Vinyl Answer

Every record tells a story. Here's a few stories in my collection. Good stuff from the outskirts of NYC.

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#eclipse

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If you go to Sony Hall in New York City to see a concert—as my beloved and I did yesterday—you’ll be greeted at the door by this massive display of Sony artifacts—electronics and albums put out by the company over the years. I have a soft spot in my heart for the 1990s section’s MiniDisc of Mariah Carey’s “Emotions” album—because the one in the display used to be mine. I bought a stack of maybe 10 MiniDiscs at a garage sale for $2 and after I eventually realized that no, I was never going to buy an MD player, I threw them on Discogs for stupid money…and a few weeks later, a woman contacted me about the Carey one, asking to buy it and could I overnight it? I said sure—and she gave me her address as Sony’s NYC HQ. I couldn’t help but ask why Sony needed one if they surely had one in a closet somewhere and she responded that it was for a corporate display. Knowing it would be seen somewhere in a giant office building, I took some car headlight buffing compound and shined it up, taking out the most infinitesimal scratches, and sent it to her. Fast-forward a few years, I went to Sony Hall one night, and there was a Sony corporate display with a familiar MiniDisc in it—I’m certain it’s the one I sold them. Glad I shined it up. So we went to see jamband Pink Talking Fish last night, covering Pink Floyd, Talking Heads and Phish, and it’s such a hairbrained idea that it works. A good night out! #sonyhall #sony #mariahcarey #talkingheads #pinkfloyd #phish #pinktalkingfish #livemusic #concert #minidisc https://www.instagram.com/p/CqN4b5FubCJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Now complete, it’s my Japanese pressing of Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense” soundtrack, all framed up. I never in a million years thought I would get all four members of a favorite band that broke up in 1988 on it, but it happened. More importantly, I was fortunate enough to meet some true musical heroes and get to simply say thank you to them for half a second. David Byrne was the first to scrawl on it in October 2019, when his show American Utopia was on Broadway; he did the traditional “signing Playbills and stuff at the stage entrance door” thing and then rode off on his bicycle off into Times Square. Drummer Chris Frantz kindly signed above Byrne at a library event/book signing at the Westport Library in Connecticut last April. His wife, bassist Tina Weymouth, was not in attendance, but she and Frantz did an appearance at a punk Christmas/live karaoke community hootenanny thing in December and it was an appropriate, low-key setting to ask for a signature, which she placed above her hubby. Lastly, while the rest of those had been free or nearly free, seeing the chance to complete the album’s autographs, I splashed out to get a VIP pass for Jerry Harrison’s recent tour with Adrian Belew. While I read close to that day that he’d demurred from signing stuff for VIP attendees, he amicably signed for folks at the one I went to, adding the silver autograph next to the Stop Making Sense logo.

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One of those early-80s AOR tracks where it’s always about how wild and dangerous it is “on the streets,” man. I remember this was played incessantly on early MTV because it had a helicopter in it—a video with a budget!

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I covered Muse the other evening at MSG—a band that never met a stage gag it didn’t like. Why use confetti cannons for the final number when you can use them four times during the show? I brought the kid as my +1, which was awesome. When she was born, I swore that if I was still covering shows when she was a teenager, I’d take her to everything. When she got old enough, I took her to one show with me 4 years ago and then the pandemic kicked in. No shows, and then when they came back, there were no more +1s. So getting to bring the kid, and getting to have a great time together, was priceless. She’ll be going off to college in a few months, so opportunities like this won’t exist much longer. My proudest moment, as we stood in the middle of the general admission crowd beneath that towering d&b audiotechnik GSL PA, was when she turned to me three songs into the show and said, “Dad, could I have those earplugs you brought for me after all?” Atta girl!

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Bobby Caldwell, R.I.P. I think every used record store in the country must have had a copy of this 1978 shaped record at some point. It’s enjoyably cheesy, which is totally appropriate for the top-10 hit, which remains a mainstay of supermarket music systems to this day. While he never had another hit himself, Caldwell went on to write an arguably even bigger slice of 80s cheese that went to number one—the Peter Cetera/Amy Grant duet, “Next Time I Fall In Love.”

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Back when I was a college PR intern at Mercury/Polygram Records, I found this awesome, forgotten promo item at the back of the closet where they kept all the mail-out CDs. What a brilliantly simple promo: a bottle opener featuring the beer-obsessed Bob & Doug McKenzie, whose two comedy albums they put out years and years earlier. Strangely, it somehow wound up in my backpack and was duly deployed for its primary objective at dorm parties thereafter.

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So we lost David Lindley this week—one of the great, under-appreciated guitar players of the 1970s SoCal scene. He is probably best known for his stellar slide guitar on a lot of Jackson Browne hits, but I’ve always enjoyed his side project, El Rayo-X. This album, 1988’s “Very Greasy,” is nothing but a party band having a good time. No great statements, no aim to sell-out stadiums—just a good time. The title comes from their raucous cover of “Werewolves of London,” which is not only musically impressive but also funny as hell, too, as they add a lot to it. It’s probably heresy to say, but I prefer this version to Warren Zevon’s classic original. The album was produced by Linda Ronstadt (!), and she and Browne show up on harmony vocals in a few places. The whole thing was recorded by legendary engineer Ed Cherney, one of the most affable pros I’ve ever met, who died a few years ago. R.I.P. to them both.

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My darling kid @ava_.young surprised me with a cool enamel pin for no reason at all—which is the best reason of all.

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I picked up a bunch of cheap 45s over the weekend, including this $2 UK picture disc from the mid-90s. I’d never heard of the song before—“Will You Still Be There (In The Morning)”—but it’s more of that mid-tempo adult contemporary pseudo-rock they were doing in the late 80s. There’s two things of note with this one—the innocuous but not particularly memorable song was written solely by mega-producer Mutt Lange….but he didn’t produce it. The other interesting bit is the B-side, recorded live in Capitol Studios; I’ve usually never cared much for “These Dreams,” but it’s a great rendition—lovely arrangement and nice performance.

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A year old today: Tears For Fears’ “The Tipping Point” — one of the most emotionally and intellectually satisfying comeback albums I’ve ever heard.

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I cleaned up my test pressing of Talking Heads’ genre-busting classic Fear Of Music this weekend. I don’t play it often for obvious reasons (I actually have a regular first pressing that I typically put on instead), but I wanted to enjoy it, pulled it out and yeah, it was kind of dirty—so I fixed that. On the upper left, you can see the grubby LP; to its right, I went at it with a Hunt brush, which did 70-80% of the work, getting dust out of the grooves, as you can see. Next, it took a bath in a HumminGuru ultrasonic record cleaning machine with a touch of Groovewasher G2 fluid in it, and Bam—you can see the decided improvement on the lower right. The record sounded amazing, particularly on (of all tracks) “Paper”—the ricocheting guitar echos were electrifying and Chris Frantz’s drums were right in the room. Totally worth the effort to clean this one up; it now is in a MoFi sleeve to keep it that way.

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So apparently the female Yin and Yang of Archie Comics, Betty and Veronica, will quit playing in The Archies and start their own group next month in a one-shot comic book that’s probably shorter than its title, “Betty & Veronica Friends Forever: Rock ‘N’ Roll.” Of note, the issue will have a few variant covers which spoof/pay homage to (take your pick) the iconic covers of Blondie’s classic 1981 “Rapture” single and Joan Jett’s 1983 “Album”…er…album. It’s not the first time Archie comics has leaned into the punk world—there’s been one-off issues of the Archies meeting the Ramones and Blondie, and the terrible 2001 Josie & the Pussycats movie had a stellar soundtrack featuring punky power-pop all-star collaborations from the GoGos, Fountains of Wayne, Letters To Cleo, Jellyfish, Matthew Sweet and many more.

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Picked this one up a few weeks ago; growing up, WNEW used to play this song all the time and I vaguely recall a bunch of us 12-year-old Boy Scouts on a camping trip talking about what a good song “One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer” was, LOL. I never knew it was a cover—much less a medley—that they were playing. It was a little disappointing to discover this is a live recording, not the original, but it’s a rowdy crowd and Thorogood knows how to play to his audience, so it’s fun regardless.

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Here’s a vintage misprint 7” single I picked up last week: Extreme’s classic 1990 acoustic ballad “More Than Words.” Somehow the blank label slipped through, so the previous owner labeled it themselves. I love songs with great harmonies, especially ones you can sing a third harmony part to, so this was a no-brainer to grab when I found it.

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Now I’ll preface this by saying I’m a huge David Sylvian fan — saw him twice in concert back in the day and will go to my deathbed with Alchemy as one of my top-5 records of all-time, closely followed by Brilliant Trees. That said — I picked up 2009’s 2-LP Manafon on vinyl the other week, quite proud of myself for getting it for $29.99 instead of $47, and I’ve got to say…I got overcharged by $29 as far as I’m concerned. Hell, I should be paid $29 just to have to listen to it. Y’know, I have a lot of the Flux & Mutability-type stuff he has done over the years, and it’s no secret that he leans into ethereal sound collages. I’m good with that; some of them are pretty cool. Manafon is not cool. This is as if he read every review that ever called his music pretentious and said “Oh YEAH? I’ll show you! You ain’t seen nothing yet!” This stuff is so formless in its execution, so arrogant in its supposition that someone would want to hear it, so mindbogglingly dull and pointless that it’s really indefensible even as abstract soundwork. It’s bad art done badly. What a disappointment.

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Dark Side of the Attic! Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” and Billy Joel’s “Songs In the Attic.”