St. Louisans used to drive all the way out to Columbia to shop at Apop Records. Now, this “Wunderkammern of exotic sounds, curio publications and psychotronic cinema” has come to us
By Stefene Russell
Photograph by Sarah Carmody
For two and a half years, Apop was Columbia’s most uncategorizable record store. If you lived in St. Louis and happened to have a thing for punk of a certain vintage (Crisis), serious electronica (Delia Derbyshire) or French yé-yé (Brigitte Bardot), you gassed up and made a pilgrimage to the wee shop, formerly a palmreader’s storefront. There were in-stores outside, with bands playing on the roof, on the loading dock and in the parking lot, sometimes at such volumes special noise permits were required. Some of the bands came from as far away as Italy. And the shows were always free.
Now Apop is St. Louis’ most uncategorizable record store. Tiffany Minx and Dustin Newman, co-proprietors, met each other as DJs at KCOU-FM, the student station at the University of Missouri–Columbia. They named their store after Newman’s radio show, Apoptosis (a scientific term for cells that turn suicidal—sort of the opposite of cancer), but Minx thought it sounded catchier as Apop—and liked the double-entendre meaning of “against pop.”
The new space, at the corner of Cherokee and Ohio, is open and breezy, with a hyper-graphic version of the Apop logo painted on the wall in white, black and red. The two say they’re aiming to do what they did in Columbia, which is carry stuff no one else does—rare vinyl, releases off tiny labels, imported zines, cult documentaries, fringe publications—on a larger scale.
“A lot of stuff that was just sitting there forever at the old store, stuff that we like, is selling here,” Minx says. “Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle ... a lot of older punk stuff, a lot of older electronic things.”
“In Columbia, a lot of people wanted what was popular that week,” Newman adds, “and then the next week they’d want something completely different.”
“But that’s not what we wanted to do,” Minx says.
Tomorrow is Apop Records’ grand reopening, and the door is propped open to vent the heady smell of silver spray paint that’s being applied to squares of merch-display pegboard. Sherri Ford, proprietress of the late, lamented Tension Head, came by to help organize record bins, and tomorrow more than a dozen bands will show up to play in the back yard. But if Minx and Newman want to do an in-store in the store, they now have space to do that.
They also have the space to house Apoptronics, a service wherein Newman will offer “synthesizers, theremins, noisemakers, sonic nauseators and other modified electronics” built to spec.
“It’s custom synthesizers, pedals ... just rewired gizmos that make weird sounds,” he says. “I had a kid who had a He-Man Power Sword that lit up and made sounds, and he was wondering if I could rewire it to make it do something else.” (He could—and did.)
“It’s sort of MacGyver-esque,” Minx says.
The pair will also offer welding services—as long as it’s along the lines of a custom instrument or specialty packaging, as they note on their website: “We aren’t looking to do any body work on your car, repair any boilers or build any bridges, but other than that we’re open to just about anything.”
And they’ll continue to operate the Apop label, releasing everything from F.D.A.S.F.D.A., “weirdo synth folk psychedelic electronica pop from Sweden,” to reissues from local “no wave screeeech Skronk irritainment” outfit Skarekrau Radio. In addition to CDs, they issue new vinyl (“We’re actually getting our vinyl pressed in the Czech Republic,” Newman says. “It’s cheaper and of better quality”), cassettes housed in spring-loaded boxes made from welded nails, or in the case of their Pasteur series, 7-inch CDs in Petri dishes.
“At the bottom there’s artwork on a transparency, and it’s sealed in there with polyethylene glycol,” Newman says. “Sometimes it’s wax.”
“Just so it looks goopy and gross,” Minx adds. “It’s great, because they’re all different-looking, depending on what we had that day, what was available.”
As for the store itself, the offerings will run the gamut from hell to breakfast, which Minx says does confuse some people who wander in off the street and ask her what kind of “culture” the store is; she says it’s not a culture, just a place to offer a roundup of books, magazines, records and movies in a true spirit of eclecticism.
“People ask us why we carry certain things,” Minx says, “and I’m, like, ‘Well why not? Don’t you want to know about the world around you and all the weird stuff in it?’ It makes sense to me.”
Apop Records, open noon-7 p.m. daily ("sometimes later"), 2831 Cherokee, 314-664-6575, apoprecords.com, myspace.com/apoprecords
