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Music fanatics rejoice with new Hoodlums

TEMPE — After 10 years as an on-campus fixture, Hoodlums record store is moving out of the Arizona State University basement and into the Tempe community.

The new location opens Sept. 20 at McClintock Drive and Guadalupe Road and will allow Hoodlums to wade into the live music scene.

“We have more space at this location, so we are going to start buying, selling and trading records in addition to CDs and DVDs,” Hoodlums co-owner Steve Wiley says in an email. “We also built a stage and purchased a PA, so we can host more bands.”

The store originally settled in 500 square feet inside ASU’s Memorial Union in 1998, according to the store website. It offered a wide collection of new and used CDs, then prospered and began selling DVDs, music posters, and various pop culture artifacts.

In 2001, it moved to a larger space inside the Memorial Union basement. This new location allowed Wiley and Luce to bring in more products including the expansion of DVDs and vinyl records, according to the store website.

The store remained open up until last November, when a fire on the third floor of the Memorial Union caused the entire building to be shut down for three months. Wiley says these were the prime months for Hoodlums’ sales.

The lease ran out while the Memorial Union was being repaired, Wiley says, and owners decided not to renew at a time when they had no customers.

“It was a tough way to end a great relationship,” Wiley says.

Some students still mourn the loss. Matthew Burrows, an ASU journalism senior, remembers seeing the signs on the store’s door announcing it was closing up shop on campus.

“That was convenient, that was on-campus, that was right there,” Burrows says with obvious frustration.

After hunting around for a new location, Wiley and Luce found a spot in the shopping center that is home to Trader Joe’s and Changing Hands Book Store.

Other new characteristics include an expansion of their music collection emphasizing the world and jazz genres and the use of their wall space to sell music and movie art. Local artists will have a spot on the walls on a bi-monthly basis, Wiley says.

At least one ASU student who hadn’t heard of the store was thankful it found a new home.

“People are really passionate about music, so it’s a good thing,” says ASU junior Ashley Chadwick.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Backstage with Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers

Last night, I had the opportunity to go behind the black velvet curtains at Phoenix’s Celebrity Theater to spend some QT with Arizona’s quintessential independent rock band, Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers.

Not knowing what to expect, I’m fairly certain this was the *mellowest* backstage party in the history of backstage parties. A room full of about 30 people ate Doritos, pretzels and drank four cases of Rolling Rock and Dos Equis [myself included — you know, just to blend in] without ever catching a glimpse of the band. I saw Steve (guitarist), who quickly ran out. PH (drummer) was nowhere to be found 20 minutes to showtime. The bassist was in the parking lot, and Roger was in the hallway looking harried.

“I gotta go memorize the words to my songs,” he told me before bolting for a dressing room.

Not exactly what you want to hear from the lead singer moments before playing the city’s classiest venue. They played 31 songs in 2.5 hours. [Actually, it was more like 30 since Roger forgot at least two verses.]

But that’s part of the fun at a Peacemakers show, where Roger indulges the crowd by drinking whatever flask, beer or other mysterious alcoholic beverage it offers up during the set. He is a true warrior, but the all-night sing-along ends up helping him out later in the show. Everyone realizes this, and musical purists would be alarmed. But in the eyes of fans, it’s part of Roger’s rock star charm. [The band has now played 16 times in Rocky Point at a block party concert they call Circus Mexicus.]

The band is touring for its new album, Turbo Ocho. Check it out, and be ready to hear a mix of heavier rock and a five-man section of trumpets, bongos, and Latin timbales. Vivan los Peacemakers!

Payson man’s opus: Netflix in E minor

PAYSON — Kevin Bailey had an epiphany nine years ago while trying to play a new age tune on his piano.

The Payson music store owner tore pages of sheet music from a composition book because the book wouldn’t stay open on the music stand. But the pages kept falling off the instrument’s stand too, so he taped them together. Again, no luck.

That’s when it dawned on him: Digital sheet music.

Sounds simple, right? Bailey agrees. And now EMI Music Group and Sony are working with him to convert potentially thousands of tunes to his patented format whose roots were more garage band wonder than Silicon Valley startup.

The result is a musical version of Netflix, the popular online video rental service.

“I’m like the average next door neighbor who came up with this,” says Bailey, 45. “I just don’t want to see music die.”

Bailey’s background is steeped in music. He ran Schroeder’s piano and organ stores in Paradise Valley and MetroCenter malls while living in Phoenix. He moved to Payson, population 12,000, to escape the heat and co-found Payson Music Center in 1993.

He says he came up with paperless sheet music in 1998, but the tools to make it weren’t cheap enough at the time.

“No one’s gonna buy a music stand that costs a thousand dollars,” Bailey says. “And the proof is in the pudding because there are a couple of competitive models out there that do scoring and the page for you, but you still have to touch the screen or use a footpedal to change the page.

“But it’s still the motion,” Bailey adds, becoming annoyed at the thought. “It’s still taking your hand away from the instrument. You have to think of something other than just playing your instrument.”

So Bailey waited until gear prices dropped for DVD players, portable DVD viewers and laptops loaded with user-friendly software to create and present musical scores.

In 2005, he started scoring songs digitally for paperless sheet music. He began with songs in the “public domain” – tunes created before copyright laws were in place to protect them. Anyone can score these songs without paying the original artist a royalty. Classical music from composers like Mozart and Beethoven, for example, fall into this category.

Soon Bailey started reaching out to music industry shakers. He eventually found Milton Hopkins, of Hopkins Music Group in Austin, who agreed to work with record labels on Bailey’s behalf to secure rights to songs so that Bailey could score them digitally.

EMI Music Group, one of the world’s largest repositories for music, signed on and recently gave Bailey access to 2,700 songs. He scans them for tunes he think people will be interested in learning and playing. [Sony is also in talks with Bailey.]

Once Hopkins helps secure the rights, Bailey goes to work scoring each piece. He uses a network of six independent composers in Louisiana, Missouri and Arizona. One of them just graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in musical composition.

Each composer scores 10 songs and emails it to Bailey, who then adds the artwork using an Apple laptop. The assembly-line process takes about one month to create an album of digital sheet music.

Users can now go to the company’s website and individually select songs from Bailey’s growing library. They’ll get a CD in the mail within five days, Bailey says.

At press time, Bailey’s paperless sheet music catalog includes songs from country stars like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, the Charlie Daniels Band and more. He even has television and movie themes from the Facts of Life, Ghostbusters, Rocky and James Bond, among others. [Bailey was recently pouring over tunes from classic rock stars like Phil Collins and Genesis.]

Bailey, 45, estimates that he has sunk $50,000 into the business so far. If he strikes it rich, Bailey says, he’ll stay in Payson.

If not, no big deal, Bailey says. It’s about getting people plugged into music, driving customers to his store and other “brick and mortar” music shops, and filling a void left behind by a beloved Rim Country music teacher.

He cites a recent Gallup poll done for the music industry that suggests people are ready for this plug-and-play setup. About 82 percent of respondents said they were interested in learning and playing music but didn’t know how or where to start.

Bailey also says the paperless sheet music is something that has driven more traffic to his store at a time when the music industry is shaky. He thinks it could do the same for other shops.

“I have a television sittin’ on a piano in the front of my store,” he says. “I just put it on and loop it, and it repeats over and over and over. I have more people talk to me about it and start up a conversation, and they’ve never been in the store before.”

And maybe the new tool will offset the dearth of musical instruction in the Payson area. Bailey says local schools haven’t funded a real music program since Ileane Gonzales, whose enthusiasm for music fueled the Rim Country Orchestra and three grade-school programs, passed away in 2000 at age 79.

“It’s really not about money,” he says. “It’s more about people being able to play music and simplifying it to a point that, you know, people say, ‘I’ve got a choice. I could sit here and watch the television, or I could pop in my DVD and watch my televsion and play something.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.