I am Joe Wallace. I’m an artist, musician, DJ, vinyl collector, freelance writer, world traveler and video/filmmaker. I buy and sell records. I write about vinyl, the vinyl lifestyle, films and film soundtracks.
Turntabling has evolved a lot over the years, to the point where it’s become a boutique music shop catering to lovers of soundtracks from horror, sci-fi, and just plain weird, rare, hard-to-see, unusual movies.
Turntabling is also a mirror of my interests in New Wave, psych, electronic and experimental records. But for some reason soundtracks really make a big impact–maybe because the best of them are fairly experimental, often electronic, quirky, left-of-center, and strange.
I sell things I’m personally interested in and offer titles “collector-to-collector” as a way to promote and support Turntabling.net. I don’t have a storefront–too much overhead. I run Turntabling as a sole proprietorship focusing on selling online and at conventions.
I consider myself a curator as well as a boutique online record shop owner–the things I carry are a reflection of my own obsessions.
It’s definitely not a hobby, Turntabling is something a quite a bit larger in my mind than just a way to help pay the bills.
More About Turntabling
I wrote this for a press release a while back and most of it still serves the purpose, I think, so I include it here:
Turntabling.net is dedicated to enjoying music on vinyl. That includes DJ gear, new albums on vinyl, new wave obscurities, foreign oddities, groovy/psychedelic soundtrack albums, cover art, new bands releasing music on vinyl, companies that help bands get their music on vinyl and much more.
Turtabling.net is run by Joe Wallace, a freelance writer based in Chicago. He has been collecting titles for many years but has maintains a modest collection (hundreds instead of thousands). He likes bizarre, obscure titles and oddities such as titles by the Mystic Moods Orchestra, Perry & Kingsley, and David Frye. He also loves vinyl comedy records–a lost art form. Wallace has a decent-size collection of more-or-less obscure new wave vinyl by groups such as The Hawaiian Pups, The Units, Pink Military, Slow Children and many others.
He collects for nostalgia’s sake as well as for audio quality. According to Joe Wallace, if it was mastered in analog or meant to be heard on vinyl, it’s worth hearing in the intended format. Wallace is not a vinyl snob. He enjoys MP3s and CDs too, but loves the tactile quality of albums and the large cover art that goes with them.
Joe Wallace is a longtime musician, music journalist, filmmaker and DJ. His career includes many 80s retro and 90s alternative radio shows and DJ gigs in Japan, Iceland and Korea as part of the American Forces Network. He had a live mash-up/music collage show on the sadly defunct internet radio station F.A.K.E. Radio, and ran a web-only mashup program at the now-defunct ZombieProject.com.
Wallace was a member of the San Antonio-based “bubble-wave” band Pink Filth and recorded a proto-new wave revival group in 1999 called Goop. His other bands include Toilet-a punk rock three-piece based in Misawa, Japan, and a stint as a member of the Texas psychedelic/experimental collective Crevice. His documentary on the group, The Camera Is Your Friend, covers the band at the height of their powers in the 2002 Texas PsychFest and elsewhere.
Joe Wallace is editor of Freelance-Zone.com, a lifestyle blog, buyer’s guide and advice site for freelance writers. He writes for a variety of publications. A former Managing Editor and music industry gossip columnist for Gearwire.com, Wallace currently works as a freelance Managing Editor for a dot com startup company and as a culture columnist for LongIslandExchange.com.
Wallace can be reached at jwallace242 (at) gmail dot com.