Vinyl Blogs to Watch: Egg City Radio

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A blog that features posts on albums by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sonic Youth, AND Jim “Gilligan’s Island” Backus, Bobcat Goldthwait, plus Dee Dee Ramone in his rappin’ phase?  That’s a blog I personally think could be the greatest thing of all time. Egg City Radio has been at it since 2007 and I sincerely hope it never ever EVER stops. The image for the Jim Backus album alone made it worth the search–having searched through Egg City Radio’s archives I can say this is a work of demented genius.

I’m fully aware that there are other highly eclectic vinyl collector blogs out there, but I’ll be damned to Satan’s personal, private hell and have cocktail wieners jammed into my eyeballs for all eternity if Egg City Radio isn’t THE most delightfully insane collection of musical contradictions ever under one roof. Who else has the balls to run a review of PiL’s Commercial Zone LP back to back with a music library LP for The Price Is Right? This is someone I seriously need to read on a daily basis.

This is quite possibly my favorite blog of all that I’ve seen this year. Seriously.

Zombie Disco 2 With DJ Paisley Babylon

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Tonight, Saturday July 24 at 9PM I’ll be spinning as DJ Paisley Babylon at Chicago’s excellent Lucky Number Grill. It’s Zombie Disco Night, an event put on by the Chicago Horror Society. Last year’s Zombie Disco was something to behold and this one should be even more fantastic. There will be zombie makeup artists on site to bring out the corpse in you, plus some fun events, contests and all the retro disco insanity you can stand. Bring a bag of disco biscuits and get your groove on!

If you can’t make it to this for some sick reason, I’ll be posting a set list mix later in the week. Stay tuned. DJ Paisley Babylon rides again, terrorizing Chi-town from behind the decks.

–Joe Wallace

Chicago Record Stores: Transistor

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by Joe Wallace

Let’s just start by saying that the best record stores have performance spaces in them. I played more than a couple of gigs at the late, great Austin, Texas record mecca 33 Degrees in the late 90s, and since then I’ve been hooked on shops that know where their bread is buttered.

Chicago’s awesome “sound & vision” store Transistor, at 5045 N. Clark Street in Andersonville is just such a place. Usually, stores that don’t pick a direction–vinyl/CDs or electronics, or art, or…whatever– and stick with it are doomed to fail from the start, but Transistor has something many similar endeavors fail to promote–a philosophy.

Sure, that’s MY interpretation, but take a quick glance at the records, books, DVDs, music gear (Transistor is an authorized Numark, Korg, Alesis and Marshall dealer to name a few) and art; you’ll soon discover the vibe of this place. Everything’s interconnected somehow.

Transistor has regular workshops, performances, film screenings, even a Sunday podcast called Transistor Radio. It’s an ambitious operation, to be sure, but it definitely beats sitting on your thumbs waiting for Jesus to come and whip out a keg of Belgium’s finest. This is definitely one of the most forward-thinking shops in the Chicago record store scene. Yes, I’m well aware that it’s a multi-faceted operation, but they still sell vinyl and therefore…

One last note–99% of the vinyl falls into the new release category, but there is a smattering of used vinyl the shop offers on behalf of the Chicago Independent Radio Project as a benefit for them. How cool is that?

Vogue Picture Records 1946-1947

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I discovered a fascinating blog post at COLOURlovers (a craft blog, not a vinyl blog) called Unusually Colored Vinyl Records. It featured a variety of impressive colored vinyl productions including the Man Or Astroman release, “Your Weight On The Moon” on  glow-in-the-dark vinyl pictured above. But the REAL treasure in this blog post was the mention of some seriously vintage post-war vinyl produced in Detroit by a company called Sav-Way Industries.

The Vogue Picture Discs are amazing for their detail and the instant visual reference to the  post war era when they were made (1946-1947) but the real stunner for me was the visual theme of the Marion Mann track, “You Took Advantage of Me”.

Decades before The Tubes put out Mondo Bondage, here’s a very racy post-war vinyl record implying all sorts of naughty things with this picture. There are some 74 Vogue Picture Record titles in this collection, which you can view more of at the University of California Santa Barbara, but none of them are quite as provocative as this one.

Sure, it COULD be argued that this was an innocent depiction of the song’s theme, but lest we forget, post-war culture in the 40s was filled with double entendres created to titillate and amuse while maintaining “plausible deniability” in a so-called respectable society. Mondo bondage indeed!

–Joe Wallace