A Celebration of Vinyl

Rick and DJ had been threatening to have a celebration of vinyl…and Saturday night they did just that. Rules o’ the game? Bring whatever vinyl you’d love to hear or if you didn’t have any records, you could wear vinyl.

Results? Hilarious! Just the act of digging out old albums was a blast to the past. Brushing aside the cobwebs on my collection, I realized I would be hard pressed to bring just one album. Do I bring my favorite one, or do I bring the cheesiest one? Heck, I’ll bring some of both!

Stop for a moment and ponder this…what album(s) would you bring to a Vinyl Celebration?

Reviewing my own vinyl, I discovered that the hard rock that permeated my high school years wasn’t in my record collection (although you’ll find them on my cassettes, CDs and iPod): Boston, Cream, The Who, Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Rush, Led Zepplin, Queen, The Ramones, Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, Rare Earth, Moody Blues, Santana, Three Dog Night, and Aerosmith.

What artists got air time at the party?
Round 1: Kinky Friedman, Journey, The Jackson Five, The Beatles, Peter Frampton, James Taylor, Roberta Flack, Moody Blues, Cream, Carole King and Two Nice Girls.

Round 2: The Beatles, Petula Clark, Johnny Rivers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Barry Manilow, Tom Jones, Gil Scott Heron, Crosby, Stills and Nash, B52’s, Public Image Limited and The Judy’s.

Round 3 was getting started with Elton John as I had to leave. I could have stayed all night.

Notably missing from our vinyl was Jimi Hendrix. I had him on my iPod (and of course had brought my speakers)…but DJ stuck to the rules and wouldn’t let me play any digital music. Damn him and his rules!

Scott and Nique even went in search of Jimi at the local Half-Price Bookstore, but returned empty handed. Guess that means we’ll have to get on ebay and bid on some Purple Haze before the next celebration of vinyl spins around.

So, the ever curious Sims wants to know…what album(s) would you bring to this celebration? They don’t have to be your own…the could be “your friend’s” or “your brother’s” or even your parents. What album for me, you ask? Why, Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass – Whipped Cream & Other Delights, of course! It is my Dad’s, I swear!

12 comments

  1. What a great idea! Herb Alpert is perfect. I shed my vinyl years ago, and am now in the process of shedding my CDs, but if I were to dig a little deeper than the same 70’s hits you and I grew up on, I’d probably go for some jazz fusion that I don’t think has ever been reissued on CD. There’s a Billy Cobham album in particular that I find myself pining for occasionally.

    I’ve become a fan of MP3 blogs and the best among them (e.g., Soul Sides) regularly digitize out-of-print vinyl. By helping forgotten music find an audience I suspect they’re stimulating the reissue market, a perfect example of why Fair Use is really the IP holder’s friend.

  2. Vinyl? Isn’t that what they used to make car upholstery with? :P

    But seriously. I’d bring in my Doris Day, Les Paul, and random WWII-era French 45s. Prolly also the version of NIN’s Downward Spiral I have on vinyl.

  3. Vinyl has been much on my mind lately. I’ve been putting the finishing touches down in the workshop on a “bookshelf” to hold the thousands of LPs that my wife and I own that have spent the last three years since we moved into this house in cardboard moving boxes. And last week I received a (late) birthday present from my wife: a USB turntable that hooks up to your computer to make it easier to digitize vinyl. I’ve been digging through the few LPs that aren’t in boxes, mostly ones left behind by my parents when we bought the house from them. I think I would have to bring the soundtrack from “A Man and a Woman”, the 1960s middlebrow French film, which I dug out of the pile. Then maybe the Ferrante & Teicher album of soundtrack covers, also called “A Man and a Woman”. And then maybe one of the four album set “Rapid French” language lessons.

    From my singles collection, I would have to bring Austin’s Bad Livers doing their bluegrass cover of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”.

    I think that’s probably enough; wouldn’t want to hog the turntable….

  4. I have Whipped Cream also — as well as Going Places, which I prefer of the two. They once belonged to my parents, but now they’re all mine! In fact, Herb made it into my iPOD.

    In clearing out the house for the very last time in May, I shipped 2 massive boxes of albums (aka vinyl) to my new townhome. They included a wide range of music from Frampton and Led Zeppelin to Barbra Streisand to 1960s Goodyear Christmas albums. Sadly, my sister never would give up the Partridge Family albums she owned — they’re now melted in her attic.

    I thought that I might sell some of these albums on eBay…hmmm, perhaps I should hang onto them for fun evenings. Just gotta find someone with a turntable that still functions.

  5. I forgot to mention that my very first album that I owned exclusively and was not purchased by a sibling or parent was acquired while sleeping over at your house.

    Remember, late 1979 or early 1980? Calling the local radio DJs?

    Eagles The Long Run. Oh yeah, I still have it.

  6. I don’t think I’ve ever owned any vinyl of my own…at the point where I started buying my own music, it was all tapes.

    I think my dad had that Herb Alpert too…alas, Mom got rid of all Dad’s vinyl several years ago w/out asking us kids. I really would’ve liked to have had his (pretty good) collection of classical records.

    But what I think I’d want to hear most of all is a novelty record of music from the Disneyland Electric Light parade. It belonged to all three of us, and on bored hot summer afternoons, we’d play it on the record player in our cool basement and dance parade-like around our dollhouses. :)

  7. I still have all my old vinyl. When I moved my stuff out of my house and into storage back in 2001, I had them all in a box labeled “Records — Yes, the vinyl kind.”

    This collection includes Elton John Captiain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, Eagles Hotel California, and Styx Grand Illusion.

    Want to take a real time machine trip back to good old WHS? Rent the entire collection of Freaks and Geeks. If you never saw it during its short TV life, you missed out. Aside from everything else great in the show, the soundtrack for each episode is brilliant.

  8. Fleetwood Mac – Tango in the Night
    Eurythmics – Savage
    Shakin’ Stevens – Give me your heart, tonight.

    Oh what a night this would’ve been.

Comments are closed.