Fashioning electronic ‘Candy’
April 26, 2002 by Contributed by MICHAEL RUPPERS
Filed under Variety
A silver disco ball twirls in a second story window downtown, casting shifting patterns of light across the room and windows.
To the casual observer, it looks like just another bar, but fans of electronic music know better — it’s Candy.
Candy, an electronic music store, recently moved from its location on Broad Street to Clayton Street, above the Beyond the Wall poster shop. Up a baby-blue stairwell, people gather around speakers pulsing with the music from one of several turntables, discuss upcoming electronic music parties, browse through crates of CDs and records and look through the clothes along one wall.
“The purpose of Candy is to promote the fashion and sound of electronic music,” said Chris Garchow, a store employee. “Not just electronic music, but all cutting edge music.”
“Electronic music is music that’s composed via computers and, therefore, is not limited by instrumentation,” he said. “You can take any sound and do whatever you want with it.”
Rob Haines, a former employee, said Candy plays an important role in the electronic music scene.
“It serves as a hub for electronic music fans and as an organization place too,” he said. “If people are throwing (electronic music) parties they can put their fliers up here, and we’ll help spread the word.”
A look through the collection of records and CDs reveals that Candy caters to several types of electronic music fans.
“We carry virtually everything electronic-based: house, trance, breaks (different styles of electronic music),” Garchow said. “We’re starting to sell some hip-hop too.”
Candy sells only T-shirts carrying the store’s logo — the word Candy above a red heart. However, Garchow said, there are plans for more.
“We want to start carrying more clothes,” he said. “We want to be somewhat of a cultural outlet as well as a musical outlet.”
Candy is one of the only places in Athens, maybe the only place, where you can go to check out electronic music, Patrick Bladon, a senior from Memphis, Tenn., said while sorting through CDs.
“It’s easy to go there and talk to other people with similar interests and find out about parties that are going on,” he said.
Candy opened on Broad Street by the former Dixon’s Bicycle Shop building in March 1998 when owner Michael Lachowski decided to get back into the electronic music scene.
“I used to DJ at the 40 Watt from the mid-’80s to 1996 when I quit,” Lachowski said. “Two years had gone by, and I was missing being involved with new music, and I noticed that there was definitely more interest in new music, so I decided that it would be good to have a store that catered to electronic music.”
Candy was forced to change locations when the University bought the building that housed the store, but the move brought much needed space and greater public exposure, he said.
Candy received an unexpected celebrity endorsement at a Radiohead concert in Atlanta last summer when a band member wore a Candy T-shirt onstage.
“Michael Stipe gave Radiohead a bunch of T-shirts, and Johnny Greenwood wore one on stage that night,” Lachowski said. “That sparked a lot of interest in Candy.”
