SkipGroffInterviewFinal

Skip Groff Interview 0:00:00 to 1:25:33

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Davis: My name is John Davis. I’m the performing arts metadata archivist at the University of Maryland. I’m speaking with Skip Groff. Skip, throughout your career, throughout your life, you seem to have worn many hats—DJ, record store owner, proprietor, album promoter. Many things. And I’d like to just talk to you about that today and get your story. That’s essentially what I’m here for today: Tuesday, September 19th, 2017.

Groff: [laugh]

Davis: So, basically I just want to get your story from the beginning.

Groff: Well, the beginning in terms of music for me started in 1964. I went to Suitland High School in Prince George’s County, and I never listened to music, radio, anything, other than for Washington Senators games. It just was nothing that was part of my life at all. I was never exposed to it as a kid growing up in Japan. There was nothing that I had heard that made me want to listen to music.

And it wasn’t until February of 1964, when were going to be on Ed Sullivan, that Sunday, for their first appearance—all these kids in high school were talking about this great new group from England that was going to be on the show that Sunday. I was in the tenth grade, and as a warm-up to watching the show that Sunday, I started listening to the local station, WPGC, and heard so many things that sounded great besides the Beatles stuff, that I started listening to the other stations.

WEAM was the main station I could pick up from where I lived, besides WPGC. But at night, I’d start listening to the out-of-town stations that played a lot more obscure and local groups at that time. KYW in Cleveland, and WCFL in . CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, which was a Detroit station for all intents and purposes. And from that moment on, it all started for me, in terms of being involved in music, being interested in music, and snapping up as much information as I could find about these various records that appealed to me. It was like a whole new world had opened up to me.

So that’s where it started for me, in high school. And as soon as I got to the University of Maryland as a freshman, the local station, WMUC, which was an AM-only station at that point in time—650 on the SkipGroffInterviewFinal

dial—they had an introductory thing for new students, in the student union dining hall area. And I met Bob Duckman and Eddie Sacks. Bob Duckman was the station manager that year.

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Eddie Sacks was the program director. And although I had no experience in radio at all at that point in time, they immediately sussed out that I knew a lot about music and records, and they needed a music director. My first job was a record librarian, but within a matter of weeks, I became the music director as well. So that started it for me, with them.

Davis: Where did you go to buy records back then?

Groff: In District Heights, where I lived at that time, when I went to high school, and the first year of college, there was a place called Clark music store in District Heights. They had a lot of things where they had not sold well, and they’d put them in the three-for-a-dollar pile. So just exposed myself to a lot of stuff. I would be buying records from that pile of stuff, because I was just a kid with a small allowance. So when I got in radio, it was a different story. [laugh] I could pretty much pick anything I wanted to. But as far as the University of Maryland knows, I paid for everything I ever took.

Davis: [laugh]

Groff: But that was really the only place that—I never drove until I was 24, so I didn’t have much ability to go anywhere to buy records unless somebody else was going.

Davis: Do you still have some of those records?

Groff: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I told a story on Facebook the other day about how in 1964, when I first started listening to radio, I used to listen to Kerby Scott on WCAO, and he had a show every afternoon called the Liverpool Hour. And one day, he played a record called “Kiss Me” by Marty Wilde and the Wildcats. And it just was such a great record. I was very much into Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas at that point in time, and it had that kind of sound. But I couldn't find the record anywhere. And it wasn’t until ten years later that I found it from a collector in New Jersey who sold it to me. And I still have that record.

Davis: Was there a record store on campus at the University of Maryland?

Groff: Not at that point in time. Later on, there were stores. I think The Joint Possession in College Park sold bootlegs, at one point in time. And I know that when Dave Grohl interviewed me, he told me that he used to buy records at a shop just off of campus, but I—it had to be something that

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developed after I was there. I was only there from ’66 to ’69. I flunked out for the second time at the end of my third year, only reaching junior standing at the time I flunked out. So technically, I only had two complete years of college. But I was there for three full years.

Davis: What did you do when you were out of college?

Groff: When I left college?

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Davis: Yeah.

Groff: Oh, I was getting ready to be drafted, so you know, that’s what they did in those days. If you flunked out of college, you got drafted pretty shortly after. I had already been working in professional radio at that point in time, both in , and in Rockville at WINX. So I continued to work at WINX and I also worked at the Varsity Grille as a DJ in College Park, and worked at S. Klein’s in Greenbelt, as an in-store announcer. I did all those three jobs, part-time jobs, from late ’69 to spring of ’70 when I was inducted into the army. And that was tough, doing all those jobs, just traveling everywhere by bus. It required a lot of coordination.

Davis: The in-store announcer—what did that job consist of?

Groff: “Shoppers, for the next 20 minutes, we're selling jock straps in the ladies’ garments department.” You know.

Davis: And they wanted you to break out the DJ voice for that?

Groff: Yeah.

Davis: [laugh] And are you from a military family? You mentioned living in…

Groff: Yes, I am. My father was a career Air Force man. That’s why we lived in Japan when I was a kid. He was transferred over there.

Davis: Coming from that background, what were your thoughts on being drafted? Was it more intimidating, less intimidating?

Groff: I was very much against the Vietnam War, and I seriously thought about scooting off to Canada. But again, at that point in time, without a driver’s license, and without a car, I felt that that would be rather unmanageable. And then who knew at that point in time whether you're going to be able to get out, or get back to the country if you did something like that. So I went ahead, and I got inducted in the summer, and went to basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And because of my poor eyesight, and because of my background in journalism and radio, I was able to qualify for public

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service jobs in the army. So I never went overseas, but I served my full term of the two years.

Davis: Were you able to still sort of have music be a part of your life during those years?

Groff: Well, I had worked part-time—one of my part-time jobs before the army was working at Waxie Maxie’s in Congressional Plaza. And while I was in the army, when I was stationed back in Washington at Walter Reed, I got another part-time job at Waxie Maxie’s in Langley Park, and went back to work at WINX part-time on weekends as well. So I was doing all that stuff while I was in the army. And as soon as I came out of the army, I went full-time at WINX and was the program director, music director, and morning announcer.

Davis: And WINX was the radio station that was in a house?

Groff: Yeah, it was in a house on Stonestreet Avenue in Rockville on Old Baltimore Road.

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There were rumors that the house was so old that it was part of Harriet Tubman’s underground railway. But one of the guys who worked for me, who I had to fire, he ended up becoming a big executive at the company that I worked for, United Broadcasting. And he eventually fired my boss and they gave him the station as a going-away present when he retired. And there was a group in Rockville that was trying to get it declared as a historic place so that he couldn't tear it down, but he sold off the property and tore it down, before they could do anything about it.

Davis: When did that happen?

Groff: It would have been somewhere in the early 2000s. I know that for a while, he broadcast that same format from the transmitter site, which was in a deeper part of Rockville. But then he moved it to a Spanish format, and I think they were broadcasting somewhere out of Laurel or something like that.

Davis: But the station you worked at, was it adjacent to Rockville Pike?

Groff: Well, technically it was on Rockville Pike. It was just the parking lot in front of the station had no exit thing other than going through the little back and forth local streets. So there was no exit out onto Rockville Pike from that station. But if you looked out the window in the station, when we were broadcasting, you'd see right down onto Rockville Pike. It’s the area of Rockville Pike where 355 merges sort of with Viers Mill and then it goes off towards 28.

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Davis: Right. There’s the church there where F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried.

Groff: Yeah. The church was just adjacent to the WINX building.

Davis: So would you consider WINX to be sort of the first place where you were really able to settle in and learn how to be a professional DJ, or was that earlier?

Groff: Well, no. I mean, certainly at the University of Maryland—I would have to say that was the first place. As I said before, Bob Duckman—he was just the station manager for that one year when I was there, but we got to be great friends, and I consider him my mentor in getting me started in radio. He basically tried to get me to shape up my speaking voice and become a little more animated behind a microphone. They let me develop a show when I was program director, playing all underground music.

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I called that Underground CPM, and me and a guy named Ronnie Povich, who was Maury Povich’s cousin, we did that show. He was on one night of the week, and I was on another night. And it was like three hours, and we were playing Pearls Before Swine and Vanilla Fudge and you know, the early Jimi Hendrix. Things of that nature that weren’t being played on a lot of the other Top 40 stations, and most of the FM stations as well.

There was one local station that had a show at that time—I think it was WOL FM, which I think later became WMOD. They had a progressive show that they developed around the same time, but it was a while before WHFS really got into playing a lot of that kind of music. They were still mostly into the folk music and Grateful Dead sort of aspect of things.

Davis: Could you hear WMUC off-campus at that point?

Groff: You weren’t supposed to be, because it was a station, and it was only supposed to be on-campus.

Davis: So at that point, it was AM still?

Groff: Yeah. And it was years later that they developed the FM station. And I’ve always had a problem with that, because when I worked there at the AM station, it was supported by taxpayer funds, and supposed to be students only. And when the FM went on, Jeff Krulik and some of the other program directors that became in charge, like WGTB did with their station, they let just anybody on the air. They didn’t have to be a student there. And if you were involved with that, I’m not trying to offend you or anything.

Davis: No involvement! [laugh]

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Groff: It’s a personal grievance of mine. I just never really thought that was kosher, and I’m not even Jewish.

Davis: Yeah. So, you were there all the way up until you left school in 1969?

Groff: Mmhmm, yeah.

Davis: I’ve also heard a radio recording of you from a station in Baltimore.

Groff: Yeah, that was…

Davis: It seemed like 1968, maybe?

Groff: That was owned by the same company that owned WINX—United Broadcasting Company. It was WSID-FM. Their AM station was an R&B station in Baltimore—very popular. But one of the guys who had worked at WINX who was a good friend of Bob Duckman’s—when he was working at WINX, Bob had introduced me to Dave King, and he became the program director of this station.

And because of my show, Underground CPM, they were trying to do the same kind of format with that station in Baltimore. So I did [laugh]—I did Saturday and Sunday nights from 6:00 to midnight, and it involved taking a bus from College Park to Baltimore, getting off at the main station in Baltimore, traveling all the way to Pikesville—the station was on Reisterstown Road—doing the show, sleeping in the station overnight, spending all day Sunday hanging out in the station, then doing my shift on Sunday night, and then getting back on a bus and heading back to College Park, and getting in at like three or four in the morning.

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Davis: [laugh] How long were you at that station? How long did you have that schedule?

Groff: Well, I think I was there for about a year and a half. I know I was on the air there the day that Otis Redding was killed. We had an AP teletype machine in the studio, and I remember seeing that news come over. But it was from late ’68 to middle of ’69. And then they fired Dave, and did away with that format, and the station eventually became WLPL, which was a big Top 40 station in Baltimore for many years.

Davis: So going back ahead a few years to when you were out of the military and you had sort of resumed—WINX was kind of the main…

Groff: Right.

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Davis: …radio station you were working at? And was it around that time that you started to get into record promotion?

Groff: No, no. My interest in music convinced me that where I really wanted to be was making records, being an A&R guy—that means artists and repertoire. You probably know that. But I wanted to get into that, and I figured that the best way to get into that would be working as promotion in the record company and getting in the door that way.

And when that happened, when I worked for RCA in the mid-seventies after I quit WINX, the first time—technically the second time of three times—they must have really liked me there, because they hired me back three times. But anyway, I went and worked at RCA in record promotion in the Midwest for a year. And I was convinced that that was a dead end thing. That they weren’t interested in promoting any of the things that I was getting airplay on that were not on their agenda. So I just quit and went back to WINX.

Davis: Were you assigned specific artists?

Groff: No. Well, I mean…

Davis: Did you get Bowie? Did you get Nilsson?

Groff: No, no. I mean, just whatever was being released in a particular week. I’ll give you a example. We had Pure Prairie League on our label at that point in time, and they had a big hit, unexpected hit, with a song called “Amie.” And their follow-up was a really great pop country rock song that foreshadowed what the Eagles were going to do, or were starting to do, with songs like “Take It Easy” and “Already Gone.” It was something that I got a lot of airplay on. My territory covered the lower half of , all of Missouri and all of Kansas, and I had airplay on Top 40 stations and FM stations all over those three parts of my territory.

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And the people in New York didn’t want to hear about it. They just said, “We're not promoting this record.”

Davis: Hmm. What were some of the successes that were happening from the label at that time? Or what did they want you to put your attention toward?

Groff: We had hits with “Feelings” by Morris Albert, which was a middle of the road sort of thing. The problem with RCA was they had so many different bases they were trying to cover, and a lot of the things that became big chart hits were, you know, MOR. Just like Roger Whittaker.

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We had in Saint Louis two big country stations, and Kansas City as well. So I got to meet a lot of the country artists when they’d come to town. Guys like Gary Stewart and Johnny Russell, Bill Anderson, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings. But that was fun, working with those people. Noel Redding was on our label for a period of time, and I got to meet him. And a guy named Eric Bell was his guitarist. He had been in Thin Lizzy before that. And he was one of the sharpest dressed guys I ever saw in my life. I mean, he had a like three-piece suit on, just coming out for a promotional visit.

Davis: Did you get to actually hang out with these people, or was it just sort of a handshake thing, or…?

Groff: Yeah, basically—sometimes they would just come to the office to meet everybody that was going to be working their records. Other times, like with Hall & Oates, I had to take them around to the radio stations to meet up with the DJs and things like that. And Hall & Oates were kind of snooty until they found out that I had 40,000 45s in my collection.

Davis: [laugh]

Groff: So they wrote on their album, “Find a hit for us in those 40,000 45s of yours.”

Davis: [laugh]

Groff: But yeah, that aspect of it was pretty good. But it just definitely was not going to lead to any kind of A&R job or anything further than that.

Davis: Did you get a chance to sort of geek out about music with Hall & Oates? [laugh]

Groff: Yeah.

Davis: Once they found out…

Groff: Yeah, yeah.

Davis: Were they real music—sort of record geeks?

Groff: Well, they both came from backgrounds in bands. So when they knew that I knew about their backgrounds in Philadelphia and things like that—a lot of times these artists, they'll come to town and the record company people basically have no concept or clue whatsoever about what kind of music they're doing, or what music they're promoting. They just do what they're told. I wasn’t like that. Having come from a background as a music director, I was always interested in the music and more so in the B- sides.

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0:21:01

A lot of times, great songs are tucked away on those B-sides. That’s one thing that really upset me in the early ‘70s, when the record companies went to the concept of putting mono and stereo versions of singles out, and leaving the B-sides off for the radio station copies.

Davis: How long did that happen?

Groff: It lasted for the whole rest of the ‘70s until they stopped making records. Very rarely would they put B-sides on after they—it was basically done initially to cater to the FM stations at that time, because they could play stereo. And the AM stations were usually still playing—had mono signals.

Eventually you'd see later 45s in the ‘70s that said “compatible stereo.” So they had figured out a way to make them so that they could be played both on AM stations and FM stations. But they didn’t go back to putting the B- sides on them, because then, it became—they had these guys running the record companies that didn’t want people playing B-sides, because it threw out their whole marketing schemes for a particular artist or a record.

So just a lot of things that were done in that business that I didn’t like, that went against the things that I believed in. When I was coming up in the ‘60s, you had rebel DJs and music directors and out-of-town stations that would create hits by playing the B-sides of things when they’d find something that was really great, tucked away on a B-side.

Davis: Sure. So mid-seventies, around that time, was when you started doing Groffiti as well, right?

Groff: Yeah. Initially I started Groffiti out as a tip sheet type thing that was modeled after—Bobby Poe was a local guy who had produced a lot of records in the sixties, but he had a publication called Pop Music Survey, and I was a contributor to that as music director of WINX.

And another guy in Philadelphia named Kal Rudman had a similar thing that I was also a reporter to. Jay Thomas, who recently passed away, was a music director and program director at WAYS in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the same time I was doing what I was doing at WINX. And he and I are exactly the same age, and we were again rebels in terms of the music. In terms of trying to play things that other people weren’t playing.

Davis: He went on to be a DJ in , right? Was he an actor—Jay Thomas? That Jay Thomas?

Groff: Well, Jay Thomas ended up on several TV shows. He was on Murphy Brown. But I think he worked in a number of different places. But he started out in North Carolina.

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Davis: So would you think of it not as much as a fanzine?

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Groff: It became a fanzine later on, because the tip sheet thing was going to be based on having record companies buy advertising, and that didn’t pan out. So after two or three issues of it in that aspect, there were magazines that were starting to come around like Rock Marketplace and Trouser Press. Goldmine was just starting, too. Their original aspect was to appeal strictly to 50s collectors, but they broadened their scope around the mid- seventies.

And by the time I started doing the first couple of issues that were basically a fanzine type thing, a guy named Geof O’Keefe from Pentagram, who was the drummer of the group—I had produced them earlier—but he was helping me out with writing a lot of articles. And he and I were into very similar things in terms of the British groups of the sixties. We were both Roy Wood and The Move fans.

So, did a number of articles on that, and basically I think when I was at Hit and Run with Al Ercolani, we did one issue. It had The Slickee Boys on the cover that was called Hit and Run instead of Groffiti. And then we did one issue when I started Yesterday & Today, that was called Yesterday & Today. But there just wasn’t time any more after that to do anything like that.

Davis: But overall, would you say you made, what, like ten or twelve issues?

Groff: I think it was probably technically eight. Eight issues, maybe. It wasn’t that long. But again — Who Put the Bomp? — the early issues were similar in scope and nature and what they were trying to do. They became much more of a full magazine later on in the years.

Davis: You mentioned Hit and Run. Was that the first record store that you worked at?

Groff: Yeah. When I had come back to WINX after leaving RCA, I was program director and music director again, as well as being an announcer. But at that time, disco was in full blast, and I had no interest whatsoever in playing that kind of stuff, and I was just really disenchanted. And Al Ercolani, I had met—he had worked at several record stores in town. And he was talking about starting up a record store, a collector’s shop. And he convinced me to come along with him.

And we were partners in the beginning. The shop opened up in the Spring of ’77. And after two months, I knew that he and I weren’t going to work out together. We just had too many differences in terms of how we wanted to run things.

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0:27:00

So he and his wife bought me out, and gave me a very generous deal in terms of giving me half of all the records we had acquired in the two months we had been open together. And I used that material and also what I had already in terms of 45s to start Yesterday & Today in September 16th of ’77.

Davis: So Yesterday & Today opened in 1977.

Groff: Mmhmm.

Davis: Was that in the location on Rockville Pike, or…?

Groff: Yeah.

Davis: So it was always in that one spot?

Groff: Yeah. Well, technically there were two spots, eventually, because we had an international bookstore next to us, and when he went out of business, I took over that spot as well, and that’s what became the 45 shop.

Davis: Right. When was that?

Groff: That was 1980 that I did that.

Davis: And why that location, for you? It’s just that was what was…?

Groff: On Rockville Pike?

Davis: Yeah. That’s just what was available, or…?

Groff: Well, it was available. The rent seemed reasonable. The initial rent for the one spot was $435 a month, and because a lot of my history in music was on Rockville Pike, I was familiar with that area. I knew that it had easy access to 270 and the Beltway. The Metro hadn’t opened up yet at that point, so that wasn’t a factor. But because it was on Rockville Pike, but not visible from Rockville Pike in terms of the store, the rent was a lot lower than it would have been if it was a front shop in the shopping center.

Davis: And that area seemed to change—just from my own experience of having started going over there in the early 1980s—it seemed like that area changed a lot over the 20, 25 years that you would have been there.

Groff: Yeah, definitely.

Davis: Were there any interesting businesses around there, other than the McDonalds?

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Groff: When I opened up, the shop at the end of our strip, where Entenmann's [a bakery thrift shop] was for many years, was a radio and TV repair shop. And I think that only lasted there a couple of years. I mean, they could have been there ten years before that. I don’t know.

The name of the place where I was was Sunshine Square Center. And some time in the early eighties, the owner, Alvin Steinberg, took over ownership of the front part of the shopping center as well. So he ended up having like three or four shops face in on Rockville Pike at that point in time.

And the coin shop, Coins of the Realm, that had been one of the shops up near the front of the side strip, they moved up into one of those front shops. But the rent was like twice as much, so I wasn’t going to do that. But you know, I knew a lot of the food places changed. We used to have G.D. Graffiti’s right next to us, which was a food place, and long gone.

Davis: So this was the store from ’77 until 2002?

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Groff: 2002. Twenty-five years exactly. We closed it the same day we opened it up—September 16th. I did a posting this past week on Facebook because my mom’s birthday was September 16th. She had loaned me the money to have enough to open the store. And they required a large down payment, and the first couple of months’ rent. And so she loaned me the money. So I opened it and closed it on her birthday, in recognition of her doing that.

Davis: Was there ever any stretch, over the course of those 25 years, where it felt like not a struggle to be running a small business that sold records?

Groff: No, no. I mean, it was always a great amount of fun, and we were successful right from the beginning. The young professionals who were disenfranchised by disco music had a place to go to get records. And Al was still running his store, but without somebody caring about the 45s coming out, as much as I did, and with him not having the money to buy those 45s on any kind of a regular basis—and right away, Howie, from The Music Machine in Baltimore—Howie Horowitz—he and I started going to England in 1979 and making three trips a year, buying rare 45s that you couldn't get over here, through the regular distributors. So that boosted business a lot with people coming in looking for those things, especially.

And George [Gelestino] hadn’t opened up Vinyl Ink yet, and Phantasmagoria had not opened yet. Bobby Rencher was still involved with Joe’s Record Paradise. And Joe’s Record Paradise didn’t want to have anything to do with the punk and new wave stuff. So we pretty much had that to ourselves, except for the stores downtown.

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And Record and Tape Ltd. had some people working there who were interested in those things coming out. So they convinced them to start stocking some of that material. And Bill Asp, over in Virginia, with the Virginia Record and Tape Exchange, he had his label as well. And he was heavily into that area. But we were far away enough from each other that we didn’t really conflict with what each other was doing.

Davis: Where downtown would people go to buy punk records?

Groff: Well, Record and Tape Ltd. was—it became later Olsson’s. But that was really the only place, in Georgetown. There was no Smash at that point in time.

Davis: When did that emerge? When did something like Smash or…?

Groff: I would be hesitant to say, because I only knew Bobby [Polsky, original owner of Smash Records in Washington, D.C.] from being a customer at the store.

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I never went to Smash when it was in Georgetown. I’ve only been to it once or twice where they are now, when Matt [Moffatt, current owner of Smash Records] has been running the store. I just never had time or a need to do anything like that.

Davis: Did it seem fraternal, or did it seem competitive with the other record stores at that time?

Groff: No, the only time it ever seemed competitive—I mean, George Gelestino and I were very good friends, and when he did his record conventions, before he did the store, I always a participant in that. But when he opened up Vinyl Ink, it was definitely going after a lot of my customer base. And we were definitely competing for the same audience at that point in time. And since he was in Silver Spring, that was a lot closer to us in Rockville.

Davis: So you closing the store in 2002, was that just sort of fatigue with running a business, or…?

Groff: No, no. It was because of my epilepsy. I had developed a form of epilepsy, and I would be fainting in the store. [laugh] And when somebody—when I’d have a seizure coming on, everything was garbled that anybody was saying to me, or anything I was saying back to them was garbled. And that was just no way to live on any kind of retail basis. I just couldn't function any more that way.

And with Tower Records down the street, and Best Buy across the street selling CDs, there was never any reason for us to get into CD. And vinyl,

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for all intents and purposes, was dead at that point in time. But if my health was better, and I had known that vinyl was going to come back the way it has, I probably would have thought about keeping it open, with somebody else running it. But there just—that was not in the cards at that point in time.

But we were doing a lot of mail order. The record companies were still putting out current 45s, and when Tower stopped selling current 45s, but that the major labels were putting out of all types, including a lot of country stuff, we started selling tons of that through mail order. So Kelly [Groff, Skip’s wife] and I thought that we could do that from our house and not have to have the burden of the store anymore.

Davis: Yeah. Shifting the record store to the internet at that time I think wasn’t quite so common. That there would be such a huge selection of rare 45s, for instance, on a website.

Groff: Yeah. I just have so much stuff still in my basement. Well, I mean, you've been down there, picking up stuff with Ian [MacKaye], haven’t you?

Davis: Yeah. I saw it.

Groff: Yeah, there’s still a lot of stuff down there. I can’t go down there, because of my legs.

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So it’s very difficult for me to get down there. So Kelly has to pull anything that we sell from down there.

Davis: Do you primarily use eBay to sell records now?

Groff: No. I’m going to try and get out of eBay entirely by the end of the year. Discogs has been working really well for us, and once you get into it and examine all the aspects of how their machinery is set up, it’s a lot better for selling, and realizing money from there.

I’ll give you an example. I sell something on eBay that I put up eight or nine years ago. It sells for the first time. All right? They charge you ten cents a month per listing. So by the time this thing sells that I put up six, seven years ago, I’ve already spent all the money that I’m going to realize and profit from this thing. Maybe even taken a loss.

Discogs doesn't charge you anything, until you actually sell it, and the percentage they take is less than what eBay takes when you sell it.

Davis: How many records do you have up on Discogs at this point?

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Groff: Well, I’m working every day putting up a couple hundred. But I’ve only got I think about 200 or 300 up at the present time.

Davis: How many records in your home would you say…?

Groff: I have 3,000 records on eBay, just as a point of comparison. In the house? I’d say probably 200,000 easily.

Davis: Yeah. [laugh] And how much of that do you feel is your collection, as opposed to what you're selling?

Groff: Oh, no. My collection is all over there. No. I keep all that stuff separate.

Davis: So there’s however many thousands and thousands of records that are for sale, but the stuff that is your collection, you kind of keep separate.

Groff: Mmhmm.

Davis: Do you still collect?

Groff: Yeah. You know, a lot of the Record Store Day things they put out, which I think are vastly overpriced and strictly just a game that the record companies are playing on the collectors by reissuing things that they've already got three times over, but because they put it out in a new picture sleeve or it’s colored vinyl or it’s a numbered edition, they want to buy it again—I think it’s a big crock of shit, but I buy into it. You know.

Davis: Collecting. That’s what happens. They know you're compelled.

Groff: Yeah. It’s an addiction.

Davis: Yeah. [laugh] But you're also selling records in real life as well, at the Arbutus Record Show.

Groff: Yeah, that’s a once-a-month thing. Basically we do that just to cover the expense of the warehouse that we have, over on Gude Drive. To cover the expense of that each month. That’s like $400 rent, and we try and at least make that much every month at Arbutus, selling off stuff.

Davis: And you typically are able to…

Groff: Yeah.

Davis: …sell a few hundred dollars worth of records each month?

0:39:00

Groff: Yeah, we're basically—just taking records—like this last show, I went through the warehouse and I cleaned out ten boxes of LPs that we had

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marked $8 to $25, and put them all out at $3 each, and did really well with those. So we'll do the same thing again next month. And we haven't had any big album collections come in, in about six years. But sooner or later, some of my radio friends will call me up again and say, “I’ve got all these albums in my basement. Come take a look at them.”

Davis: As far as getting other records in to sell, is that basically what you rely on at this point?

Groff: No. I rely on the stuff that I have already. Anything else like that would be fresh meat. I mean, I know there’s enough of the stores out there that are buying in on vinyl these days that if I get a really good collection in, I can make a lot of money on it.

Davis: So going back to the Yesterday & Today era, you also had the record label, in the early years of that. Limp Records.

Groff: Right.

Davis: What inspired all of that?

Groff: Well, when I was still working in radio, Dave King, the fellow I mentioned, who was program director of WSID-FM in Baltimore—he was a and artist himself. But his thing was he did—you know what a break-in record is?

Davis: No.

Groff: Break-in record is basically a comedy type thing where you have a storyline based on some current event or something that’s happening now, and you use little bits and pieces of contemporary hits to provide the music for the storyline that you're doing. Dickie Goodman in the ‘50s and ‘60s was the first one who started doing it. He had a record called Flying Saucer. And then it continued on to the ‘80s. Dr. Demento played a lot of his stuff over the years. But Dave was really into that, and he’d put out two or three records a year that were break-in records.

But one time, in 1971, when I was still in the army, he called me up and he said, “I want to do a regular record. We’ve got this bluegrass group up in York, Pennsylvania that’s really good, so I want you to come down and help produce the record.” So we produced a cover version of “Bip Bop” by Paul McCartney, because he thought it would be good for the country stations.

And I named the group—I called them Toothpick Tommy And The Truckers. And the B-side was a song called “Signal For A Stop,” which I also named. And he ended up using that B-side, which was a really great

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bluegrass instrumental—he ended up using it on like four or five of his break-in records that he put out in the later ‘70s into the ‘80s.

0:42:07

But one time, in the early years of Facebook when I was on there, I put up a mention, and one of the guys who was in the group from York contacted me and basically told me what everybody in the group was doing. But that was the first record session I had done.

And then when I did Heavy Metal Thunder on WINX in the early ‘70s, Pentagram, a group out of Virginia, contacted me, because they were big fans of the show, and they wanted me to go in the studio with them. So we went and recorded a bunch of songs over at Bias recording in Virginia, and released a bunch of those. And they keep getting released on a label called Relapse, and they've acquired quite a lot of popularity over the years. I released two 45s by them, and that was the first records that I released.

Davis: So you didn’t really apprentice at all as a producer or anything like that. You just kind of went in as a guy who knew music.

Groff: No. I mean, I did the same thing that I did with the Dischord bands when I worked with them. I just basically used my knowledge as a Top 40 jock of how things should sound or might sound on the radio. And that was my entire interest in working with these groups, was to not get them to sound like a band just thrashing around live in a basement, but to play something that could be played on the radio if they wanted it to be played on the radio.

Doesn't mean it had to be, but I mean, the difference between EP, and the first EP are worlds apart as far as I’m concerned. The first EP, they were just finding their way around, and Nathan’s vocals were pretty much the same from one track to the other. But the Minor Threat record I think is a classic. The first one. And when they came in with “In My Eyes” after they had recorded that by themselves, I said, “Hey, guys, there’s nothing I can do for you anymore. You've got it all down.”

Davis: And how did you meet Ian [MacKaye] and the rest of the band?

Groff: Oh, they were all customers at the store. Ian and Henry [Rollins] and John Stabb. All the punk—there was no place else for them to go, and get those records. And especially with the stuff I was bringing back from Britain. You’d see a lot of Gen X 45s, and obscure punk label 45s, on No Future and Raw and labels like that, that were devoted to punk stuff. There was just no place else that they could find that stuff.

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0:45:00

Davis: And as far as going into the studio, they approached you saying…?

Groff: Yeah, mmhmm.

Davis: You know, “We're interested…”

Groff: Yeah, the Teen Idles, I’m not really sure about this—you probably know the history of the band—but my impression was that the band was getting ready to break up, and they just wanted to go in the studio to document what they had been doing. I think that’s the way it went down with the Teen Idles EP.

And so, I had done work over at ’s studio with The Slickee Boys and The Nurses. And so, I took them over there and introduced them to Don. They paid for the session. And we recorded it and did a rough mix, and then did a final mix. And that was the first record.

They wanted to initially put it out on Limp, but I was just getting ready to wind the label down at that time, because the store was just too busy. And I convinced them they’d be better off starting their own label, and that’s what they did. I think it’s fortunate that they did. I mean, Dischord has become legendary.

Davis: Yeah. And Limp was—what was the first record on Limp?

Groff: Well, the first record on Limp would have been the “Mersey, Mersey Me” EP by The Slickee Boys. That’s something they recorded on their own, but I put it out. And then I did the “30 Seconds Over DC” album. That was the first album that we did. And then I did a reissue of 200 copies of “Separated Vegetables,” the Slickee Boys album that they had done on their own, because they didn’t have the money to do a repressing of it. And then I produced or released records by The Shirkers and The Nurses and D.Ceats. Black Market Baby, and things of that nature.

Davis: How did you get to know The Slickee Boys?

Groff: Oh, Kim Kane came in to Hit and Run several times when Al and I were working there, and the Hit and Run magazine that I mentioned had the Slickee Boys on the cover. It was a story I had written about their history based on interviews with Martin [aka Kim Kane] and Howard [Wuelfing]. And that’s when I met Howard, at around the same time, and he was one of the early workers at the store. And Kim Kane was an early worker at the store, as well.

Davis: And some of the other bands that you worked with, like The Shirkers— what’s the story with them?

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Groff: The Shirkers were a development from Howard Wuelfing. He recorded “Drunk and Disorderly” and “Suicide” with them. That was the only recordings they ever did, and they only ever played live once that I’m aware of. And Thomas Kane, Martin’s brother, was in that band, as well as Libby Hatch, who was Mark Jenkins’ girlfriend at that time. Mark Jenkins is a legendary D.C. journalist.

0:48:00

I don’t know if you know Mark or not but…

Davis: Yes.

Groff: …he’s a really nice guy once you get to know him, but he’s kind of quiet and introverted in terms of he doesn't let too much hang out there. If it ever comes out—the “Punk the Capital” movie—supposedly they say it’s finished now, but many years ago, Mark Jenkins interviewed me for the movie over at my warehouse, and we had a nice long talk there.

Davis: Yeah. I haven't heard when that movie’s coming out, but…

Groff: I know that I was at a show Martha Hull did in Silver Spring last year, in the summertime. And the guy putting the movie out came up to me, and he said, “We're almost ready. It should be ready by December.” That was December of last year. But it’s almost December of this year, and still no sign of it. But he insists it’s done. Ian says he has seen it. He has seen screenings of it.

Davis: So you had said the label sort of wound down because you were too busy with the store at the time?

Groff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just too busy. We ended up—the last record we were going to do, it had been mastered, and if you ever see the first Tommy Keene album, “Strange Alliance,” on the matrix it says Limp 1010, but it came out on Avenue Records, because between the time when the stampers were made and when I decided to shut the label down, we weren’t going to put it out as a Limp thing. So he put it out on his own.

Davis: So he was Avenue Records?

Groff: Yes.

Davis: Oh. OK. I saw that was reissued, maybe a couple years ago.

Groff: Yeah. He’s hooked up with this guy—it’s like 8 by 12 Records or something like that, and he has released both that album on vinyl and the “Back to Zero Now” 45 with a nice picture sleeve.

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Davis: Yeah. Is it 12XU records?

Groff: Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. The initial 45 was only pressed up by Tommy as an addition to go in the second pressing of the album. So initially, that’s the only way you could get it. It was not marketed on its own. But I still have a couple of original copies.

Davis: How did you get to know Tommy Keene?

Groff: Well, he had a band called The Rage that I saw open up for a couple of local bands. And then he joined the Razz. I only ever saw Razz once with Abaad Behram as the guitarist. And that was at the Varsity Grille when the Slickee Boys were playing with them one night. And then that’s what led to Ted [Nicely, musician and record producer] starting to work at the store. He came in a couple days after that show and I hired him to start hanging out and working.

0:51:05

And I ended up putting together the Razz “Air Time” EP, from the edit of the show where they opened up for Dave Edmunds at the University of Maryland—opening up for Rockpile. And then we put out another record by them—“You Can Run” and “Who’s Mr. Comedy.” But both of those were Limp/O’Rourke releases.

Davis: What was O’Rourke?

Groff: O’Rourke was their label. They had put out one early 45 when Abaad was with the group — “C. Redux” — and it was more of an R&B-based, Rolling Stones type sound.

Davis: So you met Tommy Keene basically through the…?

Groff: Well, through his work with Razz, but he was a customer at the store as well. He grew up in Bethesda, so it was just a straight shot down the road to get to Yesterday & Today.

Davis: Right. And a lot of these people and bands, you were saying worked at the store as well. You said Ted Niceley.

Groff: Yeah, Ted Niceley. Kim Kane, earlier.

Davis: Howard Wuelfing.

Groff: Howard Wuelfing. was an early helper at the store, when she was a teenager, and she went on to several bands, as well as her own publishing company. never technically was an employee of the store, but he helped out a lot, especially when I’d come back from

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England with a load of records, because he wanted to be the first to go through them. And all the guys from , except for [Joe] Lally, worked there. And Mike Hampton worked there. A guy named Peter Hayes worked there. Jim [Spellman] and Archie [Moore] from Velocity Girl. Danny [Ingram] and Bert [Queiroz] from Youth Brigade. I always leave some people out, but—do you know Nick Pelliciotto?

Davis: Mmhmm.

Groff: Yeah. Nick didn’t last too long.

Davis: [laugh]

Groff: He left the door unlocked one day, so I fired him shortly after that.

Davis: No second chance?

Groff: No second chance.

Davis: [laugh]

Groff: No DeSoto, either.

Davis: So having all these very active musicians working at the record store I suppose was kind of part of the pulse of keeping the store a place where people kept coming to?

Groff: Yeah. I would give them information, and they’d give me information, in terms of suggestions of things to stock.

0:54:00

But as the years went on—Dave Stimson, when he started working there, he became our buyer. In 1980, when I bought the Barry Richards 45s, and we had opened up the 45 shop basically to house and market all the 45s I had, that was all I did after that, other than buying collections when they’d come in the door. I’d supervise that.

But the Barry Richards collection was 40,000 45s, and in those days, 1980, there was no internet yet. There was no price guides for a lot of this stuff. There was really no way to research a lot of these things. So I had to basically listen to everything and just made my best judgment on what the price is.

And we got skunked on a lot of titles, particularly obscure soul things. You know. But I paid $4,000 for 40,000 45s, and I ended up making like a quarter of a million dollars on that collection.

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Davis: Wow.

Groff: So I did OK. But it took all my time for the next eight or ten years, working on that stuff.

Davis: Yeah. You’ve been involved and aware of D.C. radio for more than 50 years now. Who do you consider to be sort of like the greats of D.C. radio? And I know that it’s changed. It may not be someone in recent years, but…

Groff: Well, when I first started listening to music, WPGC had a habit of giving DJs the same names over and over again. So there was a DJ named Dean Griffith, and he was probably the second Dean Griffith. I know that there was at least one after. But he was one of my favorites early on. And Harv Moore, who was the music director for many years there, and the morning announcer, was another one. Really nice guy, and he produced a lot of local records as well.

There was a group from my high school that—I interviewed Harv and the rest of the DJs for my high school newspaper in 1966, and I told them about a local group we had called The Adam’s Apples. And he ended up producing them and changing their name to Nobody’s Children. Jan Zukowski, who was the leader of The Nighthawks for many years, was in that group, and he was also a leader in the The Cherry People. But Harv produced their first couple of 45s.

And ironically, after Jan left to go join The Cherry People, then Nobody’s Children continued working with Harv Moore, and had a record out locally and on Buddah. A cover version of The Hollies’ song, “I Can’t Let Go,” which was written by Chip Taylor, the same guy who wrote, “Wild Thing.”

0:57:07

But the B-side of that, “Don’t You Feel Like Crying?” was written and sung by a guy named Mike Colburn, who many, many years later, I released his records with Nightman on Limp.

Davis: Yeah. And who were some of the other big local bands in that time? It was like The Hangmen…

Groff: The Hangmen. Fallen Angels certainly were big. Jack Bryant from The Fallen Angels came by the store many times over the years, as well as Tom Guernsey, from The Hangmen, before he moved to Oregon.

Davis: British Walkers.

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Groff: British Walkers were hard to pin down. British Walkers were the very first band I ever saw in concert. In late ’64, they had a record out on Try Records called “I Found You.” There was a song called “Diddley Daddy” on the other side. And Roy Buchanan was their guitarist at that point in time.

And WPGC had a concert with them and some other people at Marlboro Raceway, which was near my house in Prince George’s County. And I talked my mom into driving me over there and letting me see the show, and that was the first show I ever saw. I’ve got a picture somewhere of British Walkers on stage with Dean Griffith announcing them. But I think that was the only concert I ever saw before I went to college. Because at Maryland, you could just walk to things on campus, so I saw a lot of concerts on campus.

Davis: Like who?

Groff: The Buckinghams. The Association. Richie Havens. The Cowsills. One of the strangest concerts we ever had there was Neil Diamond with Humble Pie opening up for him.

Davis: [laugh]

Groff: I saw Dionne Warwick. She was at Cole Field House. I interviewed her one day.

Davis: The shows were primarily at Cole, or were they at the Union?

Groff: Shows were primarily at Ritchie Coliseum. Cole they only used for really big shows. I think I saw there one time. Bill Cosby’s wife was a University of Maryland graduate.

Davis: Oh! I didn’t know that.

Groff: He met her there at one of his shows.

Davis: Oh. Were there ever shows in the student union, in any of the ballrooms? Or that was later?

Groff: Well, this Rockpile show was a later thing, in the late seventies, but that was in a student union ballroom. I don’t remember anything else in the student union ballroom while I was there.

0:01:00

But I’m sure there probably were, just not things that I attended. When I was at Maryland, I never went to any classes, except to take tests, and I always pretty much failed everything. But at that point in time, if you were

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a Maryland resident, they automatically reinstated you the first time you failed out. And so it wasn’t until the second time I failed out that I was gone for good.

And when I was in the Army, because of their desire to help you go back to school, I would have been able to basically go back to Maryland and finish up for free. I went in and checked out my paperwork from the university, and went over to University College to register for it. And along the way, I thought, “I’m already doing what I want to do. Why do I need to do this?” [laugh] So I threw the paperwork away in a dumpster and I, you know…

Davis: Never looked back.

Groff: Never looked back.

Davis: Did you feel connected to campus life, so to speak, at all, when you were there?

Groff: No. I spent all of my hours at the radio station. I lived in Washington G dorm the three years I was at Maryland. And you know, I’d just work at the radio station, go to the few classes I did to take tests, and then hang out at the dorm. I don’t even remember watching TV much in those days. We certainly didn’t have them in the dorm rooms, but I know that they had them somewhere in the dorms. But it just was not part of my life at that point in time. Of course, “Cold Case” wasn’t on yet, so…

Davis: Right. So why bother?

Groff: [laugh]

Davis: Who needs a television until that show came on? So you weren’t really— the political unrest or any of the sort of things that you think of when you think of college campuses at that time?

Groff: Well, I worked with The Diamondback as a writer as well, on a limited basis doing some occasional concert reviews and record reviews for them, as well as an article on WMUC at one point in time. The Argus, also, the campus literary magazine, published an article I had done on the radio station.

But we had a guy named Ira Kaplan, who was one of the editors of The Diamondback, and he was a real hardcore liberal, verging on a communist [laugh]. And it was really—for someone as young as you, it’s hard to imagine right now, but when Vietnam was beginning to blossom, so to speak, it was really dividing a lot of the students in terms of the traditional people who—the Young Republican types, and the free souls who didn’t want it to happen at all.

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1:03:18

And that’s, like I said, when I had thoughts about going off to Canada. But it was really dividing a lot of us on campus at that point in time. And I know when Ohio happened with the Kent State massacre … that really pissed a lot of people off, and…

Davis: And you were in the military at that point, when that happened, right? That was…

Groff: No, I think that was ’69, wasn’t it?

Davis: Was it? OK. I thought that was like Spring ’70, but that might have been ’69 as well.

Groff: Yeah, I don’t know.

Davis: It’s just interesting, again, if you were serving at that time, when—but you had anti-war feelings.

Groff: Well, [laugh] when I was—when we were firing M16s on the rifle range one day at Fort Dix, we had this conscientious objector from Philadelphia, young Jewish kid, who was in our troop. And the drill sergeant said, “Button up your collars. You don’t want these shells going down your neck.” This guy didn’t button up his collar. And sure enough, hot shell after firing an M16, rapid burst of bullets, went down his collar, and he just starting spraying M16 fire all over our heads. The next time I saw him, they were hauling him away to be booted out of the army.

But things like that were happening on a regular basis. And we’d hear all these stories coming back from people who had returned from active duty in Vietnam, serving on the base, and it was just really horror stories. You just can’t even imagine. People are talking now on Facebook about this ten-hour series, Ken Burns’ documentary on Vietnam, and I just can’t imagine that I could even bear to watch that.

Davis: Were there many protests on campus? Did you participate in protests?

Groff: I’m sure there were, but I didn’t—again, it’s a question between protesting something or working at the radio station—I’m going to work at the radio station. I just loved playing music for people that they weren’t going to hear anywhere else. That was always my interest in being in radio.

Davis: Was the radio station located on…?

Groff: Building FF, over in—what the hell did they call that part of campus?

1:06:06

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It was over near like the tennis courts or something like that. The Gulch. Yeah, Building FF in the Gulch. It’s torn down now.

Davis: Yeah. It’s in the South Campus Dining Hall now, where I think it has been for decades. I know it was there 20 years ago.

Groff: Yeah. I went over there in ’78. Yeah. Sharon Cheslow was doing a radio show there, and she invited me over to do like a Top 100 countdown of the punk singles of the previous year, and we did that. I still have that on CD. She doesn't even have a copy of that show, but…

Davis: You do have a copy of that?

Groff: Yeah.

Davis: Wow. And was it in the different location at that point?

Groff: It was where you're describing it.

Davis: Yeah. It seems as if it has been there for a fairly long time, but…

Groff: Yeah.

Davis: Because The Diamondback is over in that building now, too. Where was The Diamondback located?

Groff: I could not even begin to tell you that.

Davis: So going back to—you were talking a bit about some of the punk stuff that you were involved with. You produced Minor Threat. You had Ian and those guys.

Groff: The things that I produced that were punk things were the Teen Idles, the first Minor Threat EP, the S.O.A. EP, Youth Brigade initial sessions, which didn’t get released until last year. Then the Slickee Boys if you want to call them punk, but I wouldn't think of them as a punk band. And that was their third EP—that was the only thing I produced with them. The Nurses, I produced the “Running Around” 45 by them. The Velvet Monkeys, I produced their initial recordings. Black Market Baby, I produced “Potential Suicide.” And I think that’s it.

Davis: And that just kind of stopped because you…?

Groff: Like I said, I got too busy with the Barry Richards collection. And first and foremost, I was trying to run a record store, and I needed—I was the only one who could do that stuff, in terms of pricing it and figuring out where it would go, and what to do with it.

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Davis: Were there other bands or musicians that came along that you thought, “If I had time…”?

Groff: Well, George Dively from The Penetrators, for years he wanted me to go in with his new group, New Standard, and work with them. And the Beatnik Flies wanted me to work with them, but I said, “No, I can’t do it. Don’t want to do it.”

Davis: Hmm. And music in general—have you listened to…?

Groff: I don’t keep up with current music.

1:09:00

The only current thing that I’ve bought in recent years is Adele and there’s a group called the Aerovons. Have you heard of the Aerovons?

Davis: Yes.

Groff: I mean, the story behind that record is just so fascinating.

Davis: The Aerovons are the band, the American band, that…?

Groff: Yeah. They were from St. Louis.

Davis: Right, yeah.

Groff: Got offered a contract by Capitol Records in 1969, went over to England, and recorded a full album in the same studios The Beatles were using. And I just mentioned it—I played a cut from it on my—the radio show I did last Sunday, on Robbie White’s show, and played a cut from it, and I told the whole story of the thing. They release one 45 by them. It flops. The group’s splintering. So after they recorded this brilliant album, they pack it up and go back to St. Louis. The album is never released until 30-some- odd years later. And I just think it’s an incredible album. If you want to say that’s new music I listen to—you know, that’s new, but it’s—it’s just new to me, so…

Davis: Have you thought about writing liner notes or something like that for other reissues?

Groff: Henry had me write liner notes for the CD reissue of “30 Seconds Over DC.” The original liner notes were written by one of the WGTB jocks, David Howcroft. I had him write them for me. And when Tommy’s album was coming out, I had Dave Einstein from WHFS write the liner notes for that. But I just—what I like is in England, them going back and digging up all this stuff, these brilliant songs that never got released, and doing these brilliant repackages of them. I’ve got a—do you know Brenda Holloway?

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Davis: Mmhmm.

Groff: I’ve got a double CD that should be arriving any day. They just released a double CD of all previously unreleased tracks done with producers like Holland-Dozier-Holland and and , and I just can’t wait to hear that stuff. She has always been a favorite of mine. I first heard her when she did, “When I’m Gone.” And then in ’68 or so, she had a really brilliant up-tempo record called “Just Look What You’ve Done,” that didn’t do a whole lot on the charts, but we played it a lot at WMUC.

That was one of the good things about being at a station like WMUC. Smokey Robinson and The Miracles when they released “The Love I Saw In You Was Just A Mirage”—the B-side of that record was a song called “Come Spy With Me,” which was from a motion picture, a silly goofy spy-type movie. But that song never made it onto any of their albums, and none of their CDs.

1:12:05

I had to buy it on a British compilation CD of spy-type songs. [laugh] And the three times I’ve been on the Takoma Park station to play stuff, I’ve never been able to get to playing that cut. I just run out of time.

Davis: When did new music sort of stop being interesting for you? Were you still at the store?

Groff: Yeah. In ’93 or so, when I was still going to England, but Howie and I had broken up our friendship—he thought I was trying to steal one of his employees away from him, so he started going to Japan, and I was going to England by myself. And on one of the trips over there, because I’m horribly afraid of flying, I started listening to the country music channel, and at that point in time, country music had a lot of pop country type stuff out, not the traditional sort of stuff. And I started getting into that. So for a couple of years, Kelly and I were listening to a lot of things like that, and going to see bands like The Mavericks.

But I would say, when we finished at the store, I stopped listening to any form of current music. HFS had moved to Annapolis, and they weren’t doing what they were doing before. And Kirsty MacColl was getting ready to be gone, if she wasn’t already gone. And the things that I was interested in—Ian knows this—I’ve never listened to Fugazi more than once, because I just don’t get what they're trying to do. I realize they're very good at what they’re trying to do, but it’s not my kind of thing. It’s not the kind of songs and music I listen to.

Davis: Did you ever go see any of the punk bands in person, like the ones you were producing?

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Groff: Yeah, sure. Yeah. I saw most of them. You know that I was supposed to do the first recording session?

Davis: Right.

Groff: And the only reason I didn’t was because the night before, H.R. came in the store and sat there cross-armed and staring at me like he was going to stick me with a knife at any moment. It just freaked me out so bad I called up Kim Kane from the Slickee Boys and asked them to do the session the next day over at Don Zientara’s. And they were like an hour and a half late showing up, so there was only a half hour left to record, and that’s where “Don’t Bother Me” came from.

Davis: What was the issue with him staring you down?

Groff: I don’t know. I think he was just trying to freak me out. I had gone to see them earlier at Madam’s Organ, and then I went over to their house and saw them rehearse one night. And the guys in the band except for him shopped at my store regularly, coming all the way from Prince George’s County.

1:15:05

But it was really weird. When I went over to their house to see them rehearse, I realized that it was just down the street from where I used to live in District Heights. And that was kind of freaky for me, because I hadn’t been to that area of town for oh, many, many years.

Davis: When you watched them rehearse, was it the same type of energy as one of the live performances, or was it different?

Groff: Well, I came to realize that they were fakes. They were not guys just starting out trying to play punk music. They were accomplished musicians. They could have been jazz musicians if they wanted to be. They were that accomplished on their—but they wanted to get into the punk scene, and the excitement that that was encompassing at that point in time. So you know, music should be what people want it to be for themselves, and not be manufactured and pushed into a niche just because somebody at a record label says, “Well, you've got to do this. You've got to do that.”

Davis: I don’t think I have any other questions. Is there anything you think we should touch on, that we haven't talked about yet?

Groff: Well, you really didn’t go over how I started in retail records. Besides working at Waxie Maxie’s in 1973, when I left WINX because of a disagreement over them wanting to take Heavy Metal Thunder off the air, I started working at Empire Music over in Rockville. They had a discount

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location at that point in time, so I was manager of that shop. And then I was hired as the manager of the Wheaton Plaza store of Variety Records, and I worked there until I left to go work at RCA. So basically between Waxie Maxie’s, the two stops at that, and those other things, was my retail introduction into working in records.

Davis: Mmhmm. And that was all concurrent with being a DJ as well? You sort of got to do those things at the same time?

Groff: Well, at Empire Music, I was full-time manager and singles buyer for the entire chain. So I was out of radio at that point in time. And when I worked at Empire, that was a full-time job too.

Davis: So DJing—when did that end exactly, then?

Groff: Well, in terms of WINX, it ended when I left in the spring of ’77, to open up Hit and Run, with Al.

1:18:00

But since then, when the store was operating, I was hired at WPGC to do the Sunday night oldies show in 1980 and ’81. I did that for those two years, and then later in the eighties, Flash Phillips at WAVA was leaving to go out west to a couple of radio stations, and he recommended me to do their show they had that was playing new wave stuff at that point in time, called Rock Of the ‘90s, on Sunday nights. So I did that for a year and a half.

Davis: That was on WAVA?

Groff: Yeah. Until the—with all the cassette tapes you’ve got…

Davis: Yes. I didn’t realize that was on that station.

Groff: Yeah. They changed format to a religious format, which is I think still what they're doing today.

Davis: Yeah.

Groff: And let everybody go, so…

Davis: Yeah, I was a pretty avid listener of WAVA and Q107 when I was a kid in the early-to-mid-1980s here.

Groff: Yeah. When I got fired from WAVA, when they changed the format, Jack Diamond and Loo Katz, who I had both worked with at WINX and PGC, called me up and said, “We can try and get you on the air on Q107 if you want, on Sunday nights.” And I said, “Playing ?” He said,

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“No, no, you've got to play what the station’s playing. I said, “I have no interest in playing what the station is playing.”

If it’s something that I want to play, then I’ll do it, but I’m not going to do it otherwise. I have more money to be made selling records. And even in the 2005 area, my friend Steve Kingston who I worked with at WINX and at PGC when he was program director, he’s the one who hired me for the Oldies show—he offered to build a studio in my basement, for me to do a show on his station. He owns what used to be WHFS in Annapolis. I forget what they call themselves. What’s the name of that station? It’s the only station in Annapolis besides WYRE.

Davis: WRNR?

Groff: Yeah, WRNR. He owns that station. And I said, “Can I play Velvet Underground and things like that?” And he said, “No. You've got to play what we're playing.” I said, “I’m not going to do that.”

Davis: So when you go to the Takoma radio station…

Groff: Yeah. I can play what I want to play. Although I got in trouble last Sunday because I played the Chumps’ “Jet Lag Drag” off of “30 Seconds Over DC” and I didn’t realize that Rob Kennedy says “fuck” in the song, and Robbie had to write it down and send a note to the station owner.

Davis: What time of day is that show on?

Groff: This particular show he had me do two hours from 10:00 to 12:00 last Sunday.

1:21:04

Davis: There used to be like the safe hours at least when I was at WMUC, where from midnight to 6:00 a.m. you could basically play whatever. That may not be the case anymore.

Groff: This is really the only station I’ve ever worked at where this woman who runs this station, she insists that everything be logged in advance in terms of what you're going to play. So you've got to work out all your sets in advance. There’s no room for any extraneous stuff, thought of the moment things, requests, or anything like that.

Davis: Hmm!

Groff: And you've got to have the artist, the title of the song, the label, the year it came out, the time of the song, and it has to be all done in a spreadsheet- type style. And it’s just really a pain in the butt to do it like that, but…

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Davis: I’m assuming you don’t break out the radio voice anymore?

Groff: No. I don’t do that. No.

Davis: When did that sort of go out of vogue? Like the…?

Groff: Well, it depends on how much reverb was on a station. You know?

Davis: [laugh]

Groff: Did you work at MUC when you were there?

Davis: Yeah. I was a DJ for four years when I was there.

Groff: Did they still do reverb?

Davis: Not really, no. It was pretty dry.

Groff: Yeah. Depending on what year, in the Top 40 years, when I was there, they had reverb to some extent. And certainly when I worked at WINX and worked at WPGC and even worked at WAVA—I mean, if you ever listen to any of those cassettes, you'll hear—you won’t believe it’s my voice when you listen to those things.

Davis: I’ve heard the one I mentioned, maybe around 1968—the Baltimore radio station, WSID—which is definitely cloaked in reverb.

Groff: Yeah, Ian [MacKaye] said he [laugh] couldn't believe that that was me doing that.

Davis: Yeah. How was the reverb applied? Did you have control over that?

Groff: No, no. It was part of the station processing of the signal. It was just something was added on automatically, and I guess the program directors or the station managers would be the ones to determine the aspect of that. Nothing that we had any control over.

Davis: And did sort of the presentation style change over the next few years?

Groff: Well, when HFS started doing what would be considered hippie music, progressive rock kind of stuff, it really varied from show to show. You know, Weasel always sounded like he had drank ten cups of coffee a particular day. And then you get another DJ like Damian [Einstein] or Josh [Brooks], and they’d be really laid-back San Francisco type style— very, very mellow.

1:24:11

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Davis: So the shifting away from AM essentially to FM is what kind of changed the way DJs sounded?

Groff: Yeah. One of things that I never particularly cared for about radio is I didn’t care about hearing my voice on the radio. I only wanted to play the music. So you’ve got guys on the WPGC website that, they were only ever—I mean, you know how the long list of like 25 radio stations that they worked at in their lifetime, and they just go from market to market, and they have nothing—no knowledge of music whatsoever, but they just play what they were told, and want to hear the sound of their voice on the radio.

Davis: And how often are you able to do the Takoma radio show?

Groff: Well, I could do it as often as I wanted to, but I don’t want to do it that often. It’s like I said a big pain in the butt to go through to get it together, and then Kelly’s got to drive me over there, because I don’t drive and I can’t walk. But I enjoy doing it from time to time. The guys from The Intentions, who are big fans of the show whenever I’m on, they said the other day that they want to hear me on again, and I said, “Well, I’ll have to ask Robbie.” Robbie said, “He’ll be back.” So, we’ll see what happens.

[End of recording]

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