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AUSTIN HISTORY CENTER Oral History Transcript

Interviewee: Mulholland, Dave Interviewer: Schooley, John Date of Interview: 11/07/2009 Length of Interview: 01:19:47 Interview Number: 3103 Subject Headings: Music Trade, Record Stores M9385(75); SXSW F1000 (1); Music - Bands, Orchestras, Choirs, etc. M9300; Radio R0300 Key Names: Mulholland, Dave; Tower Records; Waterloo Records; Sound Exchange Records; South by Southwest; Abstract: Dave Mulholland was the last manager of the Tower Records franchise in Austin, Texas, a national music retail chain that declared bankruptcy in 2006. Mulholland describes how he came to live in Austin, his impressions of the Austin record store and music scenes, and the effect decline of the music business on Tower. John Schooley: It is November 7th, 2009. My name is John Schooley, I am recording this interview for the Austin History Center. I am here with Dave Mulholland. First of all, can you please say and spell your name for us? Mulholland: Dave Mulholland, M-u-l-h-o-l-l-a-n-d. Schooley: All right, thanks. Okay, we are here to talk about your tenure at Tower Records, Tower Records closing, and record stores in general in Austin. First, why don’t you tell me about how you came to Austin? I know you worked at Tower in Seattle before you moved here… Mulholland: Yes. Schooley: So, just give us a general idea of how you got involved in working at record stores, and how you ended up in Austin. Mulholland: Well, my start in record stores goes way before Seattle, actually. I’ve been a record store geek since I was about age eight. Whenever I was old enough and I was out with my parents, if they let me wander off by myself, I’d end up in the record departments of stores, or if I was somewhere there was a record store, I’d end up there. I used to hang out in a record store in Fairfax, Virginia, called Penguin Feather. It was also a head shop, too. Schooley: Penguin Feather? Mulholland: Yeah. Don’t let the name fool you, they had some great stuff. But, this was late ‘70’s, early ‘80’s, though. Anyway, I hung out in there all the time, and I wanted to get a job there really bad. But, because they sold smoke paraphernalia, you had to be 18 or over. So they came up with this idea that I could mow their lawn for them, and they could pay me in records

Dave Mulholland, Tower Records 7, November, 2009 - of 21 Austin History Center

[laughter]. So I used to do that. It was an old gas station, and their lawn was probably smaller than this room… you know, two foot strips that were about eight foot long. That’s how I started there. Ended up working there years later, and in a couple other records stores in Virginia. I started at Tower because, after I had moved to Seattle to pursue my degree - in advertising. You know, to get a great advertising job. That didn’t happen. Spent all my money, and I had forty dollars. In my neighborhood was a Tower Records, which, I had been a fan of Tower since they opened the D.C. store in the area where I grew up, in the mid-80’s. So I figured I’d start working there, until I could get back on my feet and look for another job. Immediately, when I got there, I loved it. I got promoted really quickly to buyer, just because I was really obsessive about everything, and really into everything. The people that were there were just sort of coasting, and it blew my mind that in such a big music town they didn’t have more extensive sections with different types of music. They made me a buyer, so a lot of these types of music I was just getting into, or I wasn’t even into at all. I had a lot of interest in roots music, but I didn’t have a whole lot of it in my collection. I started getting into old black gospel, and Cajun music, and things like that through this. Every day was a learning experience. So, it didn’t matter so much that I was making just a little above minimum wage. The fact that I was learning something every day about something I loved was really much more rewarding. So… that turns into ten years. Schooley: How old were you when you started at Tower? Mulholland: I was 23. Ten years goes by, and I’m still growing there, I felt that, personally, I had done a great job in the sections that I represented, to where people would call me from around the country looking for things, and we would send them out stuff. But I was kind of getting topped out in the hourly wage thing, and they had wanted me to go into management. I had been coming to Austin about every six months for vacation. This was, when I was leaving Richmond, it was either Austin or Seattle, and I kind of wanted to get out of the hot weather for awhile so I chose Seattle, mistakenly [laughs]. But they wanted me to go into management, and I told them that the only way I would was if I could work in Austin. I had been trying to get a job here, outside of Tower, for a few years before that. Like, Texas Music Group, they had sort of been courting me for a while to come down here and work, but they wouldn’t commit to anything, and they ended up taking someone else who lived here. It made more sense, but they kind of dragged that out over the course of two years. But, I’m like, if I get down here, I’ll have a free trip down, and I can do whatever once I get down here. So within three weeks of telling them that I’d only do it in Austin, I was down here living, and setting that up. It was cool, it was great to be here. It was a challenge, because, coming from the Seattle store, which was number five in the chain, down to Austin, which was, somewhere around eighty-five, I think. Schooley: Wow. In terms of sales? Mulholland: Yeah, sales and volume and all of that. It was a little bit different, and the store had been run… quite a bit more lax than what I was used to. Coming in from a bit more of a productive place, to something where people are a little bit more laid back, it was a challenge. To come in and be like, “Okay, we’re going to do this now.” I was met with quite a bit of resentment from some of the staff there, but it was one of those things like anywhere. You come into a place,


and you’re either on board or you’re not. So people were leaving if they couldn’t take it, or, you know, new people were coming in. But, when you start demonstrating what you’re trying to do here, it started picking up. I think what had really been missed at that store was I don’t think that they were really trying to become part of the music community. I mean, yes, they were a record store, and yes, practically everyone who worked there was in bands or whatever. But it was sort of like, they weren’t really going out there to try to pull in local bands to consign their stuff. If they brought them by, of course they’d take it, but it wasn’t like, man, this band is great, we have to get their stuff in the store. And I wanted to do that. Just kind of wanted to be more a part of what was going on in Austin. Because, as you know, from your experience in this record community, that Tower was kind of looked at as a bit of an outsider. Schooley: Especially because Sound Exchange was right down the street, and that was a big local face of, at least, the punk rock scene. Mulholland: Well, sure, and I understand that to some extent, but being a huge record store guy, it isn’t like if we were a grocery store, a big supermarket, and we moved two blocks down from a little mom and pop store. We’re not trying to put anyone out of business. If anything, it’s one more record store to go and check things out at. There’s going to be something at each one of those stores that the other one isn’t going to have, so it’s just more for people to go look at. Make a day of record shopping. I mean, back then, hell, you could get on the bus, you could hit Sound Exchange, you could hit Tower, hit 33 Degrees. It would give you more reasons to go hit The Drag, which over the years became less and less of a thing. But there was this resentment, because it was an outside company, and Waterloo had roots here, and they did everything. It was one of those things; we were never trying to take anything from anybody. But, my whole take on it was, when I got here, people said, Well, people go to Waterloo for that sort of thing. Or, that’s Waterloo’s sort of gig. I was like, let’s make a reason for people to come here. We’re not taking anything from anybody, but just give them a reason to come. And it started to pay off. But during this time, you know, this was post 9/11… Schooley: What year did you move to Austin? Mulholland: I moved to Austin, like, January of 2002. So, post-9/11, and this was also the dawn of the iPod, and all that kind of stuff, and also the rising of things like Napster, and things like that, which really was where you started seeing the problems. Also, if I can backtrack for a sec, this was also not long after big box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City and all those people started carrying CDs as loss leaders. You know, to bring you in, and sell these things below cost so you buy a refrigerator or whatever. Well, this was killing us, and other record stores, because they’re selling things below cost. They’re selling, I don’t know, a Rolling Stones record, brand new, a Rolling Stones record for 8.99, and we’re selling it for regular price, like 17 bucks or something like that. People are like, well, why are they selling it for that price? Obviously, you’re ripping us off. It sort of, it devalued CDs in the public’s eyes, and it made us look bad. So a group of stores, I don’t remember who it was besides us, filed this lawsuit against these companies, and they were like, look - and it was a lot of the record labels, too - they were like, look, you can’t be selling CDs at that price, if we’re selling them at this price. You can’t be


doing advertising with them to sell that, and then do advertising with us to sell it at twice the price. It was this big lawsuit, and the record labels, and Tower Records lost. Because it was a price fixing thing. Schooley: It was MAP, Minimum Advertised Pricing? Mulholland: Yeah. It was one of those things where it all seemed to make sense, but they were pretty much fully protected under the law to do that. Really, what it came around to them saying, okay, we’re not going to do co-op advertising with you to sell these. Schooley: So then you just ended up losing advertising money? Mulholland: We didn’t, they did. We were doing okay. But it’s just when you have these two very different entities, in very close proximity, in the same city, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to the consumer. Who, unless you are one of those record store people, you’re tried and true, and buying records is more of a principle to you rather than just going out and getting something. You’re going to… well, why would I buy that for that price, if I can go get it for 8.99? Schooley: And all those factors are coming together. You’ve got the fact that there wasn’t that much parking at that location, your audience is college kids, and with Napster and everything, they’re all downloading stuff more… Mulholland: Yeah. Also, as far as being college kids, they’re gone during Christmas, and they’re gone during the summer. Christmas, as you know, is when you recoup all your losses from the year. And when your core customer base is gone, you’re kind of out of luck, there. It was really frustrating. We kind of got a lot of flak for the whole price thing. Really, we weren’t priced any higher than Waterloo. There would be some things, it would be a little more expensive, and there would be other things, it would be cheaper. I just depends on, the deal you get them on, whatever. I don’t know how Waterloo does their markups or anything, but we did a thing where we’re like, okay, we’re going to take anything that’s regularly priced 15.99 to 18.99, and drop it down to 15.99. We thought, this is gonna solve that problem. But it didn’t. Because, then suddenly when you put things on sale, the sale prices aren’t going to be as good. Then they’re like, if this is 15.99, why are you only selling it for 13.99 on sale? But, we’re selling it for five dollars less than we normally would, which means our markup is nothing. So, we were kind of caught in this spiral, unfortunately. This wasn’t done at every Tower store, this was an experiment for Austin, because they wanted Austin to be a little bit more… not such a cookie-cutter store. They were trying different things, and I think they were about five years too late on that. Schooley: Yeah. Mulholland: They should have done this when the record industry was booming, and they could take chances and do things like that. And also, the company was going through a lot of problems.


During the 90’s, when the record business was just through the roof, they had expanded all through the country, to places that really didn’t need a Tower Records. They started expanding into international franchises. We had two stores in Israel [laughter]. Go figure. South America, all through Asia, from Japan to Korea. Those things, they were too expensive, and with the franchise, I just think it didn’t quite carry over in the same way, and they took a huge loss on this. That’s where a lot of their money went. So during this time, they got into pretty bad financial straits. They filed a Chapter 11, and it was more of a financial restructuring. They were like, oh, we’re not going to close the store or anything. [laughter] And then about three weeks later, they called - I think it was the Monday of the week of South by Southwest. They called to tell me that they were going to be closing the store. Schooley: Bringing up South by Southwest, that’s one thing I wanted to talk about a little bit. Had you been down to Austin for SXSW before you moved here? Mulholland: I hadn’t, but I followed it pretty extensively through reading, and also knowing lots of people who came down here either to play, work it, or just go for fun. It was just something that I wasn’t able to do financially, but I had been following what had been going on in the Austin music scene for quite a long time. I knew the record stores here, I knew the music, and I knew what was going on. It was one of those things that, when I got here, I pretty much had a good idea of what it was all about. Schooley: I know one group recorded a live EP at Tower [during SXSW]. Mulholland: Um-hmm, The Thrills. That was the final year, too. In my opinion, from looking at the other lineups that had played over the years, and the ones that I’d been to, I think the last one we did was by far the best one. But yeah, they recorded a live album there. I’m sure it took awhile to get this all together, but it was to be sold exclusively at Tower, and they’re recording it there the week we find out that we’re closing. So, if you go to your local used retailer, you can usually find a copy. They may sell it somewhere now, I don’t know. If not, I’m sure it’s sitting in boxes at the EMD warehouses across the country. Schooley: The way I looked at it with Tower and Waterloo, they were the two kind of stores that tried to carry everything, and kind of be all things to all people in Austin. Mulholland: Uh-huh. Schooley: And then you had your smaller shops like Sound Exchange and 33 Degrees, and - was Stashus Mule still around when you moved here? Mulholland: No. Schooley: Yeah, that placed closed in the late-90’s, maybe. Mulholland: They were gone. I’m trying to think of who else… There was of course Antone’s. Schooley: Well, yeah.


Mulholland: And I think Jupiter was still open. I think five closed the year Tower closed. There was one over on the east side that dealt mostly with hip-hop… Turntable? Was that what that was called? Schooley: Musicmania? Mulholland: No, that was a different one. I want to say it was over on Oltorf or something like that. That one wasn’t around for long, I don’t think. Schooley: Yeah, I remember 2004 as being the year that all the record stores closed. 33 Degrees, Sound Exchange, and Tower, were the three big ones that all closed. Mulholland: Yeah, and then this other place, I want to say it was called Turntable, but I could be wrong, and there was one other one. It’s just mind-blowing. Aside from the fact that I was losing a job that I pretty much anticipated having for the rest of my life, and willingly wanted to, the fact that Austin, Texas, you know, a music town, has no record stores except for one or two. It just blew me away, that this could happen. For someone who supports record stores, to think, how could this happen? There’s just no way that you could lose this many record stores in town like this. When you could go to another town that, sure, they’ve got their fair share of live music and bands and stuff, but - ten record stores? Something like that. I couldn’t believe it. Schooley: Well, what were some of your impressions of the stores in town? How did you think Tower fit in with those stores? Mulholland: Including Waterloo? Schooley: Sure, yeah. Mulholland: Well, this is one of those things that I’ve loved about record stores, is that every one is completely different. If they were all exactly the same, you wouldn’t want to go to all of them. I mean, on my days off, and this was when I didn’t have a car, I’d be bussing it around going to all the record stores. Hitting ‘em up. I thought they were great. Sound Exchange was just an amazing store. It was one of those things where, it just had a great stock. It wasn’t a huge store, but what they had was good. You could tell that the people that worked there, and the people that ran it were really into it. Their prices were fair, and it was just a cool place. It had that record store feel, that some might see it as… you know how record store people are perceived as being hip? Schooley: Yeah. Mulholland: But they’re into music, they’re doing their thing, whatever, and I loved it. I thought that all of them really served their niche really well. 33 Degrees was cool, that wasn’t really my sort of record store, but they did have things to go look at, I used to buy stuff there. Waterloo was a good store; I think if you’re looking for local music, things like that, I think it was really great. My biggest beef with Waterloo, as a consumer, is that it’s A to Z. I’m one of those people that, if you’ve got four thousand CDs, and however many thousands of records in your house, it isn’t like you have a weekly - well, let’s see, I want to go pick up a Jimmy Buffet record or whatever. You kind of want to know about what you don’t know about, and I don’t


have time to think through A to Z. Like if I just want to go look at blues, you can’t really do that there. Schooley: That was one of the things that I thought was interesting about that store, because I had the same annoyance with it, and I would go to Tower when I wanted to see if, oh, does Yazoo have a new compilation out, or something. Because you would have to know exactly what you were looking for when you were going to Waterloo. But that was also kind of their gimmick, and they had a lot of fans, people who liked that. For me, I found it kind of annoying. Mulholland: Yeah, and I understand the justification of it, and that’s one of those things that record people argue about all the time. Because there are a lot of things that defy categories, and people would come into our store and be like, oh, I can’t believe you’ve got this here, and why do you not have Stevie Ray Vaughan in the blues section? You go through this whole argument with people or whatever. Or, not an argument, just a discussion. It’s one of those things. But being someone who likes genres of music, you want to beef up those genres, so someone who walks into it being a fan of this type of music, or say they are like, I’ve been looking for a cool blues CD. You walk up, and you’ve got great things up here, you’ve got cool things to listen to, and all this stuff jumping out at you. If you are like, I’ve heard John Lee Hooker before, or whatever, you can look and see things and you could listen to things and be like here’s an introduction to the blues. There would be something for you to check out. As opposed to where if you went into Waterloo, I think you would probably have to ask for a recommendation, because I don’t think - Schooley: Or at least ask what has come out recently, or something that’s not on display. Mulholland: Yeah, because I don’t believe I’ve ever heard blues played in Waterloo. [laughter] Schooley: I tried, when I was there. That’s one thing that I kind of wanted to talk about - assuming that in the future when this might be listened to, there won’t be any record stores anymore - can you describe your typical work day when you were at Tower? Just what people did. Can you describe it for someone who maybe doesn’t understand selling physical media, how that worked? Mulholland: Well, I can break it down in two different ways, because I was the manager, so I was kind of a jack of all trades. Or jackass of all trades, as I look back on it. [laughter] For me, I did a lot of the buying for the store. By the time that I came down here, Tower had gone to a kind of a centralized buying system, which was yet another nail in their coffin. There was a buying team that was buying the core stuff, and you sort of tweaked things to fit your local and regional flavors. I was a good buyer, and I knew my stuff. I think I had a good judge of things that I was into, but also of other things. Just from doing this for so long, you know what sells. So I would do a lot of that. I loved to be on the floor. Because I think this is one of the most rewarding things, when you work at a record store and somebody comes and they want a recommendation. You kind of pick their brain to see what they want, and you try to turn them onto things, and things that you generally think that they are going to like, not things that you’re like I’ve got thirty copies of this, I need to unload this. Or just, you pick something that’s sitting right there. You develop, or at least I do, you develop these relationships with people, and they come to trust your judgment, and


they sort of understand your taste and their taste. You start thinking about it, you see all the stuff that they buy, that you recommend to them, and it’s like, they’ve got all this stuff in their house that you love, and that you’ve turned them on to this, and have maybe changed their life in some way. It’s kind of cool because I’ve got a lot of friends, people that have become friends just from chance meetings in record stores. From them asking me for that. Even if it wasn’t someone that wanted a recommendation for something that I maybe liked, if they just came in and that person just treated them with respect, and just helped them. Because a lot of people don’t go to record stores all the time, or are sort of intimidated by them, by what they see. Maybe they saw, I don’t know, Empire Records or something like that. They live, you know, wherever. They don’t understand people with piercings and tattoos, and they’re intimidated by that. But they come in and you help them, and it’s like they’ve got someone that they can rely on. It just puts a human spin on it. It’s one of those things, when it ties into the customers, it’s not just about them buying things but it’s a place that they can rely on. If it’s somebody who, they’re really into this one label, it’s somebody that you’re always going to have that, they’re always going to come buy it. They look to you for certain things. I think the payoff is there. They tell their friends, or they recommend stuff, and you can see it, because you’re there every day. You’ve got people who are in there every day, or every weekend or something, and you get to see them every week, and I like that. I think that’s a really cool feeling. Schooley: And that’s something that you don’t get if you’re just downloading, be it legally off of iTunes, or illegally from Rapidshare or Soulseek or whatever. Mulholland: Oh, yeah. Schooley: That’s the thing, you have access to anything now, from the comfort of your own home, but there’s not context for it, there’s no one to say, oh, if you like this band, they were really influenced by this band. Or if you are into this, oh, that’s crap, they really ripped off this band, or something like that. There’s no context for things. Mulholland: Oh yeah. Or, if they were like, somebody told me that MC5 was great, but all I’ve heard is Shakin’ Street. Then it’s like, you haven’t heard, you have to hear Kick Out The Jams. And then all of a sudden, you’ve totally changed this for me. Another great thing about growing up in record stores, was before you could go in and listen to anything, like that, you were just flipping through stuff a lot of times. Just looking for stuff. And all you really had to go on were record covers and names. You know what I mean? And you’re exposed to stuff. It’s just sort of, there’s just more to it than if, and this is not me of course, but if you say, I like this Beyonce song and I’m going to pay 99 cents to download it. You’re in a store, and you are seeing, say, old Rick James records or the Ohio Players, just records where you are like, I bet that is like this, I bet that is like that. Sometimes, you get burned, or other times you just see something and take a chance on it and it becomes one of your favorite albums of all time. You don’t do that when you are downloading. I also think that when you can just sit in your home, or be on your iPhone and order music, it isn’t the same. It puts a very disposable value on music. And I think in terms of all of this, it’s changed the way the music industry works. It’s changed the way people write music. Back in the day, which wasn’t that long ago, I think most people wrote albums. Not from start to finish, but I think there was some sort of cohesiveness to it because a lot of it was written around the same


time, or where they were living, or what they were going through, or something. Now, I think it’s very hits driven, and it’s just song by song. Schooley: Well, you also had some hope that someone would sit and listen to your album all the way through - Mulholland: Exactly. Schooley: - and now it just gets put on shuffle on your iPod, and if you had some grand vision for how it was going to sound, it’s now lost, because no one is going to listen to it that way. Mulholland: Exactly, you buy what you want, and if you don’t want that, you just cast it away. Your giving it that 20 seconds of sampling time that’s like, some random part of the song, on iTunes or something, it totally changes things. As far as the music industry goes now, it’s relevance to music anymore isn’t really there. It isn’t like an artist development thing. It isn’t, say, someone like Neil Young, or Dwight Yoakum, where they say, we’re going to develop these people over the years. Now, it’s like, we’re going to sign you to six records, you’re gonna put out one, and we’re gonna drop you. You know what I mean? There’s nothing like this, it isn’t like, we think this artist is something that we can have flourish over the years and really become something. It isn’t like, they’re not selling hits, they’re selling albums. That’s kind of irrelevant now, I think. This sort of came right around the time that the whole Seattle sound came out. It was like, okay, this sound is really big. You’ve those four bands in Seattle - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, whoever else there is… Schooley: Stone Temple Pilots. [laughter] Mulholland: Stone Temple Pilots, Mud- Not Mudhoney, they’re okay. [laughter] But it’s like, let’s just sign twenty more bands that sound just like this. [sotto voce:] Stone Temple Pilots. And just bleed ‘em ‘til they’re done, and then we’ll move onto the next thing. Then, some years go by, and all of a sudden it’s bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, god forbid. So we’re going to flood the world with a bunch of white boy funk-metal garbage, and then that’ll be done, and it’s going to be bands like Oasis, and then it’s gonna be… I guess it’s always been like that to some extent, but not as blatant. Schooley: One of the things I wanted to ask about was, during your tenure at Tower, what were the biggest hits for that store? What were the big sellers for Tower? Mulholland: For Tower, Austin? Schooley: Yeah. Mulholland: Well, coming in at the time that I did, The Strokes were huge. The White Stripes were huge. Those were the ones that were really big. Coldplay. Definitely a lot more pop things. Norah Jones, stuff like that. We had Jon Mayer play in our store when his first album came out. I think at the time, he was one of those “Sony Developing Artist” things, where they put your album out for 9.99 or


whatever. We had 400 people in that store, for him to play. Now he’s huge. I don’t know why, but he is! Schooley: What were some of the other really big in-stores that you had? Or, big in retrospect, where that person played here and went onto be Jon Mayer-sized? Mulholland: There was him… The one that will always stick out in my mind, more of an infamous thing than anything else, was when Mooney Suzuki played. I think that was in 2003. I partially blame myself for this, because I wasn’t booking for SXSW for this. We had one of our kids that was doing it, this was one of the things that was put into place before I got there. But they were like, well, this band Mooney Suzuki, and they had just gotten signed to Epic, they want to play. And I’m like, yeah, yeah, bring them, they’re really cool, people will come to see them, they’re a good band. We had them booked, I think it was the two o’clock slot on Wednesday afternoon. And they’ve got more equipment than any band needs for a record store performance. [laughter] They’ve got all their yes men from the label there, bossing us around, making sure they’ve got this, making sure they’ve got that. They come on, and - I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an in-store at Tower, but, kind of like Waterloo, we didn’t have stage that was free-standing. We had to build our stage. You push all the racks back. And so there’s CDs within arm’s reach of the stage. One of the guys in the band keeps going and stepping on this one rack, getting on top and then jumping back down. Then he makes it all the way to the top. These things are made out of particleboard - Schooley: They’re not the sturdiest thing to be climbing on, with a guitar. Mulholland: Yeah, full of a couple hundred CDs that are little plastic cases. The thing crushes like a snowdrift! He just goes down, the whole thing, everywhere. And he falls back, and then it just turns into mayhem. So then, the singer gets on his back, and they are going through the store pulling the hand-painted artwork that our artist had down, ripping it off the wall. Stomping on our listening stations, breaking all of them. Then, they pretty much broke all our mics, blew out our PA, smashed a big hole in the stage, and left. [laughter] On a Wednesday. When we’ve got bands following them 15 minutes later. We’ve got to go find a PA system, and have to do all this stuff. And everyone was just, they didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t become the general manager, I was just the product manager, and I just wanted to punch these guys so bad. And no one would do anything. People were just like, well, thanks for coming. It’s like, no, not thanks for coming! I was just blown away. [laughter] So, that was one of the more infamous ones. That made the Chronicle, of course. I think later that year, somebody from one of the record labels asked if we wanted to do Insane Clown Posse, and I was like, there is no way that band is coming in my store. It’s been so long…I’m trying to think of other great in-stores that we had… The Wildhearts, I thought that was really great. No one really knows who they are, now. It wasn’t so much big names coming through, really, it was just, you know, the people who wanted to play in records stores. Where it wasn’t just something for them to do while they were in town, that their record label was making them. They’re like, I’ll sit around and play all afternoon. After people are gone, they’ll walk around and talk to the folks there. In-stores were fun, if they would go down like that.


Schooley: As opposed to a riot, where the place gets trashed? Mulholland: Yeah. Well, the place was going to get trashed anyway. If it was getting trashed in the name of fun, that was one thing. I think that the Mooney Suzuki thing, I don’t know if it was supposed to be a publicity stunt on their part, or if they were just being jerks. But it was… it sucked. [laughter] Schooley: Well, they’ve been pretty much forgotten since then, so, if that makes you feel any better… Mulholland: Yeah, I know, I know. Schooley: It’s not like they went on to have a stellar career after their first Epic record. Mulholland: And I don’t know if they even did a follow-up to that record, and that one was a re-issue of the record they put out two years before that, I think. Schooley: Did Epic pay for any damages or anything? Mulholland: Yeah, it was great. Some guy in the store… I’m like, picking up broken stuff off of the floor and this guys comes up and he’s like “I just want you to know that Sony’s going to be taking care of all the damages!” And I’m like, yeah, you better believe you are! You better believe it. They pretty much had us inventory our whole sound system, and they just bought it again. Even if we didn’t need it, they bought us another one. So, that was kind of cool. It took awhile, but, I mean, aside from that, it was just a huge inconvenience. You’re hosting people from all over the world. It’s like having a party at your house. You want it to be fun for everyone. And the next thing you know, all your stuff’s destroyed, and you’re out of commission for awhile. And people are just mortified. And, some people thought it was funny. I guess if I had been coming in off of the street and saw that, I guess I would think it was funny, too, but I wasn’t laughing. Schooley: Since you were the one who had to clean it up. Mulholland: Yeah, definitely. Schooley: Can you talk a little bit about how Austin was different from Seattle? You said that the big sellers for the Tower here were Coldplay, the White Stripes, the Strokes, they are all things that were widely popular at that time. What specifically about the Austin scene, the music scene, just the vibe of the town - how did that impress you as being different from Seattle? Mulholland: Seattle was… The thing about Seattle was, the scene got big sort of when the city was getting big. And that sort of became its identity. But at the same time, you’ve got the punk rock kids who resent all that, even though a lot of those people who went on were their friends. It was kind of a cold town, in respect to music of any wide variety of genres. There was a tiny, tiny, little jazz scene, by that time, where in the 50’s, there was a pretty big jazz scene. There was kind of a cool little roots scene, but it was packed away on the other side of town. It didn’t make it into town much.


But as far as a music-buying audience, it was great. You had a lot of the people that were purchasing records, were adults, that were sort of NPR loyal. But it meant that people who were buying, say, Pearl Jam records, were also buying Jimmie Dale Gilmore records or whatever. They were people who could identify and respect other roots music things, and where they fit into stuff, which I thought was kind of cool. And coincidentally, a lot of that stuff was coming from Austin. I think I like the scene here much better. Because, I think everyone’s a lot more…I think there’s every type of genre here. I don’t want to say everyone’s more open minded to everything, because I don’t really think they are. I just think there are a lot of people here that like a lot of different types of music, so there’s just something for everybody here. It’s changed a lot over the years. Since I’ve been here, and since…you know, Austin had that sound. The Joe Elys, the Jimmie Dale Gilmores, and people like that. Although that doesn’t really, that just kind of touches on a part of the Austin sound. I think it’s definitely turned more into a kind of indie rock town. Schooley: Well, so when did you first start to think that Tower was in trouble? I mean, you moved down here, with Napster and everything you could kind of see how things were going with the business in general, and you’ve already said that the Austin location was kind of a troubled store… Mulholland: Yes, it was. Schooley: When you first moved here, did you have this… ominous sense of foreboding, or did you think it was more than just Austin or that location, but the condition of the music industry in general? Mulholland: Well, over the years, after the big boom, you know, after the rise comes the fall. There were all these stores that they had put in non-metropolitan areas that were not doing well, and they started closing them. That kind of made sense, but you’ve got these major cities that have got these, which was where Tower really started, and really had its place, I thought, as kind of a big city record store. Or just a metropolitan area record store. And then, every now and then, one that just didn’t make sense would close. Like the one in Boston closed. I think that was the one, it “closed due to a fluke with the lease.” That’s what we were told, like, well, we thought we were able to renew, and no one said anything about it. Um, yeah, okay. [laughter] That happened with Atlanta, too, but they opened up another one a few years later. But yeah, I did have a weird sense with it. I sort of felt, when I got to the Tower here, that it was kind of a sinking ship anyway. Not necessarily due to the fault of anyone who worked there, but it just didn’t seem like it was run very well, and it hadn’t been run very well for a long time. I think it just was sort of the culture of the store, that it wasn’t really Tower Austin’s place to be as aggressive and pro-active about things. And I think a lot of that was because they felt that, oh well, Waterloo, they’re always going to be number one. And it’s like, who the hell cares who’s number one? Just go in there and kick ass, you know? You’re not going to be crossing the finish line first, but you’re going to look damn good doing it, you know what I mean? You’re going to have credibility, or at least start to build some credibility.


And I think a lot of the old-school Austin people, journalists and people like that, sort of had this negative feeling about Tower Austin, and it really bothered me. I took it personally, and I shouldn’t have, but I did. Because this is what I cared about, this is my life, and it wasn’t a place where I put in my eight hours and I came home and did whatever. I spent most of my time there, because I wanted to make it work, because I like record stores, and this was my chance. But the odds were against me when I got here, and I didn’t understand why. There were a lot of problems within the company at that time, and I think that’s when the company was starting to sort of implode from the top. They had a lot of problems with old-timers who had been in this company forever, because they started in the old hippie days, when they were, you know, smoking weed and doing coke in their office. And now they’ve gotta scramble a little bit. It isn’t one of those things where it’s just running itself. You have to go out there and really do your homework and make sure this place is running efficiently, and you’ve got people who have been managing these locations for fifteen years or something, that, they don’t really care. They might not even leave their office in the daytime, except to get in the store. They don’t really know what’s going on out there. And I think a lot of money was getting lost. And for some reason, they weren’t really looking after the Austin store like they should have been. I mean, we had no security, and anyone who has to walk up and down The Drag knows, if you need security, it’s there. With street kids, crazy people and, you know, college kids who don’t want to pay for stuff. Just things like that, just sort of a lot of administrative backing that needed to be done above the store level just wasn’t coming through. Schooley: The Tower here closed in 2004, and the company itself went bankrupt in 2006. Was that a surprise at all, or was that kind of what you expected? Mulholland: No, no, I knew that was coming. When I left, when they were closing up, they were like, do you want to go manage the Dallas store? And I’m like, hell no, I do not want to go manage the Dallas store! They were like, how about the store on Wabash in Chicago? And you know, the money, for being a manager of a music store, was pretty good. More than… quite a bit more than I make right now. Well, hell, it was… yeah, yeah, a lot more. We’ll just say lot more [laughter]. But I didn’t want to leave Austin, and, why pick up and go somewhere else when this is just going to happen somewhere else? And it did. The thing was, with their big financial restructuring, they were able to get out of any leases that they felt were not productive for them. We were on a lease for the theater there for 2010, we had signed this 20 year lease at a fixed monthly rate that would not increase. Which, for that building, was really low. So they got out of that. That’s why we got out of that. But the thing was, they got their financial stuff back together. They hired some people that do that, that get you out of this hole, and they kind of got it going again a little bit. But then, somebody got fired, and they hired this other guy in the company. His first order of business was to not pay the majors. “We’re just not going to pay.” And then they wanted to forgive any debt we had with them. Of course, in this day and age you can’t do that. In the music industry? It’s not like, oh, the money’s coming in, and we’ll just let you skate on this. They were like, no. It came down to almost a cash and carry thing, like, no net thirty for you. And that’s hard to do for a company that big.


They were trying to get someone to buy them. Because they were still an independent company, which, a lot of people didn’t know that. No one wanted to buy a record store, with the industry dying, which also has 80 million dollars in debt. Finally, a liquidator got them, and, they just bleed them from within, which was really the only smart thing to do. Schooley: Well, they were really the only big national chain like that left. Mulholland: Yeah. Virgin folded. Virgin was really, as far as competitors go, I would really say Virgin was really the only one. And there weren’t that many Virgin’s in the country. Schooley: But there were others, like there was FYE, that bought up all the mall stores or Sam Goody’s and Musiclands… Mulholland: But those places were never that good. They served their purpose, because, your mall record store is a lot different than Tower, I think. But the people that were hurting us were the places like Best Buy. Waterloo hurt us here, but it was really more on reputation and location than anything. So, to answer your question - I know I kind of rambled a little bit there - there was no way I was going to leave. Because I knew they were… I was like, eh, probably time to cut the cord, now. Especially after I think I had kind of been screwed pretty hard. After being lied to about the store closing, when they knew it was going to close. Basically, when they moved me down here, they didn’t really tell me the whole story, here. And I still don’t know the whole story. But I know that there were a lot of politics involved in this store. There were some people that wanted to keep it open at all cost, and some people who were like, I don’t want to deal with it. So it was just kind of floundering within the company. Schooley: So, how have you adjusted to post-record store life? Because you worked at Tower, what almost 15 years? Mulholland: Thirteen. Thirteen and a half, actually, for those keeping score at home. It was hard! It was kind of funny, one of the first times I came down here, my first order of business was to go talk to John Kunz [owner of Waterloo Records]. Because all the people at BMG knew John Kunz really well, and they were all, go down there and talk to him, and tell him that I told you to go talk to him, and I bet you that you can probably get a job there as a buyer. And you can call me! So I go in there, and I talk to John. And John, you know, he was polite, but basically he told me that he could probably get me a job, but it was not buying, it was, you know, standing at the register for five bucks an hour [laughter]. Schooley: Right. Mulholland: And, you know, when you’ve come this far, you just can’t go back. And, it was the day - god, I can’t believe I’m telling you this! The day that I found out that Tower was closing, I called John, and I don’t think that he had hear yet, and I told him. I said, we’ve got a few months here, what do you think? Is there any way you can get me in over there? And he pretty much told me the same thing. You know how it is, they promote from within. I understand.


Schooley: And their buyers had already been there forever. Mulholland: Exactly. It was one of those things, where, I didn’t have something to say, like let me do this, let me do that. But just that, I want to stay doing this, because it’s like my religion. But I don’t want to be paid five dollars an hour. And, as you can see, nothing really came of that. Schooley: Well, if it makes you feel any better, I worked there for seven years, and I never got moved up to be a buyer, either. Mulholland: Well, it was hard. The one thing I will say for Tower - and I’m glad I got out when I did, too, because they still had some money - I got a pretty decent severance package. I got a month’s pay for every year that I’d been there. Schooley: Wow. Mulholland: Plus some extra. So I could take some time. But I got out, but I didn’t know what to do, because this was all I really wanted to do. Schooley: Well, it’s hard. You had a job that you actually enjoyed - Mulholland: Oh, yeah! Schooley: - and that interested you, and then that industry is… is gone. Mulholland: Well, yeah. It was part of my identity. I mean, I did this, I had that thing on Austin Music Network, where “Dave from Tower reviews crappy Austin CDs!” [laughter] I did some good ones, too, I did some good ones. That’s a whole ‘nother story, too. Maybe if you do one of these on Austin Music Network… But, yeah, it was what I was about. I think that, the people that interacted with me, even if they hated Tower, they understood where I was coming from. They knew I was trying, that I was in there, trying to kick what ass I could. So, I was out of work for ten months. Took the Wild About Music [a gift shop specializing in music-themed merchandise] job, thinking that is was going to be something similar, but it wasn’t. It was similar in the fact that it was retail, and that it dealt with music on some levels, but it wasn’t like… I couldn’t really… you can’t be passionate about things there. Schooley: That was one thing that Tower managed to escape, because the Austin location closed when it did. A lot of the stores that used to sell CDs, they started to sell more knick-knacks, music-related stuff… Mulholland: We got in on that too. We had a lot of cubic space in there, we did. I don’t know if you remember, but we had a whole section in there that was action figures. Some of them were kind of cool, but you know… Schooley: You wanted to work in a record store, not a toy store. Mulholland: Well, yeah, like, because I have to make room for little Emily diaries or something, our whatever section is getting smaller. Why can’t we be selling… Yeah, that’s really frustrating.


It was starting to get into this, everything was sort of value-based. Like, oh, such-and-such gave me this little kiosk with headphones where you can listen to little snippets of world music things, and it breaks, and ends up in your back room. My boss, the regional manager, came up with this thing, the “Decompression Zone,” I’m sure it’s out of his marketing book somewhere, and you come in and you’re able to absorb things, and flip through a little speed table of things here, and listen to this over here, and it just turned into this dumping ground of garbage. Between that, and we’re selling candy, we’re selling energy drinks. Why do we have a Red Bull cooler at the front of a record store? Why are we selling these things? We started selling clothes for awhile. It’s like, am I going to start fitting people for shoes? What’s next? What’s gonna be our… we started selling baby strollers. You know, where does this end? I understand it from a marketing concept. You have to roll with the punches, and you have to adjust with the times, and adapt and all that. But, the thing with that kind of stuff, that stuff is very time-sensitive. By the time you work out these deals to have this stuff carried in your store, people might not care about it. Or, it’s the same stuff that’s going to be at Waterloo, or it’s going to be out at Spencer Gifts at the mall. And it’s like, I don’t need a Jesus pencil sharpener, the George Bush playing cards. All that stuff. It’s great stuff, but every store you go to, you start seeing that. It’s like, man, this is nothing. Schooley: Well, so many stores, that was their life preserver that they were grasping at. No one wants to buy records anymore, but we can sell all this other random stuff, too. Mulholland: Yeah, all this “lifestyle” related stuff. It’s like, clear out your clearance section, because all this will be going there in a few months. But, we tried carrying video games, and we just got robbed blind on those. Just ripped off. And those are again things that you can’t sell, unless you’re selling them at some rock-bottom price. You’re not making any money on them and it’s basically, you’re paying to have it there. Which is just pointless. So, I was there for that, and, it bothered me and it didn’t bother me. I knew that that’s what you had to do, but at the same time, it would come in and you were like…man. Your question was, where are we going to put this? We’re gonna put this where CDs used to be, or where our vinyl section used to be. At that time, vinyl was starting to pick up again, but not like it is now. Not to where you could justify having a whole aisle of vinyl, at the time. Or maybe one row, or something. Schooley: Well, we kind of got away from talking about getting out of the record store business… Mulholland: If… If Russ Solomon [Tower Records Founder] called me up on the phone, and he actually does have another store now, but it’s in Sacramento, I think it’s called R5. But if he called me, and he was like, man, let’s do it again! We figured out some way to do this! I would do it in a second. You know what I mean? And I don’t know how it would work, and it probably wouldn’t be the way I would want it, but I would probably do it again if it meant being able to get back to doing what it was that I felt…you know, providing that service to people, making it a place to come in and experience things. If that was sort of the goal of the store. But I just don’t think the time is right. Somebody may come back and do that. A good, old-fashioned record store, you know? [laughter]


Schooley: It would be like a pioneer farm or something? [laughter] Mulholland: Ye olde record shoppe! Everyone’s wearing striped vests and hats and stuff. Schooley: Well, in Austin, Waterloo and End of an Ear [record store on South 1st, opened by former owner of 33 Degrees] are still holding on. Mulholland: Yeah. Schooley: And I think Waterloo is one of the few left that’s trying to be all things to all people and carry everything. And that niche seems to be ending. Mulholland: They’re doing that a lot less. If you go and look at, I mean, the one area where you could look and browse was the compilations, and if you go in there and start looking around, you start to see that they aren’t being all things to all people anymore. When you’ve got a blues section that’s that big - [holds up hands to indicate size]. Oh, yeah, this is recorded audio. That’s 15 inches long. Schooley: Yeah, they can’t see your hand gestures. Mulholland: And I don’t fault Waterloo for that. I have no ill will against Waterloo. I think one thing that’s cool with them is that their vinyl section is exploding. But, you can see the changes are hitting them hard, and you know that they are dealing with their fair share of hardships too, I’m sure. I think it’s just one of those things, this sort of thing is getting phased out. You’re dealing with a whole generation now, of adults, who have always had computers, have always had cell phones, have always had cable TV. And always been able to - everything is extremely accessible, and there isn’t a place you have to go to, to go find out about things, or go experience things, or meet friends or pick up girls [laughter] or do something, you know? It’s just not a concept, really, as far as that used to be. And I mean, I’m sure Waterloo will be around for years to come, but I don’t know if it will just turn into a download store, or what. I still speak to people, and they say, I don’t want it to come down to buying downloads. They like to have the hard product, they like the liner notes, they like the bonus tracks, and whatever else you get with it. A sticker or something, I don’t know. So, best of luck to them, if they can keep it alive, that’s great. And I think End of An Ear, as long as places like that can keep afloat, they’ll always be there, and hopefully they are in a situation where they can sort of do this, not so much as their income, but it’s what they like to do. Sort of a boutique sort of thing. Well, obviously, with a store like that, they are unique in that they don’t have to deal with the majors at all. You go in there, and when you want to pick up the new Norah Jones record, you don’t think of going to End of An Ear. They kind of have a cool thing going, and I hope they can keep it going as long as possible. All these stores, more power to them. I just…it’s… After Tower closed, people wanted me to open a shop. You should! That’s what you’ve gotta do. After I’ve gotten my butt kicked one time, I’m gonna get out there and do it on my own dime, now. Schooley: Open Ye Olde Dave’s Buggy Whip Emporium. [laughter]


Mulholland: Exactly! I could probably do better selling wagon tongues or something [laughter]. And there may have been a speed table for those, in my store. It’s funny because Mike Lavella from Gearhead [independent record label] was like, I will give you product to put in your shop, and all this stuff. And I was like, that’s kinda cool, but - very cool, but at some point I’m going to have to pay for it, and being someone that was very loyal to labels like Gearhead, also knows that’s not something that was flying off the shelves, either. And filling my store with product that doesn’t fly off the shelves… not like I’m going to be selling things…you know what I’m saying. If you are going to be doing your own store, you sort of choose wisely to fill that little space that you’re going to be renting. That was a great offer, and I would love to do something, if the situation was more feasible. But, not so. And if I started my own store, I would probably run it all by myself. Schooley: Yeah. Alright, well, any final thoughts? Anything else that you would like to touch on? Mulholland: Yeah, and this is something that, I’ll throw it out, and if you want to re-direct questions from there: the perception of Tower from people that lived here. There was a documentary that came out the year that Tower closed, and it was called “Browsing Aisles, and Scanning Files” and it was a UT film project that these two kids did, and basically their whole thing was, we’re going to do a thing on how Napster is cutting into the recorded retail music business. They came in and talked to me, and they were real nice kids, and I kind of kept getting mad at them, because they kept saying “corporate,” in every other sentence. And I’m like, do you understand what a corporation really is? And they didn’t, they were just using that as meaning “a big company.” So, I was kind of like, this is neat, but I don’t know. But in the process, all these stores started dropping like flies, and then Tower went under. So, then they’re back in on the project. It changed the whole course of their project. They came back and interviewed me some more, they interviewed John Kunz, and the guys from 33 Degrees, and folks over at Antones and stuff. It’s a really neat movie. But I thought it was interesting, some of the people they interviewed in there. One of them was Jim Caligiuri, who writes for the Chronicle? And he really kind of ripped us one. “Well, I don’t see how a dinosaur company like them can stay afloat. The prices they charge for stuff is just outrageous!” I just wanted to call him, and be like, first of all, where do you shop? Because I doubt you have to pay for your CDs at all. I’m sure you get promos. I want him to explain to me what CDs it is that he’s paying so much for. It was things like that, that just used to drive me crazy. There was a guy… oh, man, of course I forget his name right now… Brian, something, who used to work for KGSR. He in the morning crew or something. One day, K-EYE [CBS television affiliate] did a feature in our store, it was the anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly. They were doing it from our store, and this guy - Kevin Finney, that was his name. He had written a book about something, I don’t know if it had specifically to do with Buddy Holly, but anyway. He’s plugging his book in our store, for it’s tie-in to the Buddy Holly anniversary, we’re like oh, sure, yeah, that’s great. So they tape their thing for him, and they go on their way, and I’m talking to him. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and I ask, is there anything you’re looking for. He says, well, I’ve been looking for this import Prince DVD for awhile, I just can’t find it anywhere. And I’m like, we have that. He says, no you don’t. So I went and looked for it, let’s go over there and


take a look. Sure enough, it was right there in the Prince section, but he’s like, oh, it’s so expensive! Well, it’s an import. And he says, well, I’ll just go get it at Waterloo anyway - keep it local. And walks out of the store! After we plugged his book for him, you know? A few months later he rolls in, and he says, man, I’m gonna clean up at the clearance sale here! No, you’re not, we’re going to ship all this to one of our other stores. And he came in during the sale, and he was complaining - oh, prices aren’t that great! Where is all your stuff? [laughter] Schooley: So you feel that Tower was the Rodney Dangerfield of Austin record stores? Mulholland: Yes, absolutely. In some ways, it was kind of justified, because there were things that I would see when I’d come in there, and be like, oh, man. But, at the same time, I felt that we were sort of looked upon as being these bad guys. It was kind of like you had mentioned, with Sound Exchange being down the street. But, with record stores, I don’t think - we’re not trying to steal business from anybody. It’s one of those things, as far as I’m concerned, the more the better. There is going to be competition, but I think more of a fraternal competition, you know what I mean? But it was always sort of, oh yeah, they’re the bad guy. They’ve done this and that and the other thing. Every few Austin Chronicles, there would be a mention of something we had done. Those money-grubbing bastards over at Tower have done this. This rumor came out that we wanted to paint over the mural on the side of the building - oh my god! No, what we did, we actually paid some ridiculous amount of money, we actually tracked down the guy who originally did it and had him restore it. But of course, no kudos for that. But it was one of those things that I never understood, because yes, it’s not a home-grown Austin company, but everyone that works there lives in, and loves living in, Austin. Pretty much everyone in there, if they weren’t in a band, they were a musician, and they loved record stores. It was one of those things where, on the weekend, I would be running into my own employees at Waterloo or Cheapo or someplace like that. It’s just one of those things, I just never understood that, and thought it was really unfair. Bob Schneider, he’s got his major-label release - I don’t even know if he’s still on a major label, because I don’t really follow Bob Schneider - but he had his contractual thing where he could also put stuff out on his own label of his, and he was not going to sell it at Tower. He would not sell it at Tower. Considering that a lot of his audience, I don’t know if they still are, were college kids, at the time. And you’re right across from a college. You’re kind of hurting your audience more that you are really making some sort of statement about record stores. I just thought it was pointless, it’s a lot of energy, to not do something, when it would benefit you and just make yourself more accessible to people. So, that’s kind of my tiny little rant, there. [laughter] But it was just one of those things, I never… because Austin is such a cool town, and everyone is so friendly, you know what I mean? And I’m like, yes, I’m moving to this city I love, and it’s going to be great, and work in a record store, and all of a sudden - I found the one hole universe where you can be viewed as the bad guy in a music store! [laughter] How did I find this? Leave it to me to find this. And when I got here, everyone at Tower was either totally resigned themselves to the fact that, you know, Waterloo’s always gonna be better. Well, then you have to be able to say, what do we do to be better than Waterloo? You just cut out your own niche, and make it your own. Instead of doing this. Rising above, or sinking below. And we tried, we started to have a go of it, but it was just too little, too late.


Schooley: Well, this in-fighting between different record stores looks kind of ridiculous today, in light of the entire industry collapsing. Who cares if Tower is viewed as the corporate bad guy, if all the record stores that were in town at the same time as Tower, except for one, are closed now? Mulholland: Yeah. [laughter] Looking at it now, you can just be like - just buy it in a record store. Just go out and buy it. Leave your house, and go into a store, and buy it. And walk around while you’re in there, you know? It’s kind of sad, now that everyone is doing real big things for national Record Store Day, I’m like, god, I would have loved to have been part of that. That’s just such a cool thing. Even though I didn’t get any of the cool releases I really wanted [laughter]. ‘Cause they were all gone, and on Ebay the next day. And that’s not anyone’s fault, I’m not saying anything about anybody, that’s just the way those things go. I got the MC5 45, not the Tom Waits. But I thought that was so cool, and I think there’s still this grass roots movement, you know what I mean? But in the long run, it ain’t gonna pay the bills. I’m glad there are still people out there that care. Just that fact that we’re sitting here, talking about it, just shows that there are people that care about it. I don’t know, I would do anything to bring it back, but you can’t change evolution. I can think of a lot of other stores that I wish had gotten phased out. They could have phased out Foot Locker, or something like that [laughter]. Or Cinnabon, or something, I don’t know. Schooley: Well, it’s just the whole industry. It’s like the family farm, or the record store, and all these different vestiges of the old economy, that aren’t around anymore. Mulholland: Yeah. It’s one of those things, that, if you had told me even five years before that, that record stores were going to start dropping like flies… If you told me why, I’d probably have been like, well, yeah, maybe that’s kind of bad. But at the time, there’s no way. If you’re selling just box after box after box of titles, it’s just going crazy. How can this ever go under? [laughter] It’s one of those things, I think no matter how good you’re doing, you kind of have to consider that there is a downside to it. I don’t know. Obviously, I’m not in a position where I could have made any decisions. I think it’s funny that there still is a Tower Records online. Same logo, still looks like the same website. Schooley: And, I think they still have a store in Japan. Mulholland: And that was an eight-story store in Japan, too! That was kind of my Mecca, I always thought, one day I’ll go to Toyko, and go to the eight floor store in Japan. Never did. Yeah, and it’s actually a really good website. Well, it really was, I should say. Because, after they started that, I think it was a few people who maybe worked for Tower? They bought it, and I think, that one-stop, Kaman Distribution, do you remember them? They have something to do with it. But, I was just getting great prices on stuff, and if you bought over 20 dollars worth of stuff, you got free shipping, and they’d get it to you by the end of the week. But then, they were having less access to everything. So, their selection is kind of dying, and their prices - they’re not bad, they’re comparable. So, it’s not what it was. It was kind of cool that it was out there, and I’ll still buy stuff from them, I’ll still give my money to this sort of… concept, you know what I mean? [laughter]


But, uh, I don’t know. It’s strange buying records now. Especially being someone who has such a, I mean, my taste is getting so that I’m looking for more obscure things, and it’s hard for me to go into a record store and find anything that I really want. To where you’re having to pretty much shop online, which is one of those things that I never really wanted to do. One of my old bosses, from the Seattle store, who had worked at the one in Philly, and D.C., and all these other places… He’s one of those old record store people, who sort of loved record stores, and felt that Rolling Stone was a good magazine at one time. [laughter] You know, one of those type of guys. I read this thing he posted on Facebook, he said, I’m going to exclusively buy all my records at Amazon now, it took me months to admit this, but… He worked for Borders [bookstore chain], after Tower closed. The one over at Ben White and Lamar, over there where Central Market is? About this time last year, they were looking for a manager, and I’m like, oh man… It’s Borders, but it’s right down the street. I didn’t have the job I have now. I called him, and he’s like, you don’t want to work here. He’s like, the music is gonna disappear from there, and in ten years, no one’s gonna buy books anymore. Don’t get on another sinking ship.1 [laughter] So, I had a glimmer of hope there, for a second. But, that’s just funny. I don’t know. Schooley: All right, well, do you have anything else you’d like to add? Mulholland: Well, depending on who hears this, or reads it, when you do - if record stores are still around, support them. It’s one of the last strongholds of culture, if you want to call it that. [laughter] The thing I always loved about record stores, is, it’s just going and getting turned on to what you don’t know is out there, and what you don’t even realize is going on. Something you might hear, that’s playing in there, and be like - what’s this? This is so great! And it turns out that it’s the score from some Hitchcock movie or something like that. Things like that, if you’re sitting in your room, next to your pile of dirty laundry or something, you’re not gonna find that. You’re gonna find whatever it is you’re looking for, and you’re gonna go on your merry way, unless the little side bar chooses things for you, you know? I don’t know. Maybe they’ll have that resurgence, where people want to go so retro, and open record stores again, and people will want to support it. Assuming music will be created that people will want to support. [laughter] I’m not bitter, I swear! [laughter] (Interview ends)

1 Borders filed for bankruptcy and closed all Austin stores in July 2011.

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