new acquisitions (a visit to london, ontario)
November 19, 2011
Arcade Fire :: The Suburbs
Cockney Rebel :: The Human Menagerie
Coeur de Pirate :: Blonde
Papa John Creach :: Inphasion
Dalis Car :: The Waking Hour
Divinyls :: What a Life!
Gang of Four :: Another Day/Another Dollar
Gorillaz :: Plastic Beach
Wanda Jackson :: Leave my Baby Alone
Judas Priest :: Point of Entry
Juicy Lucy :: Get a Whiff a This
The Klezmorim :: East Side Wedding
Meat Puppets :: Lollipop
Donny Osmond :: Alone Together
Peaches :: Impeach my Bush
Silver Convention (self titled)
Le Tigre :: Remix 12″
The Tubes :: Outside Inside
Bonnie Tyler :: It’s a Heartache
Neil Young :: Hawks & Doves
Various artists :: (Ronco presents) Get It On! (as seen on TV)
Posted by jodi on November 19, 2011 at 11.17pm
open wide
May 22, 2011
This is a record I picked up at St Vinnie’s yesterday: a souvenir of the Christ’s Ambassadors Youth Convention 1973 in Scarborough, Ontario (spelled “Scarboro” on the sleeve). I’m sure that the music contained within is as terrible as you can imagine, but I wanted it for the amazing cover art. The deal was pretty much sealed when I opened it up to check out the quality of the disc and found a fold out poster, about 45 x 45cm (18 x 18″) square, that is an exact reproduction of that cover art. SCORE.
I haven’t decided yet if I want to hang it in the living room next to the sacred heart statue, or over my bed.
Posted by jodi on May 22, 2011 at 9.23am
tonight on the listening project
February 12, 2011
It’s 1958 on The Listening Project, and tonight we’ll be listening to two records:
The Four Lads Greatest Hits, undated 1958:
and Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, released March 31, 1958.
The needle will drop on the first record shortly after 8pm EST. If you’re nerding around on the internet on a Saturday night, come by and chat with us! About this music, or about other music, or about whatever. http://lp.pzed.ca/
Posted by jodi on February 12, 2011 at 8.04pm
like a record, baby
January 30, 2011
New tattoos: shoulder (me) and inner forearm (Peter). Slightly different red inks but otherwise the same. Inked by Qpaukl Kimmerly at rEvolution gallery + studio, Kingsville, Ontario.
Posted by jodi on January 30, 2011 at 9.18am
drop the needle
January 29, 2011
Peter and I are getting matching tattoos today!
Posted by jodi on January 29, 2011 at 8.11am
cinzano and music
December 28, 2010
Tonight on The Listening Project.
Posted by jodi on December 28, 2010 at 8.12pm
record cleaning machine
December 17, 2010
Cleaning records in preparation for our first ever installment of The Listening Project, which starts tonight! In half an hour, in fact!
We mixed up a cleaning solution of distilled water, vinegar and dishsoap, which is much less expensive than the little bottle of cleaner that came with the machine, but also more work because you have to rinse it off with water. You dribble the fluid on the spinning record, work it into the groove with a stiff brush, then lower the vacuum nozzle which sucks all of the liquid off the record’s surface. It’s totally cool (and a little dorky).
Other necessary preparations completed: seeking out as many youtube videos as possible for songs that appear on the 4 records we’ll be discussing in our first listening party, so that our friends out on the internets can listen along; mixing up a can of frozen concentrated orange juice, for the bourbon; assembling pillows and laptops and an afghan for my feet in the upstairs music room. Since I don’t expect anybody to show up at the door tonight I might get into my pyjamas before we start. I still have about 20 minutes to decide, not accounting for bourbon-and-orange-juice mixing time.
Needle drops at 8:00!
Posted by jodi on December 17, 2010 at 7.33pm
introducing. . . the listening project
December 13, 2010
It’s been two years in the making, but Peter and I are finally ready to launch the listening project. And we’ll be hosting our first ever listening party this Friday night! The format will be as follows: we’ll choose a selection of 4 or more records (working through our collection in chronological order by release date), announce in advance what we’ll be listening to on a given date, and invite anyone who likes music (or talking about music) to join us in a conversation in the listening project weblog comments, which will open for each album as the needle drops. We’ll be posting images of the sleeves, discs and any ephemera found inside (the letter from a teenager to her brother in juvenile detention, found inside my used copy of Ozzy Osborne’s Bark at the Moon, is still thus far the most amazing such example). So if you don’t care about the music, come and talk about the cover art. Or tell us your remember-whens about that time when that music played a part in your life, or that awesome adventure you still associate in your mind with whatever was in the car’s tape deck at the time. We want it all.
We won’t be streaming the music or offering it for download, but we’ll try to provide links to online archived music when possible for anyone who wants to listen along. Of course if you have your own copies of the records we feature then you can cue them up and listen with us that way. And if you’re in our neighbourhood, you’re welcome to drop by to listen with us, sift through our record collection, or play along on the keyboard, accordion, drum machine, balalaika, air guitar, whatever (please bring your own air guitar). I’ll make snacks!
When we started planning two years ago we had just over 600 records in our collection, and since then we’ve been actively building the collection in anticipation of this project. There are currently 1067 records in the collection but we’ve still got some areas in which we hope to expand further, particularly the following: early Canadian country and female country vocalists, Motown, early funk and soul, lesser known new wave and punk, early electronica that is not disco, 60s underground psychedelia, and the core essentials of CanCon like the Tragically Hip and Rheostatics. We’re always open to offers of donations and trades (I’m looking at you, Dad, and all of those Skeeter Davis records I spotted on your shelves last week!).
You can read a little more about the inspiration for the project here: about the project.
Please feel free to browse the online database of our record collection here: browse the collection (there’s also a link in the sidebar to view the collection in chronological order).
View the first listening party announcement, and the list of records we’ll be listening to, here: listening party!
And add us to your RSS feed reader to get updates on other listening parties, coming soon.
Y’all should join us! All you need is an internet connection and something to say.
Posted by jodi on December 13, 2010 at 7.58pm
buying local
April 25, 2010
Saturday was Dr. Disc day, the long-awaited opening of Windsor’s Dr. Disc Records in their palatial new quarters at 471 Ouellette Street. Peter and I are avid record collectors, and as our collection is currently in a period of rapid expansion in preparation for an exciting! new! project (which I PROMISE I will write a little bit about this week), and because we just plain love this store and have ever since our youthful days spent happily shopping at their (sadly departed) flagship location in London, we headed downtown to celebrate the reopening by showing them some good old fashioned loving. And by “loving”, I mean “cash on the barrel head, hon”.
Shiny!
The store’s been open for less than a day and already someone has discarded a Tim Hortons coffee cup on an empty bit of shelf. A sort of christening, I suppose. (No, we did not buy either of those records you see above there).
This new location is two floors, with all of the used vinyl upstairs. There was a whole second room up there that was mostly empty but for some (empty) record bins, so I foresee lots of exciting expansion there. Here’s hoping this means all of those milk crates of overflow vinyl will soon be up off the floor and more readily accessible to those music lovers like us who are pushing geriatric, because y’all, I just can’t crouch for an hour sifting through those crates like I used to.
What we bought:
1. Half Man Half Biscuit Dickie Davies Eyes (an extended single, which normally we don’t collect, but we make exceptions for bands whose work is hard to find)
2. The The Soul Mining
3. Sleater-Kinney Dig Me Out
4. Tom Waits Mule Variations
5. Lene Lovich Stateless (Peter said “don’t know much about her but she looks like a weirdo so let’s get it”, a strategy that has worked out for us in the past)
6. Iron Butterfly Ball
7. Jerry Jeff Walker Mr. Bojangles
8. Marianne Faithfull Rich Kid Blues
9. Alanis Morissette Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie
10. The Shins Wincing the Night Away (containing the song that was recently stuck in my head for a month or more, making buying this possibly a bad idea)
11. Dwight Yoakam Hillbilly Deluxe (yes, I like this. Shut up).
Posted by jodi on April 25, 2010 at 9.37pm
