Chicago, IL | ‘She’s an experience’: Friends celebrate the life of Oak Park record store owner Val Camilletti: Friends and associates — people who filled every corner of Val Camilletti’s life — celebrated her life Sunday afternoon and into the late evening in what many said was a memorial tribute that the longtime Oak Park record store owner would have enjoyed. Crowds of better than 250 packed FitzGerald’s in Berwyn to listen to the rock, blues and other forms of music that Camilletti relished. They sat at tables, stood or sat at the bar and propped themselves up against the walls to drink, chat and just hang out. Others watched outside on a live feed from the stage. The central focus — what Steve Parker, a longtime friend and host of the festivities, called “the experience” — was Camilletti, the owner of Val’s Halla Records, who died July 24 after a two-year battle with breast cancer.
UK | Man hears voice of uncle killed in Second World War after lost recordings found on eBay: The nephew of a naval officer who died during one of the great battles of the Second World War has been able to hear his uncle’s voice again after recordings made on British ships turned up on eBay. Robert Terence Grogan – better known as Terry Grogan – died alongside 1,415 other men when their ship was sunk by the Bismarck during the Battle of the Denmark Strait in 1941. But in the years before the war, the Royal Navy man recorded his voice onto vinyl using specialist equipment and posted the messages home. His nephew Peter Jefferson, 73, was amazed to discover the existence of the unique recordings after a historian found the rare pressings on sale for £20 on the online auction site.
San Antonio, TX | Del Bravo Record Shop has been west side staple for more than 50 years: At Del Bravo record shop off Old Highway 90, music runs deep in their roots. “My dad being a musician and loving music, he decided to open up a store, something for the family. They started the store here many years ago and we’ve been here through good and bad times,” Jay Gutierrez said. And by many years ago, Jay means 53! But it hasn’t always been easy for this true “mom and pop” business. “In 2009, with technology and the recession, it kind of hit us at the same time,” he said. With records and CDs slowly going out of style, the family relies on what they know best to keep the turn tables spinning.“We’re looking for ways to on how to survive here, so we’re starting to see an increase in vinyl sales again…”
If you hate your eyes, you can now watch video recorded on a vinyl record: …Analog video encoded on vinyl records isn’t a new concept. The experimental Phonovision format, created by John Logie Baird in the late 1920s, used gramophone records to record video, but the format never caught on. Formats like Betacam, and eventually VHS, allowed for vastly superior audio and sound…Fast forward 20 more years, and as Mat from YouTube’s Techmoan discovered, a Vienna-based company called Supersense has picked up Gebhard Sengmüller’s VinylVideo torch and is selling a roughly $200 converter box that is essentially the secret sauce to making this format work. You’ll need to provide the turntable (preferably higher-end hardware with a diamond tip stylus) and a TV, but the converter box will take the audio signal coming from a VinylVideo record, boost the signal, and split it into video plus mono audio signals.
