Tub

  I prefer baths to showers.  I always have.  It reminds me of my childhood.  A word of advice:  never lose your inner child.  I take baths and listen to music. It is the nicest part of my day to be in a hot bath and listening to my stereo.  Today, it was Stevie Ray Vaughan.  Showers are okay, if I don't have a choice.  It is just relaxing to be in a bath.

 This brings me to an experience, when I lived in a condo in Greenville.  The buildings were close to one another, and they formed alleys between each building.  My bedroom was on the second floor and overlooked the alley and the back of the next building.  The guy, who lived in the opposite condo, was a bit overweight.  I'm being nice.  He probably weighed 300 pounds.  Every morning, unless it was storming, he would come outside on his porch; strip down to nakedness; and stand in a metal tub to take a bath.  Even in the rain and the cold, he would have this ritual.  Unfortunately for me, I would see him from my bedroom.  I wanted to look away, but it was like watching a car wreck.  Maybe, he was too large to fit into his tub inside, although those tubs were pretty big.  Maybe, he was a nudist.  I never met him to find out.  He was the real-life "ugly naked guy" character from "Friends".

 I would hope that we would have thunderstorms in the mornings, because it wouldn't have been safe for him to stand in a metal tub with water.  Although, I secretly wanted for him to test the laws of electricity.  Some of the condo's residents complained about his show every morning, but the owners said he was within his rights to do that on his property.  If he had been a supermodel, and she was bathing herself outside, it would have been vastly different.  If anyone sees me taking a bath outside on my porch, call the folks with the rubber rooms.  

Grooves

  I've worked thirty years in retail stores.  During my tenure in retail, I learned a lot about how to be successful.  I learned how to display merchandise that would make the customer want to buy it.  For example, when I worked in Books at Belk, there was a new book by Billy Graham.  I built a cross with those books on a table.  We sold out of the books.  Creativity was the key to displaying items for sale.  I also learned what people wanted to buy.  When I was a buyer for Belk, I brought in a Tummy Toner knock-off as seen on TV.  We sold 10,000 units within a six-week period.  When I worked at Rich's/Macy's, I had the number one Lamp department in the Rich's company in sales and the number five Luggage department in all of Macy's stores.  Why?  I knew how to sell.

 My unfulfilled dream has been to have a store of my own selling books, records, posters, autographs, memorabilia, magazines, videos, and other stuff.  For a long time, I have been selling much of this stuff on eBay and Amazon, but I wanted to have a store of my own.  I have had some of my stuff in a couple of other stores, but I had no real control over the sales.  

 When I thought I could do a store, I put in a lot of study into what other stores did that were similar to what I wanted to do.  In my business model, I picked a few things from record or memorabilia stores, but I found that no one in the Southeast was doing what I wanted to do.  So then, the preparation began.  

 I had a very large collection of VHS tapes with music on them.  I took those tapes and recorded them on 8-hour tapes.  I created tapes with a lot of genres from rock to pop to soul to country to classical to jazz and more that would appeal to customers. In order to break up the music, I also added movie or comedy clips to add to the videos.  I made sure that everything would be suitable for any customer that came into the store. The idea was to play these tapes in the store on a big-screen TV and maybe have a sofa so that customers could sit and watch them. I had over 130 video tapes to show in store.   When DVD's came out, I transferred much of the material to discs.  I had over 180 discs, since I couldn't get any more than six hours to a disc.

 The store was going to be called Grooves and Such. My advertising would use the tagline "Grooves and Such, it's a Gas, Gas, Gas" using the first initials in the store's name and borrowing a line from "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones.  I thought it was catchy. I needed cork boards to display the autographs and posters; three glass cases to show the small stuff; a few tables with boxes to use for the records and videos; and other fixtures for the books and magazines.  The store itself would be no more than 1200 square feet.  I figured that $175,000 would be needed to get the store going and allow it to be profitable within a year.  The location would have to be in an area with free parking and easy to get to, like a traffic light nearby.  I scouted several locations and found a few that could work.

 My dream never materialized.  The closest I got was in 2015, when I was working with a friend who would supply the financial needs.  Unfortunately, he was killed.  One blessing was that the store probably would have failed during Covid.  Maybe one day.  

 

Hurt

  The Cobbwebs was a band that I was a part of.  I wrote the lyrics to several of the songs.  We billed ourselves as "original 60's rock and roll".  Del and Chris did all of the music.  We were based out of the Irmo, SC area, where they lived.  

 There was a local company that produced a various artists tape called "The Burning of Columbia" in the mid-1990's, and we were picked to be on that tape.  We went into a recording studio to cut our song.  The tape was released, and we got some radio airplay.  

 Things were looking up for us.  A local band was getting some major airplay during this same time.  They were called "Hootie and the Blowfish".  We knew some of the people with that band, or we knew people who knew people with that band.  At any rate, we knew we were good and tried to shop our music around to artists and labels.  We would send them a tape of our music along with the sheet music for the enclosed songs.  The companies would return the tapes but keep the sheet music. We listened to the radio to see if a band would steal our copyrighted songs, and then we would sue them and make millions.  

 Due to a lawsuit many years before regarding George Harrison and "My Sweet Lord", it was determined that a song would have to have eight bars in a row the same in order for the music to be copied.  We heard one rather famous band use our music, but it was only six bars, so there was nothing we could do.

 We were getting a lot of buzz around town for our music, especially on local late-night FM radio.   We were going to be the next Hootie that was going to come out of Columbia.  One Saturday, the three of us went to Augusta, GA for a record convention.  We liked to go there to look for rarities to add to our collection.  As we were going from table to table, I overheard Chris and Del talking to a dealer.  They were telling him about their upcoming move to Nashville, TN to make it big up there.  This was the first I had heard about a move.  They were going to leave Columbia and me.  We had a three-way partnership with The Cobbwebs.  All decisions had to be put to a vote.  I wasn't consulted about their moving to Nashville.  I was shocked and deeply hurt.  Of course, it was a good move for them and the music.  They just never told me they were moving.  I couldn't go with them because of my job.

 The last time we were together, before their move, was at The Rolling Stones concert in Columbia in 1995.  It was a great show.  I had to resign myself in knowing that the music would be better in Nashville.  It was, and we got noticed.  We never achieved "Hootie" status.  We were in the top ten for indie releases in several European countries in 2002.  That was something.