A Matter of Records

The 40-year history of Plan 9 Music involves startup woes, expansion, contraction, hopscotching locations, bankruptcy reorganization, shifts in technology, the dizzying fracturing of musical genres, economic crashes, distribution tangles — and now a pandemic.

Bob Schick, a Plan 9 employee for 37 years, reflects on how the clientele kept the store operating during the past year. “Our loyal customers would call us up and have us walk their orders out to them,” he says. “I didn’t foresee that coming. They were saying, ‘We don’t want you to go away,’ and we are saying, ‘We don’t want to go away, let’s keep doing it.’ ”

Through all the upheavals and downturns, Plan 9 has established itself as a center for the region’s culture — musical and otherwise — with its support for homegrown talent and its in-store events.

For patrons near and far, it’s more than a record store — it’s a welcoming connection to a wider world. Jimmy Blackford shopped at Plan 9 before he started working there. “People wanted to talk about what was new and happening in music, and we’d tell people about stuff we’d heard about, and they’d tell us about bands they’d gone to see live.”

Like an old hardware store, with the customers standing around a stove, though perhaps with the patrons wearing more leather and body adornments.

Jim Bland, Plan 9’s co-founder, says he’s been sustained by his involvement in the music community, helping to promote concerts and regional talent, providing an information hub for all things music, and following his personal interests with the Richmond Folk Festival.

“It’s for the love of music, being able to be my own boss and my involvement in the music community that has kept me motivated through the tough times,” Bland says. “Throughout, I could not imagine doing anything else.”

‘Space Oddity’

Bland graduated in 1973 as an English major from Virginia Commonwealth University. While he was in school and afterward, he racked and stocked records for department stores, and he ultimately started working at a retail store called the Album Den.

That’s where, in 1977, through Sire Records, he got the Ramones for an in-store performance in support of their concert at the now demolished VCU Franklin Street Gym. (Plan 9 eventually became known for hosting artists in store — in 1991, the Ramones returned for a signing session.)

Bland’s friend David “Pedie” Kurzman managed a B. Dalton Bookseller on Nine Mile Road at Eastgate Mall (now Eastgate Town Center) until the location closed. Given the choice between working at another store for less pay or moving out of town, Kurzman instead considered a more creative way to earn a living that jibed with his interests.

Richmond was then amid a dry spell of stores featuring import and indie records. Enthusiasts like Kurzman and Bland traveled to Washington, D.C., “just to buy cool records,” Kurzman recalls. “So I got the idea to open a used record store and called Jimmy, as he had experience already in record stores … and suggested we open a store, and then we got together.”

They scouted locations. At the time, Bland considered Shockoe Bottom, which was less expensive in pre-floodwall days, though little stirred there during daylight. Kurzman favored Carytown, which didn’t carry its present cachet. A dwindling audience attended The Byrd Theatre’s second-run movies, and the street was populated with hardware and appliance-repair stores, a few beauty parlors, apartment buildings, and boarded-up storefronts. (George Stitzer, who’d worked at The Byrd since its 1928 opening, eventually becoming its manager, was killed beneath the streetlight across from Plan 9 in 1982. The theater closed for a time.)

Bland and Kurzman settled on 2901 W. Cary St., an unrenovated former two-room apartment (today’s Citizen Burger), still with its kitchen. They had $1,200 in tax return money and a junky cash register.

They needed a name.

Bland and Kurzman, the latter a fan of fantasy and science fiction, shared an affection for cult films. Plan 9 organically emerged from conversation, the name taken from director Ed Wood’s obscure contribution to sci-fi/horror cinema, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

‘Takin’ Care of Business’

Plan 9 opened on July 11, 1981. Bland and Kurzman had forgotten to get change for the register, so Kurzman’s father ran to bring in rolls of quarters and nickels.

Pinball machines and video games, a draw in those days, stood in the front, and the records were in the back.

“The video games were good in that they helped bring in a few dollars,” Kurzman recalls, “but they were a major pain in the ass because they drew in kids whose primary hobby was video games and secondary hobby was stealing records.”

Social media in 1981 meant generating word of mouth by circulating flyers (especially at the Bus Stop club during the slam-dancing craze) and sponsoring odd movies and punk bands.

Bland and Kurzman consigned their personal record collections to the store, as did friends Perry Bailey, Rod Givens, Andy Jones and Brent Hosier, among others. “I really wish I still had some of those records today,” Kurzman reflects. “I believe when we opened, we had virtually every new wave and punk 45 ever pressed for sale.”

For the store’s logo and advertising handbills, Bland turned to a former Album Den colleague, designer and artist Givens (of today’s Ignatius Hats).

Givens describes a brief discussion between himself and Bland. “I drew the flyer by hand,” he says, “and that’s the way they’ve kept it all these years. We tweaked the ‘9’ a little to make it more legible.”

The figure on the first handbill looks like an eerie, new wave Nosferatu. Bland and Kurzman’s vision embraced resurrecting old records — good music never dies.

Givens describes the first location as “a real punk, seedy little record store.” He vividly remembers thumbing through bins and seeing roaches skitter out of them.

Buzzy Lawler became acquainted with Kurzman in high school and found a home in record stores. He remembers the first Plan 9 and his introduction to the sounds of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and of Robyn Hitchcock with the Soft Boys. After 14 years in the tightening corporate world of Peaches Records, a chain of stores known for its wooden record crates, Lawler, a musician and radio host, worked at Plan 9 from July 1992 until 2010.

“Plan 9 was another universe,” Lawler says. “What I really liked — loved — about being there was putting the universal currency of music into people’s hands.”

‘Working on a Dream’

In a 1990 interview for The Richmond Review on the store’s ninth anniversary, Bland recounted the difficulties of Plan 9’s early days as near disastrous. “Taxes nailed us that first year, and we screwed up a whole lot,” he said.

Kurzman’s and Bland’s love of music evolved from a pastime into their vocation.

“I had decided long ago if I could make a basic living being immersed in music,” Bland reflects, “it was the job for me — although I had to learn the business of being in business the hard way.” About a decade into their partnership, Bland and Kurzman forged a buyout agreement, with Kurzman leaving to pursue his interests in rare science fiction and fantasy books.

During the early Plan 9 years, Richmond didn’t have a reliable alternative or college radio station. Jimmy Blackford points to the September 1981 introduction of cable television to Richmond. This development heralded the arrival of MTV, punk and new wave. Students moving from the Northern Virginia suburbs to attend VCU and the University of Richmond also wanted to find their music. They came to Plan 9.

“What I really liked — loved — about being there was putting the universal currency of music into people’s hands.” —Buzzy Lawler

Cable TV in 1982 also brought with it a collaborator, Channel 36 “Color Radio,” a “station” that played music over the color test bars of an unfilled Continental Cable channel. Its Carytown studio for a time was above The Track restaurant (now Pho Luca’s) before moving to Broad Street.

Plan 9 prospered. The store moved to 2913 W. Cary St., now the home of Chop Suey Books and then a former clothing shop where carpet hung on the walls. Bland took over a dressing room for his office. Increased inventory hastened an early 1990s move to 3012 W. Cary. There, Plan 9’s basement Crypt, with a dramatic portal fronted by a metal gate and painted flames, received visits from vinyl collectors nationwide.

Eugene Henry, a current Plan 9 employee and DJ known professionally as “Hip Hop Henry,” remembers making the trip to Carytown and the Crypt when he was a student at Hopewell High School. It was here that he acquired a significant amount of his musical arsenal. “It was like the gates of heaven!” he recalls of walking into the Crypt. “Wax hardly existed, it was CDs then, and so it was just me and my friend down there, and I think Jimmy [Blackford]. It was incredible.”

In-store events like midnight sales of new releases drew patrons, as did performances by No Doubt (1995), Captain Beefheart guitarist/songwriter Gary Lucas (2003), Camper van Beethoven (2004) and numerous Richmond bands.

‘Names, Faces, Places’

Plan 9’s growth included the addition of a second store at Albemarle Square shopping center in Charlottesville in 1985.

“We’re lucky the last of us misfits have a place to be,” observes Ruth Wilson, manager for the Charlottesville location, whose term of service with Plan 9 clocks in at 26 years this month.

“I had to adapt to selling everything to anybody,” she says. “You have to know a little bit about everything, maintain varied interests, read the news, you need to pay attention to the media.”

Mark Anderson Brown came to Plan 9 professionally after eight years of tie-wearing at the corporate Sam Goody Music. He moved to Plan 9’s 3012 W. Cary St. location in 1994 and later opened a Plan 9 store at Pocono Crossing in Midlothian. A surprising number of record collections arrived at the store for sale as CDs dominated the industry. “They’d have this treasure chest of wonderful recordings,” Brown says.

In the late ’90s, the company’s logo was changed from “Plan 9 Records” to “Plan 9 Music.”

Plan 9’s growth required better advertising and marketing efforts.

Kelly Wilkes joined as marketing director in 1993 after having first experienced Plan 9 as a customer. “I’d go to Plan 9 to check out a real record store and thought how awesome it would be to work there.”

When Wilkes departed her role as a Capitol Records representative, she visited Plan 9’s then-new office and warehouse, a crowded, two-story space at 2614 W. Cary St., now the site of Kreggers at Hand. “I surprised Jim [Bland] and [music buyer] Clay Roberston,” she recalls, “and they basically offered me a job on the spot. Lucky me. I was with Plan 9 for 13 years and loved it.”

Many employees were/are musicians, graphic artists, designers and writers, their camaraderie borne from a shared passion for all kinds of music. “In my day it was quite the melting pot,” Wilkes recalls.

During MTV’s early years, Plan 9 used then-plentiful record company promotions money for quirky ads where customers answered, “What does Plan 9 mean to you?” Responses ranged from “I don’t know!” to City Councilman Chuck Richardson holding a CD as he majestically remarked, “Con-ven-ience.”

Bill Altice, who freelanced some of Plan 9’s print advertising, worked with creative director Michael Mullen to conjure a few memorable 30-second ads. “We made five commercials in five hours and edited them in two and a half,” Altice says.

The 30-second, late-night ads placed their characters in front of a white backdrop enjoying unexpected song selections. A white-goateed man in a black-striped pullover and vest, Danny Brisbane, drops a hi-fi stylus on James Brown’s “Popcorn,” and it sets him to swaying; in another spot, musician Harry Gore holds a Walkman, and while wearing a James Brown T-shirt and pastel pink pants, he bounces to Buck Owens’ “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail.”

A crawl across the bottom of the screen declares, “Music is a deeply individual expression of a complex personality.” The jagged store logo then appears with the tagline, “Where serious music lovers shop.”

‘Big Time’

Plan 9’s dominion at its height comprised two Charlottesville stores and locations in Harrisonburg, Williamsburg, Carytown and Midlothian.

The acquisition of a few Record Exchange shops brought the franchise for a time to 10 stores.

Bland also sought to take local music global with the founding of his own record label, Planetary Records, in 1996. He realized, when talking with musicians in the store and at shows, that they needed assistance with pressing or artwork, or basic seed money. He created Planetary to achieve those ends and complemented this with 9X, a free monthly magazine chock-full of interviews with artists, music reviews and advertising from record labels.

The Planetary roster encompassed a constellation of Richmond musicians, including Susan Greenbaum, Li’l Ronnie and the Grand Dukes, Terry Garland, Burnt Taters, One Ring Zero, Page Wilson With Reckless Abandon, The Shiners, and the Ululating Mummies.

Bland ended the enterprise in 2013. “Overall, I never recouped the original investments,” he says, “but I really enjoyed it, especially when I participated as art director and producer of sorts on some of the releases.”

And then came 2008-11, when an abrupt yank of the economic phonograph arm sent a painful, long scratch across the cultural vinyl.

College kids downloaded free music online, which squeezed music sales. The nationwide economic crash that began in 2008 further damaged retail.

“We closed stores one by one as necessity dictated and terms allowed,” Bland says, “but it was a gut-wrenching learn-as-you go experience. The hardest part was laying off excellent, dedicated staffers.”

Schick adds, “Those were some very long nights when we thought it might be necessary.”

“It” meaning closing up shop.

‘Remember Me Well’

Jay Leavitt ran a record store in college. He traveled from his home in Alabama for an interview with the Richmond-based furniture store Heilig-Meyers, and he was taken to lunch at the New York Deli. He distinctly remembers walking past Plan 9.

“Unbeknownst to my wife at the time,” Leavitt says, “the presence of Plan 9 probably had something to do with me choosing to move to Richmond.”

With a young family and little disposable income, he nonetheless frequented Plan 9’s aisles, and he often saw 9-sters at shows, especially Blackford.

Leavitt took a part-time job at a competitor called Digits, and word got back to Blackford. During one of Leavitt’s periodic visits to Plan 9, Blackford took him aside and said if he wanted a job, they’d find a place for him. Six months later, Leavitt started evening and weekend shifts. He eventually went full time as a cashier following the 2000 bankruptcy of Heilig-Meyers, then he managed the Williamsburg branch from 2000-03 before becoming general manager of the Carytown store. There, he experienced the worst and the best moments of his career.

The worst: New Year’s Day 2006. He saw Richmond Times-Dispatch writer Dan Neman coming up the aisle holding a reporter’s notebook and thought to himself that Neman wanted his reaction to the sudden passing of a music industry titan, “like maybe Paul McCartney had died,” he recalls.

Instead, Neman brought news of the murders of Richmond-based musician Bryan Harvey; his wife, World of Mirth founder Kathryn Harvey; and their two young daughters. “I knew Kathryn well, and Neman didn’t know,” Leavitt recalls. “I needed 10 minutes to collect myself before I could speak to him. And he was really apologetic.” Bland, too, was a co-owner of World of Mirth.

Then that summer came the best moment — an in-store performance by the Drive-By Truckers, fronted by fellow Alabaman Patterson Hood. “I’ve known him since he was 10 years old,” says Leavitt, who considers the performance, in part a memorial for the Harveys, to be one of the best nights of his life.

‘Not Fade Away’

By the end of Plan 9’s financial reorganization, what remained by 2012 were the flagship Carytown store and the Charlottesville satellite. Bland explains, “After reorganization we had to maintain a tight budget month to month, often not being able to buy what we felt we could sell, but only what we could afford to invest after expenses were covered.”

The cutbacks caught up to Leavitt, who after 17 years at Plan 9 now needed a Plan B. At dinner one night with Halcyon Vintage’s owner at the time, Connie Carroll, she suggested to Leavitt that he should open his own record store. “And I’m forever grateful to her,” he says, “because she encouraged me and helped me with the books and setting things up.”

Thus came Deep Groove Records.

“I’m extremely proud of my association with Plan 9 and all they’ve accomplished,” Leavitt says. “If it could’ve worked out, I’d still be there doing whatever needed doing. Because I love this,” he says, nodding toward the enthusiasts flipping through cardboard record sleeves at his Robinson Street store as funky jazz plays overhead. “I love it with all my heart.”

Even after making it through the Great Recession, Plan 9 still required some adjustments to ensure its survival. By around 2011, Carytown’s increasing popularity meant rising rents. Bland describes hunting for vacant spots on Broad Street and even in strip malls. Following downsizing, the store in 2012 moved to the former Pirouzan Oriental Rugs showroom at 3017 W. Cary St.

Today, Plan 9’s staff is engaged in a form of continuing education about the spectrums of music and its resonance within the greater culture.

“People have gotten deep into their tastes,” Blackford observes. “Our customers are less likely to listen to million sellers. One example … Big Star. When I first started working here, not that many people were into Big Star.”

Schick confirms, “Their records barely existed except as used.”

“Now they’re kind of in the canon,” Blackford says.

Changes of taste are revealed in the turning over of collections. Blackford describes the earlier days of finding plenty of ’60s and early ’70s long-haired acid rock.“Now you’ll see obscure funky soul, heavy metal, hip-hop and a bunch of regular rock stuff, all in the same collection.”

Generational shifts came all of a sudden. “It’s kind of, ‘Oh, wow,’ when you realize it,” Bland says. “Customers from years ago are coming in with their kids. Bob and I have our 20-somethings working here now.”

Henry gestures toward the hip-hop aisle and notes, “It’s not only vinyl; it’s a small thing now, but artists are dropping cassette tapes. Nas’ last two albums both came out on cassette.” Much like the spinning platters themselves, music is cyclical. “You expect the record to come back,” he says with a chuckle, “but not like this.”

As it was in the beginning, so it is in 2021, with vinyl taking up the central aisles of the store and patrons flipping through records. For shoppers, individual musicians, groups and songs conjure up a storehouse of associations and memories.

Thus, 40 years on, the records keep spinning, however the star-making machinery classifies the American popular song.