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.