I love articles about the resurgence of the beloved vinyl record. Here's another one, this one from our friends in Vermont:
Music shops selling used albums strong
By CHRIS GAROFOLO, Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO -- The faltering economy has caused several major industries to suffer on a national scale, but there's at least one on the local level that has not felt the effects of the recession.
Local retailers specializing in used records and CDs say their businesses have held steady even in the midst of what officials call the worst economic period since the Great Depression.
Cash-strapped music lovers continue to head to the corner shop to browse through the latest collection of secondhand albums.
"Despite it being a lousy economy, we still have a really loyal customer base," said Alicia Beasley, manager of Turn It Up! in Brattleboro. "We're doing well, we're doing good."
The store has seen a bump in sales since winter, with annual events such as last weekend's "May Magic" sidewalk sale bringing in decent profits.
"I think the economic downturn has helped us a bit, but the whole industry has seen a steady decline beginning in 1999," said Fred Wilber, owner of Montpelier's Buch Spieler.
With the digitizing of music and its wide availability online, secondhand stores have taken a major hit over the past decade, he said.
Elektra Duncan, co-owner of In the Moment, a record store in Brattleboro, agreed with Wilber about the condition of the music retail industry.
"I think that we're holding steady in a time when many stores are showing a decline," she said.
Approaching its fourth year in downtown Brattleboro, Duncan said In the Moment has seen a jump in its annual sales regardless of the national economy.
To stay in business during a recession and the explosion of music Web sites, many retail shops have turned to the Internet to reach a broader audience.
Duncan said their online business is holding its own, selling a good portion of contemporary and pop music to buyers in Europe, Russia and Japan.
"We've decided to integrate (the Internet) rather than fight it," he said.
Expanding retail services to the Internet has also helped Burlington-based Pure Pop Records stay afloat.
According to store employee Amy Wild, online albums sales have boosted even as less business is seen revolving through the doors.
"The stuff that won't necessarily sell at the store in Burlington will sell online in other parts of the country and around the world," she said.
Online music has also helped Turn It Up! sales, but in a different way.
Beasley said the store can compete with online music sites because Turn It Up! is selling music for the same price or less than downloading tunes.
"We're finding a lot of people check here and compare it to online, and buy their music here," she said.
Resale stores usually thrive during difficult economic periods. Consumers with less money in their pockets tend to sell unnecessary items in an effort to acquire some quick cash.
"We're definitively seeing an older generation bringing stuff in," said Beasley. There has been a mixed bag of middle-aged customers selling vinyl and CDs, she added.
"There's been a lot of people coming in to sell their music collection to make some extra money," said Wild.
Most shops report an increase in customers bringing in their vinyl records, but many retailers say the aging bundles often yield few sales.
"I've been seeing more vinyl coming in, but what they bring in isn't very good," said Wilber. If people are trying to maximize their return, many turn to online services, he said.
In some cases, it isn't even the dusty vinyl boxes left in the attic for years that people are selling.
"We buy movies, too, we're seen a lot of that," said Beasley.
But since more customers are pawning off old vinyl albums and used CDs, music shops also benefit because it provides a high turnover rate of new merchandise coming in.
"People are getting rid of a lot of old stuff, but vinyl's coming back around," said Duncan. The record sales are increasing at a faster rate than CDs, she said.
With a new awareness around records, more teenagers are coming in and looking at classic rock 'n' roll albums re-released on vinyl, said Duncan. "People are recognizing there is a difference in how it sounds."
Buch Spieler has seen the opposite effect -- less youth purchasing records and more people buying new CDs.
Wilber said he has noticed his shop alter from an after-school hangout to an older clientele looking to add to their collections with brand new CDs.
"I'm not getting as many used CDs as I used to," he added. Wilber has owned the capital city music store for more than three decades.
Even in tough economic times, people continue to look at entertainment items, such as purchasing music or going to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
But for the same price seeing a movie once in the theater, Wilber said a customer can own an album for a lifetime. "Music is still a relatively good bargain."
SOURCE: http://www.reformer.com
Monday, May 11, 2009
Top 5 eBay Vinyl Record Sales
Week Ending 05/09/2009
1. LP - The Beatles "Yesterday and Today" LP Butcher First State Mono Perry Cox COA - $7,000.00 - Start: $7,000.00 - Bids: BIN
2. 45 - Walter & The Admeration's "Man Oh Man (What Have I Done)" / "Life Of Tears" La-Cindy - $4,250.00 - Start: $9.99 - Bids: 15
3. 45 - Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers "My Bonnie" / "The Saints" - $4,175.00 - Start: $0.01 - Bids: 34
4. 45 - Rock Bottom & The Spys "Rich Girl" / "No Good" "Death Trap" Bottom - $2,945.99 - Start: $1,000.00 Bids: 9
5. 45 - The Sweets "Satisfy Me Baby" / "Something About My Baby" Soultown - $2,600.00 - Start: $3,000.00 - Bids: Best Offer
Lots of butcher covers sell on eBay, but none have been mono first states with a Perry Cox certificate, so this week's #1 stands alone, selling on a Buy-It-Now for $7k.
45's fill out the rest of the list, with the northern soul 45 from Walter & The Admeration's single selling for halfway over $4.2k. The Beatles show up again in the #3 spot, this time in their incarnation as the Beat Brothers backing Tony Sheridan. The "My Bonnie" single bids up well over $4.1k.
In the #4 spot a punk 45 makes its way up past $2.9k, and last, another norther soul 45 from The Sweets gets a best offer of $3k.
As always, thanks to Norm at http://ccdiscoveries.blogspot.com/ for this great data!
1. LP - The Beatles "Yesterday and Today" LP Butcher First State Mono Perry Cox COA - $7,000.00 - Start: $7,000.00 - Bids: BIN
2. 45 - Walter & The Admeration's "Man Oh Man (What Have I Done)" / "Life Of Tears" La-Cindy - $4,250.00 - Start: $9.99 - Bids: 15
3. 45 - Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers "My Bonnie" / "The Saints" - $4,175.00 - Start: $0.01 - Bids: 34
4. 45 - Rock Bottom & The Spys "Rich Girl" / "No Good" "Death Trap" Bottom - $2,945.99 - Start: $1,000.00 Bids: 9
5. 45 - The Sweets "Satisfy Me Baby" / "Something About My Baby" Soultown - $2,600.00 - Start: $3,000.00 - Bids: Best Offer
Lots of butcher covers sell on eBay, but none have been mono first states with a Perry Cox certificate, so this week's #1 stands alone, selling on a Buy-It-Now for $7k.
45's fill out the rest of the list, with the northern soul 45 from Walter & The Admeration's single selling for halfway over $4.2k. The Beatles show up again in the #3 spot, this time in their incarnation as the Beat Brothers backing Tony Sheridan. The "My Bonnie" single bids up well over $4.1k.
In the #4 spot a punk 45 makes its way up past $2.9k, and last, another norther soul 45 from The Sweets gets a best offer of $3k.
As always, thanks to Norm at http://ccdiscoveries.blogspot.com/ for this great data!
Music News & Notes
Sir Paul & Dylan?
Bob Dylan has stated that he would like to collaborate with Paul McCartney on a future studio project. Dylan told Rolling Stone:
"That would be exciting, to do something with Paul but, you know, your paths have to cross for something like that to make sense."
A spokesman for McCartney said "I should think he would be very interested in hearing about it. As you can imagine, it would be a pretty major thing if it went ahead."
=========================
New Bangles' Material?
Susanna Hoffs not only has "Under the Covers Volume 2" coming out with Matthew Sweet, but she is also in the process of writing a new Bangles album.
"We're kind of under the radar to some extent, but we're always on and off the road during the year. We're sort of approaching the record like we're going to go in and record three songs, and go out on the road and come back, and go in and record three songs," she said to Spinner.
=========================
Wilco Album Cover Art
Wilco revealed the album cover for their new LP Wilco (The Album) on their official Website: And yes, it’s a photo of a camel attending a rooftop birthday party. The picture is from a site in Milwaukee, WI (a eatery) and the LP is set for a June 30th release date.
Bob Dylan has stated that he would like to collaborate with Paul McCartney on a future studio project. Dylan told Rolling Stone:
"That would be exciting, to do something with Paul but, you know, your paths have to cross for something like that to make sense."
A spokesman for McCartney said "I should think he would be very interested in hearing about it. As you can imagine, it would be a pretty major thing if it went ahead."
=========================
New Bangles' Material?
Susanna Hoffs not only has "Under the Covers Volume 2" coming out with Matthew Sweet, but she is also in the process of writing a new Bangles album.
"We're kind of under the radar to some extent, but we're always on and off the road during the year. We're sort of approaching the record like we're going to go in and record three songs, and go out on the road and come back, and go in and record three songs," she said to Spinner.
=========================
Wilco Album Cover Art
Wilco revealed the album cover for their new LP Wilco (The Album) on their official Website: And yes, it’s a photo of a camel attending a rooftop birthday party. The picture is from a site in Milwaukee, WI (a eatery) and the LP is set for a June 30th release date.
The Fascinating History of Record Collecting
A great article from my vinyl friends over at NYLVI.com
By Kevin Hawkins
Record Collecting has been around for about as long as recorded sound. In the beginning phonographs and the records, which were played (first wax cylinders and later flat shellac discs) were mostly reserved for the rich people. However, by 1920 the manufacturing process for both records and players was improved, which lead to a drop in the price for the players and purchasing music became a possibility for a broader range of people.
After the phonograph cylinder was given up the record became the uncontested medium for decades. The number of available recordings exploded and the number of companies, which pressed records also increased incredibly. The records, which were pressed, were 78 rpm, double-sided, ten-inch shellac discs, with about four minutes of recording time on each side.
While the recorded sound industry grew at an extreme high pace the growth eventually slowed down by the Great Depression and World War II, since countries were lacking raw materials. When World War II ended, the economy in these countries started to grow again and what happened was that Classical music (which accounted for a significant portion of the 78rpm releases) was slowly pushed into minority status by the influx of popular and new music.
An important point in the history of record collecting was when the 33 1/3 rpm, 12-inch LP record and the 45 rpm, 7-inch record became available on the market around 1949/1950. These formats provided advances in both storage and quality and these records were made of vinyl, which then came to replace shellac as manufacturing material. Also, groups of small record labels were formed with the beginning of the rock and roll era in the early to middle 1950s, and the growth of a market among post-war teenagers with disposable income to spend on 45 rpm singles was important.
Record Collecting as a hobby most likely did not take shape as it is know today before until the 1960s. With the folk music boom in the late 1950s to early 1960s, there was suddenly a demand for archival material. In some countries record collectors started to search small and remote towns for older discs. In the beginning the most wanted items were pre-World War II shellac discs containing records, which mostly were what is considered the precursors to then current rock and roll and country styles. Later generations of record collectors found their passion in digging up obscure 45s for genres such as doo-wop, or LPs from the late 1960s garage rock and psychedelic genres.
In January 1964 the pop music scene changed forever with the arrival of The Beatles in the United States. Following The Beatles was a wave of thousands of bands inspired by their fresh; lively take on rock music with a sharp British sensibility, picked up guitars and many released records. Many of these acolytes released 45 rpm records in small batches to sell at local concerts and to their friends and families. Because of their relatively small pressings, these obscure local records became highly priced and valuable.
The collectors item with the most notoriety in record collecting is not a record at all, but merely an album cover. The Beatles themselves accidentally contributed what s probably the most well known and valuable collectors piece of the rock and roll era: The Butcher Cover. This title is an informal one for the cover of the Yesterday and Today album, which was released in 1967. Until this date LP releases in the US by The Beatles were different from those released released in the United Kingdom. The ones released in the US were shorter, had different songs, album titles and artwork.
Another Holy Grail of some collectors is Bob Dylans The Freewheelin Bob Dylan released in 1963, and has four songs that were deleted from subsequent pressings. For example the price of this record is known to be around $35,000 for the stereo version and $16,500 for the mono version, when in excellent condition.
One collectible record format is known as test pressing. A test pressing is what the name implied; 5-10 copies of a record pressed for the purpose of checking the mix or levels on a record, or to ensure that the die is cutting properly. Although the test pressing is naturally meant for the band, producer, pressing plant or record label to keep as reference, they are often placed in special packaging and given out to friends or devoted fans.
About the author
Kevin Hawkins writes about music, the music industry and vinyl records. To find out more about the history of record collecting and vinyl check out nylvi.com.
Nylvi is a social marketplace for record collectors.
By Kevin Hawkins
Record Collecting has been around for about as long as recorded sound. In the beginning phonographs and the records, which were played (first wax cylinders and later flat shellac discs) were mostly reserved for the rich people. However, by 1920 the manufacturing process for both records and players was improved, which lead to a drop in the price for the players and purchasing music became a possibility for a broader range of people.
After the phonograph cylinder was given up the record became the uncontested medium for decades. The number of available recordings exploded and the number of companies, which pressed records also increased incredibly. The records, which were pressed, were 78 rpm, double-sided, ten-inch shellac discs, with about four minutes of recording time on each side.
While the recorded sound industry grew at an extreme high pace the growth eventually slowed down by the Great Depression and World War II, since countries were lacking raw materials. When World War II ended, the economy in these countries started to grow again and what happened was that Classical music (which accounted for a significant portion of the 78rpm releases) was slowly pushed into minority status by the influx of popular and new music.
An important point in the history of record collecting was when the 33 1/3 rpm, 12-inch LP record and the 45 rpm, 7-inch record became available on the market around 1949/1950. These formats provided advances in both storage and quality and these records were made of vinyl, which then came to replace shellac as manufacturing material. Also, groups of small record labels were formed with the beginning of the rock and roll era in the early to middle 1950s, and the growth of a market among post-war teenagers with disposable income to spend on 45 rpm singles was important.
Record Collecting as a hobby most likely did not take shape as it is know today before until the 1960s. With the folk music boom in the late 1950s to early 1960s, there was suddenly a demand for archival material. In some countries record collectors started to search small and remote towns for older discs. In the beginning the most wanted items were pre-World War II shellac discs containing records, which mostly were what is considered the precursors to then current rock and roll and country styles. Later generations of record collectors found their passion in digging up obscure 45s for genres such as doo-wop, or LPs from the late 1960s garage rock and psychedelic genres.
In January 1964 the pop music scene changed forever with the arrival of The Beatles in the United States. Following The Beatles was a wave of thousands of bands inspired by their fresh; lively take on rock music with a sharp British sensibility, picked up guitars and many released records. Many of these acolytes released 45 rpm records in small batches to sell at local concerts and to their friends and families. Because of their relatively small pressings, these obscure local records became highly priced and valuable.
The collectors item with the most notoriety in record collecting is not a record at all, but merely an album cover. The Beatles themselves accidentally contributed what s probably the most well known and valuable collectors piece of the rock and roll era: The Butcher Cover. This title is an informal one for the cover of the Yesterday and Today album, which was released in 1967. Until this date LP releases in the US by The Beatles were different from those released released in the United Kingdom. The ones released in the US were shorter, had different songs, album titles and artwork.
Another Holy Grail of some collectors is Bob Dylans The Freewheelin Bob Dylan released in 1963, and has four songs that were deleted from subsequent pressings. For example the price of this record is known to be around $35,000 for the stereo version and $16,500 for the mono version, when in excellent condition.
One collectible record format is known as test pressing. A test pressing is what the name implied; 5-10 copies of a record pressed for the purpose of checking the mix or levels on a record, or to ensure that the die is cutting properly. Although the test pressing is naturally meant for the band, producer, pressing plant or record label to keep as reference, they are often placed in special packaging and given out to friends or devoted fans.
About the author
Kevin Hawkins writes about music, the music industry and vinyl records. To find out more about the history of record collecting and vinyl check out nylvi.com.
Nylvi is a social marketplace for record collectors.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
It's Alive!: Bringing new life to old records
By DAVE PHILLIPS
Freedom News Service
In a shadowy basement, past shelves and shelves of dusty, preserved specimens, Bill Cook stepped into his laboratory.
In front of him stood stacks and stacks of arcane machines, tangled with cables.
"Some call me Dr. Frankenstein," he said, turning, so the light caught his face. "I take old, dead recordings and bring them back to life."
He laughed, then slipped a scratched, 70-year-old record out of its yellowed paper sleeve, laid it on a spinning RCA turntable, and set the needle in the groove.
The laboratory in an unassuming split-level house on a quiet wooded lot in Woodland Park, Colo., suddenly flooded with the blare of big band horns and clarinets. The vinyl hissed and crackled as the needle clattered in rutted grooves. It sounded as if the whole band were playing through a tin can.
Cook, 78, stood still for a moment, listening, then started to nudge knobs and prod switches. Lights blinked. Signals surged through cables. Processors crunched the millions of ones and zeros that make up digital sound. And slowly Cook coaxed the battered sound of the record back to life, until it almost sounded as though the band were in the room.
That is Cook's passion and his art. He digs up the remains of recordings, revives them with a complex cocktail of digital processes, and rerecords them on CD as bright, digital sound.
He then re-releases selected works on his tiny record label, Audiophonic.
"I can take an old 78 from the Depression and make it sound like it was recorded yesterday," he said.
He turned back to his stacks of analog equalizers, amplifiers, and digital enhancers and fiddled with the knobs, making slight adjustments.
Cook is one of a small cadre of cottage audio craftsman slowly bringing dead music back to the future.
"There are several people, each with different specialties," said Rick Starr of Portland, Ore., who markets and distributes releases for a handful of digital remasterers, including Cook.
"What makes Bill Cook special is his ear," Starr said. "He is an audio wonk ... an audio geek ... an audiophile ... he just has a really amazing ear. And he has an incredible collection of records."
Shelves sag under the weight of 50,000 records in Cook's laboratory - 45s, LPs, old 78s, and about 30,000 rare 16-inch vinyl discs called transcriptions that were played by radio stations from the 1930s to the early 1950s, before the invention of the LP.
"Those are my specialty," Cook said. "I've been collecting them my whole life."
Cook's is not the largest collection of transcriptions, but it's close.
"The Library of Congress still has me beat," he said with a slight chuckle.
SOUND BARRIERS
Cook has been fascinated with sound since he built his own high fidelity record player as a kid in 1942.
"Regular records sounded like hell," he said. "Those transcriptions from the radio stations were the only source of hi-fi records. So I started collecting them."
He trained as an electrical engineer in college and hung around Hollywood sound studios on summer breaks. He owned AM and FM radio stations in Colorado Springs, Colo. He worked in film. He even worked for the Apollo space program - always trying to create better sound.
Along the way he kept collecting old sound equipment and 16-inch records. Today his basement is a tangle of old and new. Boxes of vacuum tubes, New Deal-era turntables the size of washing machines, and a 7-foot-tall Ampex amplifier stand next to state-of-the-art digital converters.
"This is the recorder Lawrence Welk used to lipsync all his shows," he said, pointing to a large 1940 reel-to-reel.
"This amplifier was used to record the theme to ‘Star Trek,'" he said. "As this stuff got old and new technology moved in, people were just smashing up this stuff and throwing it away. So I would take it off their hands."
Cook feeds the scratchy analog sound through a series of computers - aptly called the declicker, decrackler, dehisser and debuzzer - that take out all the noise, leaving clean, digital music.
The whole setup costs about $100,000, Cook said.
Cook's stash of old equipment and lifetime working with sound put him in a perfect position to become the Dr. Frankenstein of a dead musical era. But it is the shelves of 16-inch radio transcriptions that give him a loophole to do it legally.
‘'A GRAY AREA'
As recording technology has changed over the decades, whole libraries of music have been marooned on obsolete technology. Who has a record player anymore?
Hobbyists such as Cook have the technology to update old music, but copyright law, which generally states that record labels own the rights to a recording forever, keep them from doing it. If someone found a 100-year-old Columbia Records wax cylinder and wanted to rerecord it on CD, Columbia would have to give permission first.
Companies often choose not to, or charge royalties that make it too pricey.
But Cook has slipped through the cracks. His 16-inch transcription discs were never sold to the public. Record companies sent them to radio stations to play, then be thrown away.
"So they weren't regulated under the same laws," Cook said. "We exist in a gray area."
Since 2004, his tiny record label has released a dozen CDs by long-dead artists such as Ozzie Nelson and his orchestra and country-western stars the Sons of the Pioneers.
He has sold several thousand copies through collectors' magazines and his Web site, www.audiophonic.biz.
His tiny company also digitizes people's personal record collections.
"This is all music I love," he said as he stood listening to the clean stream of band music pouring out of the laboratory. "It makes me happy to be able to bring it alive."
SOURCE: http://www.thetelegraph.com/
Freedom News Service
In a shadowy basement, past shelves and shelves of dusty, preserved specimens, Bill Cook stepped into his laboratory.
In front of him stood stacks and stacks of arcane machines, tangled with cables.
"Some call me Dr. Frankenstein," he said, turning, so the light caught his face. "I take old, dead recordings and bring them back to life."
He laughed, then slipped a scratched, 70-year-old record out of its yellowed paper sleeve, laid it on a spinning RCA turntable, and set the needle in the groove.
The laboratory in an unassuming split-level house on a quiet wooded lot in Woodland Park, Colo., suddenly flooded with the blare of big band horns and clarinets. The vinyl hissed and crackled as the needle clattered in rutted grooves. It sounded as if the whole band were playing through a tin can.
Cook, 78, stood still for a moment, listening, then started to nudge knobs and prod switches. Lights blinked. Signals surged through cables. Processors crunched the millions of ones and zeros that make up digital sound. And slowly Cook coaxed the battered sound of the record back to life, until it almost sounded as though the band were in the room.
That is Cook's passion and his art. He digs up the remains of recordings, revives them with a complex cocktail of digital processes, and rerecords them on CD as bright, digital sound.
He then re-releases selected works on his tiny record label, Audiophonic.
"I can take an old 78 from the Depression and make it sound like it was recorded yesterday," he said.
He turned back to his stacks of analog equalizers, amplifiers, and digital enhancers and fiddled with the knobs, making slight adjustments.
Cook is one of a small cadre of cottage audio craftsman slowly bringing dead music back to the future.
"There are several people, each with different specialties," said Rick Starr of Portland, Ore., who markets and distributes releases for a handful of digital remasterers, including Cook.
"What makes Bill Cook special is his ear," Starr said. "He is an audio wonk ... an audio geek ... an audiophile ... he just has a really amazing ear. And he has an incredible collection of records."
Shelves sag under the weight of 50,000 records in Cook's laboratory - 45s, LPs, old 78s, and about 30,000 rare 16-inch vinyl discs called transcriptions that were played by radio stations from the 1930s to the early 1950s, before the invention of the LP.
"Those are my specialty," Cook said. "I've been collecting them my whole life."
Cook's is not the largest collection of transcriptions, but it's close.
"The Library of Congress still has me beat," he said with a slight chuckle.
SOUND BARRIERS
Cook has been fascinated with sound since he built his own high fidelity record player as a kid in 1942.
"Regular records sounded like hell," he said. "Those transcriptions from the radio stations were the only source of hi-fi records. So I started collecting them."
He trained as an electrical engineer in college and hung around Hollywood sound studios on summer breaks. He owned AM and FM radio stations in Colorado Springs, Colo. He worked in film. He even worked for the Apollo space program - always trying to create better sound.
Along the way he kept collecting old sound equipment and 16-inch records. Today his basement is a tangle of old and new. Boxes of vacuum tubes, New Deal-era turntables the size of washing machines, and a 7-foot-tall Ampex amplifier stand next to state-of-the-art digital converters.
"This is the recorder Lawrence Welk used to lipsync all his shows," he said, pointing to a large 1940 reel-to-reel.
"This amplifier was used to record the theme to ‘Star Trek,'" he said. "As this stuff got old and new technology moved in, people were just smashing up this stuff and throwing it away. So I would take it off their hands."
Cook feeds the scratchy analog sound through a series of computers - aptly called the declicker, decrackler, dehisser and debuzzer - that take out all the noise, leaving clean, digital music.
The whole setup costs about $100,000, Cook said.
Cook's stash of old equipment and lifetime working with sound put him in a perfect position to become the Dr. Frankenstein of a dead musical era. But it is the shelves of 16-inch radio transcriptions that give him a loophole to do it legally.
‘'A GRAY AREA'
As recording technology has changed over the decades, whole libraries of music have been marooned on obsolete technology. Who has a record player anymore?
Hobbyists such as Cook have the technology to update old music, but copyright law, which generally states that record labels own the rights to a recording forever, keep them from doing it. If someone found a 100-year-old Columbia Records wax cylinder and wanted to rerecord it on CD, Columbia would have to give permission first.
Companies often choose not to, or charge royalties that make it too pricey.
But Cook has slipped through the cracks. His 16-inch transcription discs were never sold to the public. Record companies sent them to radio stations to play, then be thrown away.
"So they weren't regulated under the same laws," Cook said. "We exist in a gray area."
Since 2004, his tiny record label has released a dozen CDs by long-dead artists such as Ozzie Nelson and his orchestra and country-western stars the Sons of the Pioneers.
He has sold several thousand copies through collectors' magazines and his Web site, www.audiophonic.biz.
His tiny company also digitizes people's personal record collections.
"This is all music I love," he said as he stood listening to the clean stream of band music pouring out of the laboratory. "It makes me happy to be able to bring it alive."
SOURCE: http://www.thetelegraph.com/
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Music News & Notes
Green Day Tour
Green Day have enlisted Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs as the opening acts for the second half of their U.S. summer tour; openers for the first half are still being sorted out according to Pitchfork. The Kaisers will join Green Day from July 27th at New York’s Madison Square Garden to August 7th in New Orleans, with Franz taking over between Houston’s August 8th date and the tour’s finale, August 25th in Los Angeles.
======================
KISS Dolls Available
For the Kiss fan who has everything, there are some new action figures coming this August. You can check out unpainted models of the toys at Kiss Online; all four figures — Starchild, Catman, Spaceman, and the Demon — will be released in a limited-edition collectible window box, depicting the band onstage.
======================
Shins Back In Action
Indie-pop group the Shins have been on an extended break for more than a year, but with a 16-date tour that kicked off on May 2nd in Bellingham, Washington, and approximately 30 songs written for a new album, the group is getting back to work — though they’re not exactly the same group.
Talkative keyboardist Marty Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandoval have left the band (on good terms, according to frontman James Mercer). They’ve been replaced by the Fruit Bats’ Ron Lewis and Joe Plummer, who plays drums in the San Diego indie-rock group Black Heart Procession as well as Modest Mouse.
======================
Test Pressings Available At Vinyl Collective
Stop by www.vinylcollective.com and score some collectible test pressings! Some of these test pressings will not ever be sold again.
36 CRAZY FISTS “The Tide” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
A LIFE ONCE LOST “Iron Gag” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD/ COBRA SKULLS “Under the Influence Vol 6″ 7″ TEST PRESSING #/10
AUSTIN LUCAS “Somebody Loves You” LP TEST PRESSING #/20
BOYS NIGHT OUT “Make Yourself Sick” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
DRAG THE RIVER “Can’t Leave These Strays” 7″ TEST PRESSING #/20
DRAG THE RIVER “Garage Rock” 7″ TEST PRESSING #/20
DRAG THE RIVER “You Can’t Live This Way” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
DRAG THE RIVER ìUnder the Influence Vol. 5_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
DRAG THE RIVER/ THE DENTS “Found All The Parts” LP TEST PRESSING
EVERY TIME I DIE “Big Dirty” LP TEST PRESSING
EVERY TIME I DIE “Gutter Phenomenon” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
EVERY TIME I DIE “Hot Damn” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
EVERY TIME I DIE “Last Night In Town” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
FAKE PROBLEMS / LOOK MEXICO ìUnder the Influence Vol. 1_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
FOXY SHAZAM “Introducing” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
GHOST BUFFALO “The Magician” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
HEAVY HEAVY LOW LOW “Turtle Nipple” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
JOEY CAPE “Bridge” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
JOEY CAPE / JON SNODGRASS ìWho Wants to Get Down?î 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
JON SNODGRASS “Visitor’s Band” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
MAYLENE & THE SONS OF DISASTER “II” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
MINUS THE BEAR “Interpretaciones” LP TEST PRESSING
NINJA GUN “Restless Rubes” LP TEST PRESSING #/20
NORMA JEAN “Anti-Mother” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
NORMA JEAN 4 x LP Box Set TEST PRESSING #/20
POISON THE WELL “Versions” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
PORTUGAL THE MAN “Church Mouth” LP TEST PRESSING
SCOTT REYNOLDS & THE STEAMING BEAST LP test pressing
SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY “Intervals” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY “Parasite” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
SPARTA “Threes” dbl LP TEST PRESSING #/10
STEREOTYPERIDER “Songs In The Keys Of F And U” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET / THE ERGS! ìUnder the Influence Vol. 4_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/20
THE JEALOUS SOUND “Kill Them With Kindness” dbl LP TEST PRESSING #/20
THE PLAYING FAVORITES LP test pressing joey cape lagwagon
THE TAKERS “Curse Of A Drunk” 7″ TEST PRESSING #/10
TIM BARRY “Laurel St Demos” LP TEST PRESSING #/5
TIM BARRY “Manchester” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
TIM BARRY “Rivanna Junction” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
TWO COW GARAGE “Speaking In Cursive” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
USELESS I.D. “Lost Broken Bones” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
V/A “Delicious Vinyl” LP TEST PRESSING #/20
V/A “Revival Road” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
WHISKEY & CO/ NINJA GUN ìUnder the Influence Vol. 2_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
Green Day have enlisted Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs as the opening acts for the second half of their U.S. summer tour; openers for the first half are still being sorted out according to Pitchfork. The Kaisers will join Green Day from July 27th at New York’s Madison Square Garden to August 7th in New Orleans, with Franz taking over between Houston’s August 8th date and the tour’s finale, August 25th in Los Angeles.
======================
KISS Dolls Available
For the Kiss fan who has everything, there are some new action figures coming this August. You can check out unpainted models of the toys at Kiss Online; all four figures — Starchild, Catman, Spaceman, and the Demon — will be released in a limited-edition collectible window box, depicting the band onstage.
======================
Shins Back In Action
Indie-pop group the Shins have been on an extended break for more than a year, but with a 16-date tour that kicked off on May 2nd in Bellingham, Washington, and approximately 30 songs written for a new album, the group is getting back to work — though they’re not exactly the same group.
Talkative keyboardist Marty Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandoval have left the band (on good terms, according to frontman James Mercer). They’ve been replaced by the Fruit Bats’ Ron Lewis and Joe Plummer, who plays drums in the San Diego indie-rock group Black Heart Procession as well as Modest Mouse.
======================
Test Pressings Available At Vinyl Collective
Stop by www.vinylcollective.com and score some collectible test pressings! Some of these test pressings will not ever be sold again.
36 CRAZY FISTS “The Tide” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
A LIFE ONCE LOST “Iron Gag” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD/ COBRA SKULLS “Under the Influence Vol 6″ 7″ TEST PRESSING #/10
AUSTIN LUCAS “Somebody Loves You” LP TEST PRESSING #/20
BOYS NIGHT OUT “Make Yourself Sick” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
DRAG THE RIVER “Can’t Leave These Strays” 7″ TEST PRESSING #/20
DRAG THE RIVER “Garage Rock” 7″ TEST PRESSING #/20
DRAG THE RIVER “You Can’t Live This Way” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
DRAG THE RIVER ìUnder the Influence Vol. 5_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
DRAG THE RIVER/ THE DENTS “Found All The Parts” LP TEST PRESSING
EVERY TIME I DIE “Big Dirty” LP TEST PRESSING
EVERY TIME I DIE “Gutter Phenomenon” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
EVERY TIME I DIE “Hot Damn” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
EVERY TIME I DIE “Last Night In Town” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
FAKE PROBLEMS / LOOK MEXICO ìUnder the Influence Vol. 1_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
FOXY SHAZAM “Introducing” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
GHOST BUFFALO “The Magician” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
HEAVY HEAVY LOW LOW “Turtle Nipple” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
JOEY CAPE “Bridge” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
JOEY CAPE / JON SNODGRASS ìWho Wants to Get Down?î 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
JON SNODGRASS “Visitor’s Band” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
MAYLENE & THE SONS OF DISASTER “II” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
MINUS THE BEAR “Interpretaciones” LP TEST PRESSING
NINJA GUN “Restless Rubes” LP TEST PRESSING #/20
NORMA JEAN “Anti-Mother” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
NORMA JEAN 4 x LP Box Set TEST PRESSING #/20
POISON THE WELL “Versions” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
PORTUGAL THE MAN “Church Mouth” LP TEST PRESSING
SCOTT REYNOLDS & THE STEAMING BEAST LP test pressing
SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY “Intervals” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY “Parasite” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
SPARTA “Threes” dbl LP TEST PRESSING #/10
STEREOTYPERIDER “Songs In The Keys Of F And U” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET / THE ERGS! ìUnder the Influence Vol. 4_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/20
THE JEALOUS SOUND “Kill Them With Kindness” dbl LP TEST PRESSING #/20
THE PLAYING FAVORITES LP test pressing joey cape lagwagon
THE TAKERS “Curse Of A Drunk” 7″ TEST PRESSING #/10
TIM BARRY “Laurel St Demos” LP TEST PRESSING #/5
TIM BARRY “Manchester” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
TIM BARRY “Rivanna Junction” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
TWO COW GARAGE “Speaking In Cursive” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
USELESS I.D. “Lost Broken Bones” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
V/A “Delicious Vinyl” LP TEST PRESSING #/20
V/A “Revival Road” LP TEST PRESSING #/10
WHISKEY & CO/ NINJA GUN ìUnder the Influence Vol. 2_ 7_ TEST PRESSING #/10
Friday, May 8, 2009
Michael Fremer Review
I am very proud to continue our new feature (look for this every Friday), music reviews that are written by the senior contributing editor of Stereophile magazine- Michael Fremer. It has been a pleasure to speak with Michael and learn more about audio sound and equipment. In fact, his new DVD, "It's A Vinyl World, After All" has hit the shelves and is selling out very quickly. This is a must have for anybody who loves vinyl, it is a true masterpiece.
Additionally, make sure to stop by his site, www.musicangle.com and bookmark it for further exploration. I certainly want to thank Michael for the exclusive rights to reprint his fantastic material.
Neil Young (recent release)
Live at Massey Hall 1971
Reprise/Classic 43328-1 2 200g Quiex SV-P LPs
Produced by: David Briggs and Neil Young
Engineered by: David Briggs
Mixed by: David Briggs Live at Massey Hall
Mastered by: Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering
Review by: Michael Fremer
2009-05-01
As soon as Young walks on stage and you hear the applause, you’ll know you’re in for a sonic treat. The audience has been carefully miked, which is not always the case with live recordings, even when the stage sound is good. The applause captures the hall space well too.
There’s a bit of fumbling as Young adjusts the mike. The intense 25 year old begins an unadorned cover of the Buffalo Springfield classic “On the Way Home” and the intimate treat that is Massey Hall 1971 unfolds. The vocal and guitar miking are spectacularly intimate and natural sounding, yet there’s just the right amount of hall sound reflection and P.A. reinforcement to let you know you’re listening to a live performance. The credits say David Briggs mixed live in the hall and that makes the production all the more remarkable.
Young’s nerves don’t appear in his fingers playing or in his voice singing, but his in-between song patter produces a few uncomfortable moments for him and for a photographer.
Young introduces the then new “Old Man” explaining that he’s just moved to a ranch that came with a foreman, about whom the song was written. “Yea, I live on a ranch now… lucky me,” he apologizes oddly for his success to the audience.
Earlier he complains to a photographer about being distracted by the shutter clicking, asking him to only shoot during applause—a somewhat restricting admonition for a professional (I assume it wasn’t some asshole in the audience) trying to get some good images, but certainly within the right of the artist to insist. However, Young doesn’t just make the request, he digs in until he makes the photographer feel really small and the audience his enemy. I would imagine hearing it today, it’s Young who feels small, but I could be wrong!
Young’s repertoire at this point so early in his career is remarkably varied and contains many tunes that would become signatures. He also covers “Tell Me Why,” “Journey Through the Past,” “Helpless,” (big applause on “North Ontario”), “A Man Needs a Maid/Heart of Gold Suite” (then new), “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Don’t Let it Bring You Down,” “There’s a World,” “The Needle and the Damage Done,” “Ohio,” “See the Sky About to Rain,” “Down By the River” and “I am A Child” and a few others, delivering them intimately, heartfelt and with remarkable maturity. Young’s piano playing is particularly effective, while his acoustic guitar work is deliberate and precise.
With the songs mostly fresh and new, the performances exude vitality and intense commitment. You won’t hear a more intense “Ohio” or particularly “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
Look, if your system is up to the task, this double LP set will take you back in time and space to the evening’s concert and put you near the front of the stage. The image of Young’s voice and both the guitar and piano are superbly tactile, transparent and three-dimensional. The balance between direct and reflected sound is perfect.
If you don’t sit transfixed through all four perfectly pressed, absolutely quiet sides, you’re clearly not a Young fan. If you’re like me though, you’ll find this set transportive to a time when audiences sat with rapt attention listening to soft spoken, sensitive artists who held the stage as few manage to do today, with just an acoustic guitar or a piano or in this case both. When Young leaves the stage after “See the Sky About to Rain” the audience goes berserk. Young returns for “Down by the River,” and “Dance Dance Dance,” finishing up with “I Am A Child.”
Classic’s deluxe packaging, the 200gram Quiex SV-P flat profile pressing and Chris Bellman’s astonishingly transparent cut of a magnificent piece of engineering and mixing by Young’s longtime producing and engineering cohort David Briggs adds up to a musical and sonic treat Young fans would be foolish to pass up. Surely this won’t be in-print forever, so get it while you can! Live recordings don’t get much better than this.
Copyright © 2008 MusicAngle.com & Michael Fremer - All rights reserved Reprinted By Permission
Additionally, make sure to stop by his site, www.musicangle.com and bookmark it for further exploration. I certainly want to thank Michael for the exclusive rights to reprint his fantastic material.
Neil Young (recent release)
Live at Massey Hall 1971
Reprise/Classic 43328-1 2 200g Quiex SV-P LPs
Produced by: David Briggs and Neil Young
Engineered by: David Briggs
Mixed by: David Briggs Live at Massey Hall
Mastered by: Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering
Review by: Michael Fremer
2009-05-01
As soon as Young walks on stage and you hear the applause, you’ll know you’re in for a sonic treat. The audience has been carefully miked, which is not always the case with live recordings, even when the stage sound is good. The applause captures the hall space well too.
There’s a bit of fumbling as Young adjusts the mike. The intense 25 year old begins an unadorned cover of the Buffalo Springfield classic “On the Way Home” and the intimate treat that is Massey Hall 1971 unfolds. The vocal and guitar miking are spectacularly intimate and natural sounding, yet there’s just the right amount of hall sound reflection and P.A. reinforcement to let you know you’re listening to a live performance. The credits say David Briggs mixed live in the hall and that makes the production all the more remarkable.
Young’s nerves don’t appear in his fingers playing or in his voice singing, but his in-between song patter produces a few uncomfortable moments for him and for a photographer.
Young introduces the then new “Old Man” explaining that he’s just moved to a ranch that came with a foreman, about whom the song was written. “Yea, I live on a ranch now… lucky me,” he apologizes oddly for his success to the audience.
Earlier he complains to a photographer about being distracted by the shutter clicking, asking him to only shoot during applause—a somewhat restricting admonition for a professional (I assume it wasn’t some asshole in the audience) trying to get some good images, but certainly within the right of the artist to insist. However, Young doesn’t just make the request, he digs in until he makes the photographer feel really small and the audience his enemy. I would imagine hearing it today, it’s Young who feels small, but I could be wrong!
Young’s repertoire at this point so early in his career is remarkably varied and contains many tunes that would become signatures. He also covers “Tell Me Why,” “Journey Through the Past,” “Helpless,” (big applause on “North Ontario”), “A Man Needs a Maid/Heart of Gold Suite” (then new), “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Don’t Let it Bring You Down,” “There’s a World,” “The Needle and the Damage Done,” “Ohio,” “See the Sky About to Rain,” “Down By the River” and “I am A Child” and a few others, delivering them intimately, heartfelt and with remarkable maturity. Young’s piano playing is particularly effective, while his acoustic guitar work is deliberate and precise.
With the songs mostly fresh and new, the performances exude vitality and intense commitment. You won’t hear a more intense “Ohio” or particularly “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
Look, if your system is up to the task, this double LP set will take you back in time and space to the evening’s concert and put you near the front of the stage. The image of Young’s voice and both the guitar and piano are superbly tactile, transparent and three-dimensional. The balance between direct and reflected sound is perfect.
If you don’t sit transfixed through all four perfectly pressed, absolutely quiet sides, you’re clearly not a Young fan. If you’re like me though, you’ll find this set transportive to a time when audiences sat with rapt attention listening to soft spoken, sensitive artists who held the stage as few manage to do today, with just an acoustic guitar or a piano or in this case both. When Young leaves the stage after “See the Sky About to Rain” the audience goes berserk. Young returns for “Down by the River,” and “Dance Dance Dance,” finishing up with “I Am A Child.”
Classic’s deluxe packaging, the 200gram Quiex SV-P flat profile pressing and Chris Bellman’s astonishingly transparent cut of a magnificent piece of engineering and mixing by Young’s longtime producing and engineering cohort David Briggs adds up to a musical and sonic treat Young fans would be foolish to pass up. Surely this won’t be in-print forever, so get it while you can! Live recordings don’t get much better than this.
Copyright © 2008 MusicAngle.com & Michael Fremer - All rights reserved Reprinted By Permission
Music News & Notes
Ardent/Stax to Reissue Big Star on Vinyl
Back in 2002, Ardent and Stax reissued legendary and cult-loved power-pop band Big Star's first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, but they left vinyl enthusiasts hanging. On June 16, they rectify that situation by putting the albums out seperately on vinyl. They're also putting the CDs out again, complete with new remastering and an unreleased single mix of "In the Street" and the single edit of "O My Soul." [Pitchfork]
=============================
Stone Roses Debut Reissue Details Announced
by Andrew Winistorfer
Back in February, news broke that the Stone Roses' self-titled debut would be getting a deluxe reissue, but little was offered by way of release date or specific details. Today brings news of the release date, August 11, and details regarding the three(!) different reissue packages.
The first package is a single disc "Special Edition" that is remastered by frontman Ian Brown and producer John Leckie that features the original album and a full length version of "Fool's Gold." The three disc "Legacy Edition" contains the original album, a disc of demos, and the "Live in Blackpool" concert film.
The "Collectors Edition" is where things get interesting, as it is the "Legacy Edition" plus the album on vinyl with an extra record of non-album tracks, a lemon-shaped USB drive that features audio, promo videos, ringtones, and wallpapers, a book featuring words by Noel Gallagher and others about the album, and six art prints painted by guitarist John Squire for each of the album's singles.
SOURCE: http://www.prefixmag.com
=============================
Slayer - Release Date Confirmed For New Album
Columbia Records has confirmed a July 7th release date for the new album from Slayer. The band are currently in a Los Angeles, California studio putting the finishing touches to the follow-up to 2006's Christ Illusion which entered the Billboard 200 at #5 - the band's highest US chart position to date.
The first new track from the album - "Psychopathy Red" - was made available as a 7-inch vinyl disc on April 18th, as part of the third annual Record Store Day. Only 5,000 of these limited edition discs were manufactured worldwide. The blood-red vinyl 'Psychopathy Red' 7-inch collectors item will be packaged in a special Russian crime scene "evidence envelope," as the song was inspired by the heinous Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, aka the Rostov Ripper, who confessed to brutally murdering 56 children. The song was recorded by the band - guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, bassist/vocalist Tom Araya, and drummer Dave Lombardo - in a Los Angeles recording studio last October.
=============================
Emerson Cancels Summer Tour Due To Injury
It's being reported that Keith Emerson has canceled both the summer tour for the Keith Emerson Band and a possible late-year reunion tour for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, due to on-going right hand injuries. He posted this explanation on his official website:
Dear Friends,
It is with much regret that I have to announce that due to past right hand injuries the resulting nerve damage and dystonic factor has made it unable for me to play the keyboards to the high standard I have always set myself and have to cancel my forthcoming Keith Emerson Band featuring Marc Bonilla USA and European tours.
I am also going to have to cancel the proposed Emerson, Lake and Palmer tour which we were going to do at the end of this year.
I will of course continue with my physical/chiropractic/acupuncture therapy etc. in the hope that this will eventually get me back on form.
This is absolutely devastating to me as music will always be my main key to communicating with a world-wide audience. I know how much my fans and fellow band members were looking forward to these shows and it saddens me greatly to have to come to this decision and make this announcement.
Thank you for your understanding.
Keith Emerson
=============================
Lamb Of God To Stream Philly Show Live Online
Metal giants Lamb Of God have announced a live streaming of their upcoming show at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on May 9, 2009. This will mark the first time the band has offered a live stream of an entire show to the public. The festivities begin at 9:30 PM EST on the band's official website. The band will be utilizing technology provided by KYTE for this special event. Fans will be able to choose from several different camera angles around the stage as they watch the live stream of the band's performance.
Currently, Lamb of God are headlining the No Fear Energy tour and are supporting "Wrath," which was released on February 24th of this year and debuted at #2 on the Billboard Charts
Back in 2002, Ardent and Stax reissued legendary and cult-loved power-pop band Big Star's first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, but they left vinyl enthusiasts hanging. On June 16, they rectify that situation by putting the albums out seperately on vinyl. They're also putting the CDs out again, complete with new remastering and an unreleased single mix of "In the Street" and the single edit of "O My Soul." [Pitchfork]
=============================
Stone Roses Debut Reissue Details Announced
by Andrew Winistorfer
Back in February, news broke that the Stone Roses' self-titled debut would be getting a deluxe reissue, but little was offered by way of release date or specific details. Today brings news of the release date, August 11, and details regarding the three(!) different reissue packages.
The first package is a single disc "Special Edition" that is remastered by frontman Ian Brown and producer John Leckie that features the original album and a full length version of "Fool's Gold." The three disc "Legacy Edition" contains the original album, a disc of demos, and the "Live in Blackpool" concert film.
The "Collectors Edition" is where things get interesting, as it is the "Legacy Edition" plus the album on vinyl with an extra record of non-album tracks, a lemon-shaped USB drive that features audio, promo videos, ringtones, and wallpapers, a book featuring words by Noel Gallagher and others about the album, and six art prints painted by guitarist John Squire for each of the album's singles.
SOURCE: http://www.prefixmag.com
=============================
Slayer - Release Date Confirmed For New Album
Columbia Records has confirmed a July 7th release date for the new album from Slayer. The band are currently in a Los Angeles, California studio putting the finishing touches to the follow-up to 2006's Christ Illusion which entered the Billboard 200 at #5 - the band's highest US chart position to date.
The first new track from the album - "Psychopathy Red" - was made available as a 7-inch vinyl disc on April 18th, as part of the third annual Record Store Day. Only 5,000 of these limited edition discs were manufactured worldwide. The blood-red vinyl 'Psychopathy Red' 7-inch collectors item will be packaged in a special Russian crime scene "evidence envelope," as the song was inspired by the heinous Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, aka the Rostov Ripper, who confessed to brutally murdering 56 children. The song was recorded by the band - guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, bassist/vocalist Tom Araya, and drummer Dave Lombardo - in a Los Angeles recording studio last October.
=============================
Emerson Cancels Summer Tour Due To Injury
It's being reported that Keith Emerson has canceled both the summer tour for the Keith Emerson Band and a possible late-year reunion tour for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, due to on-going right hand injuries. He posted this explanation on his official website:
Dear Friends,
It is with much regret that I have to announce that due to past right hand injuries the resulting nerve damage and dystonic factor has made it unable for me to play the keyboards to the high standard I have always set myself and have to cancel my forthcoming Keith Emerson Band featuring Marc Bonilla USA and European tours.
I am also going to have to cancel the proposed Emerson, Lake and Palmer tour which we were going to do at the end of this year.
I will of course continue with my physical/chiropractic/acupuncture therapy etc. in the hope that this will eventually get me back on form.
This is absolutely devastating to me as music will always be my main key to communicating with a world-wide audience. I know how much my fans and fellow band members were looking forward to these shows and it saddens me greatly to have to come to this decision and make this announcement.
Thank you for your understanding.
Keith Emerson
=============================
Lamb Of God To Stream Philly Show Live Online
Metal giants Lamb Of God have announced a live streaming of their upcoming show at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on May 9, 2009. This will mark the first time the band has offered a live stream of an entire show to the public. The festivities begin at 9:30 PM EST on the band's official website. The band will be utilizing technology provided by KYTE for this special event. Fans will be able to choose from several different camera angles around the stage as they watch the live stream of the band's performance.
Currently, Lamb of God are headlining the No Fear Energy tour and are supporting "Wrath," which was released on February 24th of this year and debuted at #2 on the Billboard Charts
Thursday, May 7, 2009
News & Notes
Here's the latest from Virgil over at www.vinylcollective.com:
Got some great restocks from Asian Man (including a pretty much out of print black vinyl Phase 3), more O Pioneers s/t 7″s, Mike hale LPs, and more.
LINK 80 “17 Reasons” LP
MIKE HALE “Broken With No Hope” LP black vinyl
Mu330 “Crab Rangoon” LP
MU330 “Mu330″ LP
O PIONEERS!!! “S/T” 7″ vanilla colored vinyl
RIVERDALES “Phase 3″ LP black vinyl
RIVERDALES “Phase 3″ LP clear gold vinyl
TUESDAY “Free Wheelin” LP
===================================
Dylan Nails His Fifth Number One Album in the U.S.
Bob Dylan will top this weeks Billboard Album chart with "Together Through Life." In his long and legendary career, this is only the fifth time he has reached the top and only the second time in the last 33 years. Overall, Dylan sold 125,000 copies of the new album.
Got some great restocks from Asian Man (including a pretty much out of print black vinyl Phase 3), more O Pioneers s/t 7″s, Mike hale LPs, and more.
LINK 80 “17 Reasons” LP
MIKE HALE “Broken With No Hope” LP black vinyl
Mu330 “Crab Rangoon” LP
MU330 “Mu330″ LP
O PIONEERS!!! “S/T” 7″ vanilla colored vinyl
RIVERDALES “Phase 3″ LP black vinyl
RIVERDALES “Phase 3″ LP clear gold vinyl
TUESDAY “Free Wheelin” LP
===================================
Dylan Nails His Fifth Number One Album in the U.S.
Bob Dylan will top this weeks Billboard Album chart with "Together Through Life." In his long and legendary career, this is only the fifth time he has reached the top and only the second time in the last 33 years. Overall, Dylan sold 125,000 copies of the new album.
Album Cover Stories
As always, I want to thank Michael Goldstein over at www.RockPoPGallery.com for the exclusive reprint rights to his marvelous album cover art stories:
Cover Story Interview – The Pixies – Doolittle - with photography by Simon Larbalestier
Cover Story for April 30, 2009
Subject: Doolittle, by The Pixies – a 1989 release on 4AD/Elektra records, with photography by Simon Larbalestier
Throughout the 40+ year history of rock and pop music culture, art and music have always marched together hand-in-hand. As documented in past Cover Story articles and in the many fine books written on the topic, album cover artwork, along with the music it promotes, has gone through numerous iterations since the early 1960s, with styles often set by one or two “breakthrough” artists who are then copied (and, in some cases, improved upon) by others (i.e., musicians, art directors and other related creatives) making a living in the same business.
As an example to back up that contention, all it takes is a look at the basic formulas for sure-fire success followed by Beatles-era acts – i.e., first sound like the Beatles, then be sure to look like the Beatles. I was always impressed by the slightly-different approach taken by the San Antonio, TX-based band lead by Doug Sahm called The Sir Douglas Quintet. Their first album was called The Best of The Sir Douglas Quintet and featured a photo on the cover of a band of five “mop tops” that was lit in such a way that you could only see the outlines of the band members, so you weren’t sure exactly where the band was from – you just assumed that they were another British band (fantastic marketing ploy, no?)! Buying the LP from the cover alone, I was then quiet surprised to hear their uniquely Texas-tinged rock tunes.
Anyway, as time went on and rock music expanded into its many different genres, each with its own group of accomplished designers, illustrators and photographers commissioned to provide appropriate cover imagery, from time to time there were musical and artistic pairings that stood out for their individuality and willingness to avoid convention. Today’s featured pairing of the influential Boston-based band the Pixies with their photographer-of-choice Simon Larbalestier serves to show how a successful pairing of artistic and musical talent produces a truly compelling package. With Doolittle, the Pixies continued to display a broad range of ways to express their take on the world musically, from dark ditties such as “Wave of Mutilation” and “Debaser” through the two hit singles - “Monkey Gone To Heaven” and the ultra-singable “Here Comes Your Man” – to the slightly-strange (but critically-appreciated) tracks such as “La La Love You” and “Gouge Away”. Their songcraft went on to influence many of the indie bands that would soon follow in their tracks, with Doolittle now always included in most every summary of “most-influential albums” of the rock music era.
This record was also the first where the design team – including Larbalestier and the fine graphic artist/designer Vaughan Oliver – had access to some of the themes that would be featured in the new record’s music and so, with these clues, they set about to imagine the appropriate visual representations of the band’s new music. The processes involved in this effort to intertwine standout song-writing with extraordinary imagery are brought to light in today’s Cover Story interview…
In the words of the photographer, Simon Larbalestier (interviewed late March, 2009) –
Back in 1984 - before starting my Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art in London - I visited Vaughan Oliver in his studio in London to show him some of my work. Most of it was very much out of context to the music industry in which he was working – my images of old decaying warehouses seemed to have no relevance to album covers! - but what we both appreciated in each other was our mutual desire to turn pictorial conventions upside down and to break down known design rules. After that meeting we stayed in touch and, two years later, I invited Vaughan to my final year degree show at the RCA. At this point in time, Vaughan happened to be looking for a photographer to work on the Pixies first EP release called Come on Pilgrim, and he was interested in four photographs from my degree show, two of which became the album artwork. This early work, looking back on it, was very raw - it was created the way I wanted it with no compromises being made to accommodate client requirements.
For the Doolittle project - by far, my most-favored body of work by the Pixies from that period - the imagery was very much an eclectic mix of the interests of Vaughan, Charles Thompson (aka “Black Francis”) and myself. From my perspective, Vaughan and Charles very much supported my dark fascinations in decay, texture, the macabre and surrealism and their visual expression in the resulting photographs. The darkness in the Doolittle images was inspired by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou (1929). Furthermore, it was the first time that Vaughan and I had access to Charles’ hand-written lyrics, and his rich use of language made it easier for me to begin to construct image scenarios. Everything about the Pixies imagery was constructed - often built as a small set as in the Doolittle series (or a life-size collage set for the Surfer Rosa Series) – and everything was sourced and built from scratch in front of the camera lens. In other words, the vision was a constructed one, and not a document of real life.
I think it is important to note here that Vaughan and I worked very much as a collaborative team – he trusted me to make the photographs, we’d discuss ideas suggested by the band and our own and most of the time he’d leave me to shoot the images in my own way. Later we’d meet up and discuss the contact sheets before I made the final prints.
Over the course of the 2-3 weeks spent on the project - it’s so far back I can’t remember exactly! - I may have submitted 12-15 main images plus some slightly different versions of each picture. Each photo consisted of two principal elements – that is, Pelvic Bone and Stiletto Shoe, Bell and Teeth, Rope and Barbie Doll, etc. The images were shot in my studio using a Rolleiflex SL66 bellows camera with a standard 80/2.8 Planar lens that enabled me to shoot objects close-up. There was no computer software or complex filter/mirror set-ups used, and the lighting was simple tungsten reflected - the contrast and depth in the images came from the way I chose to print the negatives detail in the darkroom and their fine resolution. The negatives themselves were made on super-fine grain Agfapan 25 film (sadly, no longer made). As I recall, the management had asked for color images and I “provided” these by hand-bleaching and toning the final artwork prints in the darkroom. This visually removed them slightly from their simpler black-and-white renditions.
Raw photo images for the record cover, plus the singles "Tame" and "Gouge Away"
I think it is important to remember that, at the time the Pixies images were one part of the much greater whole of my career. I was working within the design industry, completing many collages - “illustrations”, for want of a better word - for numerous editorial clients such as New Scientist Magazine and scores of book covers for publishing houses such as Random House and Secker and Warburg. I was shooting more and more landscape work for my personal fine art photography portfolio, so the fact that the Pixies work wasn’t immediately recognised as “successful” in the design world and as a marker point in my career didn’t really concern me at the time for the simple reason that I was very busy with other projects!
The Pixies were the first band that I was asked to photograph for. For the first two album covers and for some of the singles, the images were used as they were originally conceived, with no re-shoots. Knowing their appreciation of my sense of composition, I approached the Pixies projects with a confidence and certainty that offered a freedom seldom found with other commissioned projects. Where I compromised, in the later imagery for Bossanova and Trompe le Monde, was in my use of color. The subsequent use of color photography was a request from the management of the band, as I recall, not a design or aesthetic decision by Vaughan Oliver. Professional practice has since taught me that, to deliver commissioned work effectively and on a regular basis, there is always some form of compromise being made.
Being a freelance photographer often means working on projects which are short-term, with intense and often brief working relationships with designers and art directors. Often times, the real sense of the completion of the project isn’t seen until it appears in its printed form, and this can be months after the work’s been done. The Pixies project was unique for me in that it would continue to be recognized throughout the life-span of the band itself, so I wouldn’t really see it as a completed body of work until several years later.
There is no doubt at all that the Pixies work has achieved a degree of longevity, not only because of its association with a successful and iconic band, but also because it is being appreciated many years later both for reasons of nostalgia and its re-discovery by a later generation. In 1999, I was giving a lecture on my work in Seattle and someone in the audience asked me a question about the Pixies. I found this somewhat distracting as I was introducing my “Attracting to Emptiness” series in the lecture, so I in turn asked the audience a question: “Why is everyone so interested in the Pixies images?” The answer was that, in the twelve years since the release of the first EP, the audience as a whole enjoyed being able to – through the music and images of the Pixies - relive some of “the good times” of when they were growing up. I felt quite humbled at that point and appreciative that there was an audience out there that was giving my work the longevity that I desired - I had just not seen it.
Today, as people who grew up during that period of time become older and have their own families, their children have now become interested in their parents’ music and all things associated with it so that, in 2009, this work now seems more popular than ever - even to Jack and Lucy, my own two teenage children!
About the photographer, Simon Larbalestier –
Simon Larbalestier has moved from album artwork for iconic rock bands like the Pixies, through international design and advertising, to a more documentary approach over the last 20 years. Simon graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 1987. Now based in Bangkok, his current work involves several long term projects - chronic disability in Cambodia with the Cambodia Trust; children living with HIV in Thailand, supported by the Australian charity Born To Live; and the daily struggle of Khmer and Thai nationals, especially the elderly, the underprivileged and the disabled. This later work was screened at the Angkor Photography Festival in Siem Reap in November 2007 and in March 2008 at The Foto Freo Festival in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Larbalestier was also invited to participate in the second annual Twenty 120 festival 2008 ( http://www.twenty120.com) which had a screening of a film short Khok Tamol: New Beginnings that June at Promax/BDA in New York, as well as a screening in Los Angeles in July at Cinespace. Keeping in line with the spirit of Twenty120, a select group of 20 directors were invited to create films, interpreting the theme “Truth V Deception” as they choose.
19 images from the “Between Two Worlds” and “Attracting to Emptiness” series have been published by On Pedder in their Pedderzine Issue 4 (Hong Kong, October 2008). Pedderzine is On Pedder's quarterly magazine. Issue 4 explores the themes of Worship, Devotion and Power.
Issue No.8 (March 2009) of C International Photo Magazine http://www.ivorypress.com/cPhoto/cPhoto_2.html featured a body of Pixies images, including unseen Polaroids from the 1988-1990 covers and new images made especially for a deluxe edition package of the five vinyl Pixies albums (Pixies: Minotaur) to be released in summer 2009
To see more of Simon Larbalestier’s work, please visit the following web sites –
Main site - http://www.simon-larbalestier.co.uk
His most-current work can be seen on his Photoshelter Online Archive http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/simonlarbalestier
And his blog (titled “Addenda”) can be read at
http://simonlarbalestier.typepad.com/addenda/
All images featured in this Cover Story are Copyright 1989 - 2009, Simon Larbalestier Photography - All rights reserved. Except as noted, all other text Copyright 2009 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery (www.rockpopgallery.com) - All rights reserved.
Cover Story Interview – The Pixies – Doolittle - with photography by Simon Larbalestier
Cover Story for April 30, 2009
Subject: Doolittle, by The Pixies – a 1989 release on 4AD/Elektra records, with photography by Simon Larbalestier
Throughout the 40+ year history of rock and pop music culture, art and music have always marched together hand-in-hand. As documented in past Cover Story articles and in the many fine books written on the topic, album cover artwork, along with the music it promotes, has gone through numerous iterations since the early 1960s, with styles often set by one or two “breakthrough” artists who are then copied (and, in some cases, improved upon) by others (i.e., musicians, art directors and other related creatives) making a living in the same business.
As an example to back up that contention, all it takes is a look at the basic formulas for sure-fire success followed by Beatles-era acts – i.e., first sound like the Beatles, then be sure to look like the Beatles. I was always impressed by the slightly-different approach taken by the San Antonio, TX-based band lead by Doug Sahm called The Sir Douglas Quintet. Their first album was called The Best of The Sir Douglas Quintet and featured a photo on the cover of a band of five “mop tops” that was lit in such a way that you could only see the outlines of the band members, so you weren’t sure exactly where the band was from – you just assumed that they were another British band (fantastic marketing ploy, no?)! Buying the LP from the cover alone, I was then quiet surprised to hear their uniquely Texas-tinged rock tunes.
Anyway, as time went on and rock music expanded into its many different genres, each with its own group of accomplished designers, illustrators and photographers commissioned to provide appropriate cover imagery, from time to time there were musical and artistic pairings that stood out for their individuality and willingness to avoid convention. Today’s featured pairing of the influential Boston-based band the Pixies with their photographer-of-choice Simon Larbalestier serves to show how a successful pairing of artistic and musical talent produces a truly compelling package. With Doolittle, the Pixies continued to display a broad range of ways to express their take on the world musically, from dark ditties such as “Wave of Mutilation” and “Debaser” through the two hit singles - “Monkey Gone To Heaven” and the ultra-singable “Here Comes Your Man” – to the slightly-strange (but critically-appreciated) tracks such as “La La Love You” and “Gouge Away”. Their songcraft went on to influence many of the indie bands that would soon follow in their tracks, with Doolittle now always included in most every summary of “most-influential albums” of the rock music era.
This record was also the first where the design team – including Larbalestier and the fine graphic artist/designer Vaughan Oliver – had access to some of the themes that would be featured in the new record’s music and so, with these clues, they set about to imagine the appropriate visual representations of the band’s new music. The processes involved in this effort to intertwine standout song-writing with extraordinary imagery are brought to light in today’s Cover Story interview…
In the words of the photographer, Simon Larbalestier (interviewed late March, 2009) –
Back in 1984 - before starting my Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art in London - I visited Vaughan Oliver in his studio in London to show him some of my work. Most of it was very much out of context to the music industry in which he was working – my images of old decaying warehouses seemed to have no relevance to album covers! - but what we both appreciated in each other was our mutual desire to turn pictorial conventions upside down and to break down known design rules. After that meeting we stayed in touch and, two years later, I invited Vaughan to my final year degree show at the RCA. At this point in time, Vaughan happened to be looking for a photographer to work on the Pixies first EP release called Come on Pilgrim, and he was interested in four photographs from my degree show, two of which became the album artwork. This early work, looking back on it, was very raw - it was created the way I wanted it with no compromises being made to accommodate client requirements.
For the Doolittle project - by far, my most-favored body of work by the Pixies from that period - the imagery was very much an eclectic mix of the interests of Vaughan, Charles Thompson (aka “Black Francis”) and myself. From my perspective, Vaughan and Charles very much supported my dark fascinations in decay, texture, the macabre and surrealism and their visual expression in the resulting photographs. The darkness in the Doolittle images was inspired by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou (1929). Furthermore, it was the first time that Vaughan and I had access to Charles’ hand-written lyrics, and his rich use of language made it easier for me to begin to construct image scenarios. Everything about the Pixies imagery was constructed - often built as a small set as in the Doolittle series (or a life-size collage set for the Surfer Rosa Series) – and everything was sourced and built from scratch in front of the camera lens. In other words, the vision was a constructed one, and not a document of real life.
I think it is important to note here that Vaughan and I worked very much as a collaborative team – he trusted me to make the photographs, we’d discuss ideas suggested by the band and our own and most of the time he’d leave me to shoot the images in my own way. Later we’d meet up and discuss the contact sheets before I made the final prints.
Over the course of the 2-3 weeks spent on the project - it’s so far back I can’t remember exactly! - I may have submitted 12-15 main images plus some slightly different versions of each picture. Each photo consisted of two principal elements – that is, Pelvic Bone and Stiletto Shoe, Bell and Teeth, Rope and Barbie Doll, etc. The images were shot in my studio using a Rolleiflex SL66 bellows camera with a standard 80/2.8 Planar lens that enabled me to shoot objects close-up. There was no computer software or complex filter/mirror set-ups used, and the lighting was simple tungsten reflected - the contrast and depth in the images came from the way I chose to print the negatives detail in the darkroom and their fine resolution. The negatives themselves were made on super-fine grain Agfapan 25 film (sadly, no longer made). As I recall, the management had asked for color images and I “provided” these by hand-bleaching and toning the final artwork prints in the darkroom. This visually removed them slightly from their simpler black-and-white renditions.
Raw photo images for the record cover, plus the singles "Tame" and "Gouge Away"
I think it is important to remember that, at the time the Pixies images were one part of the much greater whole of my career. I was working within the design industry, completing many collages - “illustrations”, for want of a better word - for numerous editorial clients such as New Scientist Magazine and scores of book covers for publishing houses such as Random House and Secker and Warburg. I was shooting more and more landscape work for my personal fine art photography portfolio, so the fact that the Pixies work wasn’t immediately recognised as “successful” in the design world and as a marker point in my career didn’t really concern me at the time for the simple reason that I was very busy with other projects!
The Pixies were the first band that I was asked to photograph for. For the first two album covers and for some of the singles, the images were used as they were originally conceived, with no re-shoots. Knowing their appreciation of my sense of composition, I approached the Pixies projects with a confidence and certainty that offered a freedom seldom found with other commissioned projects. Where I compromised, in the later imagery for Bossanova and Trompe le Monde, was in my use of color. The subsequent use of color photography was a request from the management of the band, as I recall, not a design or aesthetic decision by Vaughan Oliver. Professional practice has since taught me that, to deliver commissioned work effectively and on a regular basis, there is always some form of compromise being made.
Being a freelance photographer often means working on projects which are short-term, with intense and often brief working relationships with designers and art directors. Often times, the real sense of the completion of the project isn’t seen until it appears in its printed form, and this can be months after the work’s been done. The Pixies project was unique for me in that it would continue to be recognized throughout the life-span of the band itself, so I wouldn’t really see it as a completed body of work until several years later.
There is no doubt at all that the Pixies work has achieved a degree of longevity, not only because of its association with a successful and iconic band, but also because it is being appreciated many years later both for reasons of nostalgia and its re-discovery by a later generation. In 1999, I was giving a lecture on my work in Seattle and someone in the audience asked me a question about the Pixies. I found this somewhat distracting as I was introducing my “Attracting to Emptiness” series in the lecture, so I in turn asked the audience a question: “Why is everyone so interested in the Pixies images?” The answer was that, in the twelve years since the release of the first EP, the audience as a whole enjoyed being able to – through the music and images of the Pixies - relive some of “the good times” of when they were growing up. I felt quite humbled at that point and appreciative that there was an audience out there that was giving my work the longevity that I desired - I had just not seen it.
Today, as people who grew up during that period of time become older and have their own families, their children have now become interested in their parents’ music and all things associated with it so that, in 2009, this work now seems more popular than ever - even to Jack and Lucy, my own two teenage children!
About the photographer, Simon Larbalestier –
Simon Larbalestier has moved from album artwork for iconic rock bands like the Pixies, through international design and advertising, to a more documentary approach over the last 20 years. Simon graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 1987. Now based in Bangkok, his current work involves several long term projects - chronic disability in Cambodia with the Cambodia Trust; children living with HIV in Thailand, supported by the Australian charity Born To Live; and the daily struggle of Khmer and Thai nationals, especially the elderly, the underprivileged and the disabled. This later work was screened at the Angkor Photography Festival in Siem Reap in November 2007 and in March 2008 at The Foto Freo Festival in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Larbalestier was also invited to participate in the second annual Twenty 120 festival 2008 ( http://www.twenty120.com) which had a screening of a film short Khok Tamol: New Beginnings that June at Promax/BDA in New York, as well as a screening in Los Angeles in July at Cinespace. Keeping in line with the spirit of Twenty120, a select group of 20 directors were invited to create films, interpreting the theme “Truth V Deception” as they choose.
19 images from the “Between Two Worlds” and “Attracting to Emptiness” series have been published by On Pedder in their Pedderzine Issue 4 (Hong Kong, October 2008). Pedderzine is On Pedder's quarterly magazine. Issue 4 explores the themes of Worship, Devotion and Power.
Issue No.8 (March 2009) of C International Photo Magazine http://www.ivorypress.com/cPhoto/cPhoto_2.html featured a body of Pixies images, including unseen Polaroids from the 1988-1990 covers and new images made especially for a deluxe edition package of the five vinyl Pixies albums (Pixies: Minotaur) to be released in summer 2009
To see more of Simon Larbalestier’s work, please visit the following web sites –
Main site - http://www.simon-larbalestier.co.uk
His most-current work can be seen on his Photoshelter Online Archive http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/simonlarbalestier
And his blog (titled “Addenda”) can be read at
http://simonlarbalestier.typepad.com/addenda/
All images featured in this Cover Story are Copyright 1989 - 2009, Simon Larbalestier Photography - All rights reserved. Except as noted, all other text Copyright 2009 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery (www.rockpopgallery.com) - All rights reserved.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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