Category Archives: Featured

Seriously Bad Album Covers

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We here at Turntabling are proud of the little collection of WTF album covers, but Nick DiFonzo’s book really takes the cake. Seriously Bad Album Covers displays 50 years and over 250 pages worth of the worst album covers ever. This import features a whopping 225 covers with a variety of wretched concepts, butt-ugly musicians and rotten excesses. Any vinyl junkie should add this to their collection of vinyl-related ephemera. This is hours and hours of entertainment just waiting to be had.

One day we are hoping that Taschen dedicates one of their luxuriously assembled editions to awful art, but until then this tome is probably THE authority on crapola covers.

DJ Skills: Mixing and Scratching

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As much as I believe you can’t really impart what it takes to be a good DJ from a book, there are some people who insist that books like DJ Skils: Mixing and Scratching are helpful and useful to beginners. So while I can recommend a book like this to newcomers, I do so with the caveat that you really need to get some time behind the decks to learn the basics in practice, not just theory.

With that in mind, this book IS getting rave reviews. You have to recognize the ambition of a book that starts off discussing the earliest record player including the 1857 French invention of the phonoautograph and Edison’s 1877 invention of the wax cylinder phonograph.
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The Orb Dr. Alex Patterson DJ Set

Alex Patterson is a legend, both behind the DJ decks and the synth rack. He’s a force to be reckoned with and a longtime favorite round here at Turntabling. If you’re an Orb fan, chances are you’ve caught Alex Patterson’s DJ sets at one time or another, but if you haven’t, here’s a nice clip of the Doctor at work.

If you aren’t yet plugged into the goodness that is The Orb, we strongly suggest you pick up a copy of The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and see what you’ve been missing all this time.

DJ Peter Hook: Beyond New Order

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For fans of New Order, Peter Hook’s solo antics are well known…but have you ever seen Hooky in action as a DJ? He tours semi-regularly, coming to Chicago’s Smart Bar and plenty of other DJ venues around the globe including Melbourne, Argentina, and elsewhere.

There’s a certain segment of the New Order audience quite into Hooky’s non-NO projects like Monaco and Revenge, but it’s unclear (to me, anyway) how many love Peter Hook as a DJ. Here’s a chance to see the man in action behind the decks…does Hooky make the grade? You decide.