Chapter 2

Chapter Two

A Name to Remember (So What If You Can't Spell It?)

It is said that one of the most important rules of starting a retail business is to name it something easy to say and spell. I guess you could say the name 'Buch Spieler' pretty much qualifies as breaking this rule.

Back in 1972, George Martin (still not of The Beatles fame) and I didn't know much about the rules of retailing and ignorance was bliss. We would sit around the kitchen table spewing out words and combinations of words that would create a name that had something, however immediate or remote, obvious or obtuse, to do with music (and, perhaps, books, too).

Perhaps it was because there were two of us that we liked names with two words.

Perhaps it was because of the schoolboy crush we both had on our high school German teacher that we ever even studied German in the first place and from that experience came up with the phrase, 'buch spieler', which roughly translates to English as 'book player'.

To this day, people still ask us here in the store "who is 'Buch Spieler" or "what does 'Buch Spieler' mean?" We try to explain it by saying that a recording is kind of like a book that plays to you.

So, we have an unusual name with an awkward spelling but it sure comes out sounding sweet when said like "boook shpeeler".

(Try saying it over and over, slowly, stretching out the vowels, rhyming it with "smooth healer"…"boook shpeeler"…Buch Spieler)

(TO BE CONTINUED)(written by Fred Wilber, October 1999)

Chapter Two

A Name to Remember (So What If You Can't Spell It?)

History Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

History
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7