A Handy Guide to Digitizing Vinyl Records from Soul-Sides.com

Soul-Sides.com is an awesome vinyl/MP3 blog featuring rare soul finds including 45s, 12-inch singles and much more. The music selection is fantastic and highly recommended, but the added bonus of a well-informed and non-snobby guide to high-quality vinyl-to-mp3 digitizing makes this blog even more valuable.

Oliver Wang, AKA DJ O-Dub, has been running this since 2000 (as a blog since 2003), so he’s got more than enough to obsess over in the archives. I’ve only just discovered this blog but am already impressed by the scope and quality. Bravo! … Continue Reading

Blogs To Watch: Music For Maniacs, Stereofound, and Thrift Store DJ

by Joe Wallace

Every once in a while I like to call attention to blogs that have caught my eye, and there are three that I’m really enjoying. Music For Maniacs, Stereofound and Thrift Store DJ are all dedicated to the oddball stuff on vinyl that most record store shoppers pass up in favor of those albums by Modest Mouse and Radiohead.

What those shoppers don’t know won’t hurt them though–I’m all in favor of having the unclassifiable music left alone in the bins until I can swing by to scoop them up, doofy treasures that they are. My fellow travelers in search of vinyl weirdness blog about their discoveries and I am SO very glad they do.

Music For Maniacs covers everything from exotica to mechanical music. That’s right, music made by machines. Not COMPUTERS, mind you. Picture something on the order of Doctor Phibes’s Clockwork Wizards except without the animatronic mannequins. This blog manages to be even cooler with a whole section dedicated to sound collage and mashups. BRILLIANT.

Stereofound is dedicated to what it describes as “non-music” on vinyl. In fact, according to Stereofound, the blog is obsessed with “oddities on vinyl, found at thrift stores and flea markets. Think of stereo-test records, jingles, sound effects, instructions..” My favorite part of Stereofound is the Moog section, but the Floppy Records stuff is a close second.

Thrift Store DJ is on a similar bent in that it is dedicated to, you guessed it, the music that gets left behind in the junk shop. … Continue Reading

Blog To Watch: The Record Robot

You might get the impression I’m addicted to vinyl blogs, but I love the quirky ones best of all–the ones that report on stuff that you didn’t DARE dream existed, let alone WISH to actually exist. Behold the image above from The Record Robot, which is a 45 single by CW McCall. It’s just kinda creepy to see a 45 recorded in the 70s that manages to resonate more than 30 years later with lyrics like:

“Columbine, columbine/
Blue in the Rockies/
Will you miss me, when I’ve gone away?”

OK, so maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, trying to tie that 45 in with more recent events…but still, any blog that manages to dig up strangeness on vinyl from as far off as Vietnam has my wholehearted support.

The album below features lounge singers from Vietnam in a variety of languages and now I am DYING to hear it.

Vietnamese Lounge? That’s a massive undiscovered genre I need to hear, and SOON. Three cheers for The Record Robot for continuing to chronicle unusual vinyl finds since 2005.

… Continue Reading

The Lost Turntable

Face it, blogs about vinyl are very few and far between when compared to their “anything goes” counterparts, so I was very pleased to find The Lost Turntable. It bears mentioning that I am a new fan of this blog not because of the MP3s from 12-inch singles and remixes, but because the writing is wonderfully caustic and fearless. In a review of Lollapalooza–which you couldn’t get me to at gunpoint because of those insane crowds–there is plenty of angst directed against Radiohead for a bewilderingly fan-unfriendly stage show, and some spleen venting at Rage Against The Machine. I quote now, only half-recovered from this. It made me laugh, depressing as it is…truer words were never written in a music blog about any one group…ever:

“Hey Rage, you do know that 90% of your fans don’t even give a shit about ‘the revolution,’ social injustice, political reform or the vanishing working class right? They just want to hear ‘Killing In The Name Of’ and start some shit. Nice message you got, too bad it’s falling on deaf ears. Time to call it a day.”

This sentiment is one I’ve had for a 13 years now and I am glad I’m not alone in the universe. Sometimes you don’t go to a show–in spite of how much you want to hear the band tear it up live–because you hate the FANS OF THE GROUP. I’d never go to a Nine Inch Nails show or a Ministry set for this reason. (Never mind that Ministry’s best days were when Al Jourgensen was in the inbetween period from pretending to be a gay disco maven to being the brain-dead industrial metal steelworker he became.)

But I digress. The Lost Turntable is all about bringing much-needed exposure to 12-inch vinyl and related sundries. I am a new convert…glad I found you, TLT.– RECOMMENDED

The Vinyl District

I’ve been searching for blogs like this with little success til now, but I am chuffed to see The Vinyl District, another music blog that is focused on the big blackfrisbee as much as Turntabling. Music blogs abound, but very few of us are interested in needles, cover art, and the anachronistic fun of spinning platters when we could be downloading MP3s.

The Vinyl District is a fellow traveler–here’s a blog that recognizes that some of this stuff is either never coming to the shiny disc or download format in any official way. Or what’s worse, if it does, it’s coming tweezed, tweaked, and otherwise interfered with. Bowie’s Diamond Dogs is a beautiful example. There are TONS of things on that vinyl album that just…don’t…sound…the…same on disc. The vinyl really does the job where the CD falls flat.

Besides, any blog that features Big Audio Dynamite tasty vinyl tracks gets my vote. TVD also shares my enthusiasm for the Mick Jones and Tony James project Carbon/Silicon, looks like we have much common ground here sonically. Great stuff. I am loving TVD, and you should too. RECOMMENDED.