Hi All,
There is a thread going about how impersonal and off-putting it can be to visit a music store these days. It made me think of a music store I frequented as I was growing up in New York city. It was called Bath Music, on Bath Ave. in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Bath Music was literally a 'mom & pop' music store. Phil and Mary the owners of Bath music were known as, mom & pop. Once you got to know Mary, she would actually be offended if you didn't call her momma. Mary had a small kitchen and dining table in the back of the store. If it was lunch, or dinner time, the smells of home cooked Italian food was streaming out of the back of the store, and if you were lucky enough to be one of Phil & Mary's 'kids' (the steady customers that grew up in that store were their 'kids,') you'd get invited to break bread with them. In the winter there was always a pot of hot coffee going and you could relax, warm up with some of Mary's coffee and shoot the sh*t with Phil about the new equipment that came in during the week. He knew us all personally and well. When you walked in, if you were a Gretsch, or a Slingerland guy he'd already have something waiting, set-aside -just for you- because he knew you'd want first crack at it. That's the kind of music store I grew up in. A place where they knew my name, and what kind of stuff I was into without having to ask.
When I opened my own 'mom & pop' style music store in 89' it was Phil & Mary that helped me to get started. Phil had been a Gibson dealer since the 40's and he let me piggy-back guitar orders for my store onto his. He wouldn't ever take a dime from me for doing it either. I was getting stuff at his wholesale prices! I offered more than a hundred times to kick something back to him and he wouldn't hear of it. "I made my money off of you the last 25 years!" he'd tell me and then he'd laugh out loud. The day I closed my business, six years later, I looked out of my storefront window on the day of the public auction and I saw Phil standing on the sidewalk out front crying.They're long gone now and so is that kind of music store experience, I'm afraid. I'm sure there are still one, or two old-school music stores around, but they are a thing of the past for the most part. A shame too, it's another piece of americana, our culture, that is gone except for memory.
John
