Thrift Store Records: forgotten music of the 60s?
- Thread starter Adam
- Start date
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
Just a euphemism for the cloning/imprinting process that made me. Glurk.
Scuzzer
Fixed Bias
Are you talking about the fedora/martini era stuff or the later material? I've had thoughts of decorating a basement music room (when I build it) with some nice late 50's americana. Something with a rat pack/Ray Charles/Nat King Cole motif.
dr.ido
Well-Known Member
I've collected a crate or two of this stuff over the time I was grabbing anything that looked interesting and was $1 or less per album. I really should grab those crates out of the storage unit (I still haven't moved all my stuff), I haven't heard any in ages. I have to be in the right mood to get into it, but some of it I really do enjoy (and some will probably being going back to the thrift store if I ever sort through it all).
I've gotten some really strange looks from people when they saw Lester Lanin, Cal Tjader and others alongside Kid 606, Venetian Snares and Nasenbluten in the recently played stack.
I've gotten some really strange looks from people when they saw Lester Lanin, Cal Tjader and others alongside Kid 606, Venetian Snares and Nasenbluten in the recently played stack.
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
Later. The late 1950's and early 1960's, when the term "Space Age" was popular and Tang was The Astronaut's Drink. Bachelor Pad music, also known as Elevator Music, Space Age Pop, or whatever, it was early 'environmental' music that tended to be heavy on keyboards, early synthesizers, and made heavy use of multi-track recording techniques. I believe it to be a child of Jazz in a sense - many or most of the most prominent electronica musicians came from that background.
Think about the TV shows of the early 1960's - most had this type of music as a theme song - Hawaii Five-0 being the most memorable.
This is a good example of what I mean.
http://www.spaceagepop.com/whatis.htm
From that, I find that I also kind of like the idea of listening to this kind of music on vintage equipment - the sort that would have been used in a swinging bachelor pad, don'tcha know.
And from there - well, why not decorate the room from the same era? Eames, mid-century modern, Heywood Wakefield, whatever you want to call it. It did get started during the Rat Pack days, but it overlapped the later Space Age days as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_Century_Modern
I just dig it all. Mrs. Wiggy rather hates it, music, equipment, and furniture, but me, I want a clock like this on the wall:
And maybe a macrame wall hanging and a tiki torch (unlit, of course) and a wet bar with a Hamm's Beer sign on the wall in neon.
If I still smoked, I'd use a cigarette holder or smoke a pipe while wearing a sweater with elbow patches.
Woo doggies.
Scuzzer
Fixed Bias
Wow, the Five-O theme song is awesome. Believe it or not, we used to play it all the time at parties when I was in college in the early '80s and as expected, everyone loved it. Unfortunately I don't see many albums like that in the thrifts around here.
Thanks for the link. I think we're talking about the same thing but you have a better grasp on the terminology. I'd like to put it all together with a big old Ampex console unit with a seperate idler drive mono/stereo turntable with a ridiculously massive arm and a whopping 50 amps per channel of tube power. Couple that with some Rob Petry type furniture and some wall materials (I'd probably go with an Old Style sign) like you listed and I'd be happy.
Yes... Woo doggies indeed.
Adam
1965 Zenith
It's good to see my thread come back.
Hamm's the beer refreshing, good stuff, but I can never find it around here.
If I ever get a bigger place I want to do it up like it's permanently stuck somewhere in the late 50s - early 60s too, well before my time, but somehow that era suits me both culturally and technologically. I already have the TV that's going to go in the center of my imaginary livingroom, 1960 RCA CTC-10 color console with remote. I don't yet have my ideal hi-fi set up yet though, I'd like a nice early stereo console with a record changer, but currently all the consoles I have are too early (mono and only play 78s), and all the ones that have been comming up for sale around here seem to be huge cheap plasticy looking 1970s units.
I picked up a big stack of Command Records at a thrift last week, talk about lots of liner notes. I listened to Tony Mottola's Roman Guitar this morning on the 1963 Philco color tv/stereo radio/phono console, now I'm playing Enoch Light's Far Away Places on my 1959 Magnavox tv/radio/phono console.
Hamm's the beer refreshing, good stuff, but I can never find it around here.
If I ever get a bigger place I want to do it up like it's permanently stuck somewhere in the late 50s - early 60s too, well before my time, but somehow that era suits me both culturally and technologically. I already have the TV that's going to go in the center of my imaginary livingroom, 1960 RCA CTC-10 color console with remote. I don't yet have my ideal hi-fi set up yet though, I'd like a nice early stereo console with a record changer, but currently all the consoles I have are too early (mono and only play 78s), and all the ones that have been comming up for sale around here seem to be huge cheap plasticy looking 1970s units.
I picked up a big stack of Command Records at a thrift last week, talk about lots of liner notes. I listened to Tony Mottola's Roman Guitar this morning on the 1963 Philco color tv/stereo radio/phono console, now I'm playing Enoch Light's Far Away Places on my 1959 Magnavox tv/radio/phono console.
Mystic
We're all born mad
I see you're getting down with the collector terminology :yes:
Yep, Glendale's a good place to find space age pop. Don't forget to check the White Elephant in Burbank, on Magnolia Blvd.
Keep going to thrifts for vinyl and you'll get to know these names pretty, pretty, pretty well.
Kind of like the proverbial missing "other" sock... it just is.
The guys above hit it on the head: the generation that originally purchased and enjoyed this type of music are passing away or being downsized, usually by their boomer offspring, into retirement/assisted living situations where room does not permit them dragging their records along... thus the stuff comes up for estate/house sales...or the pile of records are, umm, "donated" to a local thrift (read: left in front of the thrift's door after closing) late at night, unless the thrift store is one of the 50 or 60 along Holt Avenue in Pomona, in which case the records are tossed out the window of a passing car.
Personally, I find thrift store "art" to be far more fascinating than the records.
- edwin
Mystic
We're all born mad
BTW Adam, that's a cool avatar; I've not seen it before, my having descended once, maybe twice -- ever -- into those TV forums down below.
- edwin
thedelihaus
Nocturnal transmissions
Someone mentioned Combustible Edison here.
Cambridge, Mass, I can turn you on to where C.E. member Brother Cleve used to spin vinyl- some kinda co-owner/partner in a restaraunt called the "B-Side", on Hampshire Street.
Kinda (sadly- to me) homogenized to a bit from it's original kick in the pants self, it still serves up good food and great drinks.
Cambridge, Mass, I can turn you on to where C.E. member Brother Cleve used to spin vinyl- some kinda co-owner/partner in a restaraunt called the "B-Side", on Hampshire Street.
Kinda (sadly- to me) homogenized to a bit from it's original kick in the pants self, it still serves up good food and great drinks.
ponderbear
waltzing with sin
Bet his sets were pretty eclectic. You can hear the influence of Esquivel, Denny, Arthur Lyman, Peter Thomas, Baja Marimba in Combustible Edison- all the good stuff.
I went to a local dive a few years back- in the old days it was a goth hangout, painted all black, seedy and reeking, but good fun if you were in your 20s and reared on Bowie and Scott Walker, as I was. The lounge phenomenon engulfed indie music for- what, a good two years at most? Enough to convince them to transmogrify into something truly weird- ex-goths' vision of what a tiki bar should be. Imagine an african spirit mask carved out of a the hood of an old black sedan. They added the shittiest old moldy couches straight off the curb and started serving "martinis." They played lounge music, exotica and space age pop, on the same old nasty PA system that actually kinda sounded okay if the local band thought they were Trent Reznor's bastard stepchildren- for exotica, which sounds heavenly on tubes, it might as well have been a choir of jackhammers. After I stopped wearing the jackboots and moved on to more dogma-neutral attire and goals, I went there once during that period for grins with an old buddy- we could only stand it for about five minutes.
And there's your contextless middle-aged ramble for the day. Hope you enjoyed.
Cracked me up...I thought you were referring to a lounge for "cargo cultists" or something.
I go for the 1980's music I woner why its so hard to find?
I have found severa; such records I bought 4 80's records today!
I have found severa; such records I bought 4 80's records today!
pmsummer
simul justus et peccator
Picked this late '50s demo album up at The Sally for 98 cents yesterday...
CM COLLECTION OF STEREO MUSIC
Album 6
Les Brown, Polly Bergen, Lionel Hampton, The Four Lads, The Banjo Barons, Frankie Lane, Percy Faith, The Si Rady Voices, Duke Ellington, and The Romanoff Singers
Columbia Records Collector's Series
It's in great shape, and is a very nice pressing, and most of the music is really quite good.
But now I want a Curtis Mathes Super Audio 72 to play it on!!!!!
(So you are on the right track by playing it on a console.)
CM COLLECTION OF STEREO MUSIC
Album 6
Les Brown, Polly Bergen, Lionel Hampton, The Four Lads, The Banjo Barons, Frankie Lane, Percy Faith, The Si Rady Voices, Duke Ellington, and The Romanoff Singers
Columbia Records Collector's Series
It's in great shape, and is a very nice pressing, and most of the music is really quite good.
But now I want a Curtis Mathes Super Audio 72 to play it on!!!!!
(So you are on the right track by playing it on a console.)
Are you joking? Somebody is dead alright. Brain dead.
Most of what was found I am not fond of, but some of it I like very much. Try to find a NM copy of Nelson Riddle's "The Tender Touch". Great album with plenty of strings from 1956. You bought what you like, but you could get many of those albums for free. Learn what is tough to find, and buy nice condition stuff. Good luck, and continue to enjoy your easy listening music. I run into several album thrifters like myself, all about 40 or so like myself, and we all enjoy many easy listening albums, and covet stuff like the Riddle album, because it sounds great, and is tuff to find in top condition. Funny, one of the other records I found along with it was Sandy Nelson "Live In Las Vegas". Talk about quite a contrast.
targeteye
Super Member
I can never find any of it it decent shape! I wish I could. Everytime I find something from someone like riddle and the likes its totally trashed.
I'll keep looking though.
Steve
Adam, don't pay any attention to those guys. If you like it, listen to it! A lot of what you mention is what resided in Mom and Dad's stack, and some of it I still enjoy - including TJB.Beauty is in the ear of the beholder.
Thats what I say if you like it listen to it.. You could buy ALL the recors in the store and Sell the ones you don't like on ebay!
hakaplan
Needs professional help
If you're 50+ and weren't that well off, there's a greater chance you grew up listening to what your parents did, because back then there were far fewer musical devices in the home, and they were relatively more expensive. We had a console stereo and I had a mono record player. The only records I had were some kiddie records and those of my parents. It wasn't until I was 11 that I got a transistor radio for my birthday and by then I already had my parent's taste and preferred middle-of-the-road music rather than rock.
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
Excellent point, Howard. I'm 46, but the story is the same for me. Grew up listening to Burl Ives, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, 101 Strings, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, and so on. I got my first AM transistor radio at age 11 or so, used to listen to WLS out of Chicago. That was an eye-opener, I can tell you.
After that, it was a pirate radio station in Denver that really got me off the AOR and Top 40 stuff and off into the weeds with the fun stuff. But that came much later.
After that, it was a pirate radio station in Denver that really got me off the AOR and Top 40 stuff and off into the weeds with the fun stuff. But that came much later.