints like Destination...Out! or One Step Beyond have gotten much more of the ink over the years, and while Action is more straightforward, I would call it something other than commercial or mainstream—McLeanstream? The title track dominates, and I’ll need more time with the remaining tunes to form a better-considered opinion. One early take—I really dig Charles Tolliver’s “Plight” in its initial incarnation here, and it’s cool to compare/contrast it with where Tolliver would take it as a leader; first on his late 60s quartet date, The Ringer, then with the GARGANTUAN rendition on his mid-70s Strata-East big band session, ‘Impact.’ Though I’ve had the digital files as part of the Mosaic McLean box for years, I haven’t spent as much time with Action as other records in that set for no particular reason, and I’m looking forward to engaging with this record repeatedly in the coming weeks. That Mosaic box is a gift that keeps giving—Right Now! (Music Matters vinyl), It’s Time!, and Action (both Tone Poets) are superb. I’d imagine Jacknife and Consequence are probably warming up in a Tone Poet bullpen somewhere as well, but in the meantime, Action is proving even more potent than I’d hoped, and my expectations were pretty high. Recommended!
Chris Potter Quartet Eagle’s Point
I was so excited about Chris Potter Quartet’s Eagle’s Point project that I couldn’t pre-order it fast enough. As a longtime fan of each musician and having spent much time recently listening to live Wayne Shorter Quintet and Brad Mehldau recordings, the idea of this supergroup really got my pulse racing. When I got the shipping notification from the UK that the vinyl was en route, I was stoked but tried to keep my expectations in check—I still have PTSD from my high school days and the first Asia album. For those needing a refresher, back in 1982, we prog rock fans lived in a desolate musical wasteland where “musicianship” was a four-letter word. So when news of a “supergroup” featuring the guitarist & keyboardist of Yes, drummer of ELP, and bassist of King Crimson hit the music rags, we were ecstatic—this record was going to be the proggiest prog that ever progged, with immeasurable compositional depth and instrumental verbosity beyond comprehension. But when the first Asia album hit my turntable, my disappointment was beyond comprehension (and remains immeasurably deep), though I did learn a lesson about supergroups. And expectations. Still, that’s no problem here—Potter composed with these guys in mind, and the results are SPECTACULAR. The Wayne Shorter Quartet rhythm section of drummer Brian Blade and bassist John Patitucci, pianist extraordinaire Brad Mehldau, and bandleader/composer Chris Potter make Eagle’s Point even greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a beautiful recording (Potter’s bass clarinet nearly knocked things off the wall earlier), the compositions are solid, and the intricate, propulsive playing—individually and collectively—is top shelf. Mehldau is melodic and economical in his approach, but he commands undivided attention when he takes charge (dig his solo and interplay with Potter in “Other Plans”). Decades of brotherhood are palpable between Patitucci and Blade, but their conversations are inclusive—this isn’t a double duo—it’s a quartet. Potter soars on tenor, soprano, and bass clarinet, delivering solos that rip (“Indigo Ildiko”) and relax (“Aria for Anna”). I will spin it again now—long may this quartet run!
Muriel Grossmann Golden Rule
Stellar and interstellar! Muriel Grossmann’s spiritual jazz wanderlust is inspiring, and she achieves liftoff on Golden Rule in tandem with bolide bass from Gina Schwarz, dilithium drumming via Uros Stamenkovic, and galactic guitar grooves courtesy of Radomir Milojkovic. Radomir deserves a medal for his understated brilliance across every track. His dazzling lines spiral effortlessly into the cosmos, lending a distinctive voice to Muriel’s respectful nods to Pharaoh Sanders, John Coltrane, and Billy Harper. Every album I own from Muriel is a gem, but as Golden Rule was the first I heard, it holds a special place in my heart.
Chris Squire Fish Out of Water
I’ve been on a big Yes bender lately, so I knew before the barrage of social media reminders that today would have been bassist extraordinaire Chris Squire’s 76th lap around the sun. Fish Out Of Water, his 1975 solo record, is the best Yes record that Yes never made. I mean if you want to geek out a bit—an occupational hazard if you’re all-in on Yes—with former Yes drummer Bill Bruford and then-Yes-keyboard wizard Patrick Moraz on board, 3/5 of Yes is 60%. Round up.
Sonny Rollins Way Out West
Recorded in a single, 3AM session on this day, March 7, 1957, the trio of Sonny Rollins (tenor sax), Ray Brown (bass) & Shelly Manne (drums) deliver a TEDTalk on imagination, possibility, and not judging a book by its cover. The photo, titles, and opening percussive clip-clop invoke obvious Western tropes, and in full disclosure, those things caused me to foolishly and erroneously pre-judge and deprioritize this record early in my jazz listening. Once I understood the context, I listened with different ears. This is no novelty record or country-jazz affair. Rollins, inspired by his long-running love of Westerns and his first-hand look at the open, vast plains of the West, channels boundless creativity into his pared-down, piano-less ensemble of sax-bass-drums. More space means more room for ideas to germinate, take root, and grow. While he’d never previously played with bassist Ray Brown or drummer Shelly Manne, there was instant chemistry, and the trio was overflowing with enthusiasm, creativity, and spontaneous brilliance from the get-go. Space wasn’t the final frontier—only another beginning.
Similar experience keeping the law library updated at a small firm I worked at in college. Not nearly as big though, what a beast.
Excellent article. It takes me back to my youth while at the same time reminding me to appreciate today. Thanks!