Heavy Metal Thunder

It sounds odd today, but for a brief moment in the 1990s I was very fond of heavy metal music. More specifically, a variant of metal called N.W.O.B.H.M. (pronounced as a word, new-WOBE-um) which stands for New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. This has a somewhat sparser, cleaner sound. Still aggressive and definitely guitar-based, N.W.O.B.H.M. had a slight overlap with psychedelic record collectors who were drawn by the omni-present guitar riffs and the promise of a new set of impossible objects. There were some of the very early N.W.O.B.H.M. titles that were issued privately in small pressings, and the better bands recorded for small indie labels which, and these are pre-internet days, were often difficult to track down.

At this point there is literally only one record I still keep in my vinyl collection, a 3-track 10-inch e.p. by the UK band Fireclown on which the side-long track is just kind of perfect (for what it is).

But I bring this up because I went on a sudden cleaning jag in one upstairs closet that still holds a few thousand LPs or more. I hadn't been more than halfway back for a few years and, on a quest for some things to throw up on eBay, I dove in. I came up with about 2 boxes of the last of the heavy metal, records I'd forgotten were still there.

About three or four years ago, maybe longer, I took the bulk of the N.W.O.B.H.M. I'd collected and put together an auction that I ran in Goldmine Magazine, the record collector magazine that was on top before the arrival of eBay. I remember that one metal dealer contacted me and bought the whole listing, every single record. I gave him a nice price recognizing that, mixed in with the really good titles, were some very common records I'd never find buyers for.

Anyway, I thought that was the last of it until I found those crates. The best thing about eBay is that, as long as you know how to word a description, you never have to know what a record is "worth" before you list it. I'd been out of this scene for a long time and had no idea if anything was worth much, so I started all the auctions at .99 cents which turned out to work pretty well. I sold all but 2 or 3 of the 100+ titles with some going for $20-$30.

But not only that - I also found a crate full of records that I forgot I still owned. Records that, if I found them for a couple bucks, I would have bought today. So there's now a crate full of "new records" by the turntable.

This reminds me of a Christmas years and years ago when I knew someone with a shrink wrap machine and for one Christmas, when I was too broke to buy any new records, I took out about 50-75 albums I hadn't ever listened to - just stuff I'd found in thrift shops or got from radio stations when the program director wasn't looking - and resealed them all in new shrink wrap and wrapped them all up as presents to myself.

I know. Look back at the 3rd or 4th post in March for the entry in which I explain in some depth how pathetic record collectors can be.

Anyway, I hope these people will pay for the things they won; so far they have been and about half of the crate has been hauled away.

I was thinking about these things for a number of reasons. One is that I'm hung up at the moment trying to finish the post I thought would be here by now - a review of David Bromberg's new album. Two is that I'm almost finished a very nice little book about Led Zeppelin, specifically about their untitled fourth album, though it really covers everything leading up to that record. It's a refreshing book as well because it has nothing to say about their legendary debauchery or anything that smacks of the narration for a Behind the Music episode. Just the music, and some nice observations on how some songs are constructed. The book is Led Zeppelin IV by Barney Hoskyns (US, Rodale 2006).

It sent me to my Led Zep box set and had me wishing I had copies of the individual albums (something I just may break down and get). During the day I can just BLAST this stuff and it was fun to sit and listen to "Black Dog" and read about its origins.

A good part of the 3rd and 4th albums were written in rural Wales and reading about it reminded me of a trip Cheryl and I took in 1999, renting a car in Oxford and driving all the way to the northern tip of Wales. We stayed at roadside Inns and spent the days exploring old castles and warming ourselves in local pubs.

But I digress.

One pretty strong argument put forth in the book is that it is, in the end, a misnomer to describe Led Zeppelin as heavy metal or "proto-heavy metal" because they swung too much and their sound is too complicated and diverse. What's odd is that, when I think about the band, what I hear in my memory are Page's monster riffs, Bonham's enormous drums and Plant's screeching vocals. But, when I actually listen and pay closer attention, I hear a thousand other elements as well.

To recap: * A box of "new" records to listen to. * A crate of metal LPs sold on eBay. * Led Zeppelin isn't a heavy metal band.

OK then.

Back To Mono...

Woo hoo!

After a dozen tries I just managed to win an auction for an original UK 1st pressing of The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed on Decca, in mono.

This is the last of the major Stones albums to be done in stereo and mono editions. Beggars Banquet, the year earlier, like Let It Bleed, was only issued in the UK in mono, there is no US mono pressing.

This brings me ever closer to finishing a complete set of UK and US Rolling Stones LPs in mono. There are three things that potentially attract me to the mono versions of 60s records.

First, as in the case of The Beatles, the final mixing sessions where the album was mixed to mono was done separately from the stereo mixes and often there are significant differences between the two. The Beatles, John, Paul & George anyway, would always closely oversee the mono mixes of their albums, but leave the stereo mixes to the engineers. George Harrison, Geoff Emerick (their recording engineer) and others have long said that you've never heard the Sgt. Pepper LP unless you've heard the mono version. In the era of CD remastered editions, there are precious few examples of labels returning to the original mono versions.

Second, as in the case of the early Stones LPs, Donovan's Sunshine Superman, Procol Harum's first album and many others, there simply are no true stereo pressings, only mono. All the stereo pressings of these records are actually "electronically reprocessed stereo" a crude scam in which some echo and panning is added to the mono version. And vastly inferior.

Third, on a good turntable with good outboard equipment, early mono pressings of rock & roll records just sound better. They're punchier, louder, more energetic and "in your face" than the stereo pressings. If you ever have the chance, compare the first two Jimi Hendrix Experience LPs in mono and stereo; you'll be amazed.

For reasons I'll never understand I got into this Stones listening jag sometime before Christmas and didn't lift my head up out of it for well over a month. I came out of it a much bigger fan of the early records. In the past my early Stones collection was the greatest hits collection, High Tide and Green Grass, the best of five early Greatest Hits records I spent a lot of time with between 1965 and 1966. The other four great ones from this eara were The Best of The Animals on MGM, The Kinks Greatest Hits on Reprise, The Beach Boys Greatest Hits on Capitol, and The Best of The Lovin Spoonful on Kama Sutra. Three great British Invasion bands and two great American bands all similar in that their early LPs were comprised on one or two hit singles surrounded by filler. These LPs were concentrated bursts of what made each of these bands so great.

Imagine a set list of "Satisfaction" "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" "You Really Got Me" "Surfer Girl" and "Do You Believe In Magic?"

Sublime.

The great tribute to The Beatles is that there was never any effort to assemble a "Greatest Hits" album for them as it would have to have been a box set housing all their existing LPs and singles in a neat new cover.

A Fine Madness: Record Collectors and Collecting…..

I was a record collector for as long as I can remember. I’ve had 2, 3, maybe 4 collections that I’ve built and then either sold or just lost along the way. The biggest was somewhere around 20,000 LPs and that was my last one.

One day I walked by the room where the primary bulk of this was, covering a wall with crates and stacked across the floor – a room that today maybe 8 or 9 people can sit comfortably in was pretty much a room that held me and the vinyl. I don’t know what happened exactly…. Once in a while it happens with mirrors, you catch a glimpse of yourself when you aren’t expecting it and the image you’re looking at is so utterly alien compared to the image you see when you look in a mirror on purpose that seconds can go buy before you realize that it’s YOU looking back.

I glanced without any intent into the room with the record collection and - for the briefest fraction of a second - I saw it through the eyes of someone who didn’t give a shit about records. It was terrifying, disturbing, unsettling… it was really, really weird.

I had to sit down.

I remember that it was like a switch was thrown. The switch had been set to “on” and now it read “off.” I wasn’t a collector anymore. Metaphorically speaking, I glanced at those records through the eyes of Hickey, the main character in O’Neil’s The Iceman Cometh, the fellow who comes to preach the sermon about putting one’s pipedreams to rest.

Record collections are stuffed full of pipedreams.

I had a couple radio shows back in college and enjoyed them enormously. I always played my own records and I would put a show together by pulling stacks of LPs from the crates and sitting on the floor in my music room and every decision would lead to another decision and another; every decision limited what could follow and soon I’d have a set put together.

I looked at it like it was a post-structuralist jig-saw puzzle with multiple correct solutions.

I kept this enormous room of vinyl because I had a pipedream of doing radio again. It finally came to a head when I was offered a show, much like the ones I’d had in the past. When I thought about the work, the commitment, having to fight my way through the weather, traffic, etc. – and, naturally, there was no actual money involved - I decided to pass. I knew I’d never do another radio show.

I kept records so that anytime someone came over I could say “What do you want to hear?” and most of the time I’d have something that would amaze them. But nobody came over that often, and the people who did would always say “Oh… I don’t care, play what you want.” Once every 12 to 15 years someone would come by who knew how impressed they were supposed to be by the really rare records.

Finally, the single greatest trick in getting rid of a record collection is this: PLAY THEM.

Play them, and as they play, try to imagine if there is any condition under which you can imagine ever playing this again, ever; most of the time – with a collection that size – the answer is “HELL NO!”

I have said on occasion, and I like the phrase well enough to stick it in quotes, “A record collection is like a mill stone, carved into the shape of an albatross, hanging from your neck.”

The question “How do you get rid of this stuff?” is harder to answer than you’d think.

One… eBay. I started listing record after record on eBay. Sometimes I’d be disappointed at the selling price; but very often a record I knew was worth $6 would sell for $87.42 and that would help it all even out.

It was hard at first; I’d wake up wondering if I could really live without a copy of that record in the room downstairs. But then – and I have NEVER been able to really articulate this properly – I started thinking that I could live with the record downstairs and not in my bedroom. I could live with it in my office and not in my house. Soon, I started to consider that ALL the records in the world were all part of one big record collection that anyone could access if he really needed to. There were few, if any, records I got rid of that I couldn’t just get back with some time and effort.

Once the walls of my house no longer described the boundaries of my collection, all records were my records.

This was easy.

Not as easy was what to do with the records that didn’t sell on eBay. I stopped doing a mailorder list years ago, and most things that didn’t sell on eBay wouldn’t sell that way anyway.

I had a friend whose son was just turning 16 and had a turntable and a great musical curiosity and whenever I’d visit – a 6 hour drive so not that often – I would take a crate or two full of this stuff to give him.

I also hooked up with an old friend who was now selling records at a local flea market and I’d put together 700 LPs for $300 batches for him and even take a bunch of the $300 in trade from his stock – records he wanted $20 for that I knew would sell on eBay for more.

Pretty soon, when I shuffled my vinyl there were crates at the end that were now empty. I was making progress.

Recently, I’ve started buying some vinyl; I feel a twinge of the old madness returning. I’m buying old mono LPs, loads of Stones and Beatles, but other things as well. It’s one of the complexities of record collecting that the object can be BOTH really cool, AND worthwhile sonically. The Beatles’ White Album has to be heard in mono to really BE heard. Same for Sgt. Pepper. Same for a bunch of others that don’t exist on CD in their mono form.

This doesn’t at all explain the Modern Jazz Quartet LP I bought recently. A 1957 copy of Third Stream Music. I already have original stereo and mono copies of the album, and a CD. But this was the original French pressing with the same cover except now the title is “Force Troisième” and the record is on an Atlantic label variation I have never seen before. To top it off, inside the cover is a price tag showing that the record, when new, was sold at a drug store on the Champs-Elysées.

Serious aura.

Majorly cool.