“I remember a very specific time as an adolescent when records, tapes and CDs all had their own sections of my local music store. Deciding between the three musical mediums was extremely confusing, and often limited to genre specifications (as if puberty wasn’t already hard enough). I was attracted to the physical size of records, but new releases were often pricey. And I never thought that CDs would truly catch on. Tapes became my preferred aural delivery method; cheap and they’d play in my General Electric boom box.”
“Spending a lot of time in the basement, I slowly started to creep my father’s record collection. It was a standard “dad” collection, featuring plenty of Doors, Moody Blues, Jim Croce, and Simon & Garfunkel…all things that were not very exciting to a 6th grader who just saw Nirvana play on TV. Then, I found a copy of Molly Hatchet’s Flirtin’ With Disaster. Never actually hearing the band before, I remember thinking that my dad was a secret hesher, based off of the album cover alone. I had to hear this!
After a couple of seconds into side A, I was convinced that the record in the jacket was not the correct match. I kept looking at the cover while listening, getting frustrated that there was no mention of warlocks, death angels, and danger. So, I did what any normal kid would do–buy another Molly Hatchet album to see if their earlier records sounded anymore like their album covers.
Fooled a second time, I decided to return to the record store and attempt to make an exchange…and then Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” caught my eye and my lifelong love affair with heavy metal records began.
With age comes musical discovery, and my growing record collection continues to benefit from such.
These days, vinyl records are the really the only medium that I spend money on, much less even consider spending money on. I try to DJ a couple of times a month which feeds my record shopping addiction by forcing me to have new stuff to play out.
Just a week ago, I found myself up at 4 in the morning bidding on a Jay-Z acapella 12″ single, due to the badass rare artwork. Some things never change.”
—Justin Krol, Hugh Bob & The Hustle
Hugh Bob & The Hustle’s self titled debut LP is in stores now.
