Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting

152 Pages·2003·0.97 MB·English

by  Brett Milano

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Table of Contents Title Page
Copyright Notice
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER ONE - THE SCYTHIAN
CHAPTER TWO - WHY WE COLLECT
CHAPTER THREE - IT’S A SEROTONIN
THING
CHAPTER FOUR - THE LURE OF VINYL
CHAPTER FIVE - ON THE ROAD 1:
RELICS IN TEXAS
CHAPTER SIX - BEHIND THE COUNTER
WITH PETER BUCK
CHAPTER SEVEN - ROBERT CRUMB:
“COLLECTING IS CREEPY!”
CHAPTER EIGHT - ON THE ROAD 2:
SOUL HEART TRANSPLANT
CHAPTER NINE - VALLEY OF THE
STRANGE
CHAPTER TEN - OUR FAVORITE SHOPS
CHAPTER ELEVEN - LOVE AND VINYL
CHAPTER TWELVE - GEEKERY IN THE
U.K.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - EXTREME
COLLECTING
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - THE ULTIMATE
FIND
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - THE
SOUNDTRACK OF YOUR LIFE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - BONUS TRACK
INDEX
Copyright Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to James and Jacqueline Milano for always insisting I’d write a
book. To Pat McGrath, Jenny Toomey, Damon and Naomi, J.J. Rassler, Barbara
Mitchell, Steve Wynn, Mary Lou Lord, Lauren at Rounder, and Eric at
Fantagraphics for their ideas and contacts. To Peter Wolf, Thurston Moore, Peter
Buck, Peter Holsapple, and Jeff Conolly for sharing their reflections and
collections. To Colleen Mohyde and Michael Connor for running with it. To
Julia Parker for support and sushi. And to all who tossed in ideas, shouted
encouragement, or just hung out: Perry Roy, Marlene, Jon, Zoe, Jonathan, Amy
and Gay, Karen, Kevin and the Shods, Ellie, Joe and the Charms, David, Lisa,
Andrew, and the LA contingent. This is also dedicated to the bands I love;
especially to the Continental Drifters, Lyres, the Real Kids, Guided by Voices,
Robyn Hitchcock, and the Radiators for inspirational shows. Long live the
Abbey Lounge, the Middle East, and the 1369 Coffeehouse.
FOREWORD
I have been a passionate and fanatical record collector my whole life, and in
the words of author Brett Milano, I am a “vinyl junkie,” with an ever increasing
collection of nearly 10,000 vinyl record albums and 45 RPM singles, spanning
my entire lifetime. My records are my friends.
It was my mania for obscure 1960s garage/pop records that inspired me to
pick up a guitar, write some songs, and form my band, The Smithereens, over
twenty-three years ago. We were record collectors first; we became “serious”
musicians much, much later, totally inspired by our love of collecting, and the
desire to put out our own records. Why? ’Cause records were cool.
And they still are. I started collecting records way back in the early 1960s,
when at age seven, I bought my first single, “Wipeout,” by the legendary
California instrumental surf combo The Surfaris, on the Fine Dot Records label.
That is when the madness began and it has continued unabated ever since. I just
won’t listen to CDs. They don’t sound right. They don’t look right. They don’t
feel right. I believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with them. I listen
to records. Good old noisy, loud, black vinyl 12” phonograph records. On a
turntable. Or a record player. They just sound better. And there is a difference. I
revel in the artwork, liner notes, and photographs of the colorful cardboard
record sleeves that contain my records. I don’t have to squint to read the liner
notes. Brett Milano knows lots of people like me and understands that we are
only “as sick as our secrets.” He is one of us. I spent nearly twenty-three years of
my life searching frantically for an unloved, unwanted, obscure, and totally
uncollectible country and western album entitled Ernest Tubb Record Shop,
simply because I liked the absurd album cover photo of good ’ole Ernest Tubb
grinning from behind racks and racks of his own records, which he would sell at
his own record store in Nashville. My quest for this miserable record had
absolutely nothing to do with the music whatsoever.
But there it is. Recently, when a record dealer/collector friend of mine in the
Baltimore area finally turned up a copy for me after all those fruitless years of
searching for what, for me, had become a “holy grail” of sorts, I broke down in
tears. Why? There is no real or defendable reason for this compulsion, this
mania, this terrible malady. But in Vinyl Junkies, Brett Milano does seem to
make sense of it all. And he brings to light a fascinating, strange, and shadowy
pop subculture inhabited by obsessive record-hunting and hoarding vinyl junkies
that you probably never knew existed before.
I am currently on the prowl for the mystifyingly difficult-to-find, vinyl-only
release of the original soundtrack to the Vincent Price early 1970’s cult horror
film The Abominable Dr. Phibes … Why?
Brett Milano knows why—because he is one of us. I spent many years
unsuccessfully trying to track down what is perhaps the most obscure, bizarre,
and elusive Elvis Presley album ever released, an early 1970s live recording on
RCA Records titled Having Fun with Elvis Onstage.
The Smithereens were signed to the RCA Records label for a brief period in
the mid-90s. I spent a considerable amount of time haunting the hallways and
offices of their corporate headquarters in New York City’s Times Square. One
afternoon I ran into the vice president of RCA. At the end of my rope trying to
find this great lost Elvis album, I begged him to go into the vaults and find me a
copy. He said he would be more than happy to do so.
Then I good naturedly took him to task, letting him know in no uncertain
terms that they were losing tons of potential revenue off the Elvis catalogue
(Elvis is still, unbelievably, twenty-five years after his death, RCA’s biggest
money-earning artist) because unbelievably, RCA had let the great live Elvis
album Having Fun with Elvis Onstage go out of print for many, many years, and
that Elvis’ army of fans were still clamoring for this disc, and very upset that
they could not purchase it anywhere at any price. He was shocked to hear this
news, and, in earnest, promised me that he would look into this matter
immediately and do his best to see that the record would be reissued, and he
promised to find me a copy of the record.
He scrambled to the RCA master tape vaults to unearth this potential new
Elvis blockbuster, only to discover that the joke was on him.
When he listened to the master tapes of Having Fun with Elvis Onstage he
discovered to his utter horror what I already knew; that Having Fun with Elvis
Onstage was a “talking album only,” a limited-release Colonel Tom Parker Elvis
Fan Club oddity; a horrible record that featured no music, no songs, and no Elvis
vocal performances at all, but instead showcased over forty minutes of inane,
unfunny, incoherent, and Quaaluded-out mindless onstage in-between-song
audience “raps” and ramblings by an intoxicated and druggy Elvis Presley well
past his prime.
Needless to say, the vice president of RCA was not amused. He didn’t get the
joke, but I got the record. These are the lengths that vinyl junkies will go to. We
will stop at nothing to get the records we need.
Brett Milano has spent his entire life writing passionately about music,
musicians, and rock and roll. He is first and foremost a true music lover and,
most importantly, a true fan. These are the best credentials a music writer could
ever want or need or hope for. I hope that you will enjoy reading these true-life
tales of record-collecting, devotion to a lost cause, obsession, and “vinyl junkie”
madness with as much delight and joy as I have.
Rock and roll will stand.
—Pat Dinizio
Hollingsworth House
Scotch Plains, New Jersey
Autumn 2003