Category Archives: editorial

The Mood Mosiac Series

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The Mood Mosaic is a GREAT series of CDs and LPs that feature groovy, funky tracks and some sexy cover art that for some vinyl collectors is the sole motivation for buying the picture disc versions of the albums. I’m a big fan of picture discs in general, and the artwork for these is fairly well done, albeit with a 60’s-era Playboy Mansion sensibility that won’t agree with everybody. The best picture disc of the bunch is the one for the release titled The Hashish Party, with its retro funky body paint motif.

The music on these is great. Any fan of the Easy Tempo series, 70s action movie funk soundtracks, Mystic Moods Orchestra, and soul grooves will find a lot to love with these releases. There are picture disc versions of some, but not all of the titles; you can still find them for sale online at places like Amazon and on Discogs.com. These were made between 1997 and 2011, and there are (at the time of this writing) 14 titles in all.

I’ve got quite a few of these, but alas, not for sale–personal collection titles only! I am looking to buy more of these, so if you have them for sale, do get in touch: jwallace242@gmail.com

–Joe Wallace

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The Golden Turkey Awards Vinyl LP

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Music from The Blob, The Creeping Terror, AND Plan Nine From Outer Space? Ohhhhhh yessss. A great vinyl find indeed. I could NEVER part with this one! It’s music of the spheres alright….but only if the spheres are owned by a vinyl-collecting mad scientist with delusions of godhood. This is not a bad thing.

I was shocked and amazed to discover this treasure at a record show over the winter. Needless to say, I scooped it up immediately.

–Joe Wallace

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Vinyl Blogs to Watch: Vinyl Obscurity

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I’ve recently been spending time at Vinyl Obscurity which blogs about a great deal of amazing vinyl finds. Any fan of hard-to-find new wave, indie rock and related genres will be THRILLED to read through this blog, which features downloads and nice, large cover art. Like the one seen here.

The complete list of genres covered by this blog (as described on the site) are:

“private and independent releases that are out of print from the 1980s alternative music scenes – new wave – minimal synth – post punk – power pop – darkwave – electro – experimental – avant garde – coldwave – gothic – indie rock – industrial wave”.

The private press part of the equation is pretty exciting, as there are a lot of local/regional new wave and synthpop bands that never quite got the attention of an actual record label that were doing really fun and quirky material at the time.

It’s great that there are labors of love like this for 80s era wave/synthpop bands and beyond…psych has been getting this treatment for YEARS thanks to labels like Cherry Red, but there hasn’t really been the same sort of attention paid to the undiscovered/underappreciated gems of the keyboard-centered genres.

That makes blogs like Vinyl Obscurity more important, because they well and truly are carrying the torch for music that deserved better than it got. I also like the disclaimer on this page, which basically states the obvious, but in a way that would make the bands represented here quite happy.

The blog promotes the music and is all too happy to take down the links if grumpy killjoy types really, really want it gone. Any band with out-of-print music should consider themselves lucky to be represented online in this manner, methinks.

RECOMMENDED READING!

–Joe Wallace