While records have dominated the home audio electronics business throughout the 20th century, little has been published about record stores themselves. With few exceptions, most record stores were family operated or were departments in larger stores. Gary Calamar and Phil Gallo have co-authored what may be the first comprehensive book on the evolution of the record store, Record Store Days: From Vinyl to Digital and Back Again. The book is due for release on April 6, 2010.

Records appeared as discs in 1900 with two major manufacturers, Columbia and Victor. One format was at 80 RPM while the other was at 76 RPM. It took an entire generation of listeners to standardize the speed to 78 RPM, in 1925. At that era discs were competing with cylinder recordings made popular by Thomas Edison in 1897. Vinyl records have undergone turbulent evolution as 78’s were replaced by long playing records and 45-rpm singles. Could someone in the late 1960’s, the era of the vinyl LP, been nostalgic for 78 vinyls? Continue Reading »

 

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been a year since I blogged about the WD TV HD media player. I was really impressed by it, especially at the asking price. Never one to rest on their laurels, Western Digital went back to the lab, and they came out with the WD TV Mini. Think of the WD TV Mini as the little brother of the WD TV HD. Little brother might be a bit of a misnomer, since the Mini is a competent media streamer in its own right.
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Jemina Pearl will perform free in City Hall Park Thursday, August 27th at 6 pm, right after Diane Birch opens the show at 5 pm and just before headliners, The Smithereens at 7 pm.

Upon the break up of “Be Your Own Pet”, singer Jemina Pearl, daughter of rock photographer and musician, Jimmy Abegg, packed up her belongings - clothes, guitar, hair dye - and moved from Nashville to New York, formed a new band with Maxwell Peebles on rhythm guitar, Ben Pearson on bass, Erik Ratensperger on drums, and John Eatherly on lead guitar. They’ve been recording at The Fort in Bushwick, Brooklyn preparing for a fall tour.
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Celebrate Jamaica with a Reggae Gold Fly-A-Way

VP Record celebrates the release of its 17th edition of the iconic musical series, Reggae Gold 2009, featuring the hottest tracks in Reggae, including: Come Over by Estelle featuring Sean Paul; Need U Bad by Jazmine Sullivan; Nuh Linga Dance & Sweep by Elephant Man; So Special by Mavado and other summer hits from Busy Signal, Tarrus Riley, T.O.K., Queen Ifrica, Beres Hammond, I-Wayne, Laden and many more. Continue Reading »

 

Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have created a string of elegantly layered, acoustic guitar-driven folk-rock albums on their own terms, and “remaining a little island of consistency in an aggressively unpredictable industry,” as Billboard magazine put it.

The songwriting takes center stage on the latest release, Poseidon And The Bitter Bug (DeLuxe Edition), The duo barreled through the recording process in three weeks flat in Atlanta with longtime bassist Clare Kenny, session-pro drummer Matt Chamberlain, engineer David Boucher, and veteran producer, arranger, and keyboardist Mitchell Froom, all of whom they’ve worked with before. Continue Reading »