Street: How did you get into the record store industry?
Michael Heinzer: Well, my friend Milan Marvelous wanted to open a record store --
Street: Wait, his name is actually Marvelous?
MH: Yeah, Milan Marvelous.
Street: Is that his given name?
MH: No, I think when they got married, they decided to change it to Marvelous. Anyways, he was really into records and was a record collector for a long time, and then he saved up enough to open a store. I was eager to volunteer because I really wanted to see a local independent shop in the area. There really weren't any before us.
Street: So no American Idol, Kelly Clarkson or Jack Johnson or whoever?
MH: Nope, people can go to Tower or something if they want that stuff.
Street: Yeah, it's crap anyways.
MH: Pretty much. We tend to skip over the mainstream banal things and go for things that have a little bit more meaning for the people that buy them. You know, there are people that come in knowing they're looking for something esoteric or unique and they find it.
Street: Where does your store position itself in terms of piracy debates? Would you say that because your music is esoteric that piracy is less of a concern for your store? Or is there just too much hype surrounding piracy to begin with?
MH: Yeah, in a way I think that piracy affects the people who benefit most from the music, who are seldom the artists. If you're a smaller band, you probably want people to burn your stuff and spread it around. I see piracy as almost an equalizing factor. You know, there's a media blitz about how bad it is. For the most part, musicians don't really care. I'm a musician, and I don't really care. It's the people who are making millions off it that suffer, and that's fine with me.
Street: What would you say to people who are perfectly happy listening to really mainstream music to get them in here and listening to different kinds of things?
MH: Well, I'm not one of those people who believes they hold the key to what is good and try to dictate that. I like to give people what I call gateway bands: they don't take any effort on the part of the listener to enjoy them.
Street: What are some of those gateway bands?
MH: There's this group called Mothers Against Noise. They're not a band, they're an actual group of mothers ... against noise music. They're real. You can look them up on the Internet. They made a list of these bands that they consider noise offenders and that they think are turning their kids into ... evil kids or whatever.
Street: Do you ever get really fed up with your customers if they're being intolerant of different kinds of music?
MH: People come in who are annoying all the time, and you know, I'm a human being. I get pissed off. I want to get angry and lash out at times. But I realize that that's not constructive. The option sometimes is to feel subservient and to just get walked on ... to be dominated by whoever's here. But the other option is to realize that when you spontaneously react with anger, you are somehow being controlled by them.
Street: Because you're letting them get inside your head.
MH: Yeah, and it's such a huge skill to be able to have self-control. Normal people sometimes don't have it, like the Mothers Against Noise who are blaming noise music for their children being corrupt. So they take it away rather than provide these children with a way of understanding it. You know, in the world there is dissonance ... it's a reflection of what exists. You can't just take it away. You're not taking dissonance out of the world.
