Photographs by Caitlin Abrams
Electric Fetus
Walking into Electric Fetus is a visceral experience.
Incense greets you at the door and settles into your hair and clothes, while the creak of the store’s wood floorboards and the gentle clicking of staff and customers sorting through CDs provide accompaniment to the music playing overhead.
“We don’t sell music; we sell experiences,” one of the Fetus’s co-owners, Aaron Meyerring, tells me on a wintry Wednesday.
It’s a sales pitch, of course, but by the end of my day there, I begin to believe it.
When I reflect on the many, many memories I have of this special place, from the in-store performances I’ve attended to the formative years I spent working behind the record counter, what I treasure most isn’t the armloads of LPs I’ve added to my collection or the many last-minute birthday presents I’ve nabbed from the gift department. Nah. It’s the experiences. Damn, Aaron got it right.
It’s the conversations I’ve had in the record aisles with longtime employees (and onetime coworkers) like Bob Fuchs and Jon Jon Scott, who always tell me which new releases I need to buy and who have never led me astray. It’s the giddy moments meeting touring musicians at signing events or crowding into the aisles and craning my neck to see Bon Iver or Poliça or They Might Be Giants perform. It’s bringing my daughter there when she was only three weeks old to buy her first record (an “I Am the Walrus” 45, goo goo g’joob). And it’s getting through this thing called life after Prince died by communing with his fans at his favorite record shop.
In an era of curbside service, instant deliveries, and nonstop streaming and scrolling, there’s something soothingly nostalgic about hanging out in a record store like the Fetus and chatting it up with the musically obsessed. And after three years of upheaval, loss, and rebirth in Minneapolis, it feels good to stand here, on 4th Avenue South just off of Franklin, and feel nostalgic about a place that still actually exists.
Electric Fetus staff members
The gang’s all here (from left, Kim Baldwin, Aaron Meyerring, Bob Fuchs, Jon Jon Scott, Tom Smith, Dawn Novak).
Because that’s the thing: Against all odds, Electric Fetus has endured for decades, with plans to celebrate its 55th anniversary this June. When it first opened in 1968, north Minneapolis was just beginning to heal from two summers of racial unrest, and the store’s original home in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood was buzzing with hippie-beatnik dreams of revolution. Since then, it has survived multiple recessions, the death and resurgence of vinyl, a tornado, a flood, and most recently, another citywide racial reckoning, this time coinciding with a global pandemic.
Still, it beats on, a beacon from a bygone era that has somehow remained comfortingly familiar while constantly evolving to keep up with the times and stay afloat. With so many beloved Minneapolis businesses closing their doors in recent times, what is it about the Fetus that has allowed it to persevere?
Descending the stairs into the employees-only basement of Electric Fetus is like falling backward through time. The dream of the ’90s is definitely alive down there, as are the dreams of the ’80s and ’70s. Rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with records and CDs give way to a maze of offices plastered with posters and photos from past in-stores and meet and greets, while a small staff of record-store lifers—self-proclaimed Fetoids—cheerfully comb through the racks, scan in piles of CDs, and type away at their computers.
The experience (that word again) feels especially potent for me, as it instantly transports me back to my first trip into that basement almost 20 years ago, when I interviewed for a job as a record clerk and, in the process, took one of the hardest exams of my life. I still remember sweating bullets as each question got progressively more obscure, to the point I had to leave an entire page blank.
“Yeah, we still do the exam,” store manager Bob Fuchs chuckles as he welcomes me back into his office and sits down behind his desk. “It’s not the only thing I use to determine if someone can come in the door, but it’s a good litmus test.”
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Record catalogue
The belly of the beast. Scenes from the basement, where inventory is sorted, catalogued, and eventually moved up to the sales floor or shipped directly to customers.
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A basement wall with posters
Bob got his start at the Fetus back in 1986 and still spends most of his time out on the record floor helping customers, talking about music with his staff, and making sure every stray album is meticulously filed away. After all this time, he thrives on chatting up customers and trying to figure out how to meet their shifting desires.
“Saturdays are why I’m still here,” Bob says. “I love Saturdays. The energy in the room is amazing.”
Bob credits the store’s success to his tight crew, many of whom have been at the store for more than 30 years.
“The people who are in charge are on the floor,” he says. “So, we’re seeing what people are asking for, what’s moving, what’s not moving, returns and trends.”
“People have been here a long time, dedicated to doing one thing well. There’s been very little turnover. It’s kind of weird. But it’s a fun place to be.” —Bob Fuchs
Bob makes the store sound like a living organism that’s always shifting and that’s cared for by a tight-knit crew of people who know it well.
When I ask another longtime Fetus-basement dweller, Dawn Novak, what’s kept the store going, she smiles and says, “I think it all comes down to our connection to humans.” Dawn wears a lot of hats, including booking a lot of the in-store performances and overseeing web sales, and she says watershed moments, like when a tornado hit the Fetus in 2009 or the pandemic closed their doors in 2020, showed her just how much the community was willing to rally around the store.
“With the pandemic, I was monitoring the web sales from home, and all of a sudden the orders just ballooned,” she recalls. Thankfully, because Dawn happens to be married to the Fetus’s record buyer, Jim Novak, they were able to quickly shift operations to their home. “We literally had the store set up in our dining room. We were just going nuts. It was great.”
The register at Electric Fetus
Jon Jon Scott rings up a sale and keeps his real feelings about the album purchased to himself.
While Dawn and Jim were turning into the ultimate work-from-home power couple, Aaron Meyerring and his wife, Stephanie—whose father, Keith Covart, was one of the Fetus’s original owners—were in their garage pulling out plexiglass from old poster displays and turning them into shields to protect their staff once the store reopened. Once the Minneapolis store was back up and running, Aaron and Stephanie turned their attention toward a dreaded task: permanently closing the Duluth branch, which had held court on Superior Street for 33 years.
“If the pandemic did anything, I think it forced companies to make decisions that probably should have been made four or five years ago,” Aaron says. “And we came out leaner and meaner on the other side of it—more efficient, more appreciative of what we have. And, certainly, humbled by the loyalty of the staff and the local music community.”
Joni Mitchell once sang, “The seasons, they go round and round,” and the Fetus has come back from the brink to enjoy another rotation. One employee who has been captive on the store’s carousel of time longer than anyone else is Kim Baldwin, who has been overseeing the gift department for decades and who began working at the store in 1980 when she was 21 years old.
“I don’t really work a job. I don’t do anything but sell records.” —Jon Jon Scott
Kim remembers starting at the Fetus when it still shared half the building with a hardware store. When it came time to expand in the mid-’90s, she eagerly took on the task of filling her side of the store with books, clothes, candles, toys, jewelry, and, of course, all that incense.
“My department has been steady as the music business waxed and waned,” she says proudly. “We have really devoted customers.”
These days, Kim says her favorite thing is to see younger customers visit the store for the first time.
“We have people that are 90 that come in, and then people push their baby carriages in,” she says. “It’s been around so long, it’s generational.”
Customers at Electric Fetus
Crate diggers hit the recent-arrivals bin hoping to strike vinyl gold.
They’ve been selling turntables like crazy ever since the start of the pandemic, and there has been a wave of young people who are learning how to drop a needle onto wax for the first time right there in the store. Jon Jon Scott, another Fetus lifer, gets a kick out of watching the transition.
“This store runs on used CDs and used records,” Jon Jon says. “And it’s like, how do we keep having used Beatles records? Well, there’s always somebody who’s discovering it, and there’s also somebody else who sold it. The whole process just keeps getting recycled. There’s always a new group of kids who discover The Cure, Depeche [Mode], Suzi Quatro.”
Jon Jon can spot a newbie a mile away, and he knows just what to give them as they continue their discovery. When it comes to considering the Fetus’s longevity, Jon Jon takes a philosophical approach.
“Through COVID, you saw how much people really depend on music,” he says. “A lot of people are discovering buying music on records for the first time, buying record players for the first time. What that told me is that when people are isolated, they look for something to feel comfort. And more people found comfort in music, and found new comfort, who might not have had it before.”
Other record shops worth a dig
Clearance Records
A clearance box at Electric Fetus.
Drew Christopherson has been involved at every level of the record business: He plays on ’em (as the drummer for Poliça), he markets ’em (as the co-founder of local label Totally Gross National Product), and he collects ’em (as an inveterate crate digger with a vinyl-engorged basement). Here are his three favorite vinyl resources (other than the Fetus):
“They have a knowledgeable staff and great international sections, but to a digger like me, a record store is only as good as its used recent-arrival bins. And Agharta has the best, with the highest turnover rates. They’re always acquiring the most impeccable collections—this really warrants repeat visits.” Recent purchase: The Clean, Unknown Country. 2512 University Ave. W., St. Paul
“Widely regarded as one of the best punk, hard-core, and DIY-culture record stores in the country, Extreme Noise has been run as a collective for 30 years. I’ve been making pilgrimages to their Lake Street neighborhood since I was a teenager.” Recent purchase: Stàte of Feär, Complete Discography Volume 1 and 2. 407 W. Lake St., Mpls.
“I’ve only dug through their crates a few times, but their record collection is obviously as expertly and obsessively curated as their furniture. I’ve heard they’re expanding their music space in their new building. I hope they do, because I’m intrigued by my prior experiences.” Recent purchase: The Fall, “Telephone Thing.” 2014 Central Ave. NE, Mpls.
