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Vintage kodak projector on classic mike preamp, camera, and other miscellaneous items

Arts, related and otherwise… including books, film and miscellaneous adventures.

The Biggest Record Show in Texas (and the United States)- The Austin Record Convention 2019

May 23, 2019 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

The Biggest Record Show in Texas (and the United States)- The Austin Record Convention 2019 Yep, stuff is big here- trucks, some people (fit, not fat), buildings, hair, BBQ, hell the entire state is big. And the Austin Record Convention, which has been operating since 1981, was pretty great this year. Lots of dealers (over 300, according to the website) occupying 40,000 sq feet of clean, well air-conditioned modern space. The show takes place in South Austin, just a stone’s throw from the river in the middle of downtown Austin. It claims to be the biggest record show in the United... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Peter Green: A Love That Burns- Definitive Reference Guide by Richard Orlando (3 volumes, Smiling Corgi Press 2017).

September 4, 2018 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

Peter Green: A Love That Burns- Definitive Reference Guide by Richard Orlando (3 volumes, Smiling Corgi Press 2017). To call this exhaustive study of Peter Green’s performances an ambitious undertaking would be damning by faint praise: over 1,900 pages, cataloging and commenting on the history and attributes of 1,000 recorded performances by the legendary guitarist Peter Green spread among three volumes.  These volumes took author Richard Orlando more than 15 years to assemble. Green is a relatively modern artist who composed and performed within our lifetimes—and within a fairly... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, Stickies

SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN, 100 Musicians on Why They Make Music

January 12, 2018 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN, 100 Musicians on Why They Make Music    Even if you hung out in every bar, dive and dance hall in a town for the last 40 years, you wouldn’t capture the musical influences, history and “feel” of a place as well as this book tells it. Part history, part interviews with music makers, SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN is far more than a cheat sheet for the vast array of talent that inhabits this “live music capital of the world.” It tells the story of the Austin music scene, in the words of the people who lived and made it, in a way no narrative history... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

From the Gulch to the Delta

January 29, 2017 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

From the Gulch to the Delta- On Pawn~ in Asheville, N.C. We are down in the Gulch, Nashville’s newest “hot” urban enclave, bubbling with fashionable boutiques and trendy nightspots. Our trip from Virginia was uneventful, if wet; the views along the higher ridges were hampered by fog. With a brief stay-over in Winston-Salem, a quiet town of old architectural gems (and one of the best café lattes ever, at a place called “The Hive”), we landed in Asheville. This is a vibrant city nestled into the Blue Ridge Mountains with the charm of the south but a distinct culture all its own.... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

The War of Fog

January 20, 2017 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

The War of Fog -Adventures in Audiophile Moving.   For forty days and nights, we’ve been packing boxes and squaring away our Hudson River home for sale to the new owners: roughly 12,000 records have gone through my hands recently; a few thousand left a while ago, and are now in the hands of a friend who returned to vinyl; as many were handed off to a wholesaler who dealt with the listings and shipping (none of the really rare stuff got sold, so you didn’t miss a thing). The wholesaler came back a couple weeks ago to take another 2,000 records out of here. That left me with about 6,000... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Featured Book Review: The Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy

April 27, 2016 by Bill Hart

        This book—an in-depth biography of Morris Levy, a legendary music business figure with reputed “mob ties” —is long overdue. We seem to have a collective fascination for scoundrels, thugs and gangsters. But Levy was no mere thug: from his Birdland, a midtown jazz club where Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Monk, Miles, Bud Powell and Count Basie played, to his mass marketing of pop music in the decades that followed, Levy had a keen sense of where the business was headed and capitalized on it. Yet Levy always remained a shadowy figure, even decades after his death.... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, Features

Interview with Richard Carlin, Author of The Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy

April 27, 2016 by Bill Hart

Interview with Richard Carlin, Author of The Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy    Why a book about Morris Levy? Was it the dearth of information about him, the shadowy reputation or something else that drove you to research and write this?   RC: The project did not start as a Morris Levy biography. I was doing some work on a broader project- about a generation of mostly Jewish men who were the children of first generation immigrants-all from the Bronx, who were successful in the music business. I was familiar with some of the published material on Levy- there was a... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Yuri Grishin- “The British Recording History”

January 2, 2016 by Bill Hart

          Yuri Grishin’s name should be familiar to some readers; he is the polymath who assembled the extensive labelographies of Island, Vertigo, Harvest and Charisma in a series entitled “The Famous British Collectable Record Labels. ” Those books–which include images of the releases, catalog numbers, details about cover art, mastering, matrix information and details on sleeves, variations in different countries, along with “inside” interviews—provide an invaluable resource to collectors, are now out of print and are themselves collectible. Grishin... Read More

Filed Under: Compendia, Ephemera

New Skynyrd Documentary: Gone with the Wind

January 2, 2016 by Bill Hart

  Not long after writing a retrospective on Lynyrd Skynyrd, I happened on this film documentary– Gone with the Wind– about the band. Without knowing much about the film, I was thoroughly surprised by its depth and the care that went into making it; not just talking heads, or jarring, badly filmed footage of concert excerpts, it tells the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd from the earliest days, and includes interviews with some of the surviving members. Drummer Burns, who is featured in a number of interview clips, died earlier this year. The film benefits from some pretty candid... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Road Trip!

August 25, 2015 by Bill Hart

  photo credit: Modestas Urbonas The weather was glorious this weekend in the Hudson Valley and we took full advantage. Our path eventually led to Beacon, New York, which has been transformed from a sleepy river town to Brooklyn-on–the-Hudson. In addition to a couple of interesting antique stores and a great little taqueria named after a Mexican wrestler (Tito Santana), we visited Audioccult, a sweet little new/old record shop in town. We found some nice records- mostly U.S. ‘60s and ‘70s rock and R&B. (Some were first pressings and in better than usual condition at very... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera

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In Brief:

Incoming- Mrs. Henry Keep on Rising

Mrs. Henry Keep on Rising   A 21st century rock opera? Recorded to tape? And mastered at Bernie Grundman’s shop? I’ve started to explore this box (3 LPs, 2 CDs and a substantial book) in more depth and plan on interviewing the producer in an upcoming piece. … [Read More...]

Power to the People-Back Up Generator

    Shortly after the Texas "big freeze" in February 2021, I contacted various vendors of back up generators. Some did not bother to respond, a few came out, ostensibly to give me a quote and I never heard from them again. One vendor did send me a blank form with a very high total price, without completing the cost analysis for running gas lines, electrical wiring and the other things that are "adds" to the cost of the generator itself.  I kicked this around for a while-- given the heat in Central Texas during the summer--110F for days on end, we got constant warnings last summer (2023) to reduce power consumption, lest we suffer rolling blackouts. And then there's the fact that Austin really isn't "built" for freezing temperatures. Black ice with no road crews, downed power lines, and demand that teeters off the edge of power failure catastrophe. I do not want to go into the power grid … [Read More...]

Incoming-Know what I mean?

Cannonball Adderley's "Know what I mean? is a warhorse, to be sure,but one that deserves its reputation. I was prompted to explore a few different pressings as a result of a thread on the Hoffman forum: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/do-you-have-cannonball-adderley-bill-evans-know-what-i-mean-the-best-sounding-vintage-jazz-lp.1175660/  I used to shop these OJCs as bargains back in the day when Tower Records was thriving. They were a solid entry point into some very good sounding jazz--some of it "straight ahead" but well made, taken from analog masters for the most part and did I say cheap? Back in the day, these were bargain records when they were released, and until the more recent surge in prices of older LPs, could be readily found for little money.  The recent Craft reissue cut by Kevin Gray has brought renewed attention to the record. I thought it might be fun to do a … [Read More...]

We’re Back!

We’re Back! Some fresh content for your consideration. Neil Antin did some modest updates to his seminal book on Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records. Neil did not regard these changes as a “new version” so the download is now 3.1 with a “Record of Changes” at the end. I’ve talked to Peter Ulrich, the drummer from Dead Can Dance a few times over the years because I was fascinated by the group. They hit it big in audiophile circles with “Into the Labyrinth” which became a “demo” record with the MoFi release. I got that, but also sought out an original 4AD pressing, and as I delved into their music, bought more original copies- they were not crazy expensive at the time. When Peter told me he was doing a book on the history of his involvement with the band, I was eager to read it. It offers some great insight into a period when this band was inventing new sounds in the post-punk … [Read More...]

Drumming with Dead Can Dance: and Parallel Adventures- Peter Ulrich

  Drumming with Dead Can Dance: and Parallel Adventures Peter Ulrich   I didn’t really get on to Dead Can Dance until “Into the Labyrinth,” their most popular LP that made the audiophile rounds here in the States. 4AD, their label, wasn’t well distributed in the US when the band was first developing, it wasn’t exactly mainstream stuff here, even in the audiophile community. Yet the band had a following, starting in Australia, where Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry had a band and moved to a council flat in London where the two met our narrator, a soon to be jobless publicist for a theatrical/live show venue. Ulrich had the time, interest, musical background, and chops as a drummer to become part of their band. So we get the story of DCD from the outset of their adventures in England, playing local venues and developing a following. The scene was a sort of post-punk, … [Read More...]

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