Helena Rogers in her Georgetown studio (Image: Todd Matthews)

Exploring the neighborhood’s record-shop history

Rubato Records & Espresso’s brief existence at the Broadway Alley began in 1982. Capitol Hill was one of a few locations—Wallingford and West Seattle stores opened later—for a record shop opened in downtown Bellevue in 1976 by John and Helena Rogers. The pair—who later married and separated but remain friends—also co-founded the New Wave/progressive rock/avant-garde band Student Nurse.

Helena remembers selling records to Bob Blackburn, the voice of the Seattle SuperSonics, and former Seattle Mariners ace Randy Johnson at the Bellevue shop. “[Randy] would come in and lowball us trying to sell crappy heavy metal records,” Helena told me during an interview this summer at Georgetown’s Equinox Studios, where she is also an artist who paints. “He would say, ‘That’s all you’re giving me?!’ It was, like, ‘Dude, you have millions of dollars, and we barely have enough money to buy a hamburger after work!’”

John recalled selling records to REM’s Peter Buck and basketball legend Bill Russell. “[Bill] would pull up [to the Bellevue store] in his Rolls-Royce with no backseat because his legs were so long,” John, 75, recalled during a recent phone interview.

Mudhoney’s Mark Arm was a Bellevue Christian High School student and a member of Mr. Epp and the Calculations when he shopped at Bellevue’s Rubato Records in the late 1970s. “The people who worked at Rubato were older, and they…pointed us in fantastic directions,” he recalled. “They would say, ‘Hey, here’s Ornette Coleman, and here’s the New York Dolls.’ We were like, ‘Oh, OK. Cool.’ John and Helena invited us to open for Student Nurse. I don’t think they’d even heard us. That was the first show Mr. Epp played.”

Similarly, while growing up in Redmond, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein shopped at the Bellevue store. “Rubato was where I went to learn about music,” she recalled in her memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, and on NPR. “My early searches for music were narrow—trying to track down New Wave albums or complete my late 70s punk or 80s hardcore collections. It was Helena and John who steered me toward the predecessors…The owners were excited to have an eager and willing explorer, someone whose tastes they could influence…[They] would literally tell me what to buy: Television, Shocking Blue, Bobby Bland, [and] Tubeway Army.”

As part of my ongoing interest in exploring Capitol Hill’s music-related history, Helena and John recently shared their experience owning the short-lived Capitol Hill store.

HELENA ROGERS – Rubato Records co-founder

“Getting people to drag their asses upstairs was a lot harder.” At the time, I had lived in several places on Capitol Hill. I had also lived in Europe and was used to great coffee, which was not a thing in the United States. I had an entrepreneurial fantasy of getting more than one store going. When I started to think about the record store on Broadway, I thought it would be fun to have an espresso machine and little tables. ‘Rubato’ is an Italian word. It’s a musical term meaning to play without a beat. I just really liked that idea. The Capitol Hill shop was in a very small space—maybe 800 square feet—upstairs in the Alley, looking out over Broadway. I liked the vintage brick building, and the price and the space were what I envisioned. I thought being on Broadway would be better for business. Of course, getting people to drag their asses upstairs was a lot harder.

“The only problem was he wanted to keep the records for himself.” I was very enthused about [the Broadway store]. I loved it. Some good musicians worked there—Penta Swanson of the Mrs. Bill Larsens [and Dynette Set] and Garth Brandenburg of the MoonSpinners. It was a good little store. John had this incredibly deep knowledge of music. He really knew how to buy records and fill the racks with good stuff. We had a huge world music section and a fantastic jazz selection. Garth was a good buyer, as well. The only problem with Garth’s buying was that he also wanted to keep the records for himself. We had this big counter with three shelves, and Garth was shoving everything under the bottom shelf where I couldn’t see. One day, I happened to look down there and saw four huge stacks of all the inventory that should have been out in the store. It would have taken Garth an eternity of paychecks to even make a dent in those big stacks of records.

“We lived and breathed music.” As soon as we rolled out of bed in the morning, we put a record on the turntable. We lived and breathed music. We didn’t open the store until 11 a.m., so we could do all the music stuff at night and still be able to sleep until 10:45 a.m. It just melded together. We were living the dream. One of the downfalls was that we couldn’t really tour with Student Nurse because we had a business to run. High Fidelity just nailed [what it was like to work at a record store]. I was the main character—the level-headed businessperson who kept it all functioning—and everybody else who worked for me was the parade of weird people obsessed with music.

“I thought if you owned two stores, you would make twice as much money.” A lot of kids started to come up and hang out. They would buy and share one cup of tea and sit around for hours, taking up so much space. That was the beginning of the end. I was naïve. I thought if you owned two stores, you would make twice as much money. It doesn’t work that way. You have negative money for a while because getting a second store up and running takes a lot of money.

Rogers

“It was just fun to hang out.” I don’t spend that much time on Broadway anymore. But during the [early 1980s], with New Wave and dance music, it was more community-minded than it might be now. Everybody knew each other. It was just fun to hang out.

John Rogers – Rubato Records co-founder

“There wasn’t a good used record store on that part of Broadway.” Opening Rubato Records on Capitol Hill was more Helena’s idea. There wasn’t a good used record store on that part of Broadway, and she wanted to do a combo espresso stand and record store. We mostly sold New Wave, which is what people gravitated toward. We took records from the Bellevue store and brought them to the Broadway store. In retrospect, it spread us a little thin. A young guy who was in high school at the time used to come into the Capitol Hill store. He’s now the bass player in a funk band I’ve had for the last 10 years. We’ve played off and on together for the last 30 years.

“She would have swung her mink coat and said, ‘Not in here.’” Student Nurse would rehearse in the Bellevue store at night. The Broadway store wasn’t big enough. The woman who owned the building wouldn’t have gone for it. She would have swung her mink coat around at us and said, “Not in here.”

Student Nurse_s Tom Boettcher, Eric Muhs, Helena Rogers, and John Rogers ca. 1980 — (Image: Student Nurse Band)

“We got sued for breaking the lease.” The Broadway store didn’t do too great. Part of it was that we were in an indoor mall on the second floor. There was very little visibility from the street other than a sandwich board on the sidewalk. Also, people weren’t quite ready for a combination coffee shop and record store. We were a little premature. It confused some folks. The Broadway store had a heavy theft rate, but that’s part of retail. We decided it wasn’t working. One night, about midnight, we rented a truck, hauled everything out of there, and took it back to the Bellevue store. We got sued for breaking the lease. You can sue a rock, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get anything out of it. We never had any money. Ultimately, the Broadway store didn’t work out. But it was worth trying.

“Owning a used record store was a dream of mine.”  On my last day at Rubato Records, I went home and cried my eyes out for about 45 minutes. After that, I was kind of done with the emotions of it. I’ve always been a music nut. I used to DJ on KRAB, a listener-supported radio station. I would bring in a crate of store records, my own stash, and spin them for a couple of hours every week. It was a lot of fun. I still listen to music every day. Owning a used record store was a dream of mine that I got to realize for 25 years. I always enjoyed talking about music. I took pleasure in seeing people who came into the store regularly. I would set aside records to see if they might be interested. It was fun to turn people on to stuff. I believed in the power of music to be a positive force. That’s always been my motto—encourage people interested in music.

“I’m minimally nostalgic about most stuff.” I get up to Capitol Hill fairly often, but I haven’t walked down Broadway or gone into the old Rubato Records space in at least 10 years. I’m minimally nostalgic about most stuff. For the most part, I point forward. I have fond memories of many things, but I don’t pine for the old days. The new days are just fine.

Capitol Hill resident Todd Matthews is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared in more than two dozen magazines, newspapers, books, and other publications in print and online over the past 25 years.

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