Obituaries
Skip Groff, record store owner who presided over a D.C. punk paradise, dies at 70

By Harrison Smith
February 20 at 7:04 PM

Skip Groff, a radio DJ and producer whose strip-mall record shop, Yesterday and Today, became a vinyl-filled sanctuary, incubator, gathering place and meeting hall for Washington’s punk and alternative music scenes, died Feb. 18 at a hospital in Olney, Md. He was 70. ... He had suffered a seizure earlier that day, said his wife, Kelly Groff.

From 1977 until it closed in 2002, “Y and T,” as it was known, was a Washington music mecca. Located in suburban Rockville, Md., the store accumulated more than 1 million 45s, by Mr. Groff’s count, as well as thousands of new and used LPs, CDs, cassettes and music magazines.

“That store was like a clubhouse,” said concert promoter Seth Hurwitz, whose company I.M.P. once sold tickets to 9:30 Club shows out of Yesterday and Today. “It was a gathering place, kind of like a soda shop or a garage in the ’50s. You go in there, and you’d usually see someone you knew.”

Holding court from behind the counter, Mr. Groff steered listeners toward records by the Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground or British singer Kirsty MacColl, for whom he named his daughter. His store was named for a 1966 release by the Beatles, which originally featured a “butcher” cover showing the Fab Four with raw meat and decapitated baby dolls. ... Among Washington-area record stores, Mr. Groff’s shop “had the most extensive selection of imported punk records and new wave and post punk,” said Howard Wuelfing, a publicist and musician hired as Mr. Groff’s first employee.



Mr. Groff in 1997, cuing up a record at his store in Rockville. (Robert A. Reeder/The Washington Post)

The store, he added, drew shoppers including Misfits singer Glenn Danzig and Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, who made the trek north up Rockville Pike while on tour in Washington, as well as budding musicians such as Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye. ... “Sometimes you go into a record store, and the person behind the counter makes you feel like you have trespassed,” said MacKaye, who co-founded Dischord Records and led bands including Minor Threat and Fugazi. “And sometimes the owner, or the person behind the counter, makes you feel like he was wondering what took you so long. I put Skip in the latter.”
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He soon evolved from a punk-music salesman into a producer and patron, hiring up-and-coming musicians at his store and recording many of them on his label, Limp Records. By the early 1980s, he had produced most of Washington’s leading punk groups, including State of Alert, the Slickee Boys, the Razz, Velvet Monkeys, Youth Brigade, the Nurses, Black Market Baby and Minor Threat.
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Frank Samuel Groff III was born in Waltham, Mass., on Nov. 20, 1948. His father served in the Air Force, and his mother later worked for the Transportation Department; the nickname Skip emerged out of a pet name she gave him, Skippers. ... The family moved frequently, living in Japan before settling in Suitland, Md., where Mr. Groff graduated from high school. He studied television and radio at the University of Maryland, where he worked as music director of the student radio station, WMUC, but did not receive a degree.
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Even when he was closing his brick-and-mortar shop, Mr. Groff was eyeing new records. In an interview, MacKaye recalled that he and Rollins happened to be in town just as Mr. Groff was scheduled to move out and went up to say goodbye, expecting to find the place cleared out. ... “We get there, and almost nothing had been done,” he said. “Skip was frantically throwing records into boxes.” What had happened? ... Mr. Groff explained that he “had other things going on.” He had, it turned out, just acquired a private collection of 40,000 records.

Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago. Follow https://twitter.com/harrisondsmith

Style
‘Skip, we love you’: Remembering a pillar of D.C.’s punk scene

By John Davis February 20 at 6:57 PM
My father took me there first. I was 11 years old when we visited Yesterday & Today Records, an inauspicious storefront tucked on the side of the Sunshine Square shopping center in Rockville, Md. A music-loving kid, I’d haunted plenty of record stores at the mall, but when my Dad and I walked into Yesterday & Today, I could tell that it was a different creature.

The store was bursting with thousands of LPs and singles, its walls adorned with faded posters and other ephemera. Crate-diggers sifted through bins of rare records — a bounty of rock-and-roll, but also loads of jazz, R&B, and more — with prices handwritten on big orange stickers. The store’s owner, Skip, effortlessly dispensed knowledge about his inventory to customers as if he were feeding koi. They looked to him expectantly, waiting for advice on what obscure, limited-edition vinyl gem they should try next.

It was my first proper record-store experience. And Skip Groff was at the center of it.
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In the late 1970s, punk in Washington was a blur of inchoate but exciting new sounds led by bands such as the Slickee Boys and the Razz. Skip wasn’t just involved on the retail side; he formed a record label, Limp Records (a pun on Stiff Records, a popular British label), and released singles for both of those bands. At Yesterday & Today, he stocked the shelves with other punk records. Fans from the growing D.C. punk scene made pilgrimages to Rockville, clamoring for hard-to-find singles by bands such as the Damned and the Buzzcocks, which Skip would bring back from record-buying trips to England.



Skip Groff cues up a record in 1997. (Robert A. Reeder/The Washington Post)

Shortly after the store opened, two teenage patrons, Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson, told Skip they wanted to put out a record by their hardcore punk band, the Teen Idles. Skip ended up producing the record and showing the pair how to set up a label of their own. The label, Dischord Records, helped put Washington on the punk-rock map, issuing records from epochal bands such as Minor Threat and Fugazi. MacKaye, who played in both bands, became one of the most well-known figures in D.C. music and punk worldwide. Amid the cacophonous din at the end of Minor Threat’s “Steppin’ Stone,” he can be heard saying, “Skip, we love you!”

Another young customer, Henry Garfield, spent hours flipping through records and absorbing Skip’s wisdom about rare pressings of punk singles and the virtues of colored vinyl. Garfield soon changed his last name and moved to Los Angeles in 1981 to join the preeminent hardcore band Black Flag, and ultimately Henry Rollins became a notable author, musician, and actor. He left his heart, however, at Y&T. “Skip taught me how to be a record fanatic,” Rollins told me last month, when I interviewed him for an oral history on Skip. “He’s like the Dad I never had, in a way, where he gave you cool advice.”
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Thanks, Skip. We love you.

D.C. Punk Producer and Yesterday & Today Records Owner Skip Groff Dies at 70

The influential figure worked with the likes of Minor Threat, Teen Idles and Youth Brigade
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A few thoughts from Ian and Jeff in rememberance of Skip Groff. It’s hardly a stretch to say that without Skip, Dischord Records wouldn’t exist.

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rest in peace to my pal Skip Groff. His record store, Yesterday & Today, is the stuff of legend. A home for so many of us young punks in the late 70s. He started LImp records - produced & released many DC bands (including two of mine), and had an encyclopedic knowledge of music.

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