Curt Swedlow
It was the time I spent as a DJ at KDVS that really helped to set me up on a career path that led to 35 wonderful years in the music industry. After graduation and my tenure as a College Promotion Rep. for A&M Records I moved to Los Angeles to take a full-time job at Herb Alpert’s label. But being a “promotion person,” responsible for getting our records played at radio stations (at any cost, literally) really wasn’t for me and so it lasted for only a couple of months.
So, I turned my interest and focus to record retailing and created a new position for the industry which soon thereafter became known as Field Merchandiser. I spent my days visiting record stores putting up displays on XP walls and windows, repositioning albums to higher visibility locations, taking inventories, manipulating store reports to Billboard Magazine and arranging for artist in-store appearances. I spent more time at Tower Records on Sunset Blvd than I did at home it seemed. I later became a sales rep for A&M, then RCA, A&M & Arista Distribution which became BMG and ultimately I was Branch Manager, New York for Sony/BMG. Along the way the company moved us from L.A. to Seattle, returned us to L.A., all the way back home to where I grew up in New York, and then to Sacramento where I’ve been ever since.
Some of my fondest memories include fighting with Richard Carpenter over store placement of the Carpenters’ album “Passage” at Tower Sunset, orchestrating a Milli Vanilli instore appearance (and knowing their big secret), sitting in on a Cat Stevens’ recording session, meeting Groucho Marx and working with John Denver, Whitney Houston, Peter Frampton, Janet Jackson, Lou Reed and Roger McGuinn, singing backup on Supertramp’s “From Now On” song as part of the Moron Table-Napkin Choir, participating in the launching and development of Alison Krauss’ career, meeting Suge Knight at Ione Prison to discuss a distribution deal for his Death Row Records and hiding out all night at the A&M Records lot as we watched limousine after limousine roll in with countless superstar artists who came to record “We Are The World.” Over the years, I watched album sales erode, 8-tracks come and go, cassettes become the dominant configuration followed by the birth of CDs. And then, very sadly, that digitizing of music together with companies like Napster began the corrosion of the physical distribution of music. Record stores started to go out of business and music labels and their distribution arms began to significantly downsize.
I squeezed as much as I could out of what was left of this industry but then I decided to go back to school and reinvent myself. Pre-requisite after pre-requisite, several attempts to gain admission and settling for an LVN degree was a 5 year process alone. The program for my RN degree, although only a 2 year process, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Nestled among a class full of “20 somethings” who seemed to breeze through the curriculum, this 60+ year old did nothing but eat, sleep and then spend almost all my other time studying. But I survived and passed the board exam on my first try. Along the way I also did do some guest lecturing in an Independent Music Distribution class at Sac City.
Today I am an RN at a major Sacramento hospital after several years of working in skilled nursing as an LVN. The 12-hour shifts are long and intense but it leaves me with 4 days off each week. I truly love my job and couldn’t be happier. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my time in the music industry for any other career. My collection of music, participating in the development of many, many major artists, pictures that fill drawers, and the memories of countless concerts with artist meet n’ greets, made that a special time in my life. But it just doesn’t compare to how good I feel each day when I leave work nowadays.
That’s the career stuff. I married in 1978, divorced in 1989. Two beautiful and successful children, Philip who parlayed his buying job at the Sac. Food Coop into ultimately becoming the Director of Purchasing for UNFI, and Nicole who is now the General Manager for John Legend’s marketing company. I have a 9 year old granddaughter and a 2 month old grandson who was born on the 4th of July. Guess that makes me a Yankee Doodle Grandpa. Ahhh, being a grandpa, that’s actually the best job ever!
