Good Time To Support A Local Record Store

With so many local artists unable to play shows, it's a good time to call your record store and place an order to pick up a release or two from one of the many Columbus bands and musicians hurting during this, as well as supporting a local business. Here's some places to a check out:

Lost Weekend Records

Elizabeth's Records

Used Kids Records

Magnolia Thunderpussy Records

Records Per Minute

New Additions: She Don't Tell Secrets seven inch single by The Guise

Sometimes in the many hours of crate-digging at various record stores across town, stumbling upon one unknown record in a local bin opens up a rabbit hole of information. That's the case with, from what I've figured out so far, the only release by The Guise from 1983 on Doubletree Records that I found at Magnolia Thunderpussy a few months back. Turns out Doubletree was a second sub-label of Kingsmill Studio, which released nearly a hundred records on the main Blue Ash Records in the 1970s and 80s. The Guise also appeared on Volume 3 of the Q-FM Hometown Series with a song called "You Don't Have To Cry," a track similar to their power-pop style on this single.

Columbus Monthly: Exile on High Street

In 2016 former Johnny Go's House of Music owner John Petric reflected on his history selling records on High Street, Campus Partners and more at Columbus Monthly. A snippet of that:

Campus was record-store nirvana back in those days. In addition to Mole’s, you had Singin’ Dog, Capitol City, Discount Records and Magnolia Thunderpussy, as well as Used Kids and its sister operation, School Kids, which focused on new product. The competition was fierce, and Mole’s, the first used-record store in Columbus, struggled to keep up. In 1988, I dug into my savings to buy what was left of Mole’s from the IRS for the ungodly sum of $2,500, as well as paying Ken Stone’s $3,600 in unpaid rent. I now had my own business right in the heart of campus, taking over the old Mole’s space on the second floor of the Wellington Building at 16th and High. I christened my store Johnny Go’s House O’ Music, naming it after my band, Johnny Go and the Awesome Dudes.

Short North Gazette: Thunderstruck!

Thanks to archive.org, there is a nice in-depth article about Magnolia Thunderpussy by the Short North Gazette from sometime in the early 2000s. Check it:

Overdub the chirping, the rustling, the campfire crackles with the soundtrack to Magnolia Thunderpussy. The clickety clack of hipsters rifling through rows of records and CD's. Customers firing off litanies of must-have records. A derelict wind of words exchanged as paychecks get cashed on rare gems, and behind it all the kick drum of a song taking shape, a hip-hop groove, a heavy metal anthem, and enough blood and guts rock-and-roll to satisfy Mick Jagger. 

The 55-year-old Kubat, owner of Magnolia Thunderpussy, has made a life of selling music. The store whose name comes from Indian legend or an acid-laced vision, depending on whom you talk to, has sputtered, evolved, grown, shrank, flourished, and withstood the onslaught of changes the music industry has undergone in the last 34 years, from the birth of compact discs, to the advent of hip-hop and MTV. 

It has evolved from a small family-owned-and-operated shop stocking a couple hundred top-selling Billboard artists like Led Zeppelin, Elton John, and Aerosmith in the early 1970s, to a veritable warehouse storing colossal racks of tens of thousands of records, hundreds of T-shirts, posters, pins, and even video games. Kubat says you can find anything from "Abba to John Zorn" on the shelves, and a quick jaunt through the store will send you past Goths armed with fists full of metal, and indie kids going ga-ga over the new Bright Eyes album. 

And the records keep spinning.