Vinyl creeping into Best Buy

Nope, this is not a Halloween post (screw that festivity, I'm watching "Nixon" after I get back from the gym).

The creeping that's happening here is of the vinyl variety. Or "records," or "albums," to those of you (like myself) who still think there was nothing wrong with the old vernacular. I mean, this isn't siding for your home or a cover for the seat of your car. This is an actual document - yes, a record - that we're talking about. Or several, as in this case.

I just find it amusing that there are still folks out there who insist that records don't really exist anymore, as Frank Nicotero recently did on Chelsea Lately in discussing the recent announcement of the imminent arrival of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy. I believe the exact quote was, "it's been so long since they released anything, their last album was an album!" Um... Live Era was a triple record, in 1999. Yes, 1999.

You kind of have to look at store shelves to know these things, though. And I know it can be hard sometimes, but not at Best Buy these days.

These photos were taken yesterday at the San Francisco Best Buy location on Geary Blvd and Masonic:



Right in the front entrance, here we have a display hawking Elton John's new The Red Piano live album - as a triple vinyl LP. Priced at $39.99. Way to welcome a vinyl hound!




Metallica's Death Magnetic - double LP, $24.99. I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a Metallica album that wasn't released in the vinyl LP format.




Coldplay's Viva La Vida. I'd never buy this one, but still, yay for the format.




This one's a beauty, though you can't really tell from the photos: a 50th anniversary edition of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which would be a great coffee table piece for someone with a coffee table the size of a bed. Two CDs, a DVD, a 60 page 12x12 book, and a 180 gram vinyl LP of the original Kind of Blue album on blue vinyl. Sweet! $99.99.




This one here's truly amazing, and a great way to get fans of the original Queen to buy the new album with Paul Rodgers, even if they never listen to it. This $120 box includes the new Queen + Paul Rodgers album The Cosmos Rocks both on CD and double LP, as well as LP repressings of four of the original Queen's '70s albums: Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night at the Opera, and A Day at the Races. There's a live DVD in there too. It's totally excessive, but looks like it would be a really fun package to tear open on Xma$.

So there you have it - records aren't just for indie retailers anymore. Now go get yourself a turntable and take those annoying, tinnitus-inducing iPod headphones out of your ears!

Anyone have a spare $1,300?

I used to be a ravenous record collector, but my buying has slowed to the rate of what one might call that of a "normal person," i.e. just once in a while. It's not for lack of interest, mind you. It's more a matter of time and storage space. And yes, money.

I have a handful of items I still look for regularly, and have continued searching for enough years that I don't remember when I started. There's the stock copy of Queen's second U.S. single, "Liar" b/w "Doin' Alright" on Elektra. There's the final U.S. edition of Paul McCartney's Tug Of War LP, pressed with the standard stock red-and-gold Columbia labels, as opposed to the custom design labels on the original (I do have a Canadian pressing to hold me over, but I will not rest until I have my hands on a U.S. copy). And then there's the stock copy of the first Genesis single on Atco, and last with Peter Gabriel: "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" b/w "Counting Out Time." Like the "Liar" 45, I do have a white label promo of this last one, with "The Lamb" on both sides (one side stereo, one side mono). I probably paid no more than $15 for it. Sounds like a lot for a 45rpm record, huh?

Well, tonight I performed one of my infrequent eBay searches for these three items, the three remaining records that I care that much about to search for. Lo and behold, I FINALLY found a stock copy of the 45 of "The Lamb"!

There's just one small problem: I'm not exactly thrilled with the price it's commanding.

As of 11:36 PM Pacific Time, this little styrene 7" record, offered for auction by U.K. seller "stairofsirius" on eBay, has a high bid of GBP 625.00.

In U.S. dollars, that's $1,246.69.

And I thought $600 for "Liar" was outrageous!

Granted, this record does have a version of "Counting Out Time" on the b-side with a clean intro (it segues from the previous song on the LP) that has not been issued on CD, but really... $1,246.69? That's $246.69 more than the price of the second state Beatles Yesterday And Today "butch cover" LP, one of the most valuable and sought-after Beatles collectible LPs, currently for sale at Amoeba Records in San Francisco.


(Yes, I know I just pictured a first-state butcher cover, but really, who wants to look at what was pasted *over* the bloody slabs of meat?)

So, needless to say, I'm going to pass on this auction. That is, of course, unless someone wants to gift me with $1,300.00 before the auction closes. Ha!

New Costello record IS a record!

Whenever I've talked up the move some indie labels (i.e. Touch and Go, Sub Pop, etc.) have made with new releases -- making free digital downloads available with the purchase of a vinyl LP -- I've gotten little response. Might as well say "who cares," right?

Well, check this out: Billboard reports that Elvis Costello's next album, Momofuku, will be released (for now) solely as a RECORD bundled with a digital download on the Lost Highway label on April 22. NO CD!

There have been iTunes exclusive tracks and EPs released with no CD (Smashing Pumpkins, Paul McCartney, etc.), but these weren't full albums. Prince has released some internet-only downloads, but his site has gone kaput and nobody outside of his die-hard fan-base knew about them. Even Radiohead's 'pay what you want' download scheme eventually gave way to a traditional CD release (which debuted at number 1).

That an artist of Costello's stature is going the vinyl + download route and leaving the CD format out is very interesting indeed. This is one to watch. Will more people feel inclined to buy a turntable so they can "spin the black circle" while waiting for their iPod batteries to recharge? Will other artists follow suit? Is the CD really going to follow the cassette, the 8-track, and the brittle 78 RPM record into media format heaven?

A tribute to a man who fed an addiction

(A scan of an actual 45 from Will Auger's jukebox that managed to survive my rough handling as a child.)


On Sunday, April 1, 2007, Will Auger died in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Though his age is not given in this obituary, he had to have been in his mid to late 50s.

Most people don't know this, but Will was a very important person in my early development. Many people gave me records as a child when it became clear that I loved music. But it was Will who cemented my love of the 45 RPM record.

Will was an old friend of my father's. He sustained an injury in the Vietnam War that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He was perhaps the first paraplegic I ever knew. After the war, he opened up a bar in Warwick, Rhode Island, called (what else?) Will's Place. My father would stop at Will's bar on the way home from work to visit his old friend during my early years. Knowing that I liked music, Will would recycle the played-out hit records in his bar's jukebox by giving them to my father during his occasional visits. My father would then come home with these 45s and give them to me. It was one of my greatest joys to receive these records as a young child who could barely talk.

Though I was so young then, I can still remember specific records that Will gave to me. For instance, there was Pink Floyd's "Run Like Hell," which I believe was my earliest exposure to Floyd. And there was my favorite Police single, "Spirits In The Material World." Dr. Hook was still kind of popular when Will gave me the 45 of "When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman." "We Don't Talk Anymore" by Cliff Richard was another big favorite, one that I still enjoy to this day, and one that I have sung at the local karaoke bar as recently as last September. My parents claim that one of my biggest favorites was a record by Peabo Bryson, though I must have had it before my brain was developed enough to file this memory away because I cannot remember ever hearing a Peabo Bryson song until his hit duet with Roberta Flack, "Tonight I Celebrate My Love." By the time that one came out, my brain could remember these kinds of moments. I had already finished kindergarten and was bold enough to ask my parents to buy me my favorite hit records when I heard them on the radio.

Usually my father would bring home stacks of 45s, but one night he walked in the door with only one. I was already learning how to be greedy at this point, and pouted with disappointment when all I got was "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes. Boo! Not a bad record, I did enjoy it. But 3 or 4 others to go with it was what I had been expecting, and there's no pleasing a 4 year old who knows what he wants.

AND -- where's that Dexy's Midnight Runners 45 I was promised??? Still waiting!

One of the funniest memories I have attached to a record from Will's jukebox was the time he sent my father home with a Rod Stewart 45 containing a b-side called "Ain't Love A Bitch." My mother freaked at the idea of me reading a swear word on a record, as I had been using records as my way of learning to read before I started kindergarten. So she put scotch tape over the title!

All these years, Will has never left my mind. I wonder if he realized just what he did by giving me all those records, if he knew that he was feeding an addiction that, as I would tell my mother, kept me from the evils of drugs and alcohol. That was always a sure point to win an argument with my mother whenever she'd complain that I spent too much time or money on music. "Would you rather I be spending my time and money smoking cigarettes or shooting up heroin?" Case closed.

Rest in peace, Will, and thanks for the music!