Tag Archives: albums

The Mad Vinyl Roadtrip Continues

Record Shops, , , , ,

stick it in your ear springfield missouri vinyl record store

By Joe Wallace

I am hiding out in the rec center at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri–blogging incognito and trying to get a full charge on the laptop before the born-again security staff sic the wolverines on me.

Today has been a day of disappointments and joy. Photos to come plus a full report but suffice it to say that large chunks of Springfield, Missouri are some of the ugliest stretches of endless strip malls you’ve ever had the misfortune to view. I stopped in three music shops—one had no vinyl whatsoever in spite of having the word “Vintage” in its name, another had a pathetic two bins worth of all-new releases from bands I really don’t care about (except the Misfits, perhaps, who were always fun in their heyday). However I struck paydirt with the ultra-friendly Stick It In Your Ear.

tuxedomoon ship of fools LP

Wes Nichols is the gent behind this VERY friendly store, and I highly recommend this place to anyone who wants to spend a couple of hours rifling through the stacks. There’s a large quantity of material here–hardcore collectors won’t be surprised by 75% of the titles, but I did manage to locate Tuxedomoon’s Ship Of Fools, which I hadn’t seen previously anywhere else.

I also scored Devo’s Greatest Misses on CD for the road, I needed a break from Big Youth, Morricone, Beck, and Big Black. What can I say, it’s been a long strange trip.

Tonight I plan to post some updates with more images including the uber-scary Shari Lewis LP I found and a picture disc I never, ever expected to be created for an album reissue that, well, makes me wonder who is BUYING this stuff. Besides weirdos like me, I mean.

The vinyl buying road trip continues. Vinyl Road Rage 2009 hits Joplin, MO next…I think. I didn’t hear good things about the shop I looked up so I might take a pass in favor of hitting Oklahoma next.

As I look around the room here, blogging away furiously, freshly scrubbed, 20-something faces stare at me. They know I’m not one of THEM, I’m not like the others. The girlies look slightly intrigued by my presence, the guys pretend to be indifferent while muttering “Praise the Lord”. I don’t know how much longer I can stay here before my cover is blown as an unrepentant libertine and non-trumpet player. More later.


[ad#Google Adsense]

Experimenting with Twitter Plugin

Featured, Media, , , , , ,

Never Mind The Bollocks, Here'

Yes, we’ve gone over to the dark side here….but I do love the idea that you can update Twitter and the blog at the same time. I do love the simplicity of Twitter and actually thought it might replace blogging for a bit, but I see now the utter folly of that notion.

In other news, purchased the Criterion version of Border Radio, more on that after it arrives and I can review it. Two months ago I scored the once-rare vinyl LP soundtrack for the movie which features the Flesheaters, Divine Horsemen and Chris D. I love this movie and it’s even more fascinating now in light of the fact that the music business as depicted in Border Radio all at once no longer exists AND is the same as it ever was.

I love contradictions and dichotomies.

WTF: Denmark Vs. Sweden

Featured, snark, WTF?, ,

Crap album art isn’t always about the thing itself. Sometimes a merely nauseating album cover can reach dizzying new lows when compared side-by-side to equally barf inducing artwork. Submitted for your approval, all the way from Denmark–the cover of Laid Back’s Keep Smiling album. This isn’t the most rotten thing ever made, but let’s call this artwork…uninspired:

laid-back-white-horse


Now compare it to the utterly goofy and craptacular cover for this Swedish nonsense– Kjell Kraghe’s Vind I Seglen. This album cover takes the seafaring them to a similarly fucktarded new low. We’re faced with a serious chicken-and-egg question here. Which wretched cover came first? Was this some kind of harmonic convergence of dumbass graphic design? Or was somebody thinking, “No way is that OTHER windmill-and-wooden-shoes country going to show US up in the dumbass graphics department!”

wft-kjellkraghe-lp-cover

This album cover reminds me of Beavis and Butthead episode where Butthead delivers a stunning critique of a bad 90s music video by merely uttering the phrase, “Look at his FACE!” That’s all we really need to say here, isn’t it? Except those two sails placed so perfectly in symmetry next to this hambone Ricky Schroeder lookalike makes it appear this guy has some kind of freakish protruberances connected to that suit of his. 

So perhaps these are both, on their own,  merely lame-o record covers. But viewed side by side they give me the horrors. We know Sweden and Denmark are capable of better than this…but then again, we haven’t even started looking at the bad death metal album covers from these two countries. Just you wait, this stuff looks tame (well, it IS tame) by comparison.

Milty Zerostat: For Fanatics Only?

gear, , , , ,

milty-zerostatDoes anybody reading this blog actually OWN one of these? Behold the Milty Zerostat, advertised as a dust-remover for vinyl records. It shoots out a stream of ions when you pull the trigger–ions that are supposed to rid your LPs of nasty pops and clicks caused by dust (which is attracted by an electrostatic charge on your records).

The Zerostat, according to the marketing hype, removes the electrostatic charge that attracts the dust. Zap the album, clean it off, and play away! So sayeth the hype. Does this actually work? I’d love to get a first-person report. At a triple-digit price tag, this one looks like it’s a collector-only gadget, but I’d love to see it in action and hear the results.