The vinyl record collecting blog - with news about new vinyl record releases, vinyl record sales, new music releases, album cover art and weekly features
4. LP - The Beatles "Please Please Me" Parlophone UK Gold Black label 1st Stereo - $2,909.59
5. 45 - U2 "All I Want Is You" / "Unchained Melody" # K805 Australian Purple Vinyl - $2,650.89
Top 5 eBay Vinyl Record Sales - Week Ending 11/27/2010
The most interesting record on this week's list is the #3 entry, a garage 45, which may be only the second known copy of The Plastic Menagerie's 45. According to the seller, the record was found in a candy store in a small Tennessee town. Here's a link to the ad: Plastic Menagerie 45.
1. 12" - Led Zeppelin “Road Box” Test Pressing - $5,845.89
As a special treat for the holidays, I am reprinting a very popular series I call Rock & Roll Trivia. Interesting tidbits about our music and our musicians, this will be posted every day until Christmas. Enjoy:
Elvis Presley's 1957 LP "Elvis' Christmas Album" is the top selling holiday release of all time, racking up over nine million in sales.
Bruce Hornsby's demo tapes were rejected by over 70 record companies. A year after RCA signed him in 1985, his tune "The Way It Is" topped the Billboard chart, followed by five more Top 40 hits, including "Mandolin Rain" (#4) and "The Valley Road" (# 5).
The Four Seasons' Frankie Valli was arrested by Columbus, Ohio Police in September 1965, after his manager forgot to pay his hotel bill. Oops....
Jay And The Americans first learned the song "Cara Mia" in 1962 because it contained the only four chords they knew. When they finally recorded it in 1965, the tune rose to #4 on the Billboard chart.
After seeing Marvin Gaye's large collection of pornography, writer David Ritz suggested that Gaye needed some "sexual healing". The two later collaborated on some lyrics which went into the hit song, but Ritz was not given any writing credit. After Gaye died, Ritz successfully sued.
The Allman Brothers' only Billboard Top 10 hit, "Ramblin' Man" was the last song recorded by bassist Berry Oakley before his death in 1972.
The soundtrack for the movie Saturday Night Fever was composed and performed primarily by The Bee Gees and has gone platinum fifteen times over. Despite this success, The Bee Gees' Robin Gibb says he has never seen the film all the way through.
When "Monster Mash" first started to get air-play in 1962, Bobby "Boris" Pickett was working part time as a cab driver. The song has since become an annual favorite, reaching the Billboard Top 10 in '62 and '73, earning three gold records and selling an estimated four million copies. Bobby has said that royalties from the record have "paid the rent for 43 years". Not bad for a song that took a half hour to write and another half hour to record and was intended to be a bit of fun to be shared only among family and friends.
The Who's album "Tommy" spent over two years on the US chart, but in their home country, the UK, it lasted only nine weeks.
After Elvis Presley began his meteoric rise to fame in 1956, his father Vernon said to him, "What happened El? The last thing I remember is I was working in a can factory and you were driving a truck."
Peter Cetera wrote "If You Leave Me Now" about a faltering relationship. Although the song proved to be Chicago's biggest selling record, it didn't help save the union, as the woman involved ended up leaving anyway.
CCR's John Fogerty had a notebook in which he jotted down words and names that he thought would make good song titles. At the top of his list was "Proud Mary", a phrase that brought images of a domestic washerwoman to John's mind. When he got around to putting it to music, the first few chords he used reminded him of a paddle-wheel going around. Instead of Proud Mary being a clean-up lady, she became a boat and the song is a staple at any wedding reception.
Lesley Gore's first album was called "I'll Cry If I Want To" which consisted of songs completely devoted to crying.
"Mack The Knife" was written for the 1928 German play The Threepenny Opera, in which "Mack" is Mackie Messer (Macheath), an amoral, anti-heroic criminal. Although it suffered an initially poor reception, the show went on to run 400 times in the next two years. It was translated into English in 1933 and since that time, at least seven productions have been mounted in New York, on and off Broadway.
It has often been rumored that Billy Joel played piano on The Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack", but this has been denied by one of the song's co-writers, Ellie Greenwich.
The vinyl record resurgence is in full swing and going hand-in-hand with this phenomenon is a renewed interest in picture discs. Not only are they graced with fantastic artwork or a photo of the artist or band, these marvels of vinyl are usually made in limited quantities making them highly sought after and collectible.
Picture discs are manufactured to be a collectible and not meant to play as well as a conventional vinyl record. This is due to the manufacturing process as each side is coated with layers of PVC (poly vinyl chloride); sometimes up to five layers. As this process is being done, a continuous groove of music or even a band interview is pressed onto the playing surface.
Picture discs made their debut in the 20’s and 30’s with various methods and materials utilized for their production. Early picture discs were manufactured using a sheet of thin vinyl film which was placed over a thick paper print and then pressed with the grooves with varying degrees of success. Early pioneers of picture discs included RCA Victor, which released some special edition picture discs of their top performers, Musika Postkarte Company of Germany, Trusound of Great Britain and Sav-Way Industries of Detroit, Michigan, who sold their recordings under the Vogue Records moniker.
These Vogue picture discs were invented in the 40’s by Tom Saffady and were sold during the 1946-47 for fifty to seventy-five cents apiece. With seventy-four titles in all, they featured such artists as Lulu Belle, the Charlie Shavers Quartet and Patsy Montana and were ten inches in diameter and were made of an aluminum platter covered with vinyl. However, due to poor sales, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving a legacy of highly collectible picture discs.
In the 70’s, some record companies pressed picture discs as a novelty and production became more of a promotional tool. Most discs replicated the front of the album cover art but some included rare images of the band or artist or specifically modified artwork. Because of the limited quantities, unique shapes and different pressings, theses picture discs are highly sought after by collectors. They are framed and prominently displayed to show off their full color glory.
In the late 70’s major record companies like Capitol Records, Epic Records and Columbia Records started to manufacture picture discs in large numbers. Hot selling groups like the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Blondie and the Steve Miller Band, among many others, flooded the market and still command top prices in today’s market, forty years after their release.
The 80’s saw the picture disc market booming and it was a very important element to any artists or bands release campaign. With the boon of digital music in the late 80’s and 90’s, and along with the demise and decline of the vinyl record, production dropped and the picture disc was utilized as more of a limited release item or for promotional purposes.
With vinyl now seeing a resurgence, so too has the interest in picture discs. Indie bands as well as top mainstream artists and bands are producing top rate picture discs and the market shows no sign of letting up and these future collectibles are now in collector’s hands and framed for display.
Picture discs are by far my favorite collectible. They 'hold' their value very well, are great to look at and are easy to resell (if you choose to do so). Certainly, a weakness in my collecting genes, I will continue to add to my collection of picture discs for years to come. I have also made an 'a-store' and have selected some of my personal favoites. Check it out here: Buy Picture Discs Here
Michael Jackson Studded Glove Fetches $300,000 At Auction
The studded stage glove worn by Michael Jackson has recently been sold for $300,000 at an auction in Beverly Hills, California. The glove was worn by Jackson during his Bad tour in the 1980s and was one of the star lots.
A fedora belonging to the late singer sold for $72,000, while signed jacket raised $96,000.
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Unseen Thin Lizzy artwork goes on sale online
The approaching 25th anniversary of Phil Lynott's death will be marked by the online sale of limited edition artwork by Jim Fitzpatrick
Unseen Thin Lizzy artwork created by renowned Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick is to go on sale on his OWJO store on Facebook to mark the approaching 25th anniversary of the death of Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott. OWJO is a portable online store that allows people to sell online on any platform, including Facebook.
Fitzpatrick worked with Thin Lizzy to create some of the band's most recognisable album covers and artwork, such as Black Rose and Johnny the Fox. In the course of this project there will also be work published that most Lizzy fans have never seen.
“We worked with Jim to create this online store for fans to have access to previously unavailable works and produce a gallery showcasing his work,” said Karl James from OWJO.
“It’s important that this artwork reaches the fans of Thin Lizzy and at such a poignant time and we were happy to help Jim provide this.”
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Want to see some silly album cover art? Head over to 'click Orlando' and check it out, worth a laugh!
It isn't hard to do. There are countless ways that the tragic events of Dec. 8, 1980 might have been altered or even erased. A misstep, a more vigilant doorman, a last-second change of heart; take your pick. It doesn't matter. Any one could have produced the same result: John Lennon might not have been gunned down outside his Dakota apartment in New York City.
What he would have done with his life, no one knows. But everyone wonders. Would he still be making music? Would The Beatles have reunited? Would he have Bieber fever? We sifted 30 years of headlines and Beatle history, did a little crystal-balling -- and based on Lennon's own words and deeds, we came up with a few possibilities.
