Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Wuxtry Records

Having found the Jet Lag blog. It’s come to my attention that there is a lot of misinformation about the history of Wuxtry Records.

Wuxtry was the first used record store in St. Louis (if you don’t count Spectrum’s Akashic or Bob Koester’s Delmar Records in the 50’s). This was before Vintage Vinyl or Euclid Records.

It was started by a guy named Fred down in Carbondale Illinois. His partner Dan Wall went solo up here and I was his first hire. I was very young and had extremely long hair. I followed a pretty girl into the store and was amazed that the store specialized in my two favorite pastimes, records and comic books. The girl was Carol, Dan’s girlfriend. I ran into her years later. She was as pretty as ever and didn’t seem opposed to the idea of our getting together on a more intimate basis. I hated myself for years for not pursuing it.

We bought records for a dollar and sold them for two. People would walk in with their stolen library records and scold us for our greed at making a hundred percent profit. I would have to give them a brief lesson on the economics of overhead and non-moving merchandise.

The store was on Euclid.

Dan would sometimes pay me with an amp or saxophone.

We would sell independent records including locally produced ones. My band Earwacks sold all our records this way.

After several years Fred went off to start a store in Denver. Dan had me open one for his brother in Charleston, Illinois called Mazuma. We opened store two on Cherokee but our only customers were kids that came in with plastic bags that had rags soaked with some kind of industrial solvent. I was always getting a contact high. Store number three was on Delmar.

Right about this time Dan and another friend opened a store in Athens GA. My friend Dan Stefacek went down to work the place for Dan Wall. There was an abandoned church there that Danny lived in with Cindy from the B-52s. I believe REM and the Swimming Pool Qs rehearsed there as well. I think members of all these bands worked at this Wuxtry. Dan tried to convince me there was a thriving music scene down there but I didn’t believe a small college town would do us any good. Dan’s partner opened another store in Atlanta.

Employees that came in included Dominic Schaeffer, Dan Stefacek, Dan Holt, Mark Secunda, Ron Bowman and others. An employee from the Carbondale store named Howard bought out Dan Wall and brought Dan Holt to St. Louis to run the stores. Dan Holt and I became great friends. He eventually went to L.A. to pursue a career film make-up.

I’m sure I’ll remember much more later. I’ll follow up as memory returns.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Don't forget Gabriel's store on the North Side. He sold new, used, and really, really used.

Doggie said...

How could I forget Gabriel? I'm sure there are others.

Anonymous said...

Howard had a partner, Jay. They later added a third partner, Don from Illinois. It was Don's third which I bought. Selling that piece financed my move to California. My current hobby is posting acoustic Jethro Tull covers on YouTube. I have also posted Kevin's Sound Waves show on YouTube. I'm sure you will find it quite entertaining.
"marksecunda"

Sam Bortnick said...

I remember walking into the Delmar Wuxtry as a kid of 14 or so and being utterly transfixed by a giant poster of Debbie Harry, shot full length, in this clingy dress. Haha

vivaldi0 said...

I used to get all my comics from wuxtry Carbondale in 1977. I was 10. They were so cool. They would put the used ones all in a pile for me to pick through. Had I known, I should have just bought them all back then, but I still have the many I bought so many years ago. They would brown bag them and hold them until I came back after convincing my parents to give me another 2 dollars.

Unknown said...

I realize this is WAY late to be adding a comment, but I just wanted to say that around 1980 I was sent to St. Louis by my San Diego job to work on some project with MacDonnell Douglas, and being alone in the city had lots of time at night to explore. I found Wuxtry and bought a heap of import singles there by groups like the Adverts, Only Ones, Damned, Generation X, and Wire - things that I didn't see around San Diego much. I made a mix tape of them all and dubbed it "The Wuxtry Tapes", which I later dubbed to a CDR and then to an iTunes playlist that I still play now and then. It always reminds me of visiting that shop.

I went to Atlanta on another business trip around 2017 and visited the Wuxtry Records there, too. I asked the guy in the shop if it was connected to the St. Louis store and he said he'd never heard of a St. Louis Wuxtry. Glad to have that cleared up by this blog.

Steve Gardner
publisher of Noise For Heroes
author of Another Tuneless Racket