1993 mail-order catalog of “A to C” titles only stocked by Brookline, MA-based Throbbing Lobster, the onetime record label and business of rare record dealer Chuck Warner.
If you’re not already familiar with Boston record label Throbbing Lobster, I suggest you check out their catalog of releases. Active in the mid-to-late eighties, the label came to my attention via their very last release in 1988, a self-titled mini LP by Unattached. I had seen Unattached perform at one of those free, WFNX-sponsored outdoor concerts and bought their record shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until after I started working at In Your Ear Records a couple of years later that I was introduced to their influential 1984 compilation LPs, Nobody Gets On The Guest-List! and Let’s Breed! So many great songs on there from local bands like Christmas, Busted Statues and Dumptruck.
Label head Chuck Warner later turned his attention to the record dealing biz, as evidenced via this 1993 print catalog of “world punk and newwave.” The man had so many records that this multi-page, tiny-print catalog was only capable of showcasing titles by artists from A to C.
Chuck also had boxes of 7″ singles stocked at my record store on consignment. I remember thinking at the time how terribly overpriced they were—most titles were over $10! Yet I yearned to own many of them, especially that copy of the first Go-Betweens single, priced to stun at $150. (Yes, it goes for much more today. But this was 1991!)
Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Chuck parlayed his rare punk record collection—and accompanying encyclopedic knowledge—into a series of legally-questionable CD-R comps of rarities, self-released in the nineties under the “Messthetics” and “Hyped to Death” monikers. In a era just before the explosion of online musical discovery options, these comps helped bring some very obscure music at that time to a much larger audience.
And it does appear that Chuck is still in the rare record game, at least as a buyer. How do I know? Well, I have a number of records myself up on Discogs, and there were two large buys in the past year or so made by a familiar name: Chuck Warner. Based on subsequent correspondence, I found it was indeed the same person who helped open my eyes to one part of my early Boston music scene all those years ago.