From Liz Pace
I find it very difficult to control myself when handling large amounts of vinyl records. That was the moment I saw my favorite record. Take it home, listen to it on speakers in the clearest possible sound quality, stare at it, read it, play it, play it, scan for small differences with your version, and know it could be yours. It happened when You might find out by streaming (it happens more than you think)…you won’t want to miss it. As you can imagine, I was excited to hear that the university’s radio station, WESU 88.1 FM, would be hosting its annual fall record fair in Fayerweather Hall on Saturday, October 5th.
WESU Community Volunteer Liaison Chaim O’Brien Blumenthal explained the process of promoting the event to get as many participants as possible from both students and the Middletown community.
“Thanks to the great work of the entire board, especially event coordinator McKenna Blackshire and communications director Liz Pace, we have been able to work together in a calculated effort to spread the word about the Record Fair. “You can advertise by handing out flyers on campus, placing ads in the Argus, and advertising around downtown Middletown,” O’Brien-Blumenthal said in a statement to the Argus. I wrote by email. “Thanks to hard work, we were able to attract one of the largest attendances at the WESU Record Fair, and it was great to see so many students and community members volunteering their time to help with the fair. It was great and it was equally great to see the diverse mix of students and locals digging out the crates and having conversations.”
O’Brien Blumenthal was a vendor and DJ for the event. As a host on WESU Radio, his show “Anything Goes” airs Fridays from 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm and features live music and conversation as well as records.
The fair was even bigger than last year. I recognized a number of similar vendors and the selection was great, but this time there were a lot of bands playing outside and a DJ spinning records in the hall. Mamoon’s food truck was also stationed outside for the better part of five hours. There was more — as far as I know, Anthony Fantano didn’t appear.
I knew I needed to arrive early to see the widest selection possible. Still, the venue was overcrowded. Customers young and old were arguing with vendors over price, quality, and rarity. It’s a special language that only record lovers speak to each other. Is this record VG or VG+? If you can see the hairline here, would it really be? I understand. It can be daunting and tends to quickly create an impression as to whether haggling is a reasonable proposition for a particular vendor. My advice is, the less organized the display and the more willing the vendor is to have a very long conversation, the more likely you are to get a great deal.
It went relatively well. A very kind guy gave me a $5 Sade record he was eyeing, so I was able to extract a few bucks from The Zombies’ Odyssey and Oracle – honestly. , I think I could have negotiated more, but the guy knew there was little chance I wouldn’t buy the greatest record of all time, so he backed me into a corner. My strangest discovery was a vinyl pressing featuring David Foster Wallace giving his oft-quoted commencement speech, “This is Water.” After asking myself who in the world would want this on record, I realized I had thought that. Make room for novelty in your life.
From Liz Pace
After deciding I had reached my limit, I walked around the room asking others about their experiences. First, we looked at Tickle Monster’s lead singers, Griffin Abdo ’27 and Julia Chadwick ’28, and asked them about their purchase. The latter said she acquired a book of essays called “Girls: An Anthology.”
“We’ve got Sandra Cisneros and Maya Angelou,” Chadwick said. “And it includes two fathers’ perspectives on their relationships with their daughters, which I think is great…” I also received these beer cap earrings. ”
Abdo explained the importance of record selection.
“First, we acquired Todd Rundgren, one of the hidden darlings of rock history, not only as an artist but also as a producer,” Abdo said. “One of the greats…and he’s still around. And (Something/Anything) is like his best album. It has the best song of all time, ‘Hello, It’s Me.’ . And in another pivotal moment in rock’n’roll history, the Rolling Stones’ 1980 album Emotional Rescue was featured on A Bigger Splash. ”
FYI, “A Bigger Splash” has one of the funniest scenes of musical sophistication, and probably has the most Rolling Stones in any movie not directed by Martin Scorsese.
I was then able to speak with Isaiah Longstreth, 28, who performed with Montana Gras 27 and the Scarfs, outside the event and got a little inside look at how the concert went. Ta.
“[Gura]posted flyers the first or second week of school with his number recruiting guitarists and other instrumentalists for his band,” Longstreth said. . “The atmosphere was great and people were coming out to watch. It was quite hot so I wore a scarf and clothes that were too thick for the performance (because I was playing) so I was sweating a little bit, but… , I felt very relaxed. I had a lot of fun playing with them and I feel like we really bonded.”
I finally had the pleasure of speaking with Meredith Marciano, one of the event’s vendors, who does business under the name Sleepy Gene Records Unlimited, a play on the Monkees’ classic song “Daydream Believer.” She told me that nothing brought her more joy than doing record shows like this.
“Oh, that’s awesome!” Marciano said. “I mean, it’s heavy…but you get a new record, you sit in bed, you hold the record jacket, you read the liner notes, you read the lyrics to the song…and the next day you do it with your friends and you’re like, There’s nothing more fun than saying, “Come on, listen to this new Joni Mitchell record.” You’re both sitting on your bed reading the liner notes. That’s really not the case. If you’re young and doing it, it’s the ideal way to start music. ”
Truer words were never spoken.
Louis Chiasson can be reached at lchiasson@wesleyan.edu.
