Brighton, UK | Rare vinyl music records worth £1,000 stolen from Brighton shop: Police investigating the theft of rare music records from a Brighton shop would like to speak to a man captured on CCTV. A Sussex Police spokesman said a man went into The Record Album store in Terminus Road and stole eight vinyl records worth £1,000 between 4.15pm and 5pm on Friday 13 September. PC Darren Hughes said: “We would like to hear from anyone who recognises the man in the image or has any information about it. It appears the suspect knew what he was looking for and has some knowledge about records.” Police described him as being of large build, bald and was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, three quarter length dark trousers and was carrying a red rucksack.
Redmond, OR | Vinyl expected to outsell CDs by end of the year. CD tech was to make LPs obsolete in 1980s: The Compact Disc was billed as technology that would render vinyl records obsolete when it was introduced in the early 1980s. But now, the Recording Industry Association of America is predicting that revenue from vinyl record sales could overtake that of CDs by the end of the year, CNBC reported. Sales of new and new and used vinyl records have been increasing over the past decade, going up 55.8% from 2010 to 2011 and 131.8% from 2011 to 2012, CNBC said, according to eBay data. The network also said there was an 18.5% year-over-year increase in sales of new records from 2016 to 2017. CD revenue has also steadily declined. Dan Orkin, director of content at music gear marketplace Reverb, which also sells records, told CNBC that’s partially because of streaming services. “For some, streaming has cheapened music, and the ritual of buying and owning a record is a way to really commit to the artist and their work,” Orkin said.
Manila, PH | Looking for vinyl? Collectors’ fave NEC branches out to BF Paranaque: With today’s state-of-the-art gadgets, one would think that vinyl records are a thing of the past. Surprisingly, however, there are many avid fans who still value their record collections and there are also those who consistently look for new finds to add to their stash. One such store that caters to people with a keen interest on collecting vinyl is Northwest Estate and Collectibles (NEC), owned by architect-turned-businessman Jose “Jong” Canimo. It was in Washington state, where Canimo brought his love for music and “everything old and magnificent” to the next level, by offering collectors a diverse selections of LP records, gear, model vehicles and more at friendly prices. When he came back from the US in 1995, Canimo started to ship records to Manila, as advised by his friends. “It was short-lived and I ended up with literally thousands of albums stuck in my mom’s house and two storage lockers,” he recalled. “I joined monthly record shows and fairs to unload until 1999, when I opened my account on eBay under the user name postalwax and a store called Northwest Estate and Collectibles.”
Portland, OR | Freedom to Spend Records Resurrects a Portland Proto-Ambient Classic: Ernest Hood’s Neighborhoods. As a veteran record collector and crate digger, it pains me to think that, at some point in my life, I probably flipped past an original copy of Ernest Hood’s Neighborhoods without giving it a second glance. The record is unassuming looking. The cover art features a photo of an unnamed street that looks like it was taken in the 1920s, with this subtitle printed underneath: “Memories of Times Past.” Even the description of the music on the back of the record sleeve—“Multiple Zithers, Keyboards and Sounds by Ernest Hood”—makes this 1975 private-press release sound like a wacky batch of ragtime tunes that you might hear piped over the sound system of a pizza parlor. The reality of Neighborhoods is far stranger and more alluring than that. The “sounds” referenced on the back cover aren’t random noises, but a meticulously constructed web of field recordings made by Hood that feel like a snapshot of a late summer’s day.
When The Beatles walked offstage: Fifty years of ‘Abbey Road.’ n the spring of 1969, Paul McCartney telephoned George Martin to ask if he would be willing to work with the Beatles on a new album they planned to record in the months ahead. Martin, who was widely regarded as the most accomplished pop-record producer in the world, had overseen the making of all nine albums and nineteen singles that the Beatles had released in Britain since their début on E.M.I.’s Parlophone label, in 1962. His reputation was synonymous with that of the group, and the fact that McCartney felt a need to ask him about his availability dramatized how much the Beatles’ professional circumstances had changed since the release of the two-record set known as the White Album, in the fall of 1968. In Martin’s view, the five months of tension and drama it took to make that album, followed by the fiasco of “Get Back,” an ill-fated film, concert, and recording project that ended inconclusively in January, 1969, had turned his recent work with the Beatles into a “miserable experience.”
