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First off I would like to thank my friends Tyler and Angie for the invite to this show. I have not been a big listener of the Dresden Dolls but after sitting in the 2nd row of Boston’s Orpheum Theater the other night, I can now appreciate what they offer. This self-proclaimed “Punk Cabaret” duo from Lexington, MA know how to use their sounds and actions to fill out even the largest of stages. It felt like I was watching a musical more than a rock show, but it is this angle that makes the Dresdens who they are. To be part of the experience of their hometown show from this vantage point was a pleasure I won’t soon forget. I recommend it to anyone even if you have to sit in the back row.
Now, I just need to figure out how Tyler and Angie got those damn seats. If I knew where I was going to be sitting I would have brought something besides my freakin’ cell phone to take my pictures!
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Having a week off from work is a great thing. With the x-mas rush behind me and a lot of spare time on my hands, I am able to spend some time digging into the art of collecting vinyl. What I have found was a scene full of disparate information, a lot of dusty crates, passion filled music junkies, and a sense of brotherhood that could only be found in the dark corners of the music world. I have accumulated a bunch of links, in no particular order, that will hopefully make your adventure less adventuresome or at least give a good place to start:
Vinyl May Be Final Nail In CD’s Coffin - This is an article published by Wired magazine in October 2007 that talks about the comeback of Vinyl. The irony here is great.
Goldmine Magazine - This is one of the top record collecting magazines and online marketplaces. They also put out a record album pricing guide that is available in most book stores.
How is a Vinyl Record Made? - If you are going to collect them, you should probably know everything you can about them.
Birth of a Record - This is another great article (with pictures!) on how a record is made.
Gemm - This site seems to be the mecca for buying and selling used/new vinyl. It’s old school feel adds to its mystique and makes you realize of deep this world goes.
How Much Are Your Old Records Really Worthy? - This is one of the many good articles on understanding the worth of your vinyl.
Osborne Enterprises & Jellyroll Productions - “For more than 30 years the Osborne team has produced and distributed the industry’s leading line of price guides and music reference books — totaling over 135 titles. No one has more experience!”. I recently purchased their Rockin’ Records price guide which is the self-proclaimed “World’s #1 Pricing Guide” It is something I can carry around with me on the hunt.
eBay’s Guide to Vinyl Record Grades - This is a pretty standard yet useful explanation on how to grade your albums.
RecordMaster.com - They claim to be the internet’s first price guide. They do have a great page on Recording Values and Grading. If anyone can figure out how to register or are already a current member, please let us know what you think.
Record Collector Magazine - This is another magazine that focuses on Record Collecting.
The Clutch - This band’s website also has another great glossary on vinyl record terms. You will need to scroll down the page to see the list.
Vinyl LP Record Collector’s Guide - “This blog is dedicated to all the great music released on vinyl records. On this blog you will find in-depth information for record collectors as well as great record deals.” I am not sure how useful this is for a rookie, but it may be helpful for others.
The Record Collectors Guild - This is a great hub for all that is record collecting. They have forums, a wiki, and much much more.
Elvis Presley Label and Jacket Differences - Here is a forum post from the Record Collectors Guild that gives great insight into how to tell the difference between album covers and pressings. This one is obviously specific to Elvis.
Pink Floyd UK Vinyl Releases - “This is a discography of 7 inch vinyl singles (45s) that have been released in the United Kingdom by Pink Floyd”. This is another great example of what it takes to identify releases and pressings.
Discogs - “a community-built database of music information. Imagine a site with discographies of all labels, all artists, all cross-referenced. It’s getting closer every day.”
Capital Records Matrix Stamper Numbers Forum - This is a great post that talks about matrix stamper numbers. Every label has their own ways of identifying their wax. Grab an album and look at the space between the last track and the label (known as the run off) and you will see the matrix numbers they are talking about.
MusicStack - Another large online music marketplace for record collectors.
MoreMusic | Where to buy Vinyl Accessories - This is a good list of places to buy record sleeves,jackets,storage boxes,divider cards,mailing supplies,cd and video protection in the US and UK.
The History of Vinyl - What could be more important for a new collector than the history of vinyl. This is a great resource.
Vinyl Care and More - This a great resource for how to care for your vinyl and a ton of other vinyl related topics.
ClassicRecords.com - This is a great source for classical records and other great articles on collecting vintage vinyl.
Disc Jockey 101 - This is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn the skills of a DJ. Even though I was excited by the scratching lesson, I am sure most record collectors would anger at the thought.
Enjoy.
If you happen to have additional resources that you know about, please add them in the comments section. I will continue to collect and share what I find on my adventure. If only I had 2 weeks off all the time.
If you have a few minutes go and check out the rest of Buck’s stuff. It is really good. Though, he hasn’t posted in a while. I hope he wasn’t eaten by a bear or something.
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As promised, I offer you Planet Records’ brief guide to Record and CD Stores in Boston and Cambridge. Click here to get the actual scanned document which has additional information from the folks at Planet Records.
—Harvard Square, Cambridge MA— Planet Records
54 B JFK St. Cambridge, MA 617-492-0693 map Twisted Village
12 Eliot St. Cambridge, MA 617-354-6898 map Tower Records
95 Mount Auburn St. Cambridge, MA 617-876-3377 map In Your Ear
72a Mount Auburn St. Cambridge, MA 617-491-5035 map Newbury Comics
36 JFK St. Cambridge, MA 617-491-5035 map On Church Street
54 Church St. Cambridge, MA 617-497-7070 map Stereo Jacks
1686 Massachusetts Av. Cambridge, MA 617-497-9447 map
—Central Square, Cambridge MA— Mojo Music
904 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 617-547-9976 map Cheapo Records
654 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 617-354-4455 map Skippy White’s
538 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 617-491-3345 map Massive Records
1105 Massachusetts Av. Cambridge, MA 617-576-1887 map
—Back Bay Boston, MA— Virgin Mega Store
360 Newbury St. Boston, MA 617-896-0950 map Newbury Comics
332 Newbury St. Boston, MA 617-236-0950 map CD Spins
324 Newbury St. Boston, MA 617-267-5955 map Orpheus
362 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 617-247-7200 map Satellite Records
49 Massachusetts Ave. Boston, MA 617-536-5482 map Looney Tunes
1106 Boylston St. Boston, MA 617-247-2238 map Nuggets
486 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 617-536-0679 map
—Off the map, but worth the trip— In Your Ear
957 Commonwealth St. Boston, MA 617-787-9755 map Underground Hip-Hop
234 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 617-262-0200 map Regeneration Records & Tattoos
155 Harvard Ave. Allston, MA 617-782-1313 map Diskovery
113 Brighton Ave. Allston, MA map
Thanks to Planet Records for supplying this great guide. It’s things like this that allow us to spend less time looking for what we need and spend more time listening to it. Please go visit Planet Records and support those that support us and our addictions.
Amazon’s wireless reading device ,Kindle, has me very intrigued. There are other Kindle alternatives popping up as well but the wireless functionality that Amazon built in is tough to beat.
For all of you bike fanatics who want to know what is going on behind your rear wheel, check out this little digital rear-view mirror.
If you are like me, you email inbox is a quagmire. You live out of it on a daily basis, it sets your priorities, and the 2000+ emails that look you in the face do nothing but keep you from getting anything done. Thanks to Merlin Mann, the productivity guru over at 43Folders, and his Inbox Zero, your email inbox can finally see the light of day. Take the hour to watch the video of him explaining his methodology to a room full over over-emailed Google employees. It is worth it.
Wired has a good article on how to find yourself a Nintendo Wii. Here is another guy laying out similar yet just has helpful advice. I guess I am in the market for one, cause that seems to be what 30 somethings want to do with their Saturday nights now a days.
Google Maps finally launched Street View in the Boston area.
I was in Brookstone yesterday and spent 20 minutes flying this very cool and extremely affordable ($30!) remote controlled helicopter around the mall. Kick Ass.
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The Skinny:
Getting through the last month of every year is tough for many reasons. Whether it is hitting a last minute deadline (or many deadlines) at work, figuring out what to buy for that secret santa who you know nothing about, finding time to shop for gifts incrementally instead of at the last minute, or even just finding 10 minutes to sit down and relax, these days are tough on one’s ability to control and enjoy. For those of you who understand where I am coming from, I offer you a nice selection of tracks that will hopefully help you wield your time management skills at a whole new level and relish the time when it is all over and you can get bombed on your uncle’s fire-breathing eggnog. mmmmmmmm. There is nothing that warms your soul more than raw eggs whipped to a delightful lather and buried in brandy and rum.
Please support all of the great audio bloggers of the world. The sidebar lists some of my favorites. Without them, the new art of music discovery would never be this exciting and easy. If you like these tracks, click on the Artist’s name to explore the Hype Machine. You will find all you need to help support the artists and this crazy new world of music discovery.
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My work laptop died yesterday morning. It was acting very odd on Friday (i.e. very slow and a lot of “not responding” going on) and finally yesterday morning I got a fatal Blue Screen of Death. My boot file was corrupt and I was up shit’s creek. I hadn’t backed up my stuff in months and that stuff was not something that I could not lose. I knew the drive wasn’t dead but my windows install was shot. I needed to find some way to boot it up so I could get my precious stuff off of it.
My biggest issues was that my Dell Latitude D420, with its small form factor, does not have a CD-ROM drive and unfortunately I had never asked my IT guy for an external USB CD ROM drive. My only option was to find some other USB device that I could use as a boot device. Thank god there are people out there that had already figured it out for me.
I downloaded and installed Bart PE on another Windows Machine that I had to work with. This program allows you to build a bootable Windows ISO that you can burn to CD. (You will need a legal install of Windows to pull this off)
In order to be able to create a bootable USB drive and not a CD I had to download an evaluation version of Windows server 2003. There are a few Flash RAM system files you need to leverage. The Bart PE directions explain how to do this.
I downloaded and installed PE2USB GUI. This is the key program that I used to properly format my USB drive, make my drive bootable, and load the Bart PE Image to the drive. I recommend using this program instead of the command line version that comes with Bart PE. If your instance does not boot properly try playing around with the different options available on the GUI. It took me a few tries to get mine to work.
I adjusted my laptop’s BIOS so it booted from a USB device first. If you don’t have that option, then you probably can’t use this technique.
I plugged my USB Fob into the lone USB port (grrrrr!) on my machine and turned it on. To my surprise the machine booted off of the USB drive and loaded a trimmed down version of windows via Bart PE. I was now able to see everything on my hard-drive!
Since my USB drive has 4GB of storage and the OS image takes only a small fraction of that, I was able to move my files from my hard-drive directly to the USB drive.
After the files were moved, I unplugged the drive from the busted laptop, plugged it into my MacBook Pro, and transferred the files to my external hard drive.
It worked like a charm! Now I have all of my files backed up and my IT guy can just blow away my laptop and rebulid it for me. All I have to do is tuck my little “Bootable OS on a FOB” away in a safe place just and I will not sweat it if I have to deal with this again in the future.
***NOTE***This process took me 2 days to figure out on my own, but if you follow the steps I laid out it shouldn’t take more than an hour to get it working. If you have questions please don’t hesitate to comment and I will help with what i can.
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As a kid of the 80’s and 90’s, I really only purchased 1 or 2 vinyl albums in my life time. My parents bought me one of those all-in-one audio systems which weighed about 3 oz., had a turntable, duel tape-decks, and AM/FM radio all in one plastic, faux mahogany veneered box. It was kick-ass back then but as the medium of choice changed it soon lost its luster. I am pretty sure I threw it out the window of my dorm room at the end of my sophomore year in college in pure unadulterated “frat boy”.
The funny thing is that I don’t have one audio tape left in my collection let alone a way to play them. I do on the other hand still have my original Beastie Boys “License To Ill” on wax that I bought in 8th grade. At the ripe age of 34, the short roots I grew with my limited vinyl purchases are finally evolving into a deep desire to hear music the way it ought to be heard. I am finally going Back To Wax.
A while back I put a shout out to y’all to see if you had any recommendations on how to go about buying a turntable. Since then I have been poking and prodding around the net trying to educate myself on the art of the purchase. With the dawn of the “dime a dozen” dj scene and the mp3 revolution, researching turntables is pretty time consuming. Here are a few things that I found on my own but most are from the great folks over at Audio Lab Hi-Fi in Cambridge, MA who’s patience with this vinyl dunce was legendary:
The fewer moving parts the better the sound is.
All the best turntables have manual tonearms.
Direct Drive Turntables are for DJ’s who beat on their gear.
Belt Drive Turntables are for home audio listening.
Plastic anything is not a good sign. Look for wood or metal bases.
Don’t go cheap but you don’t have to break the bank.
A USB link is a nice to have but should not be the driving force in your decision.
The Europeans know what they are doing.
Go talk to someone IN PERSON who knows what they are talking about.
Avoid big chain stores (i.e. BestBuy) for this purchase of most importance.
Here is the process someone goes through when they don’t know those things:
Purchase #1 - Ion TTUSB: The Ion TTUSB is the talk of the town. It is inexpensive in relation to other home audio devices, is belt driven, has a manual tonarm, is “DJ” cool looking, and has a USB connection so you can rip your wax to MP3. The number of positive reviews out there outnumber the bad and people genuinely seem happy with this turntable. As someone who likes to test things out before making a final decision, the Ion seemed like a good place to start. The first thing I ignored was the fact that I was driving to BestBuy to make this purchase. Just try asking one of those blue-shirted commission jockies about the sound quality of a turntable and you will understand my mistake. But one must learn the hard way in some cases.
When I got home I dug into the box. Once again, I should have been worried when I unloaded the turntable and found that it weighed less than my niece 2 minutes out of the womb. It was thoroughly plastic and hollow and felt more like something made by Playskool than a home audio manufacturer. Anyways, after 15 minutes of putting the bitch together, hooking it up to my office receiver, and taking a couple of proud shots of my new component, it was time to play something. I threw on The Budos Band’s “The Budos Band II” which just came in the mail a day ahead of my purchase and was pleased with the sound. As someone so used to digital tunes, I definitely took a kick in the pants by the richness and tones coming off the grooved wonder. Hell, I was able to even quickly demo the MP3 ripping capability of the turntable in conjuncture with the open source Audacity software that came with it and it worked like a charm.
But…of course there is a but….there was something wrong. At first it was in my gut. I knew this thing was a piece of shit at heart and it bothered me. I was now in the unconscious mode of finding reasons to take the thing back. Then I saw it. The straw that broke the camel’s back and then kicked back, packed some dip in his lip and proceeded to spit on the wound for an hour had just entered the picture. The actual turntable was warped! I thought it might have been my brand new album, but no, it was the poorly pressed PLASTIC platter that came with this crap. I shut it down, walked out of my office, and didn’t touch the thing for a week. I knew it was going back. It was only a matter of when and what it was going to be replaced with.
Enter an extremely cold Saturday in December and a wonderful store in Harvard Square called The Audio Lab.
Purchase #2 - Pro-Ject Debut III/Phono USB: I decided it was time to stop playing around. The first debacle was going back to BestBuy and I needed some help with my next purchase from a real human being. After an hour of figuring out how to use Google to find a local store that specialized in high-end audio solutions I finally found what I was looking for. I got in my ride and headed to The Audio Lab.
As someone who knows about things like high-def and surround sound I am usually pretty comfortable in a place like this. But, because of my lack of turntable knowledge I walked in a bit like a dog who was about to get reprimanded. From the moment I said in a not so confident manner, “Hello. I need a turntable” to when I walked out the door with my new purchase, the guy at Audio Lab was nothing less than unreal. He held no ego. He held no contempt for my lack of knowledge and stupid questions. He was my guide with a smile because that is what he loves to do. It was a refreshing throwback to what customer service used to be.
I started by explaining my first purchase. He smiled and said lets take a look at what we have for you. He showed me the Pro-Ject Debut III and I was inspired by its simplicity. As someone who tends to look for all the bells and whistles when making a purchase, the clean lines and lack of fluff was surprisingly appealing. It was perfect. It was as much a turntable as a turntable should be. A wooden base, a belt driven platter, a manual tonearm, and an off-on switch. What more could a piece of vinyl need. Nothing. I was sold. He motioned me over to another version of the same player and said I could have the same USB connection of the Ion built into this beauty for another $90 or so. Without hesitation I said, “I will take it” and within 5 minutes I was the proud owner of a turntable I could be proud of and would be used for a long, long time. As I was about to walk out the door he reached out and handed me a slip of yellow paper and said, “You will probably need this.” and smiled. He had handed me a list of the best Used Record shops in the Boston area (I will post this list very soon). Kick Ass I tell you!
Mr. Audio Lab, you couldn’t be more right. 10 minutes later I walked into Stereo Jacks on Mass Ave. in Cambridge and spent an hour finding sustenance for my new purchase.
When I finally got home, I gently (notice I did’t say dig into this time…there was an inherent respect for this turntable that did not exist for the Ion) opened the box and put the turntable together. This time I did not think my office system was worthy of such beauty so I cabled it directly to my home theater system in the living room. Oh how proud I was when I finally flicked the switch on the Pro-ject and dropped the needle on Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”. I definitely wish you could all have been there. I laid in the middle of my living room floor for the next hour just listening, listening like millions of others had before me, in a way that I had only imagined. I had reached the end of my journey to buy a turntable and felt a need to thank those that hyped vinyl and the importance of a good turntable.
I now understand why Vinyl is important, why it is making a comeback, and why mp3’s are great for portability but truly rot when it comes to the sound and intimacy of music. Albums are meant to be listened to as a whole, not as a bunch of singles that you can easily skip over. Albums are meant to be enjoyed, learned, explored, felt, and heard as the artists meant them to be…on Vinyl and on a turntable made by a company like Pro-ject and sold by a grandmaster like The Audio Lab.
The 
I decided it was time to stop playing around. The first debacle was going back to BestBuy and I needed some help with my next purchase from a real human being. After an hour of figuring out how to use Google to find a local store that specialized in high-end audio solutions I finally found what I was looking for. I got in my ride and headed to The Audio Lab. 
