Lessons From a New Book About Old Vinyl

The up-front part: I have been an acquaintance of author Christopher Long for many years. We met somehow when he published the original version of his book "A Shot of Poison." We bonded over our connections to the band, and since then, I have read early drafts of several of his books and provided feedback and corrections when necessary. He gifted me his new book Garage Sale Vinyl. I made no promises for a review or for this blog post. But, as always, I keep it honest. These are my thoughts and feelings about this book. Some of my opinions may hurt his soul, but as he points out in this book, music, and taste in music is individual. With that said, let's get this review blog post in gear.....

My collection of books by Christopher Long. I
have a digital copy of his books
Shout it Out Loud and Superstar.

Whenever I am asked about my favorite music, I tell the inquirer that my musical taste is as eclectic as their weird uncle Frank. I range from Jim Croce to Metallica, from Ronnie Millsap to Pantera, and most recently, New Kids on the Block (that song Remix is slappin'!!) to the White Stripes. You can't pin me down. But I think I have met my match. 

Christopher Long, in his new book, Garage Sale Vinyl, shares personal stories and opinions relating to 50 of his favorite records of all time. They are not in order from least favorite to favorite, or vice-versa, nor are they published in the order of release date. Long presents them in alphabetical order by artist and tells many good stories. His musical taste may range even deeper and wider than mine. Toward the end of the book, Long writes, "I simply hear music as my personal iGadget shuffles randomly from Carly Simon and Motorhead to Loretta Lynn and Buddy Guy to King Crimson and Debbie Gibson." (260) Of that list, he only reviews an album by one of those artists in this book.

If I were to read this book again, I would go much slower. Instead of digesting chapter after chapter, I would read one chapter and then listen to the album before I read the next chapter. Instead, I finished the book and started listening to the albums about 3 days before I finished reading. So far, I am on the 14th album (John Denver's Poems, Prayers and Promises. And in those 14 albums so far, I have only skipped one album after listening to the first 3 tracks (not my cup of coffee), and one song that got long and boring half way through its 11-minute run time. The rest of them, I have either known and loved (Aerosmith and Cinderella), or listened to for the first time because of this book. Some artists (specifically Janis Ian), I had never heard of. Some albums (Alice Cooper's Killer) made me completely stop whatever I was doing at the time and pay close attention to a lyric, a drum beat, or a bass line. It was also the first time I actually listened to an entire Beatles album. With 37 albums left to listen to, I'm excited to see what other gems Long is about to treat me to. I'll probably keep the book with me as a quick reference as I work through the rest of the list.

My collection of 33 rpm LPs.

Another unexpected cause and effect situation that came about because of this book (and the blog by the same name from which this book was spawned) is that I have modestly increased the size of my record collection. I used to collect CDs. Before that, I had cassettes. Before that, I had a sizeable record collection that stayed at my parents. Most of that record collection consisted of children's records from Sesame Street, the Electric Company, Halloween sound effects, and Little Golden Books. I took possession of that collection when my parents moved about 3 years ago. Some of their collection (like Seals and Crofts and my favorite, Jim Croce's Life and Times, complete with news stories about the plane crash that took his life taped to the inside of the gatefold) disappeared. I would have loved to have gotten that Croce album just because of the memories and having my hands on those stories that I read a hundred times as a child.

My garage sale vinyl

Sometime in the last 25 years, I began collecting other albums, like 3 copies of Poison's Open Up and Say ... Ahh, and many of their singles on both 33 and 45 formats. But after Long started his Garage Sale Vinyl blog, I started paying more attention to the used records at my favorite coffee shop. On two different occasions, as I walked in the back door and worked my way to the front to get may favorite beverage (called a Pooh Bear, with cinnamon, honey and two shots of espresso), I saw two albums on the racks that I absolutely had to snatch up. The first was a copy of Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth in excellent, which was just fun. The second was Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers Greatest Hits. I'm usually not a fan of greatest hits albums because if I'm a fan of the band, I already have the songs on other records. But I bought this one because my parents had it and I knew all the words from beginning to end on both sides. I had to have it. 

Through the years, I have also picked up a couple of Jim Croce records (including a copy of Life and Times), and a second mint condition copy of John Denver and the Muppets A Christmas Together.

This weekend, I had some time to kill, so I stopped into the newest vinyl shop in my area that opened about two months ago. There I discovered that Long's tip that he shares in his book is true: the bottom bins are the dollar bins. There, I discovered a copy of Frampton Comes Alive (which Long writes about), and a copy of a record I never knew existed. When I found it, I let out an audible gasp. I was so thrilled.

Me with my newly-acquired LP of 
Surfin' USA, along with my original
(vintage) cassette from 1982

As a child of about 8 in 1982, my parents got me an album called Surfin' USA on cassette. This album consisted of poppy, happy surfer tunes, mostly from the likes of the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, with the instrumentals Wipeout and Pipeline thrown in for good measure. I still have the cassette, but I had forgotten about it, as it was buried away with my other memories of childhood. A couple of weeks ago, someone posted on Facebook asking what the first rap song was that I ever heard. It reminded me of a long-destroyed cassette I had in the early 1980s that was called Electric Breakdance. It was a compilation album, and it was a lot of fun. I remembered enough that I was able to search the Google machine and find a track list. I recreated the album as a Spotify playlist. That got me thinking about the Surfin USA cassette, so I found it, built another playlist with all of the songs, and have listened to it several times in the last two weeks. So when I found it in record format in the first bottom bin I searched (for $1 no less), I had to have it. I brought it home yesterday, got out my cheap briefcase record player, and introduced my 15-year-old son (who has his own wildly ranging taste in music) to the world of records. 

At the end of the day, I have discovered that we don't know what we don't know until someone tells us about it. I am ever grateful to Christopher Long for introducing me to a whole body of work by Alice Cooper that is amazing. Before this book, I only knew his albums Trash and Hey Stoopid. The only other Alice I knew were the overplayed classic rockers that you can hear on any rock radio station. I'm here for the deep cuts. I am grateful to Christopher Long for doing that for me, and I have discovered that I need to do that for my kids, as well.

Ceramic Villages, Hardware Stores, and Perspective

I got kicked out of an It's a Wonderful Life Facebook page a couple of weeks ago, and until this morning, as I sat down to write this blog post, I didn't really care. In fact, I was laughing at how stupid all of it was, and how people failed to keep their perspective. Now, after searching for a photo to compare against the photo that started the entire ruckus, I'm pretty peeved at the irrationality of the page owner who kicked me out, and the laziness of the person who posted the photo in the first place.

Several months ago, maybe even a year ago, I joined a page that was all about the It's a Wonderful Life ceramic village that was created by Target. I did it out of curiosity to see what pieces I was missing and what kinds of prices they were fetching. I learned a lot from the group, and I also found out that they got a lot of information from this blog. A lot of members liked to supplement their villages with pieces from a collection called Christmas Valley, which was something I didn't do.

Recently, one of the members posted a photo that showed a hardware store. She was so excited about this discovery because it was the first time that she had found a photo of a hardware store in what she thought was Bedford Falls. This photo somehow gave her permission to add, and a location to put her ceramic hardware store in her village, and it meant something extra to her because Jimmy Stewart's father owned a hardware store. She was all wound up and wanted to get ahold of an author who had printed a map of Bedford Falls in one of his books and get him to add the hardware store to his map.

Looking at the photo, one could clearly tell it was the same set, but it was decorated for a different film. I voiced that opinion but offered to use my connections to contact the author through a mutual friend. I did so. Within minutes, our mutual friend sent me several screenshots in which the author offered a scathing, vulgar opinion of this woman's evaluation of the photos in question. The photos are included here.

The photo in question with arrows pointing to the hardware store.

I asked if the author knew what movie the photos were from, waited for another answer, and returned to the Facebook group with the verdict. I couldn't print what the author actually said, so I simply said that he was adamant that the set was the same, but it was a different film, and that I was waiting to find out which one.

Over the course of several days, a couple of people asked multiple times if I had heard back, and I kept telling them no. Finally, after not getting an answer, I gave them several bullet-point reasons why the photo didn't match the Wonderful Life set:

1) Dirt roads in the photo, but not in IAWL
2) The bakery building is clearly the same, but the bakery sign is missing
3) The open lot just to the left of the bakery has a fence in front of it in the photo but doesn't in IAWL.
4) There was also a discrepancy in maps from the author and another map that is posted on the group's Facebook page, but I don't remember the details at this moment for the purpose of this blog.

So it is my evaluation is that there was not a hardware store in Bedford Falls. I wasn't rude about it. I simply posted things I noticed in the photo that pointed to facts. I heard nothing more for about a week. Then I was at my son's high school marching band showcase and something appeared on the page from the page owner that said something about being kind to others and respecting others' opinions and no need to argue. Then I got a private message from her that said someone was offended that I had the nerve to post my bullet-point comment and state that the hardware store wasn't in the movie. She proceeded to put me on a 28-day reprimand, in which I couldn't comment on the page.

Of course, I responded, reminded her that there were people hounding me, wanting to know what the author had to say, and I sent her screenshots of what the author actually did say, pointing out that I could have just published that and it could have been a lot worse. I wasn't rude or condescending in my posted comments. I simply pointed out inconsistencies between the photos and the film and told her in a private message that if her feelings were that fragile she could just ban me from the page. So she did.

I wasn't upset about it. Not until this morning when I went searching for a photo to compare the Bedford Falls street scene to the photo in question to point out the differences. I did a Google image search for "It's a wonderful life bakery scene" and came across this page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Falls_%28It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life%29 And on that page was this photo: 

Wikipedia photo

Notice what that says beneath the photos? "Shots used in the film Cimarron (1931)." Had the original poster of the original photos taken her time, she would have known that it was not a shot from IAWL. She found a couple of photos and ignored the fact that hundreds of films had been shot on the same set. And the owner of the page allowed feelings to get in the way of facts.

The fact is that there was no hardware store in It's a Wonderful Life, just as there was no record store. And yet, I bought the record store because it was part of the Target village, despite the fact that it looked so ridiculous and out of place for the time period of the film.

Target Record Shop

At the end of the day, I have discovered 3 takeaways from this experience:

1) Spend your money the way you want. If you want to add a hardware store to your ceramic village because Jimmy Stewart's dad owned one, knock yourself out. If you want to add something from A Christmas Story or a building from A Nightmare Before Christmas, then DO IT. But if you want to stay true to the film, there wasn't a hardware store in the film, and you should technically only use one pose of each character instead of having George and Mary throwing rocks at the Granville house while at the same time posing with the family and driving in the car and gathered around the Christmas tree. Bottom line: It's YOUR money. Do what makes you happy.

2) If you don't want to hear the answer, then don't ask the question. I have been a serious researcher about It's a Wonderful Life since the mid-1990s. I wrote an unpublished book. I have studied and compared all of Stewart and Capra's movies that are still available. I have watched It's a Wonderful Life about 900 times (no lie) in black and white and in color, comparing scenes, looking at scenes in close-ups, and studying character motivation and theme. Until I learned about the author in question, I had been working on making my own map. I know this film inside and out. I was a member of the It's a Wonderful Life WebRing in the early days of the Internet. I started studying this film when Jimmy Stewart was still alive. If I don't know the answer to a question I know people who do. Facts are different than opinions. Opinions are great, but when photos are involved, it is not a matter of opinion, as we have seen here. The author in question has been studying and assembling the map of Bedford Falls for more than 20 years. One random person on a ceramic fandom collector page finding two photos from an archive I can almost guarantee the author has seen is not an argument that a building existed in a film, no matter how much you wish it to be true. Trust the years of research. I gave a factual answer to the question that was asked of me and I got banned because someone didn't like the answer. That is insane.

3) Don't forget to maintain perspective. My goal when I started was to learn. Now my goal is to teach others and maintain the legacy of It's a Wonderful Life, its actors, and all of those involved in its making. I do that by sharing facts and dispelling myths (Bonus: Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were NOT named after characters in this film). A ceramic village is just decoration. It has its own value, but it's individual to each household. There is no reason to get upset about a piece of painted ceramic.

Keep it real, folks.

It's a Wonderful Tattoo

For Christmas, my wife, Jenn, told me I could get another tattoo, my second. I have wanted another one for years. My first one was a "reset button," designed to look the the "fire" button on the old Atari 2600 joysticks. I got that one in 2003 or 2004 after my divorce to remind me that I am in charge of my life and my future, not my practice wife/mother of my first child.

I have wanted a second tattoo for years, and have kicked around the idea of a Wonderful Life-themed tattoo for a while. I thought about the drawing of George lassoing the moon, but among other reasons, I decided not to do that, because that seemed to be the go-to design. I wanted something unique. And I wanted to incorporate my children in some way. So I went back to the drawing board. 

The book where I found my inspiration

And THEN I looked through the book It's a Wonderful Life: The Illustrated Holiday Classic by Paul Ruditis and illustrated by Sarah Conradsen, which I received as a Christmas gift from my parents. In it, I found two gorgeous illustrations of George Bailey praying on the bridge. I started playing with those ideas .... not suicide, but of praying and my children, and how would I incorporate them. And then I thought of the role bells play in the film.

I also wanted to incorporate my wife in the design, but I didn't want to include her name, because tattooing your wife's name on your body guarantees a divorce. That's just bad juju. Not gonna' do it. Some people suggested using her initials and putting "XXX Bridgeworks"  (where XXX are her initials) on the bridge as a way to include her. But then I realized her birth flower was holly. So that was easy.

But since I wear glasses and George Bailey doesn't, I had my tattoo artist bury the face in his hands instead of showing the face. That way, it is unclear if it is me or George Bailey praying. I also added a square and compasses lapel pin to represent my involvement in the Masonic fraternity.

So, you can look at this tattoo as simply a scene from the film inspired by a book made for children, or you can look at it as symbolic of me, praying over my children, represented by the bells, bridging my past to their future.

Below is the process of the tattoo. It was completed in two sessions. Session 1 was Feb. 5, 2021, which was the anniversary of my parents' wedding, and my grandfather's death (neither of which happened this year). Session 2 happened June 1. I might need to get the white touched up at some point, but that will be after swim season is over.

Last moment for bare arm

End of Day 1 progress Feb 5, 2021

Final tattoo, completed June 1, 2021