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
