Nova Social release their brand new record “For Any Inconvenience” today, 2/28. It’s also available for free download at their website.
“I’m blessed to have grown up in a time when vinyl was still ubiquitous, so my world has always spun at 33 1/3 RPM.”
“Running to my portable denim print record player to serenade my (still) super cool Aunt Rita with “Lovely Rita” every time she came by my house and waiting for the inevitable hug; visits from my (still) super cool second cousin Linda, better known as “Bay City Roller Linda,” whom you’ll absolve of her plaid, bell-bottomed sins when I tell you she also gave me my first copy of A Night at the Opera; the Christmas I was given Chipmunk Punk and the 45 of “Take Your Time (Do It Right)” and lost my mind (I mean really); the birthday when I received Weird Al’s In 3-D and the Footloose soundtrack and also lost my mind; the trip to The Record Shop in Bloomfield, NJ for a good end-of-third-grade report card when everyone thought I’d choose Thriller but I demanded my own copy of Sgt. Pepper (my dad’s was just too beat up, though I’m reasonably sure I had nothing to do with it).
Things that go to make up a life, as the guy who made the Tarzan soundtrack once sang.
I’d like to reflect upon the moment that introduced my true record-collecting love.
On my weekly trip to the aforementioned Record Shop, one of the fab hippie ladies who worked there was pricing some new records when I saw it. The cover showed a group of cartoon punx in a back alley, holding up a droopy Christmas tree and wielding a switchblade. The top of the sleeve read “It’s Gonna Be a Punk Rock Christmas,” but, more importantly, a sticker on the cover read “pressed on red and green Christmas vinyl.”
When I asked my hippie pal what that meant, she took the record out of its jacket and rocked my tiny world. There it was: a record made of clear vinyl with amazing red and green splotches streaking out from the center, anchored by a no-nonsense yellow and black Rhino Records label.
It was the sexiest thing my pre-teen eyes had ever seen. I bought it, took it home, and listened to it—and watched it spin, transfixed—over and over. Thus, my entrance to the kandy-kolored kaleidoscope of colored vinyl collecting was complete. It remains my weakness.
I should probably write the guy from The Ravers a thank you note.”
—Thom Soriano
