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Recordlad's Vinyl Finds... Now with Paragraphs!

Hello and welcome to the new and improved RecordLad's Vinyl Finds! As you can see, we now feature paragraphs instead of giant blobs of text!

This new feature was spearheaded by Rabbit Girl, (author of Rabbit Reads) in response to my question: "Why does nobody read my blog? What sucks about it?"

Yep, it's true. paragraphs. Nobody ever believes me, but I was sick the day we learned the rules of paragraphs in school and I've been completely lost since then. But whatever, this is a blog about records, so I'll just do my best.

Unfortunately, I haven't found any interesting records lately, so I have nothing new to write about.

Later! your pal,
RecordLad

Coloured Vinyl Makes You Into a Moron....

Yep. It's true. I can admit it. When it comes to coloured vinyl, I turn into a complete and utter drooling mongoloid.

Take for example the top left square on the right. Those four records are four copies of Bryan Adams' crap-fest of a Christmas song: "Reggae Christmas." A record that sucks so bad there's no way I could even manage to listen to it once, and I have four of them. Why? Because it's on green vinyl! Granted, they were only 50 cents each, but still!

Two Squares down and to the right is me with my two copies of a single by Los Del Mar. Who is Los Del Mar? Well, I'm glad you asked! After a quick check on Wikipedia I discovered that Los Del Mar covered the 'Macarena' and released it at the same time of the original's reign of terror. AND I HAVE TWO IDENTICAL SINGLES BY THESE BASTARDS!!! WHY??? BECAUSE IT'S ON GOLD VINYL!!!!!

So do you see what I'm getting at? Basically no matter what crap it is, if it's coloured vinyl and it's fairly cheap I'll probably buy it. Four Blue Vinyl Christian 10 inches for 50 cents each? Sure, wrap 'em up! A crazy priest rambling on at 16 rpm on red vinyl for a quarter? Don't mind if I do!

That's not to say that all the coloured vinyl I have is bad, it's just that if it'll look cool on my wall, I really don't care what it is.

It's actually a good way to insure that people will keep your records. If you suck, press it on coloured vinyl and at least your album will be hung on a wall somewhere instead of in the trash where it belongs. I'm sorry Paul Horn, that's just the way I feel. Luckily you had the foresight to go with blue vinyl, so you'll always have a place on my wall and in my heart.

The one thing I've managed to resist lately is red. I probably have about 50 red 45's and 10 0r 12 LP's. Now that's just ridiculous. What, am I going for the world record or something? So yes, when I see red vinyl, even for 25 cents, I can walk right on by! maybe I'm on the road to recovery. But probably not.

Yow!

Wow, it's funny what you find when you do a little cleaning. If you read the last post, you'll know that I'm moving so I'm cleaning out a lot of crap. And so today we'll be looking at some of that crap!

Up first, possibly the gayest album cover ever, Loverboy's 'Get Lucky.' Now I'm not saying 'gayest' as any sort of insult, I just think this album cover is very homo-erotic. I mean, check out those red leather pants, eep! And whose ass is that anyway? Probably Mike Reno's I guess, isn't that kind of embarrassing?

Oh well, speaking of embarrassing, check out the 2nd pic, that's Corey Hart's band on the inside cover of 'Fields of Fire'. Now I'm not gonna tell anyone how to live their life, but guys, when you're being photographed for an album cover, maybe you should forget about wearing sweatpants. I mean, Corey's previous album sold a million copies (in Canada, which means that in 1985, 1 in 20 people had a copy!), you gotta figure a few people are gonna end up seeing this thing. God Damn, look at the guy in the middle, he's got the full sweat suit thing going on. I guess the 10 minutes he spent getting photographed was way too long to be slightly uncomfortable. And the dude second from the left looks like he's wearing his old junior high school photo outfit! Also there's five beautiful mullets happeing, this thing is pure gold!

Now onto the Captain and Tenille. They have cute dogs. C'mon, look at those little fatties! And a weird sidenote to these two is that when Mego made the KISS dolls in 1978, they used all the extra Darrell Dragon (the Captain) heads they had lying around for the Paul Stanley doll. I guess the Captain wasn't a huge seller, they probably would have been better off making action figures of the dogs...

Cleaning house...

Well, I'm moving in a month into a smaller place, so I figured, "what better time than to clean up the old record shelf and clear out sone of the crap that's been taking up valuable real estate?"

And wow, I couldn't believe how much junk I'd been harboring. Check out that stack, I wasn't even being that harsh, just getting rid of stuff that hasn't been listened to in at least a year.

Unfortunately, when you have a big pile of stuff like this it's kind of a burden. On the one hand, you really want to take it around to all the record stores and see if anyone will give you any credit. But then again, since I no longer have a car, do I really want to carry this huge pile of records on the bus? It weighs a ton and it's really awkward.

So, what to do? I guess I'll probably break it up into manageable piles of stuff that people might actually want and take it around over the course of a few days. Then again, even out of this huge monolith, there's probably still only about 5 or 6 discs someone may be interested in. But what can you do with old records?

That's when I came up with the idea of starting a record trading club. Think about it, you could put up posters, meet at a coffee shop or something and trade all the old stuff that you no longer want, but that you don't want to just toss in the trash. It would be good for thinning out the impulse buys and stupid things you've ended up with over the years. (Bon Jovi New Jersey, it was only a dollar and I still feel ripped off) And it would also be good if you had something that was worth a few bucks, but you didn't want to take it in and get $4 credit and then see it on sale for $25 the next time you go in. Don't you just hate that?

So, that's my idea. I may never get it off the ground, but I think it could be great. If you're interested, e-mail me and maybe we can hook it up. Later, Record Lad

Paul DiAnno's Lament....

Since my last post was kind of depressing, I figured I'd stay in that vein and talk about that poor bastard Paul DiAnno.

Who's Paul DiAnno you ask? Well, you should probably know, but if you don't, he was the first singer of Iron Maiden. Well.... actually that's not entirely true. He was the first Iron Maiden singer to be immortalized on vinyl. Iron Maiden had a few singers before our boy Paul, but they've been forgotten by history! (or at least by me)

So yeah, DiAnno made it onto a ton of Maiden singles, including their first release, "the SoundHouse Tapes". If you have a copy of this you're lucky. I apparently am unlucky, as I do not own the SoundHouse tapes. Are you listening Santa? I've been really good this year, you fat S.O.B!

Anyway, PD was a pretty decent singer, but he just didn't really fit in with the rest of the band. For one, he had short hair and back then, that just didn't fly with most metalheads. I know, I know, you're saying "RecordLad, you ignorant bastard, what about Rob Halford?" Well, I guess he was the exception to the rule.

So anyway, I'm getting off topic here, the point is, PD could really wail, and the two Maiden albums he appeared on could only be described as EPIC.

So what happened? I've heard tons of stories, he was unreliable, a drunken buffoon, etc. etc. etc. but the main reason seems to be that they thought they had gone as far as they could with poor old Paul DiAnno.

It really does seem like they made the right choice though, as the band is still doing incredibly well with Paul's successor, Bruce Dickinson. But there's the rub. Mostly when you get kicked out of a band, it's by your idiot friends in high school who all end up working at the Dairy Queen anyway. Or you get kicked out of your stupid airband cause they only want four guys in the band so they can do all Poison songs. (That's right you assholes, I still haven't forgotten about that!)

But getting kicked out of Iron Maiden in 1981 would be just about the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Right after you got the boot, they would release classic album after classic album and pretty much dominate the rest of the decade. You would have to go to mars to avoid seeing kids with Iron Maiden t-shirts.

And then just when you thought they were done, since Bruce left the group and the new singer Blaze Bayley is even worse than you were, that F*CK@$$ comes back and they're back doing just as well as they ever were!! AAGGHHH!!!!!

Even just typing that was awful, can you imagine living it? Paul DiAnno, you need a hug.