Thingery Blog

Front Cover

Back Cover

Label, side 1

Label, side 2

Some provenance:

Rainy Day Music, Spencer, Iowa, was established in November of 1987 at the same location as the former Merrie Melody, an Iowa store of not enough reknown today. According to the file card I still have, we accepted the first Vulcan LP into our inventory March 25, 1988.

My further records are a little incomplete as we switched our inventory over to computers in 1991 and a lot of our sales and inventory data wasn’t preserved when those computers wore out.

I estimate my entire career sales at well under 25 copies of this record, but I am unsure of how many my predecessor Terry sold (he’s still around, I should ask him shouldn’t I?).

As far as that goes, Lyle’s still easy to find, and maybe I should ask HIM………

Anyway, the years passed, we stashed a few copies and one day in 2001 Lyle asked me to but a bootlegged copy of his record from a distributor in Germany over the Internet. That copy was twenty-five dollars, which inspired me to price the real McCoy at twenty-five dollars in my bins.

That copy went to Lyle at a price somewhat lower, as he needed one to give someone as a gift and he didn’t have any more copies of his own record.

Enter the modern era: My first eBay sale for a hundred dollars openly taunted bootleggers and dared them to obtain this nice fresh verifiable unplayed source material for their purposes and it didn’t take long before that deal was closed.

The two hundred dollar listing a year later didn’t take long either, and the three hundred dollar listing a year after that only waivered a little while.

I haven’t listed any since then.

Front Cover

Back Cover

Label, side 1

Label, side 2

Front Cover

When I founded Rainy Day Music in 1987, I had this “idea” that the farthest I’d go toward using musical organization of any kind would be to alphabetize the stock by artist.

Of course, that concept didn’t last very long, but my theory was that categories were just really sheep-sorting gates for consumers who just “knew what they liked”, except for the part where they didn’t have a clue.

That lasted maybe until 1991 or so, at which time we installed the computers and their databases that ultimately sank the store (my opinion).

There was no way the music software was going to let me get away with failure to assign Duke Ellington a category, and just one at that.

By way of identification here, I’m a Deadhead, a fan of the Grateful Dead. It was the purchase of one of their albums that led to my accidental purchase of the business.

They can’t be categorized-they did lots of kinds of stuff. That’s one of the things I liked about them. But into “pop/rock” they went, at least as far as that database went.

Finally I managed to wear out the computers and returned to the index cards I still use today, but it was kind of late for that as far as the store was concerned. Nonetheless, those cards don’t have those stupid categories.

Try listing a record at eBay, though, without using a category. I dealt with it the best I could, usually calling EVERYTHING “classic rock-other” or some such nonsense, until I pulled records from eBay altogether because they don’t have the slightest clue about that business.

Enter the past few days-I finally figured out how to configure Zen Cart so I can peddle records. There’s a trick to that because Media Mail is involved, and Media Mail is nobody’s darling, and it’s always been a calculator bug-a-boo.

But I got it. And then I noticed Zen Cart has this nifty “extra” stuff designed for selling music products. I jump on it, since it’ll search by artist, label, and yup, you got it, genre.

So I’m back at it-is this “rock”, “pop”, “progressive”, “dance”, “crap”, or what? This time I’m responsible for loading the genres.

Oh please, it’s never going to go away.

Are you a former Rainy Day Music faithful? (probably not-it has been, after all, more than eight years after the store closed)……

If you are, perhaps you have been wondering what happened to the records; I know I have. If I can just disregard all of the things that actually made me any money and just concentrate on things I thought were interesting, it would be the records.

No, not all records. But a lot of them.

As I’ve evolved or devolved, depending upon your perspective, up until now I just haven’t found a good way to present the records as I’d like to.

It looks as if I’ve found all the tweaks and switches and whatever to present them at the present-day shopping cart however, so Us Guys are now happy to announce we’re open for former business (with four listings at the time of this post) at this url:

Records

Of course, records were among my original business at eBay, and I’ve been there for 11 years now, so the selection is a little, um, picked over, but not-to-worry, I remember how I got ‘em (smile).

So we’ll begin with everything-in-the-world I’ve still got, complete with former store tags and whatnot and see how long it might take just to accomplish that.

Two things made this possible: a shopping cart that would calculate Media Mail or Priority for US destinations, and First Class or Priority for International destinations and do a halfway good job of adding up the weight of the box (I’m not quite done testing that yet), AND the absence of host site fees (like eBay’s) that inevitably add a dollar or more to every sale. If your original love is two-dollar cut-outs, that fee stuff is kind of a killer.

So, “as time permits”, let’s pretend it’s 1987 again, and we’ll start over.

Today I am informed via an email from PayPal that a request I made in 2000 for a payment from an eBay customer was canceled:

Amount: $11.19 USD

Date: Jun. 7, 2000

Subject: Soul Asylum Lp..342457565

Note: you can pay me via credit card using this route, if you like, otherwise I will need your number, exp date, card type by email, fax or phone, your choice thanks, steve

Gee, that took a while to be resolved.

But it wasn’t the “oldest” thing to come to my attention today. I received three checks from the Dickinson County Clerk Of Court totaling around thirty bucks in restitution for a check-writing spree a looney went on in 1997. I was one of their victims, to the tune of $102.11, it says here.

Well, harrumph, let that be a lesson to them-do not commit crimes of fraud like intentionally writing bad checks to your local warm fuzzy head shop. It will catch up with you.

And it looks to me like you still owe me seventy bucks and in this particular case, sooner is probably better than later, thank you.

Now, back to the David Johansen 60′s Animals medley I was listening to……….

David Johansen – Animals Medley

to transfer image from “page wizard” directory

Front Door, Rainy Day Music, 512 Grand Ave., Spencer, Iowa

Promotional Cassette Singles From My Previous Store

The Description Of The Thing:
30 cassette singles, promotional copies of releases by Disturbed, “Stupify (album version) 4:05, The Game (album version) 3:45″, program same on both sides.

Condition Of The Thing:
New (old stock), unused.

Realized .99 1/23/10

Justin Nicewanger LP front cover

Justin Nicewanger LP back cover

Sealed Iowa Record

Description Of The Thing:
One 33 1/3 rpm record album U.S. pressing, Justin Niceswanger / Villain Music, Krap Records KR-004, sealed, new.

Garo worked for Rainy Day Music and was a personal friend.

We Don’t Rock (audio object: click here)

Realized $4.25 2/10/10

Posted by saint*steven ( 10258 ) on Feb-02-10 at 12:38:06 PST

Listings

(sorry for dropping out there, an interference happened)

In 1990 or 1991 when Soundscan changed how they gathered data about music sales, NARM quickly trotted out this campaign to include little indie stores like mine among their ranks.

That was patently ridiculous because little stores like mine didn’t amount to spit in the ocean but I took ‘em up on it and hob-nobbed with “industry” types for two years.

It was like being on another planet. I didn’t have a clue what those guys were talking about.

I might also mention I think my decision to do that doomed my two little stores……..

(and yeah, Dave, that’s kinda what I LIKE about Neil-the worst enemy thing)