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Electric Fetus
MINNEAPOLIS, MN • 2000 4th Ave S, Minn, MN 55404
Dan Foley and Ron Korsh were University of Minnesota students with no retail experience when they opened the Electric Fetus in June 1968, renting a storefront in Cedar-Riverside, known at the time as "the Haight-Ashbury of Minneapolis." Rent ran about $18 a month; Foley's $5,000 student loan covered the start-up stock: records, posters, and, this being 1968, smoking paraphernalia. Korsh sold his half within months to Keith Covart, who bought out Foley's half about a decade later, making Covart the driving force behind the store for most of its history. The shop moved to its current corner at 4th and Franklin in 1972 and has anchored that spot ever since.
The store expanded once, opening a Duluth location on Superior Street in 1987. The Duluth shop lasted 33 years before closing in 2021, a casualty of the pandemic, a water main break, road construction, and a changing retail environment, but the Minneapolis flagship kept going. In 2008, Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak declared June 13 "Electric Fetus Day" for the store's 40th anniversary, and in 2018, Rolling Stone named it one of the best record stores in the country.
Prince was a longtime customer. On April 16, 2016, five days before he died, he came in for Record Store Day and left with Santana's 'IV,’ Joni Mitchell's ‘Hejira,’ Stevie Wonder's ‘Talking Book,’ and a Swan Silvertones gospel anthology.
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