Lost Ones by Lauryn Hill

A lifelong dream I didn’t know I had came true:  I opened my own record store with two friends.

We almost didn’t pull it off, amidst serious family drama, a ticking clock and intense competition. But we did it. And it was proof that sometimes you have to take a risk when it’s staring you in the face, daring you to take a chance. 

“It’s funny how money change a situation”  …

I will never not think of standing behind the register of Hoodlums New & Used Music in August 1998 when I hear the opening lyrics of the Lauryn Hill jam, “Lost Ones” from her classic debut, “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill”. That line fit our situation, even if the rest of the lyrics to the song do not. My friends Steve and Kristian and I had worked together in record store (or CD store) situations since 1992. Steve was transferred in as manager of a Wherehouse Entertainment store in Tempe, AZ where Kristian and I were working as clerks and we all became good friends, bonding over music and turning each other on to everything under the sun.  I was going to school at nearby Arizona State University but happy to work as many late shifts as possible (until 1AM since we closed at midnight), just so I could work on the music side of the busy music & video rental store.  

CDs were still in their first few years in the early 90s, as CD players became the standard and people upgraded their vinyl and cassette collections for the better sounding discs, first in long cardboard boxes and then in jewelcases. I memorized catalog numbers and rearranged displays in the store for fun, and I found joy in using the pile of previously worthless music trivia knowledge knocking in around in my brain to help customers find songs on CDs and cassette tapes, and happily listened to whatever I wanted over the in-store play system.

Grunge, country, gangsta rap and radio rock ruled the day, with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, NWA and the Cranberries among the artists whose CDs were moving tonnage.

Also, Yanni.

I graduated ASU and only wanted to work in the music business, but being in Phoenix, I had no idea what that even meant. There were a couple of Universal Music marketing people based in town, but I didn’t know them. Steve helped me get a job with the Wherehouse district office, they basically invented a job for me, where I would drive around to the stores all around the city and help them put out their CDs or do other tasks. I was totally oblivious to the dead-end nature of it, but I loved it.

After a year of that, I got a call from a guy named Brad Singer, who owned the Zia Record Exchange chain in town and he hired me away from Steve and Wherehouse to be the Zia major label buyer. I had never been a buyer, but I spent all my money on music.  Suddenly, I was interacting with major labels, getting all the free CDs I could handle. After about three months, Brad decided he needed a General Manager for his stores, and I knew just the guy.

Steve and I were in heaven!  Free music and concert tickets were everywhere, we went to shows 4-5 nights a week, no matter who it was. We met new bands and legends alike. Van Halen, Aerosmith, Stevie Wonder, a very young Alanis Morissette and many more. I was making up stuff as I went, setting up promotions and radio station events – no idea what I was doing, just going with it. Revenues were up every month, the employees were happy and business was really good with Steve running the ship. Kristian had joined us by this time too so we were all Zia guys.  Everything was cool for about three years.

In May 1998, Brad Singer passed away rather suddenly, leaving an 8-store music empire and a couple of hundred employees without a leader. He was a rabid music fan with passion for independent labels and artists, but his estate planning was not together. There was no plan for a transition following his passing.

Brad’s brother saw an opportunity, so he entered the fray, hoping to cash in. He had no experience running a business like this and no allegiance to any of us. Among his first acts was to close – rather suddenly – the Zia location located in the student union at nearby Arizona State University.  The small location had only been open a few months, but was losing money, had a manager with personal issues and could only be open during daylight hours. The Arizona State people were not amused and claimed it was a violation of their agreement, but the brother didn’t care. Over a couple of days, all the inventory was removed and the space was locked and empty.

In July, Steve’s wife was in the hospital giving birth to their first child – and the brother decided to make a second move out of greed:  he chose this moment to phone Steve and relieve him of his duties as General Manager, effective immediately. 

During my time as a student at ASU, I spent most of it working in the student union as part of their activities board.  I knew the building management pretty well and they liked Steve and me. Once they got wind of what happened to Steve, and needing to fill their empty CD store space, they asked Steve if he wanted to take a shot at opening a store of his own. Steve asked me if I would join him. Neither one of us had any idea how we were going to get the money to do this, and we still had to be chosen from among other bidders for the space, and I had to somehow figure this out while still working at Zia. And if that weren’t enough, Steve was now unemployed with a newborn at home. He had to take a chance on this. But after what the brother did, I couldn’t stay. I knew I had to join him.

We quickly drew up a business plan with each of us putting in the same amount of money to start. We had no other option but to hit up our respective stepfathers for loans to buy equipment and inventory, and thankfully they obliged. Almost as painful was the agreed-upon surrender of more than 1,500 CDs each from our personal collections to be Used CD inventory. Knowing we couldn’t do this just on our own, we asked Kristian to join us – as he was ready to leave Zia too. He became our third partner and we had our plan. We just needed ASU to pick our proposal over the much-more established competitors in town, who were all also bidding for the space.  And it was August 14. We had no jobs or insurance. School would be starting on Monday, August 24, and if they chose us, we knew it was critical to have our store ready very quickly for all the kids returning to school, ready to spend their money in the student union.

On the night of Monday, August 17, Steve was in Las Vegas interviewing for a job with Virgin Megastore.  My girlfriend and I were getting ready to leave for an Elton John concert when the call came that we’d won the bid. I called Steve’s wife and Kristian and we were thrilled…and we all knew the next six days would be insanity!

The next six days were an intense whirlwind of 16-hour days. The store was in the Student Union’s basement.  It was a weird trapezoidal shape, only one room with an open ceiling to the building’s main floor above and about 420 square feet. Without the benefit of cell phones or decent internet, we had to find a front counter, an inventory management system, a security system, a safe, set up a phone line, a bank account, credit card machine, get basic office supplies and, oh yeah, stock the store with a few thousand new and used CDs. Thankfully, the one thing Zia hadn’t removed was their custom-made vertical shelving, which had the CDs stacked up on each other, so customers shopped by looking at the CD spines. Once Zia knew we were moving in, they came over quickly to retrieve their shelving…but not before we measured it and built our own replicas!

Then there was…a name.  Steve was from North Dakota, and had his own language and colloquialisms. If you knew him, you understood.  A “hoodlum” was a term of endearment he used for all his favorite employees and friends. With no time to think about it, and Stepdad’s Records coming in a distant second place, Hoodlums New & Used Music was born.  Signs and business cards were created, ads were placed in the ASU newspaper, flyers circulated. Why we chose yellow and black, I don’t remember, but Kristian was a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan, so that could be it.

While Steve, Kristian and others built the shelving and bought supplies, I sat in the space on the floor for several days getting ridiculously high off the plastic fumes from shrink-wrapping thousands of CDs. This was not a pleasant feeling. People came by to watch me as I spent hour after hour building our stock and watching the room spin. On Sunday night, August 23, everything was finally in place and the shelves were ready. We had scanned all our inventory and all we had to do was stock the shelves and get ready for the next day.  My future in-laws came down with my girlfriend’s sister, buckets of chicken in tow, and we all had dinner and finished the job. I remember the mix of exhaustion and exhilaration, and going to bed wondering how the first day of school would go.

Hoodlums opened for business at 8:00am on Monday, August 24 and kids were excited – we were the buzz all around campus. Because they visited the student union every day for meals or studying or both, they could find new (or used) music anytime they wanted. This was pre-Napster, pre-CD burning and pre-streaming.  We had a captive daily crowd from Day 1, and a healthy clientele from the staff and faculty too, thanks to Steve’s idea of giving them an everyday discount. We also accepted Sun Dollars, the secure debit card loaded up by Mom and Dad and meant for meal plans and school supplies, but that Junior was using to buy the new Outkast CD instead. We learned to love the time around final exams…graduating kids needed to use up those Sun Dollars or lose ’em!

On Day 2, August 25, 1998, “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill” was released. It was an instant smash. We couldn’t keep copies on our shelves. We played it all day in the store, and I drove to every Costco and Target within miles and bought every copy I could because our suppliers couldn’t get it to us fast enough. “Lost Ones”, “Doo Wop (That Thing)” and “Ex Factor” – just a few tracks from an album that requires so many superlatives to even discuss. It won five Grammys and Album Of The Year, and rightly so.

The captive audience loved us – and we promised to have any special order there tomorrow, at $1.00 off (another Steve idea), which just…kept ‘em coming back. Where Zia had failed, we made friends with everyone and carefully tailored our inventory to college kids, focusing on emerging trends like techno, swing and we rode the massive growth of late 90’s hip-hop. We introduced the kids to jazz and funk and the essential albums everyone should own. We built of a series of regulars among staff and faculty too. We welcomed national artists for performances and established a reputation of being able to sell huge quantities of new releases on release days, even beating numbers from some big Tower Records stores.

The store was a big success and we loved being part of the university community. We enjoyed the flexible schedule, closing by 7pm and having Sundays off. I loved running the marketing and label relations stuff and continuing to make stuff up as I went. It supported the three of us as we were in our late 20’s/early 30’s, but after a couple of years, I knew it was time to move on and I made the difficult decision to leave my friends and my business in 2000. They were bummed, but it allowed them to hire more people and to later expand into a larger space. In 2008, after a fire in the student union, they moved to a location off campus next to a used bookstore and kept Hoodlums going until 2012, after which they closed for good, moving to doing mainly online sales. Steve, a family man, was able to be with his wife and his three younger kids as they grew up, coaching sports and being a dad and a husband.  He also used to say that not wearing a red vest as a uniform like we had to at Wherehouse was worth $10,000 a year.

By the way, Zia recovered, changed ownership and stayed independent. They’ve enjoyed an amazing run, just recently celebrating their 40-year anniversary in business. It’s one of the best music chains in the US, and I’m proud to have worked there even for a few years. I always visit at least one store when I’m in Phoenix.

Kristian eventually moved to Colorado, briefly opened a record store of his own and is now happily in another business.

Steve passed away suddenly in December 2014. He was one of my favorite people on earth and was a mentor, a big brother and a loyal friend. I miss him tremendously, he left an impression on everyone he met. I can’t count the number of songs that bring up memories of him – I will write about some of them later on.

But for now, it’s “Lost Ones” – us standing in a store full of college kids holding fistfuls of CDs, thinking about our journey to ending up there. I know the actual song lyric means something else, but that wasn’t what I was thinking about at the time. Yeah, money changed our situation, but it was good friends and good music that motivated us. Sometimes when an opportunity presents itself, you can’t overthink it, you have to take a shot.