Monthly Archives: June 2010

Vinyl Road Rage Tour 2010: Chicago To NYC Itinerary Announced

vinyl road rage

vinyl road rage two

The first Vinyl Road Rage was Turntabling’s shameless grab for publicity, vinyl records, and the 411 on cool independent record stores between Chicago and San Antonio, Texas. Along the way I hit shops in Springfield, Illinois, St. Louis, Springfield Missouri, Dallas, Austin, OKC, and finally San Antonio itself.

This year we have an equally ambitious itinerary from Chicago to New York City, which includes a lot of side journeys along the way including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Here is a partial list of indie record shops I’ll be hitting and blogging about along the way.

I’m posting this for several reasons–one of the big missed opportunities of the last trip was the chance to meet up with other vinyl junkies en route after the day’s blogging is done and be social. This time, we’re not letting that happen. If you live along the route and would like to recommend a good hangout for live music, good food and drink or other record shops, please consider this an open invitiation to get the conversation started.

Our route includes (but is not limited to) stops at the following:

Michiana Used Music & Media 4609 Grape Road  Mishawaka, IN 46545-8257( 574) 247-1188

Record Revolution
1828 Coventry Road Cleveland Hts, OH 44118-1692
(216) 321-7661

15801 Waterloo Rd Cleveland, OH 44110

11600 Detroit Avenue Cleveland, OH 44102-2320
(216) 221-9200

2136 Murray Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15217

Mr. Mike’s
27 S 3rd St Harrisburg, PA 17101

808 St John St Allentown, PA 18103

239 Bleecker St New York, NY 10014

210 Thompson Street New York, NY 10012-484

With a little luck, we’ll have the KLF blasting the whole way. Get in touch if you don’t see YOUR record store on the list, but would like to…we’d be very happy to do something fun in-store as I’ll be blogging and video-blogging this entire trip.

Would love to do a video shoot with indie music types–bands and stores–ESPECIALLY about their favorite CRAPPY ALBUM COVERS.

WTF Album Covers: God Is A Killer

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WTF album covers God Is A Killer

A lifetime of gratitude to the blog A Basement of Curiosities for turning me on to the wonders of A.A. Allen, who was apparently a bit of a revolutionary in the pulpit as he was a pro-integration activist at the height of Jim Crow, separate drinking fountains and the rest of America’s big ugly period where the Constitution only applied if you were the right sort of white anglo-saxon-protestant jackass.

Progressive as Allen might have been on some fronts, he was a fire-and-brimstone loony and faith healer. But like all religious maniacs, he couldn’t heal himself and is said to have dropped off the twig in 1970 due to alcohol-related liver failure. Whoops!

This album cover is a treat. Allen looks more than a little like a Wild Bunch-era Ernest Borgnine, but that expression on his face implies that something long and wriggly has just crawled up his rectum. The title is a hoot–of COURSE God is a killer! Look at all those church collapses, Jihads and right wing holy wars. God’s in it up to his eyeballs, a river of blood to flood a thousand universes.

Funny thing is, Allen doesn’t seem to mind. From what I read at A Basement of Curiosities, Allen seems to get off on telling his audience that if they don’t wanna “get saved” God might just have to disembowel them (my words, not his) and send them downstairs to have sex with the devil. (My words again, I can’t help myself. Maybe I’m possessed.)

This one’s a real treasure.

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Blogs To Watch: Music For Maniacs, Stereofound, and Thrift Store DJ

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vinylby Joe Wallace

Every once in a while I like to call attention to blogs that have caught my eye, and there are three that I’m really enjoying. Music For Maniacs, Stereofound and Thrift Store DJ are all dedicated to the oddball stuff on vinyl that most record store shoppers pass up in favor of those albums by Modest Mouse and Radiohead.

What those shoppers don’t know won’t hurt them though–I’m all in favor of having the unclassifiable music left alone in the bins until I can swing by to scoop them up, doofy treasures that they are. My fellow travelers in search of vinyl weirdness blog about their discoveries and I am SO very glad they do.

Music For Maniacs covers everything from exotica to mechanical music. That’s right, music made by machines. Not COMPUTERS, mind you. Picture something on the order of Doctor Phibes’s Clockwork Wizards except without the animatronic mannequins. This blog manages to be even cooler with a whole section dedicated to sound collage and mashups. BRILLIANT.

Stereofound is dedicated to what it describes as “non-music” on vinyl. In fact, according to Stereofound, the blog is obsessed with “oddities on vinyl, found at thrift stores and flea markets. Think of stereo-test records, jingles, sound effects, instructions..” My favorite part of Stereofound is the Moog section, but the Floppy Records stuff is a close second.

Thrift Store DJ is on a similar bent in that it is dedicated to, you guessed it, the music that gets left behind in the junk shop. Continue reading Blogs To Watch: Music For Maniacs, Stereofound, and Thrift Store DJ →

The TruTone Mastering Process

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TruTone Mastering Process

Ever wonder what it takes to make a vinyl LP from start to finish? The actual creation of the physical product, as opposed to recording the music itself is fascinating, and a company called TruTone Mastering Labs has put the entire process online in a step-by-step pictorial.

For me, the most interesting part from a visual standpoint is the plating process:

TruTone Mastering Plating Process

But you’ll be amused to learn that your favorite, most expensive vinyl collectible in your stack originally looked like THIS before it became the precious thing you revere now as a sacred object: Continue reading The TruTone Mastering Process →