I spent the better part of two weeks of jury duty this past August enthralled with Courtney E. Smith’s Record Collecting for Girls. Sure, jury duty’s awful but with a companion like Courtney and a knowing rummage through her records, all was just fine in the courthouse, thank you. And I’m not even the target demo.
In light of our simpatico natures, Courtney joins us this week ahead of a book signing and panel at NYC’s Book Court which will “discuss a range of topics, from being a female music nerd (from snob to pop-lover) to how female consumers move the dial in pop culture to the terrible secrets of the entertainment industry and gender.”
Prior to Friday’s panel, Courtney’s got bigger fish to fry. Or Zombies to off. Or something. —Ed.
Halloween is creeping up on us and that means one thing is on the mind of every record collector: in the zombie apocalypse, which albums in your collection would you be willing to throw at the head of a zombie to decapitate, maim, or stun it?
If you’ve seen Shaun of the Dead, you know the concept comes from that scene where Shaun and Ed discover zombie in the backyard and, after throwing everything from the kitchen at them, they start in on Shaun’s record collection. Things take a turn for the heartbreaking when Ed starts throwing records willy nilly and he cracks a first pressing of New Order without even phasing the zombie.
Since I saw the movie I’ve been combing my record collection in anticipation of the need to kill undead, flesh-eating monsters with sensitive heads. There are some records I’ve held on to for no reason other than this scenario coming to pass. All this week I’ll be telling you about the best records for zombie killing. Up first:
This movie-musical was rerun on cable constantly when I was a very little girl and I was obsessed with it. Some girls my age held on to their Dirty Dancing soundtracks, in spite of how terrible that Patrick Swayze song is, but I held on to this album.
I grew up in a Beatles house and a movie that took my favorite Beatles songs and strung them into a narrative seemed like a fantastic idea. And it is, but the execution of this film was so over-the-top, full-of-cheese, “really y’all?” It is awful. It’s so bad it makes “Baby I Love Your Way” not the most embarrassing thing Peter Frampton has ever done.
The vinyl of this atrocity is the first thing I’d throw at a zombie’s head. If it didn’t slow him down I’d just explain the plot until the zombie wondered off in search of less annoying flesh to munch.
Courtney Smith spent eight years at MTV as a music programmer and manager of label relations where she was instrumental in deciding which videos went into rotation on all twenty of MTV’s music platforms and created launch programs for emerging artists. She specialized in grooming upcoming bands and was an early champion of Death Cab for Cutie, the Shins, Franz Ferdinand, Vampire Weekend, Bat for Lashes, and many more. She writes for Flavorpill and The Daily Swarm. She also blogs about women and music for MTV’s music blog.
