My Vinyl Road Rage finds in Nashville and Memphis were pretty impressive. I have to say, The Groove in Nashville, plus Memphis vinyl shops Goner Records and Shangri La Records are all three quite stellar and worth a trip out of town to see.
I was so pleased with my finds that I had to vblog about a few of them. What do you get when you combine Jimmy Swaggart, the band Lucifer, and silent movie soundtracks? Answers below.
Lately I’ve been hard at work designing and silkscreening cotton/canvas bags for crate diggers and vinyl junkies. I’ve got several designs now, two of which are currently for sale on Etsy. These bags hold any standard size vinyl records from 12-inch double LPs to seven inch singles. These are GREAT for vinyl shopping and convention-going.
One of my biggest complaints about doing record shows is that carrying around your vinyl finds is a major pain unless you’re toting a backpack. These cotton/canvas vinyl record shopping bags are great for shows whether you’re at a horror movie convention or your local record swap.
The images are linked directly to their respective sales pages on Etsy or you can check out the Skull Star Crate Digger’s Vinyl Record Shopping Bag or my personal favorite, the Aleister Crowley Beast 666 Crate Digger Bag pictured below.
If you find these bags are sold out when you click, please get in touch with me directly (jwallace at turntabling dot net) to make arrangements as I usually have plenty in stock to sell at conventions and shows. Naturally, the vinyl seen here is NOT INCLUDED, heh. Did I mention these are only $9.50 each with free shipping in the USA?
In the 1980s, America was gripped in such a wave of conservative nonsense that any idiot could write a book about Satan, rock music, and witchcraft and it would somehow sell. Brain-dead religious right charlatans and/or nutters like Bob Larson, Jacob Aranza, and the infamous Peters Brothers were doing a brisk business in books about Satanic messages hidden in that evil rock and roll music.
The best part about all of these books–and the most telling–are their sections about “backwards masking”. This delightfully hysterical non-crisis was generated by preachers who spent a good deal of time turning records backwards on their turntables, listening for the Devil’s messages.
Even better-the right wing hysteria made bands get into the act and perpetrate their own actual, for-real backwards masking messages. Did they do it just to screw with the Christies? ELO not once, but TWICE threw a bone to the Bob Larsons of the world with the albums Eldorado and Secret Messages. Kiss’s Gene Simmons–then seemingly eager to bait Christians into some new madness– recorded some backwards messages on his solo record. There were plenty of others, to be sure.
Well, now that I’ve purchased an Audio-Technica AT LP 120 USB turntable, I’ve taken to revisiting some of these hilariously wrong-headed books. (I was all about them when I was in high school for vastly different reasons–caught up in my own small town religious kookiness–don’t worry, I got better).
See, the Audio Technica AT LP120 turntable has a delightful function–it plays in reverse, no finger-turning needed to uncover those Satanic messages. I plan to go through the whole of my catalog to listen for the Devil’s commands…I thought I’d start off by listening to Eno’s Music For Airports and work my way to the first Air LP.
Yeah, those records are all instrumentals. But Satan is a TRICKSTER, you see. He could have hidden messages in there backwards ANYWAY. And that’s the same kind of logic you’ll find waiting for you in ANY of those book titles displayed here.
If you’ve never read these books, I strongly urge you to do so…if for no other reason than to see the minds at work behind yesterday’s goofy right wing thinking. Which is pretty much the SAME thinking at work in TODAY’S goofy right wing thinking.
Don’t believe me? Check THIS crap out:
This website is called Dial-the-Truth Ministries. In addition to being grossed out by their anti-Obama hysteria and general Bronze Age fire and brimstone stupidity, can I REALLY be the only person who sees the disconnect in a WEBSITE called DIAL the Truth? I think not. But it never occurred to THEM, apparently.
Here’s a total howler of a site with a page called Satan’s Music. Prince, Queen, and apparently for some reason the Dixie Chicks are all apparently in service of Our Dark Lord Lucifer. Even the cute one.
Did you know that Emo is unethical for born againers to listen to? Oh yes, kiddies. You are all going to kill yourselves now.
Those are only three examples. Share your own in the comments section, and don’t forget kids…YANKEE ROSE.
I have a little rule about reviews. “Don’t waste time talking about blogs you don’t like” has been my golden rule for a long, long time. When I was writing print ‘zines in San Antonio, I was a LOT more fearless–I’d routinely trash stuff I didn’t like. I once had a long conversation with some people from a gothity/bondage outfit called Flesh Fetish–they took issue with me for groaning about their goth night S&M lite shows at a local club called the Cameo.
I still think that stuff is silly, but today I wouldn’t bother to talk trash about it. If folks want to indulge in some light spanking in between endless repeats of “Lucretia My Reflection” and “Tragedy For You”, let ’em. (When it was all said and done, I think my biggest objection to that stuff was the way the crowd gathered round with that “Ooooh! BOOBIES!” vibe.
So all that leads me to this 80s music blog on About.com. I’ve said elsewhere that About.com is about as useful as bondage trousers on a corpse, especially for the writers who managed to score writing gigs as Guides. I have the funny feeling this writer is getting pressure from his About.com masters to steer into middle-of-the-road territory. There was a nice review of fIREHOSE which gave me hope–fIREHOSE is great fun even if they never get close to the full-on glory of the Minutemen.
But I can ONLY imagine the gulag-like conditions that exist for those who scribble for About.com–I picture some sort of steroid-enhanced hulk of a guard standing over a row of cubicles, beating the writers until they produce headlines like this actual example from the 80s music blog:
’80s Duo Hall & Oates Boasts Plenty of Quality If No Surplus of Coolness
Ok, kids…Hall & Oates might have dabbled in new wave, they might have been great for laughs, you might even have gotten lucky to them if you went to high school in the 80s…but there is NO amount of marijuana that will EVER convince me that the words COOL and HALL & OATES should EVER go together.
I feel for the guy who writes this blog, I really do. I think maybe he’s being held hostage in the hills of Columbia somewhere, writing this stuff at gunpoint in fear of his life. If you know of his whereabouts, please get in touch so we can send a rescue mission in there to get him back. Then he can start writing about The Minutemen, Polyrock, and DEVO instead.