Final Piece (Rough Draft)

Workshoppers,
Due to logistical and communication failures on Sunday, I was not able to do my venue profile.
Today I began piecing this together. It is a bit short because I will be interviewing the Record Shop's owner this weekend and then placing bits of the interview throughout my piece.
Keeping this in mind, please let me know how the interior descriptions of the store are functioning.
Since I have not yet interviewed Joe, what questions about the store would you like to see answered (focusing perhaps mainly on the importance of record stores in today's digital society)?
 Thanks.

Rough Draft

Cam Stewart

                        The Need to Be Heard: Independent Record Stores’ Vital Place in Society

In a time when music consumption occurs mainly online, the idea of a record store seems obsolete. Music purchasing has become an activity based mainly on the MP3 format, a digital product that has given both compact discs and vinyl albums a true test of their value in modern society. But for some, the idea of clicking a button to hear a song is void of intimacy and lacks any interaction with the music. For those feeling this way, the value of vinyl is infinite. Over the past decade vinyl has made a significant resurgence, due mainly to the sales occurring at local record stores.

            Fortunately for both vinyl enthusiasts and vinyl sales, the Corner Record Shop exists. Located on West Main Road in Kalamazoo, the Corner Record Shop is an independent retailer focusing mainly on vinyl releases from both past and present artists. The interior of the space is vibrant. The walls are painted orange and music from the store’s record player blasts throughout the air. While not the largest record store in the country, the Corner Record Shop’s selection is diverse, spanning dozens of generations of music: it feels like the record collection of an eclectic group of music-savvy individuals.

            The walls of the store are speckled with albums by artists including the White Stripes, Can, Neil Young and Gram Parsons. Just looking at the records hung on the walls reminds one of how wonderful it is to see album art in its fullest size- a grateful departure from the dwarflike dimensions of MP3 artwork. To hold the album is to feel its gloss and to see the slanted reflection of the store’s lights off the plastic casing, an image one simply does not get when looking at album art on a computer screen.

            But perhaps those who visit record stores already know the benefits of purchasing LP’s. Those who need to truly be allowed into the world of vinyl are those illegally downloading MP3 albums online for free-they are the people greatly affecting the future of the music industry.

            In the past decade, spawned mainly by the downloading site Napster, music sales in the United States have dropped 47 percent. A staggeringly low amount of people are frequenting record stores like Corner Record Shop, instead choosing to illegally pirate their music in large quantities.

            Only 37 percent of music acquired by United States consumers was paid for in 2009. One can only guess how small a percentage of this was bought at local record stores.

            It is clear that the American music industry is in a state of flux. But where does this leave the hundreds of independent retailers still trying to nurture honest music consumption?

            These stores are now catering to a small niche of customers devoted to buying physical albums, a small but passionate clientele that keeps these stores afloat. For these people, watching the music industry transform entirely into a digital atmosphere is ghastly.

            Perhaps the greatest contributor to vinyl’s resurgence is the independent music scene. Nearly all of the big indie labels, including both Matador and Sub Pop, release their artists’ albums on the vinyl format. Albums from both these labels are scattered throughout the shelves and walls of Corner Record Shop. Releases from Beach House and Yo La Tengo are quick to go home with many of the people who enter the store.

            To celebrate this flourishing bond between labels and stores there exists the glorious Record Store Day. Created in 2007 by a group of individuals hoping to promote independent record stores, Record Store Day features a wide variety of special, limited releases from an expansive list of artists. The event’s goal is to reconnect the consumer with the music he or she listens to. Because none of the releases can be downloaded, the listener is encouraged into visiting their local record store and engaging with the community.

            The Corner Record Shop stocked many of the limited-edition releases featured on Record Store Day and enjoyed a large flow of customers throughout the day, many accompanied with albums tucked between their arms.

            The store is part of a vital community of small-scale record shops that are preserving the pleasures of buying vinyl.

Profile (Revision)

Into the Eccentric

Cam Stewart

Walk through the heavy doors of Bell’s Eccentric Café and see what appears to be a haphazard combination of company product, local art and 1930’s African Safari. A tribal mask hangs to the right of the chalk board on which the bar’s draft beers are written. In three columns the available beers and occasional sangria are listed. High on the back walls are large posters advertising the brewery’s beers. They hang like grand statements of some higher knowledge, like what you are looking at is the culmination of infinite attempts at greatness. To judge whether or not the brewery has reached that level, one must only shift one’s gaze downward, to the swarms of people that, in gleeful cycles, parade to and from the bar with plastic cups of amber liquid.

It is March 26 and is the official release day of Bell’s most famous beer, Oberon. A wheat ale robust in fruity aromas and spicy malt, Oberon is the ultimate sign of spring in Kalamazoo. The bottle’s label looks like a Michigan sun spread out against a pale blue sky. Looking at the bottle is like looking into a summer afternoon void of any predicament or bad news. Looking around the bar on that Monday night in March, a scene more reminiscent of a rowdy Saturday night, one would be hard-pressed to disagree with the fact that Oberon’s release is something of a cultural event in Kalamazoo.

I approach the bar with my plastic cup, a material used only on Oberon day due to the high-volume of customers, and order an Oberon. The bartender, a tall man with focused eyes, asks me if I would like an orange slice in my beer. All around me I notice patrons with slices of orange in their ales, so I say yes, I’d like mine with an orange slice. I drink the beer and it is cold. Behind me four men are toasting one another, singing the praises of warmer weather all while holding cups of foaming Oberon.

Both Bell’s Brewery and its main eatery, the Eccentric Café are Kalamazoo institutions.

Recently christened the “4^th Best Beer Town in America” by Livability.com, Kalamazoo, Michigan owes this acclaim largely to Bell’s success. The award comes at a time when Bell’s Brewery is focusing on expansion and distribution, its product being sold in fourteen states and counting.

In 2003 Bell’s opened a massive brewing facility in Comstock, a neighboring town to Kalamazoo. Its exterior is like some military base where every person is stiff and upright, all walking in front of grey, dwarfing brewing barrels that look like upturned beer mugs. Comstock’s quaint atmosphere and its spanning open land make it an obvious choice for Bell’s main brewing facility. Here, nearly 180,000 barrels are brewed annually, allowing the brewery to be 8^th in volume out of all domestic craft brews in 2010. While downtown Kalamazoo could not facilitate such immense beer production, it is still home to the brewery’s main pub and eatery, the Eccentric Café. This café functions as the epicenter for everything Bell’s. It is the heart of the company’s endeavors and it embodies its many quirks and unique stylistic choices.

I return back to the Eccentric Café a month and a half later with my friend and Kalamazoo College Senior, Alex Griffin. It is a bright sunny afternoon and the inside of the café gleams with light. The crowd is older and dressed largely in business- casual attire. We approach the counter and the bartender studies our eyes. Amongst the clutter and décor of the Eccentric Café’s walls is perhaps the most important piece of wall fixtures, the draft board. Here the draft beers are written in chalk and updated daily. In the second column are some of the rotating beers, the seasonal ales and the beers available only at the café.

            Currently featured in the café are two of Bell’s Experimental Ales. These beers are brewed exclusively for the Eccentric Café and are attempts at seeing how differing hop levels affect a batch of beer. Another noticeable change from my last visit is the addition of Sangria to the board. A mixture of red wine and Bell’s fruity brew, The Oarsman Ale, the sangria tasted flat and bland- perhaps a result of mixing beer with wine.

            The rest of the board is filled with some of Bell’s more common brews. Toward the bottom of the list is The Smoked Stout. A dark beer that tastes like a breeze of campfire blown across a massive bar of dark chocolate, it is a brave mixture of disparate flavors.

            Also included on the list are Bell’s Amber Ale, Porter, Lager of the Lakes, Best Brown and Hopslam. Each of these beers are the result of Larry Bell and his team’s efforts, they are what keep crowds of people pouring through the Eccentric doors.

            Food at the café takes a backseat for beer. The Roast Beef Bleu Cheese Sandwich was a pricy venture into ordinary deli fare. For the price, one would expect a larger sandwich crafted out of high-quality ingredients, but what one receives instead is a basic sandwich whose sole purpose seems to soak up the beer.

            Five men sit at the bar, backs bent forward into the wooden counter, sipping beer and laughing loudly. They do not notice my friend and I as we approach the bar.  Alex engages the bartender and asks him what beer he would recommend.

“Seems like a good day for Deb’s Red,” says the bartender without hesitation, grinning.

The Events of October: Response

Gail Griffin's brave book, "The Events of October" will surely be labeled by many as haunting and chilling. While this work is definitely both things at once, I cannot help but attach the term 'intimate' to it as well. The depth in which Griffin explores both Maggie and Neenef is remarkable, it forms two characters whose identities are expanded upon on the page. She starts her book off with a brief history of the campus, something essential for her book to reach out and over the Kalamazoo audience.

Upon grounding our campus in rich details alive with image, Griffin then gets into the lives of Neenef and Maggie. While Griffin often uses traditional summary techniques to write about a long amount of time, she also uses IM's between the two students, a technique I found to be the most potent and horrific.

The usage of IM's was hugely effective, in my opinion. This accomplished so many things, but the main thing it achieved was its ability to accurately and intimately look into the online discussions Neenef and Maggie were having soon before the incident occurred.  Some may think that this technique was invasive and rash, but I however feel it was necessary. Griffin explored the medium through which students at the time communicated. There was no Facebook yet. These messages show the utter dependency Neenef had on Maggie, and the irrational way he communicated with her. One learns much about both students when reading these messages, I am glad Griffin decided to include them in her book.

A question I have concerning these messages is- did Griffin remove any bits of text from the messages? Also, why did she choose to cut out what Maggie wrote in some of the exchanges? What effect on the conversation did this have?

Aaron Aupperlee's piece about Gail Hammett, a mother faced with the despair of having a child in prison, was an interesting character study. The story had a good pace to it and peaked for me upon learning about her handicapped child. Aupperlee's terse descriptions allowed for the piece to forego any melodrama one might expect when reading about such a harrowing topic. The arrests of her son were laid out well and provided just enough information into Hammett's strife. I wanted the topic of Hammett's drinking to be further fleshed out; it seemed to be a major player in her life and both of her son's lives. What is she doing to combat her addictions? It was very good to read something of a fellow Kalamazoo student.

CYOA Response: The French Fry Connection

Richard Read's expansive article on McDonald's french fries was in depth and informative, but felt as if lacking a concrete structure. His transitions from one topic to another often felt sporadic and rushed; this left me feeling confused about what his main focus was to begin with. Following the story was often a challenge because Read would introduce characters suddenly into his narrative without properly introducing them. It is clear that Read thoroughly researched his fries and their creation process, I simply would have enjoyed a more cohesive structure to his work.

The parallels Read draws between Oregon and Asian countries are fascinating, understanding the dependency both places have on each other was highlighted through focusing on the french fries. This is what I found most fascinating. The constant communication between the Northwest and Asia occurring through the fry market was something I previously had never thought about.

Brewery Process

Writing the profile on Bell's Brewery was an exercise in focus. For the longest time I did not know whether I wanted the piece to highlight the brewery itself or the wizard-like Larry Bell. Because I could not get an interview with Larry Bell, I decided to make the piece focus more on the brewery itself. But because Bell is such an integral part of his company, I could not spare mentioning him at least a few times. Lately I have been reading a lot of John Jeremiah Sullivan and am astounded at his ability to link two seemingly-unrelated things to discover a greater theme about both of them. This is what I tried to do with Bell's and Hedrix. Using the commercial as a launching pad, I tried to get deeper into Bell's as a company.

A Brewery Experienced

Cam Stewart

A man in classic German attire pumps his accordion. His face rapidly changes from somber to grimacing while the camera zooms in on his eyes and a red light burns from beneath. Then in a Hendrix-like fury he sets his accordion on fire and dances feverishly around his blazing instrument. While this may all sound bizarre (and it definitely is), perhaps what is most surprising is that this video is not an advertisement for spicy German sausage but for Bell’s Brewery. Or maybe it’s only strange until you really think about it for a moment.

Bell’s Brewery, Inc. makes beer like Jimi Hendrix played the guitar: both using a shared knowledge of classical rules with which to experiment to produce something that is wild and unique. But while Hendrix revolutionized guitar music, Bell’s founder Larry Bell focuses instead on ales and stouts, porters and lagers.

And his focus has met its bounty.

Recently christened the “4^th Best Beer Town in America” by Livability.com, Kalamazoo, Michigan owes this acclaim largely to Bell’s success. The award comes at a time when Bell’s Brewery is focusing on expansion and distribution, its product being sold in fourteen states and counting.

In 2003 Bell’s opened a massive brewing facility in Comstock, a neighboring town to Kalamazoo. Its exterior is like some military base where every person is stiff and upright, all walking in front of grey, dwarfing brewing barrels that look like upturned beer mugs. Comstock’s quaint atmosphere and its spanning open land make it an obvious choice for Bell’s main brewing facility. Here, nearly 180,000 barrels are brewed annually, allowing the brewery to be 8^th in volume out of all domestic craft brews in 2010. While downtown Kalamazoo could not facilitate such immense beer production, it is still home to the brewery’s main pub and eatery, the Eccentric Café.

Walk through the heavy doors of Bell’s Eccentric Café and see what appears to be a haphazard combination of company product, local art and 1930’s African Safari. A tribal mask hangs to the right of the chalk board on which the bar’s draft beers are written. In three columns the available beers and occasional sangria are listed. High on the back walls are large posters advertising the brewery’s beers. They hang like grand statements of some higher knowledge, like what you are looking at is the culmination of infinite attempts at greatness. To judge whether or not the brewery has reached that level, one must only shift one’s gaze downward, to the swarms of people that, in gleeful cycles, parade to and from the bar with plastic cups of amber liquid.

It is March 26 and is the official release day of Bell’s most famous beer, Oberon. A wheat ale robust in fruity aromas and spicy malt, Oberon is the ultimate sign of spring in Kalamazoo. The bottle’s label looks like a Michigan sun spread out against a pale blue sky. Looking at the bottle is like looking into a summer afternoon void of any predicament or bad news. Drinking the beer is like one’s first experience listening to ‘Purple Haze’: everything you tasted before it becomes stale in a wash of intense flavor. Just like many would argue “Are You Experienced” to be Hendrix’s best work, many craft brew fanatics would claim Oberon to be Bell’s master work. Looking around the bar on that Monday night in March, a scene more reminiscent of a rowdy Saturday night, one would be hard-pressed to disagree.

I approach the bar with my plastic cup, a material used only on Oberon day due to the high-volume of customers, and order an Oberon. The bartender, a tall man with focused eyes, asks me if I would like an orange slice in my beer. All around me I notice patrons with slices of orange in their ales, so I say yes, I’d like mine with an orange slice. I drink the beer and it is cold. Behind me four men are toasting one another, singing the praises of warmer weather all while holding cups of foaming Oberon.

The beer comes from the same Comstock plant roughly 20 miles away. The same plant that is faced with the riveting yet daunting task of expansion, of pushing one’s product further into the market. But doing so can often be met with conflict. In 2006, Larry Bell pulled his product from the Illinois market due to a dispute over distribution rights within the state. Bell felt that his product was not going to be thoroughly represented under the strict laws and therefore decided to withdraw completely from the state, a bold statement that embodies the passion Bell has for his product.

Through clever labeling tactics Bell has begun to reintroduce his beer into the Chicago-area market. Under the guise of “Kalamazoo Beer,” Bell has put two new beers back into the state of Illinois, a move that proves his desire to become a national institution.

I return back from Oberon night at Bell’s and think again about the online commercial and its intended message. Why am I so convinced of the image of Larry Bell bent over his voodoo potion like Hendrix knelt before a guitar engulfed in flames?

Maybe there truly is an existent parallel between Jimi Hendrix and Bell’s beer. Something in the wailing blast of wheat and orange notes would make Jimi smile. After sipping his beer, that is.