Like a dog seeing a bone in one’s yard, I reacted to the cover of Record Time with my mouth watering. I immediately thought of Gene Deitch and his classic illustrations for the cover of the Jazz magazine The Record Changer. I have never seen an actual issue of The Record Changer, but I was obsessed with a book that came out some years ago, The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove, which focused on his visuals for that publication. Closer inspection, and as soon as my excitement or discovery dwelled down to a professional level of appreciation, I realized that there are differences between the cover of Record Time and Deitch’s drawings.
It is obvious to my readers here on Substack that I have a thing for vinyl records. There are publications devoted to music but not so much to the vinyl record itself and its culture. Record Collector and Ugly Things come to mind as publications devoted to vinyl hounds. Still, Record Time seems to understand the underbelly of the desire for records, in their purest form, as an obscure object to dwell on. For me, the vinyl record is a fetish object, and even looking at pictures of this damn object in magazines or, even worse, on Instagram makes my mouth water. Rarely do I pester my local bookstore if a magazine comes in, but I almost call them daily to see if they have Record Time in their inventory. Skylight Books had copies delivered to their store, and I went there to purchase the magazine.
Once home, I read it from cover to cover and then spent extra time reviewing what I read. I even tracked down some of the records mentioned in this issue and found them on the Discogs website. Record Time is a collection of articles on the more obscure aspects of record collecting. It is basically a ‘fuck you’ to the digital world and the joys of going to one’s record shop to find and pick up the obscure and unknown presence of music or recorded sound. I know a lot of obscure 20th-century music, but here, among its pages, are new things that I didn’t even know existed. Such as the knock-off of The Beach Boys called The Surfsiders Sing The Beach Boys Songbook (Design, 1965), a tribute to the Fab Five. Still, according to the author of this article, Laurent Bigot, it does its own versions without copying the original recordings. And one can find this 21-minute album online if one wishes to purchase it. Another curiosity is Lee Harvey Oswald on vinyl. Although not music, it's still a strange byproduct of disastrous moments in American history. And probably the most mainstream article in issue number one is a piece on the rock n’ roll band Montrose. I have not been waiting for an in-depth essay on this band, but the unexpected gives the reader a thrill.
The most exciting discovery is a group of musicians called People’s Victory Orchestra & Chorus. They released three albums in the early 1970s, and I have never heard an inch of sound or vision from them. But what I can find online is intriguing, and Record Time is jam-packed with all sorts of interesting artists and sounds, mostly on the eccentric side, but what I heard so far is pretty profound and beyond interesting. The one song I do know is ÇA Plane Pour Moi, but what I didn’t realize is the twisted history of this song/recording from Elton Motello to Plastic Motello. It’s a fascinating narrative and worth the price of this magazine.
So yes, the cover of this magazine/zine drew me, but what is inside is a thrill. I can’t see how anyone who loves the idea of vinyl records, especially those that have been ignored by the mainstream, as well as the landscape of finding these gems in funky record stores, especially in the 45 rpm section. Record collecting can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be costly, and there is something beautiful about finding something unheard of and being introduced to such an exciting world. Record Time is the publication for our age.
One can get the latest news on Record Time here.
Montrose LOL. That's quite an eclectic lineup!
Hey Tosh. is there an artist credit on the August issue? it kinda of resembles an artist down here in the desert named SHAG that we adore.. https://shagstore.com