Skip Groff, a radio DJ and producer whose strip-mall record shop, Yesterday and Today, became a vinyl-filled sanctuary, incubator, gathering place and meeting hall for Washington’s punk and alternative music scenes, died Feb. 18 at a hospital in Olney, Md. He was 70. He had suffered a seizure earlier that day, said his wife, Kelly Groff.
From 1977 until it closed in 2002, “Y and T,” as it was known, was a Washington music mecca. Located in suburban Rockville, Md., the store accumulated more than 1 million 45s, by Mr. Groff’s count, as well as thousands of new and used LPs, CDs, cassettes and music magazines.
“That store was like a clubhouse,” said concert promoter Seth Hurwitz, whose company I.M.P. once sold tickets to 9:30 Club shows out of Yesterday and Today. “It was a gathering place, kind of like a soda shop or a garage in the ’50s. You go in there, and you’d usually see someone you knew.”
Holding court from behind the counter, Mr. Groff steered listeners toward records by the Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground or British singer Kirsty MacColl, for whom he named his daughter. His store was named for a 1966 release by the Beatles, which originally featured a “butcher” cover showing the Fab Four with raw meat and decapitated baby dolls.
Among Washington-area record stores, Mr. Groff’s shop “had the most extensive selection of imported punk records and new wave and post punk,” said Howard Wuelfing, a publicist and musician hired as Mr. Groff’s first employee.
The store, he added, drew shoppers including Misfits singer Glenn Danzig and Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, who made the trek north up Rockville Pike while on tour in Washington, as well as budding musicians such as Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye.
“Sometimes you go into a record store, and the person behind the counter makes you feel like you have trespassed,” said MacKaye, who co-founded Dischord Records and led bands including Minor Threat and Fugazi. “And sometimes the owner, or the person behind the counter, makes you feel like he was wondering what took you so long. I put Skip in the latter.”
Mr. Groff maintained a wide selection of country and western rarities, rock and new-wave classics, obscure metal singles from Britain and Canada, and a smattering of Top 40 hits. He had initially planned to specialize in late-’60s rock and psychedelia, but his focus shifted with the rise of punk rock in England, which Mr. Groff visited several times each year to buy records.
“When you start selling 15 to 20 Buzzcocks or X-Ray Spex records and one Beatles record, your ideas get changed around pretty quickly,” he said, according to the D.C. punk history “Dance of Days” by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins.
He soon evolved from a punk-music salesman into a producer and patron, hiring up-and-coming musicians at his store and recording many of them on his label, Limp Records. By the early 1980s, he had produced most of Washington’s leading punk groups, including State of Alert, the Slickee Boys, the Razz, Velvet Monkeys, Youth Brigade, the Nurses, Black Market Baby and Minor Threat.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...12096c-3523-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html
From 1977 until it closed in 2002, “Y and T,” as it was known, was a Washington music mecca. Located in suburban Rockville, Md., the store accumulated more than 1 million 45s, by Mr. Groff’s count, as well as thousands of new and used LPs, CDs, cassettes and music magazines.
“That store was like a clubhouse,” said concert promoter Seth Hurwitz, whose company I.M.P. once sold tickets to 9:30 Club shows out of Yesterday and Today. “It was a gathering place, kind of like a soda shop or a garage in the ’50s. You go in there, and you’d usually see someone you knew.”
Holding court from behind the counter, Mr. Groff steered listeners toward records by the Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground or British singer Kirsty MacColl, for whom he named his daughter. His store was named for a 1966 release by the Beatles, which originally featured a “butcher” cover showing the Fab Four with raw meat and decapitated baby dolls.
Among Washington-area record stores, Mr. Groff’s shop “had the most extensive selection of imported punk records and new wave and post punk,” said Howard Wuelfing, a publicist and musician hired as Mr. Groff’s first employee.
The store, he added, drew shoppers including Misfits singer Glenn Danzig and Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, who made the trek north up Rockville Pike while on tour in Washington, as well as budding musicians such as Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye.
“Sometimes you go into a record store, and the person behind the counter makes you feel like you have trespassed,” said MacKaye, who co-founded Dischord Records and led bands including Minor Threat and Fugazi. “And sometimes the owner, or the person behind the counter, makes you feel like he was wondering what took you so long. I put Skip in the latter.”
Mr. Groff maintained a wide selection of country and western rarities, rock and new-wave classics, obscure metal singles from Britain and Canada, and a smattering of Top 40 hits. He had initially planned to specialize in late-’60s rock and psychedelia, but his focus shifted with the rise of punk rock in England, which Mr. Groff visited several times each year to buy records.
“When you start selling 15 to 20 Buzzcocks or X-Ray Spex records and one Beatles record, your ideas get changed around pretty quickly,” he said, according to the D.C. punk history “Dance of Days” by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins.
He soon evolved from a punk-music salesman into a producer and patron, hiring up-and-coming musicians at his store and recording many of them on his label, Limp Records. By the early 1980s, he had produced most of Washington’s leading punk groups, including State of Alert, the Slickee Boys, the Razz, Velvet Monkeys, Youth Brigade, the Nurses, Black Market Baby and Minor Threat.
Read more here -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...12096c-3523-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html
