Off the Record behind the scenes at Amoeba Music
By: Katie Dillon
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Freestyle Academy for providing me with the tools and guidance essential to the creation of this project. I would also like to thank the people at Amoeba Music for sharing their stories and their passion for music with me.
Table of Contents Preface Introduction Chapter 1
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
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Conclusion Works Cited
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Music in the City
A World of Music
A Gateway to Music
Preface For years, I lived a life untouched by vinyl. Being a techy, my dad encouraged us to download music, telling us that it was easier, faster, and more portable than CDs or records. Neither my dad nor my mom collected records or even owned a turntable. They told me that the sound of mp3s was more crisp and more clear. They were both advocates of convenience and mobility. Why choose a square foot of music when you could get it for just a few megabytes? Downloaded music was all-around better. For years, I saw the world through their eyes, thinking of records as old school, impractical, and absurd. Then I listened to my first record. It was a song I’d heard many times before, “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac. I had this song on mp3 and it was a tune I always appreciated but never fully understood. I expected to hear the crystal clear, compressed melody that came out of my iPod, but as the needle slid into the groove of the record player, I finally realized what I had been missing all this time. Listening to “Rhiannon” on vinyl was like seeing the song in a whole new light. The warmth of the sound enveloped me and cast me into a trance. For four minutes and thirteen seconds, I let the music seep through my pores and unwind me. The sound was so organic and so unlike the music I’d heard before. I began to think of the record as an extension of Stevie Nicks, singing directly to me. Some people say that I wasted that day, listening to the same record over and over, enraptured by the music, stuck to my chair, and trapped in my reverie. But that day wasn’t a waste. It was a gateway through which I would explore a whole new world of music. This documentary project was a way for me to continue to explore my recently discovered interest in records. As excited as my partner Isabel and I were about delving into the world of records, wandering the aisles of a record store and getting to know the store and its staff, we faced some difficulties in finding our exact location. But once we found Amoeba, there was no turning back. After our first interview with Amoeba owner, Joe Goldmark, we knew that Amoeba Music would fascinate us to no end. With each interview, we uncovered another piece of Amoeba’s history and revealed another quality that makes the place so unique. Unlike my parents and so many other people I knew, the people at Amoeba understood my experience with “Rhiannon.” When they spoke about records, they put into words everything I was thinking when I was listening to that one track. They added new descriptions of the sound that deepened my understanding of vinyl and they confirmed what I had already noticed about nature of records. They shared their stories with me and now, I’ll share them with you.
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Introduction “As I move and sway in place, I feel the full skirt of my favorite gypsy dress anchoring me to the floor with the weight of its fabric against my ankles - a good thing, as in my mind I am about to float off into space. I open my eyes and cut myself loose, the music starts to seep in through my pores seeming to replace my earthly flesh and my vision is filled with the stage lights bouncing off the faceted rings that I’ve worn for that very reason” (McGee xiii). Music, alongside many other forms of art, has the power to move people. Some melodies will capture people’s hearts and feed their minds. Others will entrance people and help them to escape into a different state. Music is a form of energy that touches the most primitive part of a person. It brings us together and creates a connection between people that cannot be achieved in any other way. For decades, San Francisco has been the home of a flourishing music scene. Many different genres of music and counter cultures have sprung up in neighborhoods throughout the city, creating a vibrant patchwork of culture. The beat poets in North Beach, the hippies in Haight-Ashbury, and the gays in the Castro neighborhood have each contributed to San Francisco’s diverse collection of counter cultures. Each of these were also influenced by different types of music, making San Francisco one of the most musically diverse places in the world. However, in recent years, rising housing prices have made it more difficult for the music industry to thrive in San Francisco. Writer Zoe Corbyn describes what was once an “artistic, bohemian place with a history of flowering counter-cultures” as “the hype- and capital-fuelled epicentre of America’s technology industry” (Corbyn). San Francisco’s spirited music scene has been overshadowed by an influx of technology companies and their high-wage employees. As a result, musicians who have made their home in San Francisco for years are now unable to make their rent payments. Writer Ian Port explains, Higher housing costs make it more difficult for musicians, especially bands, to live and create [in San Francisco]. But they also make property owners less likely to lease space to music venues and recording studios, when building housing would be more profitable. And as more housing goes up and the city becomes denser, existing clubs and performance spaces find themselves surrounded by people who don’t want to hear loud music or see raucous crowds late at night. (Port) The San Francisco music scene is dwindling. This sad truth about the changing music scene in San Francisco raises questions about its future. Will San Francisco’s music scene die? At Amoeba Music, the answer to this question is an emphatic “No!” As one of the last of its kind, Amoeba Music embodies the famed countercultures of San Francisco; its employees preserve the music that makes the city unique by freely sharing their excitement and providing the people of San Francisco with a direct connection to the music.
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Chapter One: Music in the City
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olden Gate Park--the grass is basked in sun and covered by a blanket of brightly colored, freespirited people dancing. A colorful patchwork of people moves through the grass, constantly changing as the crowd reshapes itself. Women twirl in circles, taking in the warmth of the sun and the electricity of the music. Their gypsy skirts anchor their bodies to the ground, but the music takes their minds and their souls far up into the sky. The grass tickles the bare soles of their feet, and reminds them of what it feels like to be alive. Music wells up around them and boosts them into a state of expanded consciousness. They come here to love, to dance, and to be. In the late 1960s, an event like this was a common occurrence. The idea that people should gather together for the sole purpose of being together and being in the moment was a common and appealing idea for hippies
in the 1960s. Rosie McGee was one of these free spirits who experienced the human be-in and lived through the summer of love. When a
at a moment of deep cultural change. She stepped boldly into situations that led her to shake off the conventions of her family and the acceptable behaviors for a young lady at the time, and become ‘liberated’” (McGee). Liberation was a keyword for the kind of society that the hippies strived to create. Instead of living in a society based on war and commerce, the hippies wanted to create a society based on creation, the arts, -Rosie McGee vii and all-embracing love (McGee). The hippie movement inspired many great artists who are still revered friend of Rosie’s writes about her in the Danc- today. Music flourished during the 60s ing with the Dead, she explains that and into the 70s and creative people “[Rosie] found herself in San Francisco were rewarded for their talents with
Liberation was our keyword for the new society we had in mind to build, not based in militarism and commerce, but in the arts, personal expression, music and joyous expressions based on easy friendship and sharing”
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fame and love. However, times have changed in San Francisco. In recent years, it’s become increasingly difficult for creative people to receive validation for their work. The ideas of liberation and allembracing love that dominated the 60s and the 70s are no longer prominent today. The movement in the 60s that inspired artistic and musical creativity has been replaced by the birth of the technology industry. We asked Amoeba Music owner, Joe Goldmark, to reflect on how the growing prominence of the technology industry has affected Amoeba. He explained that Amoeba was mainly affected by the fact that employees were finding it difficult to
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stay in the area. San Francisco has gotten so expensive that employees who had been living comfortably
10 years ago are now getting priced out and being forced to move out of town (Goldmark). The presence of big businesses like Twitter and Dropbox have had an effect on the economy that has driven up the rent in San Francisco and increased the cost
of living there, making it hard for musicians to pay their rent. Their struggle is amplified by the fact that music venues are shutting down as rents increase and musicians are unable to find gigs to sustain themselves. Musicians are moving to places like Oakland and leaving San Francisco behind. Historically famed for its flourishing music scene and eclectic counter cultures, San Francisco is on the verge of losing its soul. H oweve r, all is not lost. Businesses like Amoeba Music are devoted to preserving the unique cultures that once dominated San Francisco and keeping the music alive in the city.
Chapter two: A World of Music
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moeba: a single-celled organism that collects food and moves around by extending fingerlike projections of protoplasm. Amoeba music: one of the biggest record stores in the United States that collects a wide variety of music and extends its influence around the world. Amoeba music is a single entity that encompasses the many different genres of music in San Francisco, the United States, and the world. Like a single-celled organism collecting food, Amoeba Music reaches out to capture the diverse collection of music that fuels its success. Simply put, Amoeba Music is the biggest and the best. Amoeba’s diverse collection of music attracts people throughout the world and acts as a hub that symbolizes music around the world. As cost of living has increased in
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San Francisco and musicians and artists have been pushed out of the area, San Francisco’s music scene has been jeopardized. Record stores are being
forced to shut down and make way for techy businesses and their highwage employees. David James remarks that sadly, “[Amoeba Music] is one of the last...large general audience, general public serving record stores that exists anymore” (James). He continues
to explain that “when Amoeba Music opened, there were many stores like [it]”. For example, he describes Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley as having multiple large record stores “all within a few blocks of one another” at the time that Amoeba Music opened. Now, most of those record stores have shut down. However, while many record stores have failed, taking their music collections with them, Amoeba Music has remained successful and provided people with music of many different genres to satisfy their wide variety of tastes. Amoeba music is an undoubtedly gigantic record store. Joe Goldmark himself says, “Amoeba is probably the biggest and best record store in the
“We aren’t a niche store that only applies itself to indie rock or electronica or avant garde...You could only be super into black metal and this could be your store.”
world, quite frankly. And I’m not just saying that; I think its that’s the truth and so we’re humbled to be that” (Goldmark). But why is Amoeba’s size so important? Is bigger actually better? In the case of Amoeba Music, it most definitely is. Size is what makes Amoeba, rather than any other record store, a musical hub that represents the counter cultures of San Francisco and the world. Ryan Boucher, employee of Amoeba Music, believes that “part of having a store that’s really large is it just embraces all of the music and all of the formats” (Boucher). He also claims that “[Amoeba isn’t] a niche store that only applies itself to indie rock or electronica or avant garde...you could only be super into black metal and this could be your store.” While small stores that sell select types of music represent select types of music culture, Amoeba represents music culture as a whole because its wide selection of music allows it to
cater to a variety of individual tastes. Amoeba acts as a musical hub in which customers can find anything they need regardless of genre. Furthermore, Amoeba’s extensive collection of music has helped the store to make a name for itself and become
cal hub for the people of San Francisco and the Bay Area, but also it acts as a tourist destination for people who want to see the vast accumulation of recorded music and experience all that Amoeba has to offer. Amoeba’s wide selection of music allows it to be anyone’s record store and puts it on the map as an important destination for music lovers around the world. One of the reasons why Amoeba is still so successful and seemingly immune to the decline of San Francisco’s music culture is that Amoeba is “part of the San Francisco music scene but [it’s] also bigger than that” (Boucher). In the midst of a cultural change in San Francisco that favors technology, Amoeba acts as a musical hub, conwell known solidating a world of music into one a r o u n d store. However, while Amoeba Music the world. According to Ryan, “people brings a world of music together into come [to Amoeba] from Germany and one place, it is really the employees are like ‘I’ve waited a whole year to who make this music accessible to come check out your store’” (Boucher). the people. Not only does Amoeba act as a musi-
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Chapter three: a gateway to music
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h e most prominent and outwardly noticeable thing about Amoeba Music is the feeling that you get the moment you walk in. When I stepped through the threshold on my first trip to Amoeba, I felt like I was stepping into another world. The contrast between the busyness of Haight Street and the calm of Amoeba Music caught me off guard. Laid-back, thoughtful people flipped through stacks of records. Some looked for their favorite music, some tried to find the expensive original issues of music, and some just looked at the art. An older man with a colorful shirt and round sunglasses drifted through the store, looking at rock titles here and there, all the while holding his dog on a leash beside him. The atmosphere at Amoeba was very relaxing, but despite the relaxed feeling of the store, I
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could tell that there was an electricity in the air sparked by a shared passion between employee and customer. The employees shared a love and admiration for music with the diverse group
of people that came through their store, and eventually they shared it with me. According to David James, manager at Amoeba Music, the people who work at Amoeba, including himself, are “so into their slice of music fandom that they want to share [it] with other people” (James). The pas-
sion for music that the employees at Amoeba share makes it a very unique place. The fact that the employees care so much about the music makes shopping at Amoeba less about spending money and more about expanding your exposure to records and deepening your love for music. A wide variety of people wander into Amoeba looking for a number different kind of music. During his interview, Joe Goldmark explained, We of course get all ages; we get a lot of new people who are coming because of the vinyl thing...they just got a turntable, they’re pretty young or they wanna buy records. We have a lot of what I call greybeards: folks in their 60s who never stopped liking something you can hold in your hand type music, CDs, LPs, whatever. Lots of collectors, lots of people that come in and they’ll just buy a poster off the wall. We’ve got a lot of wives of record collectors.
They’ll come in and, wives, what are they doing in a record store I don’t even know but they’ll see a book section and that’s fun for them. (Goldmark) Amoeba Music serves a very eclectic group of customers. Some enjoy the same level of “music fandom” as the employees and some are much less educated in the field of music. However, even if you don’t know much about music when you first come to Amoeba, the energy and the passion of the employees is easy to absorb. Suzanne Lee, one of the employees at Amoeba, explains that “customers can pick up on people’s enthusiasm...a lot of times someone will single an Amoeba person out and listen to all the things they recommend... it really comes through in how [Amoeba] people are able to suggest things to [customers] that they wouldn’t ordinarily come up with and we just have a lot of people like that here” (Lee). The Amoeba Music employees use their passion to cre-
Amoeba and employees who will help customers to find what they are looking for (Goldmark). The knowledgeable and passionate employees who work at Amoeba make it a very easy place to feel at home. A few days ago, I was taking pictures at Amoeba Music for this documentary book. I came across David James, the manager who I had interviewed a few weeks ago, and asked him how he had been since I last saw him. He was carrying a big box filled with old CDs. He told me that he was doing well and that he had just bought someone’s CD collection for Amoeba Music. As David James started talking about the music lovers who are willing to share collection of CDs, his eyes lit up and their love of music with the custom- he couldn’t hide his foolish grin as he ers. There is an information desk at described to me, in detail, the gravate a gateway between the people and the music. They make an overwhelmingly large amount of music much more manageable by recommending music to customers that will expand their exposure and fit their musical tastes. Additionally, the customers who wander into Amoeba, knowing very little about music, instantly feel at home there. Joe Goldmark explains that Amoeba is “very counterculture.” The employees are
“You have to really walk away from some of us sometimes to get us to stop talking about this thing that we’re really into.”
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ity of this investment and the value of the unique CDs in the collection. Of course, I knew nothing about the particular artist he was so enthralled with, but his obvious excitement rubbed off on me and after a few minutes, I was grinning too. As I walked away from David James, leaving him to continue his work, I realized that I had formed a newfound connection with the artist who made him so excited even though I’d never actually heard this artists’ music. Later, as I was thumbing through David James’s interview, I realized that he had admitted to the fact that he, as well as other employees, sometimes get a little overly excited about the music. He said, “[The employees] are just so excited about the music, sometimes we go a little overboard with it, you know, sometimes you have to really, you have to walk away
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liant” and “passionate” (Coronado). Another Amoeba customer describes Amoeba as “one of the friendliest and down-to-earth places you can ever visit”. When he’s at Amoeba, he “feel[s] like [he is] at home” (Simko). The sheer size of Amoeba music has the potential to make any customer feel overwhelmed, but surprisingly, customers feel at home at Amoeba. This is due mainly to the helpful, friendly, and passionate atmosphere created by the staff. Many Amoeba customers have had experiences with ers, I thought that his apparent love the employees similar to my experifor music only boosted my own excite- ence with David James, but none of ment. Other Amoeba customers also these customers have seen the staff’s share the sentiment that passionate passion as something to be avoided. Amoeba employees add to the expe- Instead, customers appreciate the rience of shopping for music. Joseph staff’s excitement and they let it inCoronado, a patron of Amoeba Music, fluence their own passion for music. excitedly describes the staff as “brilfrom some of us sometimes to get [us] to stop talking about this thing that [we’re] really into” (James). I had seen first hand the extent of David James’s passion towards music. However, while he thought that their extreme passion was a distraction to the custom-
Conclusion Amoeba music provides a direct connection between the people who come through the door and the music that has influenced people for years. Passion is contagious at Amoeba Music. The music shares its passion with the employees who share their passion with the people. Amoeba preserves San Francisco’s history of counter cultures by representing all of the music that was once prominent there, once prominent anywhere, or that is still prominent today. But what is next for Amoeba? Will Amoeba remain untouched by the economic challenges that have driven so many artists away? Will Amoeba thrive and expand or will it become overshadowed by the technological advances that make music so much more accessible to people within their homes? Although Amoeba might become less successful as the artists move away and the tech industry expands, I don’t think it will ever shut down or be forgotten. There will always be people who appreciate vinyl for the softer, rounder sound and the culture that goes along with its purchase. As long as these people exist, Amoeba will continue to be relevant, at least in some circles. Music has always influenced people. Music will always influence people. As long as music influences the employees of Amoeba Music and as long as music influences the people of the world, Amoeba will survive. “Dancing - the physical kick of high stepping boosting the available energy made for higher highs. It was an emotional entangled group spirit calling to the potent human energy welling up around the band’s music as it expanded, flowing outward. Feedback loops of excitement rippled out and washed back from the audience, lifting and reflecting, glittering waves on a small ocean. In our elevated states, all this moving energy was palpable, real and endless, as long as the music played” (McGee).
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Works Cited Boucher, Ryan. Personal interview. 22 March 2015. Corbyn, Zoe. “Is San Francisco Losing Its Soul?” The Guardian. N.p., 23 Feb. 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2015. Coronado, Joseph. “Who We Are.” Amoeba Music. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2015. Goldmark, Joe. Personal interview. 1 March 2015. James, David. Personal interview. 8 March 2015. Lee, Suzanne. Personal interview. 18 March 2015. Leonard, John. “The Life and Death of the Record Store.” The Washtenaw Voice. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2015. Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow, 2005. Print. McGee, Rosie. Dancing with the Dead: A Photographic Memoir ; My Good Old Days with the Grateful Dead & the San Francisco Music Scene, 1964-1974. Rohnert Park, CA: Tioli & Bytes, 2013. Print. Port, Ian S. “Exit Music: Musicians Are Leaving San Francisco. Can the City’s Legendary Scene Survive?” SF Weekly. N.p., 12 Mar. 2014. Web. 13 Feb. 2014. Simko, John. “Who We Are.” Amoeba Music. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2015.
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Katie Dillon is a Junior at Los Altos High School and Freestyle Academy. She lives in Los Altos with her parents and two siblings. Katie was born in Austin, TX, but she moved to Los Altos at the start of third grade. She loves to swing dance, rock climb, and listen to music from the 60s, the 70s, and today. Katie also loves to travel and hopes to gain perspective by visiting many countries around the world.
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