Hi, my name is Alex.

 

Although one person - someone very important in my life – used to call me John. Not because of John Lennon, mind you. The reason was my deep love for John Coltrane, who - ever since I was 14 - would serve as my guide, both musically and spiritually. Not that I ever became a musician myself. For that, I simply lacked the necessary coordination between my left and right hands. String instruments were therefore out of the question from the start. Not even the guitar was willing to become my friend. And that was despite the fact that I had always deeply admired greats like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Frank Zappa, and all the other guitar wizards.

 

In school, I was tormented by the recorder; a bit later, I tried my hand at the clarinet after hearing Eric Dolphy play the bass clarinet. Yet I simply couldn't seem to master reed instruments either. Perhaps drums and percussion would have been the right fit for me - but who in the house would have been willing to endure the racket of a beginner on the drums?

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So, in the end, I was left with no choice but to become a music lover. As luck would have it, in the late eighties, a music store opened up in the very building where I was living at the time with another film student. It was the heyday of the CD. Everyone was parting ways with their vinyl records to switch over to digital sound instead. Since I was completely obsessed with cinema at the time, I, too, had already parted with my vinyl collection - a collection I had acquired in St. Louis back in the early eighties. At that time, I had been in the USA as an exchange student, before returning to Munich to attend film school.

 

From the moment Dock - the owner of the CD shop in our building - learned my name, he would call out "Alexis Zorba" after me every time our paths crossed. Not bad at all, I thought to myself back then, being a die-hard cinephile. Certainly better than "Ali Baba"- the nickname I’d been saddled with during my childhood. And Dock’s shop ensured that I soon morphed back into an absolute music fanatic. I began buying up almost his entire stock of jazz CDs - starting with "Trane" and Miles.

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Toward the end of my twenties, my passion - which had previously been devoted to films and filmmaking - shifted entirely towards music. Instead of trying to watch every great film ever made, I developed a fixation on acquiring all the music in the world worth listening to. An endeavor likely doomed to failure from the very start. It was also during this period that I learned to appreciate an audiophile Hi-Fi system - the indispensable prerequisite for being able to enjoy music to the fullest. Initially, I mostly listened using components manufactured in Japan. But before long, products bearing the "Made in the UK" label became my absolute favorites - for both loudspeakers and amplifiers.

 

Moreover, I gathered a circle of like-minded individuals around me who shared the same dream of perfect music reproduction. I met numerous fellow travelers whose devotion to sonic reproduction escalated into a veritable obsession - so much so that they sacrificed their families and their jobs for its sake. Or rather, that their wives left them, as their entire paychecks were being blown on ever-more-expensive loudspeaker systems and Hi-Fi electronics.

 

After graduating from film school and gaining some initial experience in the film industry, I spent my nights writing my first major feature film screenplay - while driving a taxi by day to earn a living. Unfortunately, my screenplays were rejected, so I had to make ends meet in television instead. Thus, music offered me a welcome counterbalance to the frustrations of the TV business.

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In the early 2000s, I opened my first music shop. Since the premises were located in a historic corner building, I named it "alex corner." The name is a nod to the British blues musician Alexis Korner (who, incidentally - much like Alexis Zorba - also had Greek roots). And since jazz has its origins in the blues, this seemed like a fitting name for a fresh start. Later that very same year, as fate would have it, I opened another shop - which was also situated on a corner.

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And twenty years later - the previous shops having since closed, as I now had to earn a living for my wife and two children as well - I reopened "alex corner". This time with the entrance located around the corner.

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So, this is merely the prequel; the true story of "alex corner" has only just begun.