1969 - Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin
.jpg)
Don't talk to me about love - Altered Images
2 days ago
Showing posts with label Vinyl News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vinyl News. Show all posts
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Dig Music label spawns retail vinyl store Medium Rare Records and Collectibles
Dig Music label spawns retail vinyl store Medium Rare Records and Collectibles
by Brandon Darnell - Sacramento Press
Marty DeAnda started a vinyl record store by accident with a little help from Louis Armstrong.
Medium Rare Records is in the offices of the Dig Music label, which DeAnda co-founded. The label represents local artists such as Jackie Greene, Chris Webster and Sal Valentino.
The business is located in The Urban Hive at 1931 H St. and was pretty typical of a recording label office, with couches and music-themed décor, before becoming a retail store.
The office, visible from the sidewalk, featured a mannequin of Louis Armstrong in the window, staring out at 20th Street, and passers-by routinely came in to ask about it.
“I’d have 30 people coming by each day,” DeAnda said. “I figured I might as well sell them something, so I brought some records from home. All of a sudden we had a store.”
“We sell only quality vinyl records and collectibles,” DeAnda said, adding that he caters to buyers who are serious about music, but not looking to drop hundreds of dollars on an album.
“That’s how I came up with the Medium Rare name,” he said. “It’s about those people in the middle – those people who want a vinyl record of The Beach Boys or Jimi Hendrix but aren’t looking for something extra rare.”
DeAnda grades the condition of each record in his store, which he writes on a label and sticks on a plastic sleeve. Customers are asked not to remove the records so as to prevent damaging them.
“If they want to buy it, and they come to the counter, I’ll take it out for them to look at, but I just don’t want 30 people taking it out and handling it and taking away the quality,” DeAnda said.
DeAnda said there has been something of a resurgence of interest in vinyl records despite the apparent dominance of digital music.
“The sound is just warmer on vinyl,” DeAnda said. “The new generation seems to have rediscovered it. In an era where you can sit under the covers in your Snuggie and listen to an entire album for free and then download the single you like, people miss the ceremony of buying music.”
Despite the recession, other music stores have opened in Sacramento in the past year as well, including Dimple Records, Phono Select Records and ZuhG Life.
DeAnda – a sixth-generation Sacramentan – said he knows the other local music store owners, and he added that they focus on different markets and don’t really compete against one another.
“Everybody’s got a different group of people they appeal to,” DeAnda said. “We’re where the 30-year-olds to the 70-year-olds come for good used vinyl.”
Nich Lujan, co-owner of Phono Select Records, agreed. He stopped by Medium Rare Records and Collectibles Tuesday afternoon to pick up some printing he’d had done.
“We’re absolutely not competitors,” he said. “We help each other out.”
Lujan said more record stores opening in the area is a good thing for the local industry, since many collectors will make a trip to multiple stores in search of the records they seek.
Brent Zane stopped by the store for the first time Tuesday afternoon to sell some records he’s picked up over the years as a musician.
“Right off the bat, it looks good,” he said. “There’s not a bunch of garbage – it looks like a quality used records store.”
Urban Hive owner Brandon Weber said having the store is a boon to his business.
“It’s great to have them,” he said. “It’s easy to walk in and find something good. You don’t have to dig for it. They do the digging for you.”
Kari Shipman works out of The Urban Hive, and she said DeAnda is “the perfect person” to operate the store because of his knowledge of music.
“He has a deep appreciation for the music,” she said, adding that she has shopped at his store to pick up music for her brother.
Medium Rare Records and Collectibles is open from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Saturdays, or by appointment. Visit the store online by clicking HERE!
by Brandon Darnell - Sacramento Press
Marty DeAnda started a vinyl record store by accident with a little help from Louis Armstrong.
Medium Rare Records is in the offices of the Dig Music label, which DeAnda co-founded. The label represents local artists such as Jackie Greene, Chris Webster and Sal Valentino.
The office, visible from the sidewalk, featured a mannequin of Louis Armstrong in the window, staring out at 20th Street, and passers-by routinely came in to ask about it.
“I’d have 30 people coming by each day,” DeAnda said. “I figured I might as well sell them something, so I brought some records from home. All of a sudden we had a store.”
The store officially opened in late November, but DeAnda said he has been bringing records in for the past year.
“We sell only quality vinyl records and collectibles,” DeAnda said, adding that he caters to buyers who are serious about music, but not looking to drop hundreds of dollars on an album.
“That’s how I came up with the Medium Rare name,” he said. “It’s about those people in the middle – those people who want a vinyl record of The Beach Boys or Jimi Hendrix but aren’t looking for something extra rare.”
DeAnda grades the condition of each record in his store, which he writes on a label and sticks on a plastic sleeve. Customers are asked not to remove the records so as to prevent damaging them.
“If they want to buy it, and they come to the counter, I’ll take it out for them to look at, but I just don’t want 30 people taking it out and handling it and taking away the quality,” DeAnda said.
The only CDs in the store are those put out by artists on the Dig Music label.
DeAnda said there has been something of a resurgence of interest in vinyl records despite the apparent dominance of digital music.
“The sound is just warmer on vinyl,” DeAnda said. “The new generation seems to have rediscovered it. In an era where you can sit under the covers in your Snuggie and listen to an entire album for free and then download the single you like, people miss the ceremony of buying music.”
Despite the recession, other music stores have opened in Sacramento in the past year as well, including Dimple Records, Phono Select Records and ZuhG Life.
DeAnda – a sixth-generation Sacramentan – said he knows the other local music store owners, and he added that they focus on different markets and don’t really compete against one another.
“Everybody’s got a different group of people they appeal to,” DeAnda said. “We’re where the 30-year-olds to the 70-year-olds come for good used vinyl.”
Nich Lujan, co-owner of Phono Select Records, agreed. He stopped by Medium Rare Records and Collectibles Tuesday afternoon to pick up some printing he’d had done.
“We’re absolutely not competitors,” he said. “We help each other out.”
Lujan said more record stores opening in the area is a good thing for the local industry, since many collectors will make a trip to multiple stores in search of the records they seek.
Brent Zane stopped by the store for the first time Tuesday afternoon to sell some records he’s picked up over the years as a musician.
“Right off the bat, it looks good,” he said. “There’s not a bunch of garbage – it looks like a quality used records store.”
Urban Hive owner Brandon Weber said having the store is a boon to his business.
“It’s great to have them,” he said. “It’s easy to walk in and find something good. You don’t have to dig for it. They do the digging for you.”
Kari Shipman works out of The Urban Hive, and she said DeAnda is “the perfect person” to operate the store because of his knowledge of music.
“He has a deep appreciation for the music,” she said, adding that she has shopped at his store to pick up music for her brother.
Medium Rare Records and Collectibles is open from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Saturdays, or by appointment. Visit the store online by clicking HERE!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Throwback products we love: Vinyl Records
Throwback Products We Love: Vinyl Records
By Diane Bullock Nov 30, 2010
The LP record. Those clunky, 12-inch discs of vinyl have inspired a god-like worship by audiophiles -- from John Cusak’s character in High Fidelity who organized his music collection not alphabetically, not chronologically, but autobiographically to Stanley Goodspeed in The Rock who shelled out $600 for a Beatles LP, rather than a $13 CD because they “sound better” to the characterization of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, whose radio station studio and bedroom/home office were clogged, floor to ceiling, with the last ‘real’ records before the impending “death rattle, the last gasp, the last grope” of rock and roll music.
Four decades before Cameron Crowe had Bangs putting a nail in the coffin his record acquiring habit, RCA Victor was introducing the very first commercial vinyl record to the market. But the listening medium didn’t catch on until with the public until Columbia Records pioneered cost effective playback equipment and unveiled the 12-inch Long Play 33 1/3 RPM microgroove polyvinyl chloride record at a New York press conference in 1948.
The vinyl record would be the dominant mass market music medium for the next three-plus decades until the 1980s when cassette tapes started filling the shelves. But vinyl’s major popularity plunge came courtesy of Sony (SNE) and Philips’ (PHG) digitally recorded compact disc which proved far more portable, far less vulnerable to damage and, according to some, provided better fidelity. Vinyl records were officially ushered out of the marketplace by 1991 when the vast majority of copies of U2’s Achtung Baby were purchased on CD and Tower Records stores were holding final clearance sales on all vinyl merchandise, which comprised only 15 percent of total sales.
With the relatively recent advent of the Internet, the MP3 and the iPod (AAPL), the empire of the CD is experiencing a gradual overthrow. According to Billboard's senior chart manager and analyst Keith Caulfield, 44 million digital albums were purchased by July 2010, up four million from the previous year, while CD sales dropped by 33 million to 114 million. Online stores now predominate the retail music landscape with Apple’s iTunes store taking the biggest bite at 70% of the digital music market share. June 2009 saw an end of the brick and mortar record store era when the last Virgin Megastore chain in North America closed its doors.
Of course, not all of America’s music stores have turned their leases over to Pinkberry. And of the proud few that remain, an unexpected sales trend is in the works. Although common logic and practicality dictate that vinyl records should have gone the way of fellow technological dinosaurs the floppy disc, the beeper and its CD successor, the LP has managed to cement its place in the niche music consumer’s heart and stereo shelf.
While the vinyl record will never again be a heavyweight contender in the music retail industry, currently comprising only one percent of total album sales, it certainly deserves ‘comeback kid’ status. According to Nielsen SoundScan, sales of vinyl records actually increased by nearly one million units from 1.9 million in 2008 to 2.8 million in 2009 -- and those figures exclude independent shops and concert sales. (In 1980, at the height of vinyl's popularity, 322 million LPs were sold.) We’re seeing a resurgence of vinyl catalog reissues as well as a growing roster of artists firing up the vinyl presses for new releases. Some artists like Green Day are doing both. Last year the punk band re-released every record in their entire catalog on LP and then pressed their newest album, 21st Century Breakdown, on vinyl for its initial release. The Rolling Stones is also catering to the LP collector with a new all-vinyl limited edition box set of remastered recordings from 1964-1969, which will set fans back $265.
As long as there remains a market for vinyl records, a demand will coexist for the equipment on which to play them. Electronics companies like Sony and Pioneer hawk state-of-the-art automatic turntables while recreations of turn-of-the-century wood-accented cabinet models complete with modern digital conversion capability are the business of companies like Crosley. Even Pottery Barn (WSM) has gotten in on the vinyl action with a classic leather bound portable suitcase player that plays and digitizes 33, 45 and 78 rpm records into audio files.
The lasting appeal of the vinyl record extends beyond retro novelty item hipstertude into 100 percent uncompromising sound snobbery. There is a superior race of audio purists who insist that the most cleanly mastered compact disc could never rival the hiss, crackle and pop of its spiral-grooved counterpart. They’ll argue that there’s nothing like physically flipping through card jackets in record store bins, admiring the album art, removing the record from its paper sleeve and gingerly cradling its edges in their palms.
Besides, Stanley Goodspeed wouldn’t exactly get to hear "turn me on, dead man" on "Revolution 9" by hitting the rewind button on his iPod.
http://www.minyanville.com/special-features/articles/vinyl-records-turntable-record-player-gift/11/30/2010/id/31349
By Diane Bullock Nov 30, 2010
Four decades before Cameron Crowe had Bangs putting a nail in the coffin his record acquiring habit, RCA Victor was introducing the very first commercial vinyl record to the market. But the listening medium didn’t catch on until with the public until Columbia Records pioneered cost effective playback equipment and unveiled the 12-inch Long Play 33 1/3 RPM microgroove polyvinyl chloride record at a New York press conference in 1948.
The vinyl record would be the dominant mass market music medium for the next three-plus decades until the 1980s when cassette tapes started filling the shelves. But vinyl’s major popularity plunge came courtesy of Sony (SNE) and Philips’ (PHG) digitally recorded compact disc which proved far more portable, far less vulnerable to damage and, according to some, provided better fidelity. Vinyl records were officially ushered out of the marketplace by 1991 when the vast majority of copies of U2’s Achtung Baby were purchased on CD and Tower Records stores were holding final clearance sales on all vinyl merchandise, which comprised only 15 percent of total sales.
With the relatively recent advent of the Internet, the MP3 and the iPod (AAPL), the empire of the CD is experiencing a gradual overthrow. According to Billboard's senior chart manager and analyst Keith Caulfield, 44 million digital albums were purchased by July 2010, up four million from the previous year, while CD sales dropped by 33 million to 114 million. Online stores now predominate the retail music landscape with Apple’s iTunes store taking the biggest bite at 70% of the digital music market share. June 2009 saw an end of the brick and mortar record store era when the last Virgin Megastore chain in North America closed its doors.
Of course, not all of America’s music stores have turned their leases over to Pinkberry. And of the proud few that remain, an unexpected sales trend is in the works. Although common logic and practicality dictate that vinyl records should have gone the way of fellow technological dinosaurs the floppy disc, the beeper and its CD successor, the LP has managed to cement its place in the niche music consumer’s heart and stereo shelf.
While the vinyl record will never again be a heavyweight contender in the music retail industry, currently comprising only one percent of total album sales, it certainly deserves ‘comeback kid’ status. According to Nielsen SoundScan, sales of vinyl records actually increased by nearly one million units from 1.9 million in 2008 to 2.8 million in 2009 -- and those figures exclude independent shops and concert sales. (In 1980, at the height of vinyl's popularity, 322 million LPs were sold.) We’re seeing a resurgence of vinyl catalog reissues as well as a growing roster of artists firing up the vinyl presses for new releases. Some artists like Green Day are doing both. Last year the punk band re-released every record in their entire catalog on LP and then pressed their newest album, 21st Century Breakdown, on vinyl for its initial release. The Rolling Stones is also catering to the LP collector with a new all-vinyl limited edition box set of remastered recordings from 1964-1969, which will set fans back $265.
As long as there remains a market for vinyl records, a demand will coexist for the equipment on which to play them. Electronics companies like Sony and Pioneer hawk state-of-the-art automatic turntables while recreations of turn-of-the-century wood-accented cabinet models complete with modern digital conversion capability are the business of companies like Crosley. Even Pottery Barn (WSM) has gotten in on the vinyl action with a classic leather bound portable suitcase player that plays and digitizes 33, 45 and 78 rpm records into audio files.
The lasting appeal of the vinyl record extends beyond retro novelty item hipstertude into 100 percent uncompromising sound snobbery. There is a superior race of audio purists who insist that the most cleanly mastered compact disc could never rival the hiss, crackle and pop of its spiral-grooved counterpart. They’ll argue that there’s nothing like physically flipping through card jackets in record store bins, admiring the album art, removing the record from its paper sleeve and gingerly cradling its edges in their palms.
Besides, Stanley Goodspeed wouldn’t exactly get to hear "turn me on, dead man" on "Revolution 9" by hitting the rewind button on his iPod.
http://www.minyanville.com/special-features/articles/vinyl-records-turntable-record-player-gift/11/30/2010/id/31349
Rolling Stone's Top 100 Album covers #44!
1973 - Bob Marley, Catch A Fire (original zippo cover above)
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Rolling Stone's Top 100 Album covers #50!
1973 - Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy (click for larger pic)
Rolling Stone's Top 100 Album Covers #51!
1968 - Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland (original cover) click for larger pic
Front (variant cover)
Back (variant cover)
Monday, September 13, 2010
Rolling Stone's Top 100 Album covers #53!
1979 - Stevie Wonder's Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
