Feed Your Head! Music

Thom Osburn’s friends told him for years that he already owned a record store — he was just missing the cash register and store front. So when he was laid off from his photo-retouching job in early 2009, with no potential jobs in sight, he did something a little crazy. He started a business focused on the fledgling music industry in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

That business is Feed Your Head! Music, the newest addition to the Atlanta record store circuit.

Most people plan for years to follow their dream and to start that business that they always wanted. Thom didn’t really have a choice. He looked around at his 7,500-plus record collection, pulled out 1,500 LPs that he could part with and 500 more CDs and opened shop in the East Atlanta Village.

Like most record store owners in Atlanta, Thom is a wealth of knowledge regarding not just music, but all things vinyl, minus the pretentious attitude. I got the opportunity to sit down with Thom a few days shy of Feed Your Head’s one-year anniversary to discuss music, business and gang initiations.

Purge: I’ve shopped in your store a handful of times in the last year. Every time I’m here you always seem to enlighten me through our conversations, whether it be about an artist, album or even the format of the recording.

When and what triggered this deep love for music and a passion for all of the details?

Thom: Probably at a pretty early age. I was really little, two or three years old. Right after I learned to talk I learned how to operate the phonograph.

We had an album in the house called 24 Happening Hits which was on Columbia and it was just a various artist compilation you could buy mail order and it had the stuff that was then current, like Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Sonny and Cher and Tommy James doing “I Think We’re Alone Now.” So I thought that an album sounds great if each song is different from the others.

Another album that we had was The Beatles’ Help! soundtrack. Not the Help! album from Britain that everybody is familiar with because that’s the one that’s on CD. The soundtrack is seven Beatles songs interspersed with seven or eight instrumental tracks from the movie. Some of them were done classical style and some were done to sound like Indian music. There was a version of “Hard Day’s Night” played with a sitar. The diversity of that record was really appealing to me.

That little GE suitcase record player with the swivel-out speakers and the flip-down turntable that played at three speeds was a real eye opener and ear opener.

Purge: You’ve been open for a year now. How’s business been?

Thom: When the weather’s good I’ve had some monster days to pay the rent and keep the lights on. When I opened the store I only had around 1,500 albums and 400-500 CDs from my personal collection. The store has probably bought 4,500 pieces since it opened. The items have gone out a lot more slowly than they have been coming in, but I still get steady business. The content of the store no longer reflects my taste per se. I bring in what I know will sell, especially if someone asks me about an album. Even though it’s music that I personally wouldn’t listen to.

People walking by the store usually hear me play rock and some post 1950s jazz, but until opening the store I had not listened to either genre in close to ten years. Because you listen to enough rock and it all starts to sound alike. Modern production and CD mastering is atrocious. So I just found myself listening to much older stuff. It was better recorded, better performed, everybody knew how to read music and it wasn’t built in a computer. It wasn’t sterile.

Purge: You were on the wrong end of a gang initiation last summer when you were brutally assaulted in your store. Obviously, you didn’t duck and run, but how has that altercation affected you?

Thom: These days I’m well armed and trained with a firearm. I walk around the store carrying a retractable club, knives, pepper spray and often have a Glock on my person. And when I see someone standing at my counter casing the store I walk toward them with my hand on the club so they can see quite clearly that I’m armed and my hand is on the weapon. They usually turn and walk out of the store without saying a word to me. They don’t even acknowledge the situation, but it’s obvious we’re both thinking the same thing. That’s happened at least three times since the attack back in July.

My children begged me to close the store, but “they” would have to really lay me up pretty good to consider it. I would have to be unable to work to close the store. But the next kid who pulls a stunt with me like that will not get to see a judge because I’m going to take him out and he won’t be able to speak to anyone ever again. Because I cannot be beaten like that again.

Purge: Other than selling records (and defending East Atlanta), what do you want to accomplish with Feed Your Head’s existence?

Thom: Mainly, to show that there is music outside of what the radio or other media outlets are trying feed you. The whole notion that the only music that is worthy of listening was released in the last six months, or two years, or even in the last ten years, seems kinds of preposterous to me. I think any fan of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw or Beethoven’s Ninth would take exception to that. So naturally, I carry their albums in the store along with other recent artists.

John Lennon once said, “This is our newest single or our latest electronic noise depending on what side of the fence you’re on.” That was a pretty prescient comment because electronic noise is 90% of what’s on the charts these days.

Feed Your Head! Music is located at 493-b Flat Shoals Avenue in the East Atlanta Village and is open Monday through Saturday, 2 PM to midnight. The store specializes in used vinyl, CDs, and DVDs, and even sells turntables.

Photo Credit: Christy Parry