Avid Record Collector

is “street fighting man” the most valuable picture sleeve in the world?

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IN LATE AUGUST 1968, the Rolling Stones re­leased “Street Fighting Man” as the lead single for the un­re­leased BEGGARS BANQUET album. It was the group’s follow-up to Jumpin’ Jack Flash, which had been a world­wide smash. While it topped the Cash Box Top 100, for some in­ex­plic­able reason it stalled at #3 on the Bill­board Hot 100

As Street Fighting Man was of a quality sim­ilar if not quite equal to Jumpin’ Jack Flash, I as­sume now that everyone as­sumed then that an­other top-tenner was on the way. [Continue reading]

the avid collector’s guide to wild in the streets part 1

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IN 1968, AIP’S NEW MOVIE was not about bikers, babes, and devils. While “Wild In The Streets” was an­other Amer­ican In­ter­na­tional Pic­tures ex­ploita­tion B-movie, it was also a clever com­bi­na­tion of black humor, so­ciopo­lit­ical satire, and some gen­uinely good rock & roll. [Continue reading]

what was the first “rock” double-album of the ’60s?

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 IT IS ACCEPTED “FACT” that two sem­inal works of pop­ular music—the Beach Boys’ PET SOUNDS and Bob Dy­lan’s BLONDE ON BLONDE—were re­leased on the same day, May 16, 1966. And there was a second reason to cel­e­brate that date: BLONDE ON BLONDE was also the first rock double-album of all-new studio record­ings, beating the Mothers of In­ven­tion’s FREAK OUT! [Continue reading]

the ongoing damnation of faust (and a lesson on selling on ebay)

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BUYER SCAMS ON eBay and other seller sites are rec­og­nized, if poorly ad­dressed by those sites. In my ar­ticle “eBay Buyer Scams And Ship­ping Items In­ter­na­tion­ally,” I wrote about these is­sues and an al­ter­ca­tion that I had with a buyer in Eu­rope who I be­lieve was trying to pull such a scam. [Continue reading]

God damn the pusher man

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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]