In summer 2011 The Flaming Lips released collaborative vinyl EPs with Lightning Bolt, Neon Indian and Prefuse 73. The 'starter blob' of vinyl for each disc was assembled by hand using random amounts of different vinyl colors, ensuring that every record would be unique. Here are a couple of
Flickr photosets of the finished products (and a bit of the process) as they came off the presses.
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posted by mintcake!
on Nov 26, 2011 -
15 comments
Project Thirty-Three "The seemingly infinite number of vintage record jackets that convey their message with only simple shapes and typography never cease to amaze me. Project Thirty-Three is my personal collection and shrine to circles and dots, squares and rectangles, and triangles, and the brilliant designers that made them come to life on album covers."
posted by OmieWise
on Jun 13, 2011 -
19 comments
Vintage Vanguard is a Japanese web site featuring the cover art for every Blue Note album ever released. Other labels are featured as well.
posted by dobbs
on Jun 20, 2010 -
18 comments
Pitchfork TV presents
I Need That Record! (one week only),
Brendan Toller's
documentary feature examining the plight of independent record stores in the U.S. Featuring Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Ian Mackaye (Fugazi/Minor Threat), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group) Chris Franz (Talking Heads), Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers), Pat Carney (The Black Keys), Bryan Poole (Of Montreal), and many more figures of the indie record making/selling scene. Plus the wild animations of
Matthew Newman-Long! (
previously mentioned)
posted by shoesfullofdust
on Apr 24, 2010 -
19 comments
Peter Goldmark, developer of
early color tv technology, is lesser known for a cooler invention, the
Highway Hifi – the first recorded-music player for an automobile. The under-dash system played
records provided by Columbia Records which played at 16 ⅔ rpm even when the vehicle was in motion. It was first released with Chrysler models in 1956 but lackluster promotion of the option by both Columbia and Chrysler led to the option being
discontinued before the 60s.
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posted by jessamyn
on Oct 12, 2009 -
36 comments
Imagine you're living in China, trying to work your way out of the family date farming business (which garners approximately $450 annually). You do all the right things. You apply for (and receive)
Communist Party membership. You study literally to the point of collapse, and despite coming from coal-town origins, you score high on your
gao kao ("high test," more-or-less the only thing that matters in getting into a Chinese university). Your already-poor family goes
deep into debt to send you to college, and you even manage to come out with a degree. Classic rise-up-by-your-own-bootstraps tale, right? However, finally, when you go to apply for a job—
your state-sanctioned educational, occupational, and political records are inexplicably, awfully gone. What has happened to that plain manila folder (!) that serves as your only legitimate, official history in Chinese society?
Probably stolen and sold so a party official's child can get everything you worked so hard for. And then,
of course, your family is detained by party officials when your parents demand to know where the hell your life went. Of course.
[more inside]
posted by Keter
on Jul 27, 2009 -
47 comments
"
The whole dream is that everybody has a world record in them," said Dan Rollman, president and co-founder of the Brooklyn-based
Universal Record Database. Since the site went live last fall, more than 1,000 feats have been documented - ranging from the most binder clips on a face (
now up to 34) to the longest toenail (
seven-eighths of an inch) to the most whoopee cushions sat on without smiling or laughing (
presently up to 18), and a few records involving mustaches (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6). Beyond the basics of setting records, the URDB is
based on three principles: 1. Honesty and accuracy are pretty much everything, 2. Don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt others. Don't hurt the planet, and 3. Waste sucks.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 20, 2009 -
22 comments
A Day in the Life of Abbey Road; (sorry for the prosaic lead-in link - at least I didn't use the word "iconic!") Enjoy watching Beatles' fans and locals negotiate London's famous Abbey Road crosswalk. I miss album covers; I'm of the generation of high school kids who spent a zillion hours flipping through them in record stores. The best of them - like Abbey Road - could be high-impact and sometimes accompanied their records like a kind of graphic mini-novel. What were some of your favorites and why?
posted by Dex Quire
on Mar 10, 2009 -
42 comments
The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."
posted by Miko
on Feb 16, 2009 -
27 comments
Desperate Man Blues Edward Gillen's documentary about Joe Bussard, renowned collector of 25,000+ blues, folk and gospel 78rpm records from the 20s and 30s. It's about the hunt and the hunter, as much as what he found. One week only on Pitchfork TV
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posted by msalt
on Jan 31, 2009 -
15 comments
The New Creation was born in 1970 when Chris Towers, an unknown guitarist from Vancouver, decided to form a Christian rock group with his mother Lorna as lead singer and their neighbor Janet Tiessen on drums. Scared by reports of the hippie excesses of the Manson/Altamont era, Lorna Towers wrote doom-laden, apocalyptic lyrics for the New Creation's aptly titled album,
Troubled. The band was unpolished, yet somehow captured a unique lo-fi sound comparable to a hybrid of the Velvet Underground and
the Shaggs. The group might be totally forgotten today, if an aging hippie record dealer named
Ty Scammel hadn't rescued a copy from a $1 bargain bin, leading to the
album's rediscovery by collectors of Christian rock and
outsider music.
[more inside]
posted by jonp72
on Jan 16, 2009 -
23 comments
Legendary record man and music producer
Jerry Wexler died on August 15, at the age of 91. His keen insight, and his deep love and appreciation for the artists he worked with resulted in an extraordinary enriching of American music.
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posted by flapjax at midnite
on Aug 17, 2008 -
16 comments
This is a collection of the National Archives stored in the
Digital Vaults. You can browse through hundreds of photographs, documents, and film clips and discover the connection between some of the National Archives' most treasured records. With the
Pathways tool you can see the unique and surprising connections between events and people and test your knowledge of history. As you travel through the site and collect documents, images and films, you can then merge the objects to
create your own poster or movie from your collection.
posted by netbros
on Jul 17, 2008 -
16 comments
Death were a
proto-punk trio of black Jehovah's Witnesses based out of Detroit back in 1974. They were almost signed to Columbia, but bailed on the label when Columbia wanted them to change their name. Instead, they self-released a 7" which is now
quite a collector's item, influenced as it was by,
“Iggy and Stooges, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and The Who”.
But the story doesn't end there. Recently, Bobby Hackney, whose father played in Death along with two of his uncles, learned of the band and, lo and behold, his dad found the master tapes for their unreleased full-length in his attic. Is a new chapter in
punk rock history about to be written?
posted by stinkycheese
on Jun 11, 2008 -
35 comments
Today is Record Store Day!What is it about music? It is Love and Passion channeled through a medium that cuts across and through actual definition straight to your soul whether you love Blues, Reggae, Country, Punk Rock, or Quawwali music, your favorite artists take you places you could otherwise never go - and that place is often a place of love and inspiration. -
Marc Weinstein [more inside]
posted by carsonb
on Apr 19, 2008 -
38 comments
20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups of All Time from Blender Magazine. "They include MCA Records’ decision in 1989 to pass on a Seattle upstart band called Nirvana while also betting big on “Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz,” the debut album of a hair-metal band called Pretty Boy Floyd."
posted by plexi
on Mar 15, 2008 -
50 comments
