for those who never gave up their turntables
WATCHING SCENES WITH VINYL RECORDS or references to vinyl records in movies and television shows usually causes record collectors to laugh. The person responsible for placing the record in the scene almost always gets something about the record or the chronology wrong. Or makes an exaggerated claim about its value (“It’s worth five grand, easy”). [Continue reading]
A FEW YEARS AGO, I wrote about Del Shannon and offered a brief introduction to his music. I mentioned I Go To Pieces as a song he wrote and arranged as a nod to the British Invasion of 1964. After that, Shannon kept searching for a place to stay in the world of pop music. [Continue reading]
IT WAS JUST ANOTHER DAY on Medium when I found the article, “Embarrassing Songs By Major Artists.” Written by Alex Markham for The Riff, its tagline was “Even the biggest music superstars had moments when taste deserted them.” He could have written “every music superstar” and substituted “intelligence” for “taste” and I would have agreed! [Continue reading]
I HAVE BEEN BUYING RECORDS for sixty years and collecting them for about the same length of time. As far back as I can remember, I have referred to LPs and EPs and prerecorded tapes as ‘albums.’ Since the Digital Revolution of the ’80s, I have referred to tapes, EPs, LPs, and CDs as albums
During this time, I called a seven-inch, 45 rpm record with one track per side a ‘single’ while calling a seven-inch, 45 rpm record with two or three tracks per side an ‘EP.’ [Continue reading]
“A FINE LITTLE GIRL, SHE WAITS FOR ME” is the first line of the first verse of one of the most famous records of the past hundred years. But the record doesn’t open with the verse, it opens with the chorus: “Louie Louie, me gotta go.” [Continue reading]
SHRINK-WRAPPING ALBUMS did not become standard practice for the American record industry until 1963-1964. Prior to that, EP albums and LP albums were shipped to wholesalers and retailers without any protection! Then Robert B. Cohen, a rack jobber in New Jersey, started wrapping records in protective plastic sleeves, making him the “Godfather of Shrinkwrapped Albums.” [Continue reading]
I HAD TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION: “Who was the first rock band to sell a million albums?” It was on Quora and immediately seized my attention. Why? Because not only had I never thought about it, but I had never heard a record-collecting friend or a professional music writer address it. [Continue reading]
IF YOU ARE A SUBSCRIBER TO THIS BLOG (Rather Rare Records) and you do not receive updates and other notifications via email from this blog, listen up! It appears that I initially misunderstood quite a few things in setting this blog up, including the subscription process and how emails are sent to subscribers. [Continue reading]
THE AVID COLLECTOR was the title of my column in Pulse! magazine. Pulse! (with the annoying exclamation mark) was the in-house magazine for Tower Records that was free to every customer in every Tower store in the world! The Avid Collector was about collectible records and ran for almost two years in the early ’90s. [Continue reading]