for those who never gave up their turntables
WHEN I ARRIVED AT MY OFFICE on a day in early 1987, I was handed a package that had arrived earlier. As I worked at home more often than “at work,” my schedule of arriving and departing varied from day to day. My job was editor of a line of price guides for record collectors published by O’Sullivan Woodside and formerly associated with other authors. [Continue reading]
THE YEAR 1966 was rather magical for me in regards to music and records. I was 14-going-on-24 and the music with which I connected—the charm, the magic—has lasted all these years. There were a handful of records from that year (I should say that era, as 1966 seems like an era unto itself, lodged in between the British Invasion and psychedelia) that have an effect on me like few others. [Continue reading]
AS A TARGET OF BULLIES most of my high school years, I have grown up as a reasonably ‘controlled’ adult (I have a veeeeeery long, veeeeeery slow-burning fuse to my once hair-trigger temper), constitutionally and philosophically anti-violence instigation (versus the necessity of using violence in defense), but quite capable of taking care of myself. [Continue reading]
FOR SEVERAL YEARS I toiled at a restaurant while working on building my blogs. We had piped-in music via one of those satellite feeds: select a genre and hear the same damn songs over and over at a volume that was hearable but rarely allowed for the identification of the artist let alone the lyrics. [Continue reading]
GREAT SINGLES IN 1967 by established artists that should have been BIG hits but weren’t were common. For example, Buffalo Springfield’s Mr. Soul, the Byrds’ Lady Friend, and the Hollies’ King Midas In Reverse (and I could go on but that’s grist for another mill). But perhaps the biggest disappointment was the Rolling Stones second single of the year, We Love You / Dandelion. [Continue reading]
THOSE OF US OLD ENOUGH to have at least witnessed “the Sixties”—even if only as teenagers watching it happen all around us—remember that there was a time when the terms “dealer” and “pusher” were NOT synonymous. A dealer sold only “good” drugs—“head drugs”—like marijuana, hash, and the occasional psychedelic (mostly LSD). [Continue reading]
THIS ARTICLE addresses the first few years in which deleted record albums flooded retail stores across the country. Stores that had never contemplated a bargain bin in their record department started one and record-buying was never the same. But these records should have had a huge impact on the early record collectors price guides, but did not. [Continue reading]
THIS ARTICLE is about my first price guide, the 1985-86 edition of the Rock & Roll Record Albums Price Guide. I discuss some of the reasoning that I used and the results that had an immediate and profoundly unsettling impact on the hobby and business of selling and buying records. It makes public the reasoning that went behind the decisions that sticker-shocked (shocked I say!) [Continue reading]
IT WAS EARLY 1966 and my 12-year old sister Mary Alice just bought her beloved Herman’s Hermits’ new single, Listen People. She proceeded to play it night and day, over and over and over, driving my bother and me to beyond distraction. Diving us batty! In fact, so far beyond distraction, that we decided, “Nevermore!” [Continue reading]