By María Eugenia Guerra

SAN ANTONIO - It was a love of music and the avoidance of "a real job"that propelled Dave Risher into the business of selling music. Risher, 47, is the proprietor of Hogwild, the Main Avenue corner outlet that embraces some rather obviously understated marketing techniques. The bins that hold collections of CDs by genre are hand-printed. Band posters, including the Beatle's Yellow Submarine poster, and the black t-shirts of death metal punk rock bands are the backdrop along the walls of the old storefront that once housed a blues café, a pool hall, a book store, a liquor and gun store, and the Evergreen Drug Store.

Risher has been at Main and Dewey for 20 years, a location near San Antonio College that he said has served him well. "This is a comfortable place to shop for music," he said, adding, "This isn't a cookie cutter format for music, so we don't get cookie cutter customers. They might not be as comfortable in here as in Wal Mart. We are the anti-Wal Mart music store."

"Our inventory is somewhere between a little and a lot off the beaten path," he said of the inventory of CDs, DVDs, LPs, tapes, lunch boxes, t-shirts, and magazines. Hogwild stocks new releases, punk, heavy metal, Tejano, Texas artists, international, Indian, rap, jazz, reggae, dance, and Zydeco.

Risher is hesitant to typify his average customer. "They come from everywhere, and many of them from the 956 area code. We are South Texas friendly," he said. "About two-thirds of our business is in heavy metal. What our customers have in common is a love of music. If we don't have what they want, we can help them find it," he continued.

The music aficionado is modest about his business acumen and his 20-year history in the music business, allowing that he is "self-taught and sub-intelligent" and has survived despite "a great deal of error" by "dumb luck, persistence, employee gratitude, and an unabated love of music."

According to Risher's friend Laredoan Sean Chadwell, a TAMIU English instructor, Risher honors employee gratitude by serving his staff Bola de Oro dark coffee from Nuevo Laredo. "Dave loves South Texas and the border. He influenced our decision to move to Laredo," Chadwell said, adding, "Every town in America should have an alternative record store like Hogwild. Dave has all the regular stuff, but he also promotes the small labels."

"He is very thoughtful, which is a personal as well as a business attribute," Chadwell said. "He's a gentle person with a lot of business mettle."

(Hogwild Records is at 1824 Main in San Antonio. You can reach Dave Risher at (210) 733-5354 or by e-mail: hogwildrecords@hotmail.com.)