Vinyl

Project – Record Shelf

Since I’ve actually taken an interest in vinyl records, One thing I really wanted to do was build a simple little record shelf. This would serve two purposes basically. One, it looks cool. Two, it gives me another way to decorate the basement a bit. The concrete block walls are a pain to work with, especially the outside wall where all my music stuff is. The temperature changes mean nothing sticks to it long term. In other areas I’ve hung frames from the rafters using small chains. For this space, I’ve got a nice shelf I can use and swap out what’s on display as I get more records.

It wasn’t an overly complicated project, but it took longer than planned since my wife had the garage full of garage sale stuff and I couldn’t really reach any tools. Also it’s been blazing hot out, and I don’t care to work outside in that much heat. On the problem of the heat, probably sometime int he fall, I’ll drag the shelf and the lower shelving out and stain and seal it. Neither plays very well with the heat either.

The shelf itself is a handful of 1×4 pine boards. It’s a bit more complicated than it might seem at first. For starters, I like the look of inset joints over just using metal L braces, so I went and inset and glued the shelves inside the sides. This was a bit tricky because I don’t actually own any bar clamps. I also added the little back catch pieces under each shelf, so the albums wouldn’t be resting on the wall itself. This was slightly complicated because there is a power conduit running down this wall i had to work around. The shelves themselves are notched around the power conduit as well. I also only have so many clamps large enough to glue these, so it took like a week of “clue one piece then come back.”

Each shelf also has an angled groove cut along the length so the albums sit slightly down in the shelf and are more secure. The whole thing is screwed to the rafter above for support. In fact the whole thing is much sturdier than I thought it would be. My main worry is that the albums would tumble off, damaging the records, but now that it’s up, I actually am not worried about that at all. Everything is very stable.

Also, my original plan was to stick the CD holder I had been using back on the lower shelf, in front of the new shelf. I immediately hated this look. But I also realized that there was a small gap near the bottom, so I added one more smaller shelf to put (most of) the CDs on. I really liked this end result. Plus the board I used here was a different type of wood that was just around, and it’s a much sturdier type of wood than the pine, so I didn’t end up needing to add a center leg like I had worried I might need to do.

I suppose it’s also worth noting the equipment itself. The entire set up is pretty minimal. Everything is centered around this small mixer and amp combination.

I originally bought the mixer for use at my PC, I wanted to be able to play games on one machine, and watch a video on another machine, and merge the audio out one headset. That didn’t really work out to be as useful as I had hoped, but instead I get to use the mixer for my music instead. The amp I bought to go with some nice JBL speakers I had, that needed 2 wire connections to work, also connected to the PC originally. Except I never ever use anything but a headset on my PC, so it was a waste.

Connected to the Mixer are the input options. They can be played all at once, since it’s a mixer not a switch, but I’m not sure why you would want to. There is a Raspberry Pi hidden under the little shelf that connect to my music library and can be controlled remotely via a webpage. I have this kind of mediocre CD player that I’ll probably replace one day with something better, but still compact. Even a portable CD player would probably work better. There is also an Amazon Echo connected, but since Amazon jacked up their music service, I don’t use it as much. I also have an aux cord hanging off for connecting to a phone.

Lastly is my record player, which I bought at a garage sale. It works pretty well for my needs though. It’s an Audiotechnica AT-LP60, nothing fancy.

Lastly I have this recently acquired audio switcher. Right now I just have the one set of speakers, but at the very least, it will be easy to add a second set outside so I can listen to music while out on the deck or porch under the deck out back. The output selector will make this much easier to accomplish and it’s something I’d thought about getting at some point before, then I came across one at an estate sale.

Evangelion Finally

While I’ll talk a bit on this album, Evangelion Finally, this also covers the vinyl version of this album. So, a bit of a story here. I really don’t plan to collect up a ton of records for my recently activated vinyl hobby, but I really could not resist this one when I came across it. I was originally looking into albums at Best Buy, because I had some credit, and went to do some price comparisons, then this one, and another came up as recommended. Which has spawned a bit of a new angle of interest for my vinyl buying. Anime Albums, and to some extend, Video Game albums.

I already have a plan to build a narrow wall shelf over my record player space, and this album, will look so nice propped up on the wall. I almost wish I had a good way to also show off some of the records themselves in the display because they are often quite nice looking. This album included, it has two records, both a nice splattered hot pink color. The cover has this very vibrant image of Rei Ayanami on it.

I should probably rewind a bit more on why I care about this album. I am not currently a particularly huge Anime fan, but I used to be one. I really can’t stand a lot of modern Anime, but still like a lot of those old, 90s, early 2000s classics. Evangelion is up there as one of my favorites as well. I re-watched it recently on Netflix and it’s still really good. The soundtrack is also pretty good, though this album is not the complete sound track. It’s mostly just, all the vocal tracks, minus a few dozen versions of Fly Me to the Moon.

Back around the time I was in college, I listened to the complete soundtrack pretty regularly.

While the whole album is pretty good, assuming you are fan of Evangelion and music in Japanese, I find most of the “meat” of this album is front loaded in the first 5 tracks. As one would expect, it opens with the opening track from the series, A Cruel Angel’s Thesis. The second track is a nice version of Fly me the The Moon. Yes, the same song often associated Frank Sinatra. For those who may be unaware, this song was played during the end credits of each episode of the series, though each episode also featured a different take and version of the song.

The third and fourth tracks are from the two movies, Soul’s Refrain and Thanatos-If I can’t Be Yours-. Both tracks are good, but the fifth track is the fan favorite from The End of Evangelion, Komm, Süsser Tod (Come, Sweet Death). This track plays during the Third Impact event as the world ends during the movie, and it’s probably the most upbeat sounding song about death that you’ll ever find. It’s also a bit of an odd juxtaposition of language, the title is German, it’s from a Japanese show and sung by a Japanese woman, but the words are all in English. There is also a Japanese version of this song at Track 12, though it’s a different mix for the instrumentals.

A lot of the rest of the album I don’t immediately recognize, aside from Track 11, Shiawase wa Tsumi no Nioi. This kind of tracks with my experience with Evangelion as a whole. The one track I do recognize was from a Dreamcast game, and while I have never played the game, it would have ended up in my soundtrack pile of Evangelion media back in the day. Most of the other tracks seem to come from the more recent V2.0 Remake anime. I have, sort of watched, parts of this, but I couldn’t get into it as much as the original series at all.

While I admit, I mostly bought this album on vinyl because I want to to hand up among my wall display, it is a good collection of music from the series.

Record Store Day 2023

Today was Record Store Day.  It’s moistly just, a “promotional” sort of deal for local record shops, and not really like, a “real holiday”.  I decided I would go ahead and give it a go.  There were a couple of pretty inexpensive albums that I was interested in and I’ve recently (finally) picked up a record player after many years of “I should get a record player”.

Man, now I’m just getting layers and layers of things to bring up here.  Maybe it’s best to just start at, “Why vinyl?”

I guess it’s almost, “Why not?”  Ok, there are plenty of reasons why not.  It takes up a lot of space, it’s not portable, it’s not particularly cheap, it’s not skip-able, etc etc.  Some of these are advantages though.  I listen to mostly albums anyway, why not buy a format that lends itself to album listening?  Space and cost are less of an issue as well, I don’t intend to go nuts on buying records.  There is nothing that I just HAVE to have.  If I could get an ok deal, on some things, I might buy it, but there is nothing I am desperate for on vinyl.  I’ve already had a few records for a while, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Dark Side of the Moon, A promo single from Mortal Kombat Annihilation, and slightly more recently, the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I also recently bought a player for these albums.  I found one that fit what I was looking for at a garage sale and got it pretty cheap, it’s a nice little entry level Audio-Technica AT-LP60.  The main thing I wanted was a stand alone unit like this.  It takes up less space, and I already have speakers that are much nicer than most of the self contained units I come across.  It operates perfectly for my basic needs.

I had looked over the list online, and the price list I had found, and basically only wanted 2 albums.  Dodie’s Hot Mess EP, and the Arooj Aftab – Live in London EP.  I am going to skip the boring details behind these choices for now because I may do some album write ups in the future but these two were both affordable at under $20 each and both were artists I enjoy.  I had a few others lined up as alternative options or maybe if I felt spendy, but I ended up either not finding them or passing on them.  I also decided that I would go ahead and get the Taylor Swift Folklore album, if it was there, despite it being a bit more than I wanted to spend.  The price didn’t matter, it was sold out.  People camped out overnight for that thing.  CRAAAZY People…..

I was a bit worried during the lead up.  The store had been posting photos online as they unboxed everything and I had seen neither of these albums shown.  This was especially annoying because Dodie’s album was listed as “Regional Focus” and she was doing a live show off in London FOR Record Store Day.  Which sort of suggested, “Hot Mess” may be “Regionally focused to England.”  Friday night though, both albums showed up as being available.  So I was set to go.

The store opened at 8AM.  But it was also a 45 minute drive away in the next city over, and I didn’t have anything on my list that I needed to be there super early for anyway.  I arrived around 8:30, and there was still a line down the block, which was a little discouraging.  I had driven all this way though, how long could it take?  It didn’t help that it was also very cold, and I had not brought a jacked, though I was wearing a flannel shirt, in classic “I’m a 90s teen” fashion.  

The line took, a very looooong time.  It was something like 2 hours before I got in the store.  Thankfully, I got to chat up some nice strangers while waiting.  We made jokes, and talked music and concerts and records and talked other things.  Funny enough,, I never got any of their names.  There was one lady who had been at the hospital nearby and her husband had asked her to come down here and see if she could get a KISS related album.  I get the impression she did not manage to, I never saw her in the store and she had been trying to recruit me or the other dude to buy her a second copy since it was limit one.  Then there was “The other dude”, whom I really enjoyed talking with.  Talking with him was like looking at a mental and verbal mirror, though we looked nothing alike.  He was disappointed that people would leave the store and not look happy and not show off their hauls.  He ended up checking behind me and as I was leaving, I reminded him to do his fist pump as he left for the crowd outside.  There was also a younger girl who reminded me a bit of my daughter, with her slightly eccentric dress and mannerisms.  The notable store for her, she was wearing these flowered pants.  As we got closer to the store entrance, she mentioned being friends with the worker managing the store entrance.  The employee finally noticed her in line and they exchanged some pleasantries, and the employee mentioned “I like your pants”.  The young girl said thanks, then opened the front of her jacked and exclaimed, “They aren’t just pants, they are overalls!”  And everyone got a kick out of that, and the reaction of the employee.

It’s really kind of funny that we never got anyone’s names, because the other dude said something that really stuck with me.  He talked about writing some books as a hobby, and not really wanting to be a famous writer because he liked the anonymity of just, not being known.  He mentioned enjoying just sort of the basic human interaction, he had a better phrasing that I’ve forgotten.  And here we are, a small group of strangers, bonding over a shared event, passing ships on the ocean, with no real clue who we all really are.

Anyway, my turn finally came up, I went in.  The RSD Exclusives were in bins sorted alphabetically, and the front of the alphabet was open.  I quickly thumbed through the A-B bin and found my Arooj Aftab record.  The only one in there, I have no idea if there had been more earlier.  I picked it up and slid down to C-D looking for Dodie, and like the Arooj Aftab album, there was one copy of Hot Mess.  This meant mission accomplished for the day, anything else was a bonus.  The end of the alphabet was open so I slid on down there and started working my way back towards “A-B”.  No Taylor Swifts.  There was a NENA – 99 Luftbaloons I seriously considered but decided to skip.  I almost got the Garbage EP, I do like Garbage.  In the end, I decided on no more exclusives, and went over the the main part of the store.  I checked for any CHVRCHES or Aurora albums they might have and came up empty there.I checked through the “recent arrivals” and there were a few interesting ones but I decided I would wait for now.  There was a line outside, only 20 people allowed in at a time due to the store size, and I didn’t really need to linger.  I headed to the checkout table.

The Other Dude ended up behind me in line, he had a couple of albums picked out.  The real oddity here was the person in front of me.  So the store WAS having 10% off everything not RSD related.  So if you’re a collector, that would be a good time to pick up some other stuff.  The guy in front of me was buying, cassettes.  ONLY cassettes.  They seemed to be like, $1 each, and he spent a whole $8 and some change.  Like dude…..   dude…..  dude…. I am sure your cassette choices are great….  but did you just stand in line for possibly 2 hours, to spend $8 on used cassette tapes?  That 10% didn’t even save a dollar and there are a LOT of people here waiting to spend hundreds of dollars.

It seemed, very odd.

After finishing up, I went back to my car and drove around the block to…. The OTHER record store in town, Recycled Records.  This store was not participating in Record Store Day, because it’s closing in like a week.  It’s been around in town for a very long time.  I thought I had read they were doing 50% off, there was no indication that this was the case at all, anywhere.  I didn’t end up buying anything.  Not for trying, but I just didn’t find anything that jumped out at me.  There was a Radio Head vinyl I would have bought at half price, but it seemed new Vinyl was only 10% off.  They didn’t have any of the other artists I looked for unfortunately.

Afterwards I headed out to spend a few hours at my parent’s house just hanging out before heading home in the late afternoon.

Just one last bit, I’ll talk about the albums themselves later, but they are both very cool disks, and I can understand why people buy these special versions like this.