This video is supposed to be funny, but today it just seems a bit depressing for some reason. Maybe if there was an explosion involved or a bit of shrapnel-related head trauma? I have to admit, I DID laugh at the point in this video clip where the guy felt the impulse to explain that they weren’t actually setting fire to America itself, just a record with a SONG called “America”. Thanks, boys–glad we got that cleared up and squared away.
Category Archives: Media
Jack White: Vinyl Junkie
One of the stops on Vinyl Road Rage 4 in Nashville was the most excellent Third Man Records, the boutique record store and home of the record label of the same name.
Jack White started Third Man after his recording contract expired with V2. The White Stripes signed with Warner to record Icky Thump, but Jack White pulled off a shrewd deal to keep the rights to vinyl pressings…and Third Man wasn’t far behind with reissues of the back catalog, plus new releases by bands like The Dead Weather.
If you’re into learning about the entire saga of Third Man, have a look at this excellent interview with one of Third Man’s major players, as published by Collector’s Weekly. It’s a pretty interesting look behind the scenes at Nashville’s prime iconoclast labels/record stores.
Strange Wax Vinyl Documentary
I admit it, I’m a sucker for a good documentary. Strange Wax is well-shot, a visual candy store for vinyl lovers, to be sure.
Lovely to watch, isn’t it?
My major complaint with most of the vinyl documentaries I’ve seen over the past year and a half is that the filmmakers all seem compelled to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing why vinyl is superior to digital. This is completely unnecessary and really sounds like a sales pitch. But that doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of this production in the long run…
And while I’m feeling feisty, additionally vexing to a nitpicky writer/editor is referring to more than one record album as “vinyls”. People! “Vinyl” is both singular AND plural.
–Joe Wallace
The $650,000 Turntable
I am told that this Dereneville VPM turntable, by AV Design Haus, is priced at $650,000. Deutchmarks or dollars? Does it even matter?
Is this the most expensive turntable ever built? If it’s not, it probably was at one time. But with all that fine, precision German-built analog attention to detail, can it really compare to the ultra-high tech wonder that was my first record player ever?
Really, no amount of $650,000 high-tech inventiveness could ever create the thrill of discovery comparable to what I had as a kid plopping down this Power Records vinyl (see below) down on the Close ‘n Play and hearing the psuedo-Morricone Italian crime soundtrack music blasting out of those crap speakers.
I realize now that the music on the following clip was the gateway drug for my now-insatiable soundtrack collecting obsession when it comes to Morricone, Stelvio Cipriani, Piero Umiliani and others. Strange that you can pin down a lifetime of music obsessions to a single, very obscure record heard as kid:
P.S. The story on the Batman: Stacked Cards vinyl is HILARIOUS. Listen all the way to the end to hear Batman ruminating that a frontal lobotomy could return The Joker back to “normal society”! Hell, yeah–let’s save time and bother and lobotomize EVERYBODY!
–Joe Wallace