Great Expectations
An Interview With Headline Records Founder Jean Luc Gaudry
March 19, 2019
LOS ANGELES – Jean Luc Gaudry’s talking about the identification process when depositing checks, which gets him into blockchain and then, somehow, the wonders of how vinyl is actually made.
It’s a roundabout way of delving into the particulars of the Headline Records founder’s brand new podcast, but Gaudry’s adept at crisscrossing topics, skillfully picking up on the most fascinating parts of any subject.
The long-time DJ – he DJ’d for a few radio stations in France and then later, once Stateside, was at former Indie 103.1 DJ TK’s internet station Moheak Radio. Having a podcast when he opened his punk-focused record shop Headline Records in 1995 was always in the cards, but the technology didn’t exist. Fast-forward to now and costs have come down, the technology’s improved and the timing made sense.
“A long time ago I was a DJ. I’m still a very bad DJ. I’m very, very bad, but I love it. I do the podcast especially for me. I’m not saying I want to be selfish, but I really enjoy it,” he said.
“The Punk Show” already has a few episodes under its belt and airs Thursdays in two-hour stints. Guests will be regularly invited, with Gaudry’s first being the Transplants’ Rob Aston on March 21.
“I don’t prepare anything [for the podcast] and when I was a DJ it was the same thing. I have a crate. It’s by feeling. Everything is by feeling,” Gaudry said.
The show is a significant undertaking and a long time coming, but it doesn’t even begin to crack the surface of an even more ambitious project Gaudry has been chipping away at for the past 12 years. The basic idea he has is, at its simplest, a platform where shows and event listings can be stored for every major city and country in the world. He’s spent the past several years acquiring the domain names of every capital, country and major city (e.g. showsinparis.com, showsinberlin.com and on). The only piece of the puzzle missing is London, but he’ll eventually get there. His one stumbling block, as with most ideas, is access to capital but he’s not shelving the project any time soon.
“I have really good friends say – they don’t say they don’t believe in the project, but after 12 years they say, ‘You know, you should drop it or whatever,’” he said. “And I say, ‘No. No.’”
Such a move would be inconsistent with how Gaudry operates anyways. More than 20 years ago he made the decision to move from France to the U.S. to start Headline.
“You know, it goes like this: When you arrive to a certain age and you work for people for a very long period of time – I was starting to work at 16. So when I arrived at 30 years old, I said ‘Well, why not do something I really wanted to do?’ I like punk rock and I think I can be good at it and I’ve always been in retail so I say why not do a punk store? It was very difficult to do something in France and at that time I had a big conflict with France about politics and a lot of things so I said no way I’m going to do that in France.”
Gaudry was aware of more mainstream acts such as the New York Dolls and knew of Patti Smith through relatives. However, it wasn’t until a friend, at 17, began introducing him to the Angry Samoans, Circle Jerks and other bands that he wandered down the punk rock rabbit hole.
“I was like, ‘Wow, that is amazing’ and just like that I started to discover other bands and being a fan, just buy and buy [records] and going to shows,” he said.
Gaudry had already come out to L.A. many times for vacation to see bands play and frequented places such as Zed Records, Rhino Records and Vinyl Solution.
“You had no stores in L.A. that specialized in punk so I said ‘OK, I’m going to start from scratch,’” he said. “I wasn’t really speaking English. I mean, a little bit but nothing like – I’m still not really speaking English. But it took me a good year just to prepare. You need visas. You need to do a corporation and all that crap.”
Nearly everything – all the paperwork, all the buying – he handled on his own.
“I’m not saying I’m proud of that,” he said. “The only thing I’m proud of is when I took the decision [to start Headline], because that is the hardest thing. It’s not before and it’s not after. The moment you take that decision, that is the point really where you’re going to do it. Consistency. You just do it. Twenty years later I’m still working the same way I was working 20 years ago.”
Gaudry’s moved the store five times, originally starting at Pico and Westwood. His father was his first customer. He bought a T-shirt. Lack of foot traffic hampered the business on Westwood and it wasn’t until the move to Melrose, Headline turned profitable.
Gaudry at one time also ran the Headline Records label, but stopped that around the time of the Great Recession and, of course, the rise of mobile.
“It really changed the behavior of how people buy and how people react to the product, if I can call it a product because, to me, it’s not really a product to have a record in your hand or a CD. It’s art. Especially vinyl. It’s art,” Gaudry said.
Sales of 7-inches, what the label was operating, trickled off. Trading also began to slow between 2008 and 2010.
“Twenty years ago, you had a lot of people buying stuff in general because the economy was very different. We had more money in a certain way so labels and bands were willing to trade. Imagine you had eight really great releases and two were just OK,” Gaudry said. “You had somebody say ‘Oh, can you trade’ and that guy had a few good bands. Because the economy was OK, people were trading and now instead of 10 items, now you had 30 items and you had more choices. Now people only buy stuff they like. Let’s say somebody contacts you and you know the stuff he has you’re not going to sell a lot. Why are you going to trade something you know is going to be really hard to sell? When you have to pay your rent, the landlord doesn’t want fucking vinyl. He’ll say ‘I don’t care about your fucking vinyl or your fucking T-shirt. I want money!’”
The other change he – along with most every other business owner – has had to grapple with is, of course, the internet’s rise. But Gaudry contends record stores will always maintain a certain relationship the net will never be able to establish between a shopkeeper and shopper.
“You’re always going to have the history,” he said. “Of course you can find history on the web. You can do a search and find the story of the band, but that’s not everything. The relationship you have with somebody when you come to a store and talk with a guy – I don’t know everything. Trust me, every day I discover a new band. Every single day. But it’s the relationship.”
He can’t satisfy everyone, especially those who comparison shop between online prices and brick-and-mortar retail prices, but he’s also not trying to play that game. And he’ll continue carrying on that way.
“You do your zine and some people’s going to say ‘Oh, your zine looks like crap.’ OK, do your own!” he said. “I mean, if you don’t like the store fine. I’m not offended, but it’s what I do. I’m not saying I don’t care, but it’s just the way it is. As soon as you do something, you’re always going to have somebody who is against you or who won’t understand why you’re doing it. So you just have to accept it.”
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