albums

So, my theory goes like this :

If I could accidentally collect about 40 Christmas records over the past few years, I must have actively passed up at least a thousand. Perhaps they were duplicates, perhaps they were all fairly generic in their variety or instrumentation, but I’ve always just flipped right past them. Now, I’m the kind of collector that becomes inspired by anything that presents itself in quantity, so I don’t know why they never crossed my mind as ‘collectible’. Thanks again go to FaLaLaLaLa for showing me otherwise. I still think that my repulsion away from Christmas music is a gut reaction to my grandma’s insistence on playing what she calls ‘Japanese jazz’ during many holiday events. You know the music that they played on the Weather Channel in the early 90s? It’s like living inside of that. And praying for some kind of supertornado to just come on by and relieve you from your misery.

Given the amount of holiday music that’s been produced, a very small percentage of it actually finds radio play every year, be it on an FM station or piped into a mall. This means that there are thousands of Christmas songs that are just going unnoticed, forgotten, and ultimately unappreciated. And that idea is what inspires me to discover and collect. By the time I die, I’m going to compile the ultimate Christmas playlist. It will not be encyclopedic, but it’ll undoubtedly be a thousand times more interesting than what we traditionally hear. And it’ll absolutely involve some Twisted Sister. Did you know that Dee Snider wrote a Christmas song that was later recorded by an unwitting Celine Dion?

So, I’ve gotten a good start on my Ultimate Christmas Mix – and given the assortment of records I’ve found in the garage, I’ve also started on The Worst Christmas Mix Ever That Makes Babies Cry.

My personal favorite, for the cover alone, is ‘Home For Christmas : A Joyous Evening of Yuletide Songs‘, released in 1964. The joyousness is doubtful, as it appears that this record hasn’t seen a needle more than once, whereas my copy of Led Zeppelin’s ‘IV’ is scratched to heck and back, denoting the true measure of joy derived from any album. The cover depicts a family joylessly singing along to the piano playing of a bespectacled girl, whose pigtail strangely and rigidly extends out from her head. They stand in a line, mouths agape, clearly gathered together for some kind of highly invasive tonsil inspection form the Ghost of Christmas Whatever. The only one even kinda smiling is ol’ Grandma, and she’s only smiling because the baby is about to goose the dog. The gentleman in blue wears a ‘P’ on his chest, which surely stands for ‘Pretty Awesome Guy’. Merry Christmas.

Of note is ‘Good King Wenceslas‘, which has the ‘father’ character belting it out in a crazy, unnatural baritone as if it were some kind of Klingon battle hymn – causing me to giggle uncontrollably, especially at the verse ‘BRING ME FLESH AND BRING ME WINE!’ A finer Klingon there never was!

A close second is Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘Christmas Tyme‘. He doesn’t have to spell thyngs ryght, he’s the Humperdinck! He can spell it wrong fyve different tymes on the record sleeve, but are you gonna argue with that surly lothario on the cover? I didn’t think so. It’s a cover that begs the question, ‘Is this the best photo you could get?’ The answer is ‘yes, Mr. Humperdinck had a very busy schedule of swoonifying women that day.’

The most interesting record of the bunch is ‘A Music Box Christmas‘. which is a recording of a collection of 19th century music boxes, all from the collection of Rita Ford – so within this collection of Christmas records of mine, one of the records themselves is a document of a collection. The liner notes (which are always exhaustive, bombastic, and a fun read in themselves) details the general history of music boxes, the authors of the songs contained therein, and talks about the photograph record rendering the interchangeable discs of a music box obsolete, a theme that’s still repeating itself 30 years later as we constantly change musical formats.

And finally, the only full-length Christmas record I ever intentionally bought, ‘Hi-Fi Organ and Chimes and Christmastime‘, purchased solely on the virtue of the word ‘hi-fi’. That, and for ten cents.

If you have a favorite holiday album of any era, comment down below, and check out the collection I’ve amassed so far – and enjoy some holiday tunes!

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer from ‘Hi-Fi Organ and Chimes’ LP
Rudolph by Engelbert Humperdinck
Rudolph by The Boston Pops
Rudolph by Gene Autry
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Every box of records I’ve ever found at a tag sale, or a Goodwill, or a Salvation Army, or laid outside the library door like so many defenseless newborn kittens, has had at least a half dozen Christmas albums in it. And they make me recoil in horror. Sometimes, entire boxes brim with the beasts, and my disappointment is fairly obvious upon their discovery. It’s probably the gagging sounds.

It’s not as if I detest Christmas music, but its omnipresence between November 15th and January 10th of every year is enough to inspire revulsion. The typical Christmas radio fare is saccharine and overdramatic, with the most recent, manufactured singer belting out a Christmas classic as if their face is just one nanopascal away from complete explosion. What’s even better is when it’s a duet in which two incongruous singers try to out-belt each other with every verse, thereby damaging both of their credibilities at once. Bah, humbug. The only pair that could do that successfully was David Bowie and Bing Crosby, a feat of wonder which shall never be duplicated.

Somehow, I’ve let my distaste for ‘modern’ Christmas tunes infect all of my holiday cheer, so I can honestly say that I’ve never intentionally dropped a dime on any Christmas vinyl, ever – even though it unrelentingly presents itself to me at every turn for next-to-nothing prices. Unless it had ‘hi-fi’, ‘organ’ or ’space’ in the title, or somehow snuck by my angry judgment sensors unscathed, any holiday music that I have is purely accidental, and very likely mixed into larger crates of things I’d purchased. Recent inspections of these crates of records out in the garage has reveal that I’ve apparently been in about 40 accidents I didn’t even remember having. Ergo, my Christmas record collection is significant… and still largely unpleasant.

But only now do I realize that I might have passed up some real gems during this past summer’s yard sales – most specifically, two huge boxes of Christmas records that were being given away for a total of ten dollars – which I unwittingly passed up.

I only realized my error when I recently happened upon FaLaLaLaLa.com – a wonderful blog that collects this lost holiday vinyl, documents it, and even allows readers to download select tunes (or entire albums) from them. I’ve surely encountered quite a diverse smattering of these in my travels, but I’ve never thought to, like, APPRECIATE them. Of course, most of these encounters would have been under the golden, searing sun of mid-July, when Christmas couldn’t possibly be more distant or unattractive, so pardon my ignorance.

It seems that almost every recording artist is contractually obligated to record a Christmas album, or at least a single, at some point in their careers. The Beatles recorded 7 super-rare holiday flexi-discs for their British fan club members. The Beach Boys (and later, Brian Wilson solo), Elvis, Chicago, Jethro Tull, The Supremes, The Jackson Five, Rockapella, Bright Eyes, Mariah Carey, Don McLean, Aimee Mann, Twisted Sister, Air Supply, 2 Live Crew, and Chris Isaak are just a few of the diverse artists who’ve dedicated entire albums to the holidays, often lending their unique styles to classic songs, along with one or two original compositions. Hell, I’ve even contributed some especially bizarre and bad music to a Christmas compilation a few years back. No one is immune to the dreaded holiday spirit. Even Scrooge was swayed, eventually.

Of course, none of these compare to the genuinely warm and classic albums of Burl Ives, Vince Guaraldi and Bing Crosby, which will forever reign superior to all other Christmas albums. I can’t help but actually start to CARE about the holidays when these come over the speakers. I’ll copy some of THOSE albums for my grandparents this Christmas, instead of the god-awful Phantom soundtrack we’re forced to endure every year. By the way, a close fourth place album comes by way of Christmas Cocktails, from the Ultra-Lounge series of albums.

Of course, these aren’t nearly as interesting fare as the various Christmas concept albums out there. Of course, I’m a fan of the Star Wars Holiday Album, but strange concept albums like ‘Have a Jewish Christmas…?‘ (downloadable in full from FaLaLaLaLa) are always welcomed additions to the collection. Pair that with ‘Oy to the World’ by the Klezmonauts and you have a Christmas that appeals to a larger group of people than usual.

1994’s ‘Christmas in Luke’s Sex Shop’ is 2 Live Crew’s decidedly profane contribution to the vast collection of musical Christmas fare. Most of the songs on the album feature titles that are a bit too offensive or potentially controversial to even mention here – but I encourage you to seek it out on your own, at your own discretion. It can’t be worse that whatever Larry the Cable Guy and Mr. Cork have decided to destroy Christmas with. If you can point me to a genuinely funny Christmas song, I’ll gladly marry your least attractive daughter.

Of course, there are ten times as many alarming Christmas albums for children, including the 5-song CD single featuring a whole array of Shrek characters that causes me to hurriedly leave the house any time the kid decides to pop it into the CD player. I’m just grateful that we don’t have Pokemon Christmas Bash. One day I’ll get my revenge by torturing the household with 700 slightly different versions of Jingle Bells.

Of course, my own accidental collection of holiday records is another thing entirely. I’ll tell you more about it, and give you a listen, on Saturday.

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Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect – Join our Collectors’ Community

Usually when we’ve been record shopping, I’d always skipped right over the boxed-sets of LPs and compilation disks. I’ve always written them off as worthless, pre-packaged and regurgitated stuff that could be bought elsewhere. They’ve been shilled on TV and in the backs of magazines, which led me to discredit them even more. Sets like this were also produced in such numbers that they’re less rare, and it would be unlikely to find anything particularly innovative recorded on them. So, why my change of heart?

First, I’m not talking about famous-artist box sets — these are usually made by the musician or group’s producer and label and reissued with the highest quality. I’m sure some fell short, but these are generally seen as premiere presentation of an artist’s greatest work. These, generally, do appeal to a collector. I’m also not talking about those discount-rack “best of” albums, CDs, and tapes produced by somebody other than an artist’s regular label (K-Tel is an example anyone over 25 should remember). With these disks, some independent producer paid for reproduction rights and produced an album as cheaply as possible, most likely by skimping on the reproduction quality and recording media. These, generally, do not appeal to a collector, unless somehow a rare cut happened to end up on the disk.

The compilations I’ve overlooked are what I consider contextual compilations. Rather than a collection of a single artist’s works, or a sampler of a particular label or genre, these sets were pulled together with a topic or subject in mind. For example, simple compilations like Billboard Top Hits of every year in history give a content of the music inside, relating it to its peers. You might not realize that The Devil Went Down To Georgia and Heart Of Glass shared the airwaves, so listening to these tunes within a yearly context adds some understanding to the music.

Time Life are probably one of the highest-profile producers of compilations and box-sets that I’d formerly overlooked — however, Rhino also does a good job, and a number of other companies have put extra work into these compilations, making them worthwhile. Rhino’s New Wave Hits Of The ’80s is an excellent example of a set whose values is more than the sum of its parts. Rhino put a lot of effort into both the music featured on the discs and the additional info found in the liner notes, to give the listener a greater perspective on the genre as a whole.

The Cruisin’ The Fifties and Sixties series are an excellent example of context outside of the music itself. Like the Billboard compilations, the focus of the Cruisin’ series is a particular year at a time. However, the producers of Cruisin’ wanted to present the music in the context of the history of rock-and-roll radio by recruiting actual DJs from large radio markets of the time, some retired, and getting them to perform their show in the studio. While this reduces or affects the songs running time, as it would if you were to record a song right off the radio, the actual value is in the presentation of the music.

On a different track, there are also multimedia compilations designed for individuals and educational institutions to learn history through books, audio, and sometimes video. If you’re a fan of library sales, you’ve probably brushed right past these without a thought. Like Cruisin’, these assemble period music within an explanation of their purpose at the time. Queue’s Apple Pie Music is a multimedia CD designed for educators, and Time Life’s The Life History of the United States is a 12-book-and-album set, are two examples I own — the latter were purchased just yesterday, but just the albums. These 12 records are meant to compliment the information found in the books, but from a music collector standpoint have the benefit of historical context for a variety of music, from pre-colonization to the 1950s. One site of each album is called “documents”, a half-hour breakless track in the style of a radio program, combining an voice-over explaining each segment, with a variety of dramatic performances of letters, speeches, and literary works, interspersed in later albums with actual period recordings. On the reverse are several musical works from the period, many of them being secular music rather than classical works. Putting together popular tunes with historical works gives a greater dimension, such as realizing that the early blues and Teddy Roosevelt were contemporaries, for example.

The next time I’m thumbing through the record bin and come across an inch-thick box of LPs, I won’t write them off as yet another set of Bizet — I might find something a bit more, something with context along with the content, something to learn from and experience. To enjoy music is to understand it, and taking more from it than a tune and some lyrics adds to my experience. Those same songs might exist on a hundred other records, but the become something different when assembled with a purpose.

During last weekend’s sweaty tag sale exploits, I found myself in a garage full of unappreciated LPs. Among the two full boxes, a vast majority of them were either holiday albums or musical soundtracks… and the rest seemed to be stuck together with some mysterious, dried liquid. I never let myself be deterred by the unwashed detritus of tag sales, so I boldly dove in, assigned some positive mental energy to my immune system, and came out six records richer. How could I resist Jimmy Walker’s spoken word album, ‘Dyn-O-Mite‘? I’m only mortal.

When I checked the price tag on the records, I saw that they were 50 cents each… or five dollars for the whole boxful. I broke out the abacus and quickly calculated that I was already spending three dollars on some records I wanted… but I could have at least fifty more records I didn’t even slightly want for only two more dollars! What use could I possibly have for a slew of albums I didn’t want to listen to or allow to take up space in my already cluttered life? Could I throw them at the dog and test their aerodynamics and edibility all at once? Could I finally exact my emotional revenge upon the original cast of The Music Man?

(As it turns out, after I inquired about buying the whole box of records, the woman went inside to check on something, and came back ten minutes later talking about how hungry she was, having completely forgotten my inquiry. I didn’t pursue it further, lest I get some kind of contact buzz from being in her apparently herbally-enhanced vicinity.)

But it got me thinking. It wasn’t the first time I found a ‘buy-one-get-ninety-free’ deal on LPs. I’d recently bought a charming 1960s record carrier for only two dollars…. but I had to take the Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand records that were inside it also. I turned over two dollars, and a small portion of my immortal soul, and brought the whole lot home. WHAT on Earth could I do with this collection of unwanted record albums? I had to think of something fast – I was pretty sure that the restless spirit of Neil Diamond was trying to touch my in my sleep.

As it turns out, I could do a whole heck of a lot with unwanted albums. The craft brigade is mighty, and they have a propensity towards the ‘retro’.

For one, you can make kitschy bowls. Following some simple instructions, one can pop an unwanted LP into the oven for a few moments and the vinyl will become highly flexible and malleable, until it cools – at which point you can easily re-heat it. If you place the LP on an overturned bowl, it will begin to conform to the shape as it wilts, and harden into shape as it cools. From there, fill that sucker up with apples or hard candy and you’re set (though the toxic properties of album vinyl are debated, washing the bowl once you’re done should allay some fears). One might even get sculptural with broken record pieces and a little bit of directed heat.

A slightly more complicated idea involves creating coasters from the center label area. Using a scroll saw and a whole lot of caution, cut out the center disc and sand down the edges. A little bit of varnish or spray fixative will waterproof the paper of the label, and your living room table will be the hippest in the house. Seriously, your nightstand is gonna be totally jealous. I wouldn’t worry about the hole in the middle of the remaining disc, as the dreaded condensation only forms around the rim of the glass, but it’s not hard to plug the center hole with a bit of epoxy, if you find it necessary.

The circular shape of the album lends itself easily to clockmaking. Simple clock movement kits can be found at your local craft store, and the pre-drilled hole in the center of the album is just waiting to be filled with some time-telling hands. Numbers can be aligned with a protractor at 30 degrees from each other, and can either be painted or glued on. If you’re not especially fond of the album you’re using, replace the center label with something of your own design.

Crafters on Etsy have made it a regular practice to create notebooks using both album artwork, cut to size, or the albums themselves (again, carefully cut using a scroll saw). Vintage album artwork is an entirely different creature than it is today, designed to appeal to a 12” scale instead of the tiny CD covers that we have today, or worse, miniature iTunes icons. It looks great on the front of any notebook – even the worst album artwork has a delicious sense of irony. For added irony, heat up an album and bend it into an iPod holder.

Of course, the possibilities don’t end with this short list of ideas. The raw material of circular, black vinyl is potentially limitless and inspiring, inviting all kinds of alterations. Rarely costing more than a dollar a pop, there’s plenty of room to try and fail a thousand ideas – just make sure you’re not melting down a rare gem.

The Wifey and I have written a bit about collecting record albums lately, but it’s not because we had any plan to focus on a particular collection. See, around a month ago, we got a huge box-lot of 78rpm records from the 1930s-1950s. Of course, we couldn’t get them go without being listened to first, so we poured the wine, hooked up the sacrificial turntable (in case a record was cracked and caused any damage), and stayed up until the early hours of morning voting thumbs-up and thumbs-down on the various recordings. “Thumbs up” generally meant we’re keeping it, “thumbs down” put it into a pile to be thrown out, sold on eBay, or as raw materials for an art project as-yet-to-be-undetermined.

For years, I’ve liked to buy albums at garage sales and thrift shops, purely for the purpose of listening to them. Mint albums, shrink wrap intact? I open them, and have a listen to what an unscratched, unworn record sounds like. Spending more than $1 a record? Insanity! Boxes of boring ones were liquidated at rummage sales for 25¢ an album; others went to the thrift shop. I didn’t think much of them, other than to throw a stack of records on the changer as an alternative to radio, and rarity or value really wasn’t a key in my record album shopping habits. I wouldn’t have even called it a collection. I owned records, much as someone owns a drawer of silverware.

Now, my books — those have long been a collection. Early editions of “Arsenic and Old Lace” and “Tour of the World in Eighty Days,” mid-19th century books on parlimentary procedure and books written in latin (with a convenient hebrew translation on the facing page). Long-obsolete encyclopedias with colorfully inaccurate maps. Religious treatises condemning new morality threats like boxing and flappers. I’ve atually been excited to find a rare or interesting book, knowing it had some value, while trying to hide my excitement and pay the little old lady at the rummage sale who had recklessly priced it far too low. My interest in collecting books is obvious to anyone standing in our front entry. My books are a collection — maybe not the best — but it definitely holds a value to me.

The question becomes: why don’t I think the records are a collection, while my books are?

If I were to do a pseudo scientific study, donning a white lab coat and carrying an authentic clipboard around, by observing various groups of items and deciding whether or not they were a collection, I’d have to be rather arbitrary: groups of items without context do not make a collection.

I could drive down the street, and observe a yard full of lawn ornaments: flamingos, whirligigs depicting a man sawing a log whenever the wind blows, wooden cutouts of hirsute grandma hips bending over, flowerpots in the shapes of a veritable menagerie of creatures. Could it be a collection? Possibly. At a friend’s house, noting their shelves full of Harlequin paperbacks, arranged by color and title. It is likely to be a collection, but possibly the product of a lovelorn obsessed woman. A car parked at the mall, dashboard covered with California Raisin figurines double-stick-taped into stability. I’d think it an unlikely collection, but I might consider it one.

In each case, I couldn’t decide just on the collection’s contents. I’d have to seek out the collector.

A library has a collection, handled by a librarian. A museum has a collection, overseen by a curator. A collector handles their collection, deciding what must be included, what is irrelevant, what must be cared for and how to care for it, how to display it and how to repair it (if it should be repaired at all). Without a collector, groups of things have little meaning beyond their casual relationship. Shelves of Dragonlance books could be the penultimate and complete collection of the series, or it could be that the reader has found that even the used book stores won’t buy them when they’re done reading. A jar of buttons could be sewing supplies, or it could be a rare set kept together to protect their value as a whole. The person who decides this is the person who assembled the items in the first place: the collector.

While value, rarity, and relevance are important in defining a collection, it’s not always the key. There’s people who collect bears, people who collect anything with their town’s name on it, and people who collect animals with wheels. None of those will have a network of price guides and appraisers ready to assign rarity or value to the components of their collection, but none would deny that it is a collection. There’s something inherently defining by simply deciding to collect something.

So, in my lab coat, with my clipboard, I’d have to look at myself inquisitively and ask: do I have a record collection? While I’ve mostly bought them to listen with little regard for value, I have taken steps to filter and evaluate which records are good and bad. I’ve bought shelves specifically for the records. I can identify myself at least an expert on what I own. And, above all, I most definitely enjoy both buying and experiencing each individual part of my collection. The labcoated me would have to nod approvingly, and add a checkmark in the “collection” column on the clipboard.