Spitball Army

Owner closes CD store before losing his edge
Posted by Mary Colurso November 09, 2007 5:00 AM
Categories: Columns, Music

Fans lined up outside Laser’s Edge for an afternoon autograph signing with Taylor Hicks. (photo: al.com)

It’s a windy fall morning and Fred Osuna is sweeping the sidewalk in front of his store.

The small heap of dry, brown leaves on the sidewalk doesn’t reflect Osuna’s mood, which is reflective and relaxed, almost lighthearted.

He’s been a small-business owner for more than 16 years in downtown Homewood. “This is my home away from home,” says Osuna, 47, who lives in Crestwood. “I love this neighborhood.”

He’ll be leaving it in a couple of months, however. Osuna’s business, Laser’s Edge Compact Discs, is closing at the end of the year.

But don’t start weeping, bemoaning the state of the recording industry or hanging black garland over the door at 2825 18th St. South just yet.

Osuna says his decision to shut down after Christmas wasn’t the result of immediate financial problems or an inability to cope with short-term changes in the CD business. For now, he says, Laser’s Edge remains solid.

“Some people still love the excitement of the chase. They love exploring, looking for music or interacting at the store,” Osuna says.

He says he simply couldn’t predict that Laser’s Edge would be in similar shape in 2013. That’s how long his next lease would last, after the conclusion of the current lease at the end of January.

“I had to ask myself: What are the odds of still being successful in five years?” Osuna says. “Considering everything, I’d have to bet against it.”

Online music sales, discount chains and digital downloads have affected his sales, as they have made an impact on other independent music retailers, causing what Osuna calls “a little of a downward slope.” But there hasn’t been a deep or drastic spiral, he says.

“The writing started appearing on the wall in 1998 or ’99, but only because that’s when you started seeing people getting their music in other ways,” he says. “As things change, they eventually are going to overtake a business like this one.

Osuna says he decided to shut down before that happened.

“It’s time to make the step, make the jump,” he says. “It’s pretty much like taking the step to open the store. I know, deep down, that it’s a good business decision.”

To his way of thinking, Laser’s Edge reached a peak of sorts on Halloween, during an in-store performance with singer-songwriter Josh Ritter. Although artists ranging from Diana Krall to the Blind Boys of Alabama have played mini-concerts tucked into corners of Laser’s Edge (which has a total of 1,500 square feet), none of them had quite the poignant charm of Ritter’s late-night set.

“Josh was a prince, as always, barefoot and in a toga,” Osuna wrote in an e-mail newsletter the next day. “I stopped counting at 100 people, but even with the tight crowd and the very late hour — or perhaps because of it — the in-store was intimate and emotional.”

Osuna’s Nov. 1 message to customers — “a ridiculously difficult type of letter to write” — had much the same tone, delivering news that prompted many to call with their regrets or send him thanks for the memories via e-mail.

Some have been frequenting Laser’s Edge since June 29, 1991, when Osuna…heard the store’s cash register ring for the first time. (Osuna…became the sole owner [in 2000].)

The store’s appearance hasn’t altered much over the years, Osuna says, although computers have been introduced, listening stations have been installed and the daily soundtrack customers hear has been loaded — from CDs, naturally — into two maxed-out 80GB iPods.

Those iPods, holding perhaps 23,000 tracks, are likely to be auctioned along with other store memorabilia in January. Autographed posters and store fixtures will be on the auction block, as well.

“I’m going to have to find a place to buy music,” Osuna says, laughing.

Dismantling Laser’s Edge before its closing isn’t an option, he says. On a recent weekday, the store shows no signs of its impending demise. As always, the inventory — an estimated 5,500 to 6,000 CDs and DVDs — places an emphasis on classical and jazz recordings, along with a carefully chosen selection of rock, pop, folk, country, blues, R&B and world music.

Discs by local musicians occupy a prominent niche. In fact, three brown boxes stacked in a corner hold hundreds of copies of an item exclusive to the store: Taylor Hicks’ 2005 independent CD, “Under the Radar.”

When the “American Idol” winner was competing for the title on national TV in 20006, Hicks, a Hoover native, and Osuna struck a deal to make “Under the Radar” available to fans around the globe. No other retailer was permitted to sell it.

“I saw an opportunity and I jumped on it,” Osuna says. “The adrenaline was pushing, and it was fun. People from all over the world have come to the store because of it, from Finland and Japan and Canada.”

Osuna has been a near-constant presence at Laser’s Edge since Oct. 15, 2004, when he dismissed his staff to cut costs and go it alone. He says he isn’t sure what his professional future will hold, but his spare time — a luxury for someone accustomed to an 80-hour work week — is likely to be filled with bike rides, swims and lots of movie-going.

“I feel a little bit of sadness, but it’s exciting, too,” he says. “My mind is just full of ideas.”

Fred Osuna, left, [was] ready for business on the opening day of Laser’s Edge: June 29, 1991. In his office, Osuna still has a framed invitation from their preview party, held the night before.

FRED’S TOP 10 LASER’S EDGE MOMENTS
(FOR TODAY … ASK ME AGAIN TOMORROW)
By Laser’s Edge owner Fred Osuna

1. Opening day (June 29, 1991): Our first customer, Amanda Wilson, buys eight copies of the Kathleen Battle & Jessye Norman CD, “Spirituals in Concert.”

2. Our first Christmas (1991): On Dec. 16, 1991, the store is quiet, everyone else goes to lunch and a woman walks in the back door holding a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. A limousine trunk full of laserdiscs and a $2,279.02 check later, she leaves. The crew then returns from lunch, wondering if it will ever get busy.

3. Shame Idols vs. the rain: Local band Shame Idols, including staff member Jesse Suttle on drums, plays an in-store performance so loud that no one notices the hurricane-force monsoon raging outside. The event is captured on videotape (the in-store, not the monsoon).

4. Hugging Diana Krall (1996): My friend Sherri Nielson and I escort relatively unknown jazz artist Diana Krall around town for three days, two concerts and a CD signing at Laser’s Edge. At the end of the weekend, Diana thanks me with a death-grip hug, and I let go first, opening the door wide for Elvis Costello.

5. The day after Thanksgiving: It’s a tradition she has created: My mother visits Birmingham from South Carolina every Thanksgiving, and descends upon the store that Friday with bundles of freshly baked cookies for the customers.

6. Ain’t nothin’ like ’em at Carnegie Hall: A visiting classical violinist asks us to take him to lunch at a barbecue joint recommended by his friend Itzhak, which is how…I find [myself] seated across a table from Gil Shaham and his Stradivarius at the original Dreamland in Tuscaloosa, sharing a slab of ribs.

7. A lesson for Ryan Adams (Jan. 24, 2003): Ron Sexsmith plays an in-store performance made up entirely of songs requested by an adoring full-house crowd — one song from each of his albums, in chronological order. During the set, I hear a clicking sound, and notice his girlfriend sitting on the floor at the back of the crowd, calmly knitting a sweater.

8. Receiving the NARM award (2002): Laser’s Edge wins the 2002 NARM Advertising Award for that year’s CD Sampler, which was designed as a tribute to my parents, featuring photographs of my mother and recently deceased father. Our competition includes upstarts such as Best Buy, Tower Records and Borders Books & Music.

9. Hem (2001): I hear a beautiful song called “Betting On Trains” on an Uncut magazine CD sampler, track down the album from an Irish Web site, find out the band is American, assume they’re from the Midwest, find out they’re from New York, assume they’re from rural upstate New York, discover they’re really from Brooklyn. My love affair with the unofficial Laser’s Edge house-band, Hem, begins.

10. Halloween with Josh Ritter (2007): At his midnight in-store, Josh Ritter — having earlier been told that I am to announce the store’s closing the following day — ends the evening with an a cappella Irish Toast.