About a month ago one of the Facebook pages I am following (Vinyl Lovers United) posted an article about an artist in Seattle who uses old records and carves silhouettes of city skylines and other designs into them. http://www.geekwire.com/2016/seattle-artist-hopes-kickstarter-moves-needle-vinyl-record-cutouts-go-high-tech/ According to the article, the artist was always in the market for finding excess and unwanted records that he could use to create his unique artwork. The artist oftentimes went into record stores and asked the owners if they had any excess and/or unwanted records that they would be willing to sell, and would use those acquisitions for his craft. It is the topic of unwanted records that I wanted to talk about today.
First and foremost, I think that it is important to clarify my definitions of unwanted records, because they basically fall into three different categories. There are the broken and unusable records which are no longer playable on a turntable. There are the records that were unilaterally panned by critics and so obtain the moniker “unwanted.” And then finally there are the records that would never have had the chance to be hit-makers or fall into such a narrow niche genre that over time they may never be heard from again. It is the final category that I wanted to discuss on this blog.
I think the deliberate use of records as art started to bother me when I was a teenager in the late 80’s and early 90’s. And by art in this instance, I am referring to the music created by DJ’s who scratched records directly on a modified turntable to make a particular sound designed to complement other voices and instruments.
Even as a young teenager, whenever I would think about DJ’s I would think about which vinyl record was meeting its untimely demise this time. Did some DJ’s always use records that were already damaged beyond playability? Did some DJ’s look for specific artists, albums and/or genres in which to make an example of when they went to their station? Did some DJ’s just pick up large quantities of ‘unwanted’ records from Tower Records, and let the chips fall as they may? (More recently I also have issues with the new Red Robin cassette and eight-track wall art, but I digress)
I want to tell you the story about one particular record that I picked up while browsing through the bargain bin at a record show at the Seattle Center last spring. My genre of choice is Jesus Music, and while that may be a narrow genre in itself, it is amazing how my collection has expanded by simply browsing the thrift stores and record stores in just the Seattle area alone. As many vinyl music lovers know when they browse for records, there are always albums on one’s ‘list,’ however there also albums that fall under the “I wasn’t looking for it until I found it” category.
The album is titled: “Songs of Faith From the Heart of Cameroon, Africa.” It was recorded in the fall of 1969 and features hymns and spiritual songs sung in Douala, German and English. I had already made some good finds on this record show visit with Randy Stonehill, Love Song and the Pat Terry Group. However again, there are simply some albums that do not fall into a category of interest for a seeking vinyl music lover. I figured that if I put this particular album back into the crate that it would never be heard from again. I remind myself that somewhere in the past, someone somewhere felt that they had created music worthy enough to be made into vinyl and released as art (and ministry, if you are into Jesus and Jesus Music like I am).
“Songs of Faith...” could quite easily be categorized as an “unwanted” album. It could easily have made it onto a DJ’s turntable or an artist’s cutting room workbench. Out there are similar veins of vinyl gold that Itunes or Spotify simply aren’t going make digital recordings of. Which is why when this type of unwanted album is created into art in one form another form of art dies at the same time.
Not to oversimplify the solution, but I believe in response to the vinyl art carver, there are enough ruined vinyl records out there to fill a small country. Here’s how I know:
As a child born in the 1970’s I grew up in a home with a record turntable. My parents listened to the music of Simon and Garfunkel, Gordon Lightfoot, Arlo Guthrie, Linda Ronstandt, ABBA, and a slew of others on a healthy sized record collection of 33’s and 45’s. I was also a child who tended to dance around the living room and jump off of furniture while an upbeat vinyl single such as “Super Trouper” was being played ten feet away. So when a record started to skip or repeat itself, generally there was not much you can do about it, unless you didn’t mind walking over to the player every minute or so to move the needle. If records can be damaged by something as simple as a child leaping off of a couch, or by simply being too close to a window on a sunny day, think of all the other thousands of ways a record could be damaged. There is a mountain of unusable records out there, over decades of vinyl music creation, that are quite suitable for the purpose of framed art.
For those remaining playable records lost in the vastness of back room clearance bins I say to people: who is to say what records are wanted and which records are not? Because that is one of the joys of being a vinyl lover: Serendipitously discovering the music that time and man have forgotten and taking it for a spin again.
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