The Past & Present World of Cosmo Music

 "Cosmo Guitars, a small business started by Tom Hebert, began in 1966 importing guitars from Italy and Japan. Tom was fresh out of the Air Force and itching to pursue a business venture in the area he was most interested in - music. Tom had been involved in bands while in the Air Force and his passion was the guitar.

Although importing guitars was promising, in 1968 Tom realized the added potential of his 

Sheppard Ave location in Downsview and opened the 1st Cosmo Music. Selling mostly the guitars and accessories he was importing, the store grew.

                          1976: Cosmo Music - Yonge & Centre Richmond Hill Store

In 1970 it was obvious that retail was what Tom enjoyed. He stopped importing guitars and continued full steam ahead opening a small music school and broadening the scope of musical instruments sold in his Downsview store.

This is where the story of Cosmo Music as we see it today began.

In 1971, Cosmo Music moved to Richmond Hill and took over the local Mundinger Music location. Richmond Hill was a much smaller town, but with the bigger store and Yonge Street locale, Tom was thinking into the future. The new store already had a large lesson studio (65% accordion students) and big potential for future growth.

Cosmo Music began dealing with Brass and Woodwind sales, rentals and repairs in 1975. The need for a band department became apparent with the population explosion and the lack of service oriented school band program providers. The Brass and Woodwind department quickly became an area of expertise for Cosmo Music as their rental fleet grew exponentially.

                                1985: Cosmo Music 9201 Yong Richmond Hill Store

In 1985 Cosmo Music moved once again to an even bigger location just a few blocks south on Yonge Street. Taking over a department store and building one of the largest music stores in Canada, gave Cosmo customers an increased instrument selection and even more value than before. It also gave way to construction of The Cosmo School of Music, the largest and most prestigious music school in the area.

Cosmo Music's Brass and Woodwind Department was growing so fast, the decision was made to relocate the department into it's own location. The Cosmo Music Brass & Woodwind Centre opened in 1990 and became Ontario's leading provider of brass and woodwind instruments and accessories.

The new building also housed Cosmo Music's Brass and Woodwind repair facilities, one of the largest in the country, and Cosmo's ever rowing rental fleet (now well over 11,000 instruments).

The dream of the entire Cosmo Team has always been to creat the world's most exciting and interactive music making environment. In the spring of 2008 this dream became a reality when Cosmo Music amalgamated both of it's locations into one giant store.

Cosmo Music - The Musical Instruemnent Superstore opened its doors on May 22, 2008 and has already been declared by many to be one of the biggest and best musical instrument retail stores in the world; providing sales, service, rentals and lessons for all types of musical instruments in a one-of-a-kind, world class facility."

Friday, March 8^th, 2013, I decided while on business for Allstage in Toronto, that I would take the opportunity to check out a Music Dealer store I had never ventured into before – Cosmo Music.

As Barb and I wheeled up to the store from the outside at 10 Via Renzo Drive, the size of the building was impressive. Seeing so much square footage that was dedicated to being a Music Store was intoxicating to me as a Musician and I couldn’t wait to get inside to scope things out.

Barb and I proceeded inside to be greeted with a wide open concept that was the Atrium – airy, and two floors of wide open space that was illuminated by the glass that made up the front of the building. To our left inside the Atrium was a little Deli that served light fare and beverages like Coffee. In the center of the Atrium there were a few large stands that sold different kinds of cool merchandise that was music related. From Coffee Cups to miniature guitars and many more items – all of which were quite reasonable and attracted the interest of several customers in the store.

To my right was the coolest idea that reminded me of New York, New York – the famous Casino in Las Vegas. The different Music Instrument departments were housed in specific areas of their own within the façade of each to look like individual buildings on a streetscape. There was Guitars, Keyboard Zone, Drummers, Virtuoso (Wind Instruments), Book & DVD Department’s – all designed to look like individual shops complete with doorways and windows.

Each department was manned by at least 2 Staff members who were the consummate salesmen. They were friendly, well informed of the products they were selling and allowed their customers to roam around until such point in time that one had a question that needed to be answered.

After asking for permission when I 1^st arrived, to speak to someone in management – I was greeted by a very lovely lady named Jennifer Maknyik who was the Director of Marketing for the store. I explained to her about Allstage and how I wanted to take pictures of the store and do an article on it for Allstage. Being very polite as I tended to ramble on somewhat, Jennifer gave me a complete rundown on the store and a brief insight to its history.

She led me through parts of the store like the in-house Service department with technicians who could fix any instrument brought into them as opposed to sending it out for repairs. As a musician, I found this feature very attractive and appealing. There was the Rental section which was quite large and addressed any item that a musician might want to rent for a gig. And upon further discussion Jennifer informed me that they had a large staff of Music Instructors that facilitated the education of some 2000 students.

Of course the Drummer in me led me to the Drummers section where an autographed Jason Bonham yellow Vistalite set sat in the window. Walking through the entrance to the interior, I found myself in a serious world of drum gear. Acoustic drum kits by reputable Manufacturer’s like Sonor, Pearl, DW, Ludwig, PDP and many more. Electronic kits, a wall of cymbals by different manufacturers, a room full of percussion, and another area dedicated to a multitude of BD pedals – it was Drummer Heaven.

Each department had easy access to the next via a front entrance or a rear corridor that connected them effortlessly for the consumer. Drums, Brass & Woodwind, Keyboards, Special Effects for Stage or DJ’s, A DJ section and ultimately leading to the massive Guitar section.

Along my travels there was a multitude of special features to the store from a Recording Studio environment to an isolation room filled with guitars and Marshall amps. In the Guitar section of the store, there were guitars everywhere – most notably on a wall that was two stories high with one side being electric and on the other side of a large staircase, a wall of acoustic’s that also were 2 stories high. Everything in every department was numerous in stock but not cluttered, and then there was the staff who were gracious, informative and very easy to deal with.

This was not your average Music Store, and from my perspective – they were doing it the right way in today’s economic times.

It truly is a one-stop-shop Music Superstore.

Allstage Band Birth

Ok Gang - this is my thoughts.

As mentioned earlier - I have a bunch of open dates from Bender not playing this summer between May - August....16 of them to be precise. Now of those 16, all I can say is that I am going to try and nail down gigs with bars within an hour of London - hopefully I can convince Bar owners to go out on a limb and break the time old standards as I spend ALOT of time thinking all things music, and I have a few ideas that hopefully I can pitch them. The "Allstage Band" is going to be three fold in purpose:

1) to kick start some interest around town in terms of getting the public engaged with Live music in a different forum/way than it has been. This is NOT a jam as such - this will be gigs that are paying gigs, where each member that is part of the "band" that night, supply's their gear and each set maybe a different drummer or singer or guitarist comes in and plays a tune or two - the material will be pretty much decided on so that all players can be "plug-n-play" - so there won't be any prog rock - just standards from a few eras.

The Allstage Band will be Allstage Members only – BUT – if you have your own Merch, I can probably work something out with someone I have in mind, who would mind your Merch and sell it along with theirs. Consequently you would get to plug your primary band while playing with another (sell t-shirts, posters, pens, kickers, etc).

I would look at feasibility of Video to You Tube on the Allstage Channel – again listing who you REALLY play with and website urls. I would market this as an Allstage vehicle – the selling point is that so many talented and experienced musicians would be a part of it, that Bar owners would know that the “band” are not a half-assed unit – this is totally professional and treated as such. If Music stores and Bars would get onboard to advertise – we could have an Allstage Banner with ads from each supporter be it Venue, Music Store that helps is out in some degree. Why would Bill at The Dawghouse want a Banner with George from the Eastside on it? Because Bill’s is up there as well and this is not a partisan project – this is an EVENT aimed at promoting “Live” music and getting people into ALL the bars to buy alcohol/food.

2) The other reason – simple – to promote Allstage on another level and get even more people engaged to not only the site, but to our local music community and maybe beyond. If caught on well enough and was a moderate to large success – maybe something else that I am thinking of on a much larger scale can come into play to benefit all the Allstage Members……that depends on how much all of us want to invest some effort and focus into this project.

Is this going to be easy to co-ordinate – No

Am I going to be able to fill all 16 gigs that are open with booked jobs – PROBABLY NOT?

Can we make a bit of money and have A LOT of fun with each other playing – YES

Will it rattle the way things are done in London and maybe initiate some “outside the

box” way of doing things so musicians and bars can prosper – POSSIBLY.

Will Bars be open to some new ideas on how to do things if it makes them money to some degree – I CERTAINLY HOPE SO.

Will things get better if we just play it safe and accept the status quo – NO.

Out east and Quebec have live music 6 nights a week, sometimes 7 – and it works – why? Because everyone got onboard, bucked the “this is how we always do it” train of thought and broke some barriers to change perception and how to do things.

Practices can be at my home pretty much any time of the week – I have practice kit for drummers – we can all supply our own individual backline for now at practice – Bender gear belongs to Ian, Keith and Evan and I would not use their property for obvious reasons of ownership & respect.

So there you have it. I suggest that we all meet at a bar that I will sort out on a Sunday soon and we can garner all input and ideas to make it happen. If you wish to not be a part of this, please just remove your name from the Allstage Band FB page – it won’t be everyone’s choice for sure.

Thanks for your time in reading this all.

Jim

allstage@rogers.com