Back In Time With Counter Clock Records

Article posted with permission from our friend Robert Benson over at Collecting Vinyl Records blog.

written by Robert Benson


As we all enjoy the vinyl record revival, there is another aspect to this phenomenon that sometimes gets overlooked: the forgotten 45 rpm records from years past. Sure, there are some mainstream artists, punk rockers and indie musicians who have found this audio medium to their liking, it is a marvelous way to not only give their fans what they want (the music), but also create a collectible as well.

Another medium from the past has gone through some major changes in recent years. Remember when AM radio dominated the air waves? And then another format in the 70’s added even more alternatives for music lovers -FM radio. Now we have satellite radio and another inventive medium, the Internet radio station.

One Internet radio station in particular has been able to combine the aforementioned 45 rpm records and the Internet to form Counter Clock Radio (http://www.live365.com/stations/counter_clock?play) and Counter Clock Records (http://stores.ebay.com/Counter-Clock-Records). The business is the brainchild of the wife and husband team of Jane and Norm Geddis of Mission Viejo, California who have developed a ‘play what we find’ programming style that is very unique and allows their listeners an eclectic array of music genres to listen to. I had the opportunity to speak with the developers of this novel concept, let’s learn more about Counter Clock Records and Counter Clock Radio:

Obviously you have a love for vinyl- what is it about records that make them so appealing to you?

Norm: “They're round, like wheels. It's by far the best use of man's first invention. CD's never felt quite the same. Downloads are radio plus labor. I'm a decade past being impressed with myself for getting software to work after an evening playing around with my computer.”

Jane: “I like the built-in nostalgia value of vinyl - whether it’s a 1964 Top 40 one-hit wonder or a super rare Private Press Psych LP. It felt like a part of me died and was buried when CD's became the standard. With downloads, it’s like the moss has grown over the headstones.”

How long have you been online/ selling on ebay and what are your thoughts about the fee changes and the overall operations of this online giant?

Norm: “We started Counter-Clock Records in July of '07. Or rather, I started selling on eBay about that time, just 45's that I was done loving on, and then both us created the store and glued these other parts (blog and radio station) to it.”

“As far as those changes everyone talks about, I came into the middle of that and, speaking just for me, I'm a part of Counter-Clock Records. eBay is just the venue, the shopping center where our store is located. No matter where one has their store, there's not a merchant on this planet, or likely any other, who isn't complaining about the rents. It's not a complaint I'm going to pass along to my customers.”

When did you decide to go ‘online’ with the Live365 radio station?

Norm: “The station has been running since March of '07 which was several months before we opened the store.”

What kind of fan base do you have, what kind of records/music do you play?

Jane: “Our base is our customers who have found our station. The station is very close to exactly how we want it to be, with short music news segments and trivia, so now we have something unique and something we're proud of. It's time to let everyone know. We play what we find. I call the programming style Accidental Nostalgia.”

My readers love the “Top 5 vinyl record sales” feature each week. How long have you been doing this? Have you noticed any specific patterns- what sells the best (and who) and what is the most expensive record that you have ever documented on the list?

Norm: “I began the blog about the same time I started the radio station. The "store" so to speak began when I put a few records up on my eBay account in July of last year.”

“The most expensive record I've documented was the White Album that sold last week for $30k, which is saying a lot for vinyl collectibles in this economy. Unfortunately I flubbed that one and it got left off that week's list. The seller had listed it in "Music Memorabilia" and I keep my eyes on the "Record" category. I also didn't keep an eye on your blog that week, Robert, or I would have caught it - the problem of selling records and writing about them during the holiday season. So I did a mea culpa entry on that one so it makes it on the Record Store Day year-end list.”

I love listening to the station- your format and genres of music are very eclectic. Where do you get the music and how do you decide what you want to play?

Jane: “We buy collections from individuals, closed record stores, from eBay as well. Mostly the 45's speak to me. By that I mean that when I look through a stack of records I sense what's interesting, unusual, weird . . . just enjoyable. Norm has an encyclopedia of music history in his head, but if we just went on that alone we'd sound like tons of other stations. So clairvoyance plays its part.”

Do you have any plans to add DJ’s to the mix?

Jane: “A podcast is in the works. But it may not happen unless the Earth starts spinning slower.”

What are the future plans for the station and Counter Clock Records?

Norm: “Next year is going to be about more of everything. We have lots of inventory to love on and get out there to the world. The backbone of vinyl records is the community record store. The Internet cannot deliver that. Counter Clock Records is something to come home to, but not to replace the chill up your spine dirty tile smell of your record store.”

What do you think of the ‘vinyl revival’ and where do you see vinyl in the next ten years?

Jane: “I think the vinyl revival is great! I also think it was inevitable. Tens of millions of us who love vinyl are either retiring or have more time on our hands, and whether you have a little or a lot of money, there's something for everyone. Plus, it seems that even though they're not buying "our music,” young adults and teens are discovering that there is something more to vinyl than the downloads. And getting squeezed in the middle are CD's. It seemed only a matter of time before these two groups converged and the music market opened up to let us back in.”

Norm: “I'm not a money guru and this isn't investment advice. However, as my grandmother used to say during tough times, "there'll always be somebody with money." And, like during the seventies and early nineties, traditional investments are not attractive. Comic book values skyrocketed in the seventies, as with sports cards in the early nineties. I think it’s about to be vinyl's day in the sun.”

Do you have a Top Ten list of your favorite 45’s and or favorite recording artists?

Jane: “I'll do artists-Etta James, Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, The Band, Bill Monroe, Renaissance, Mazzy Star, Opal, Joan Armatrading, CSNY.”

Norm: “45's for me- Mixed Feelings "Sha La La"/"Love Will Find A Way," Moody Blues "Go Now"/"Lose Your Money," Small Faces "Itchycoo Park"/"I'm Only Dreaming," Sandi Sheldon "You're Gonna Make Me Love You"/"Baby You're Mine," Pink Floyd "Point Me At The Sky"/"Careful With That Axe Eugene," Olivia Tremor Control "California Demise" EP, Hedgehoppers Anonymous "It's Good News Week"/"Afraid Of Love," Barbara Lewis "Baby I'm Yours"/"I Say Love," Denny Laine "It's So Easy”/Listen To Me"/"I'm Looking For Someone To Love," The Intruders "Every Day Is A Holiday"/"Old Love" and probably a hundred others.”

So, if you are looking for some great old obscure rock and roll, one-hit wonders and soulful R&B, drop by Counter Clock Radio and Counter Clock Records and give them a spin. Your ears will love what you hear.

The Ultimate Vinyl Collectors Christmas Gift

Neiman Marcus just released their annual Christmas Book with gift suggestions for those Wall Street CEO's and now have this for sale ...

Thirty-Five Year Collection of Top 100® 45 RPM Records

In this age of soulless digital downloads and MP3 mumbo-jumbo, we gleefully turn to that treasured icon of our American pop culture childhood: the 45 RPM vinyl single. And since we're in the once-in-a-lifetime business, we giddily present our exclusive, definitive collection. To be clear, it contains each and every 45 RPM vinyl record that was listed on the Billboard Top 100® Rock and Pop charts from Jan. 1, 1955, through Dec. 31, 1990. Absolutely every disc for 35 years, every No. 100 up to every No. 1. There are some 18,400 records total. Some are even autographed. How about the Beatles' 1964 hit "Ain't She Sweet" with picture sleeve, worth a cool $500; or the Beach Boys' 1961 hit "Surfin' Luau" worth $200. There are literally hundreds of extremely collectible 45s — Elvis, Joplin, Hendrix, you name it — and the collection in its entirety is priceless.

Ditch your bike in the front yard, run inside, and dial up 1.877.9NM.GIFT already!

Item
Chart-Topping 45 RPM Record Collection
Price $275,000.00*
OCBF9_NMO3597

*Our offer is not sponsored by nor affiliated with Neilsen Business Media Inc., the owner of Billboard®. Please note: Delivery is not included.

[Neiman Marcus]

Why LPs face the vinyl curtain

We live in an era of constant and frantic change, and no one bears the brunt of this more than the music fan. Admittedly, that's a music fan talking, but I can't be the only person in the country with 1,000 LPs and nothing to play them on. (Until I get the damn thing repaired, that is.) Travis Elborough is just 35, but I suspect he has a morbid streak. His last book was a paean to the Routemaster bus, a form of transport that has also seen better days. Like that book, this one is steeped in a nostalgia we didn't know we were feeling yet. Maybe he's a sort of cultural ambulance chaser, predicting the things we are going to miss before they are actually gone. But his instincts are sound.

Unless you hate music, the LP has underpinned your whole life. It changed music, and music changed us. It's not something we should abandon lightly.

For what did we have before? We had live music or 78s, with a handful of minutes a side. If you'd tried to record Wagner's Ring Cycle on 78s, it would have taken 112 of them. Without the arrival of the LP in 1948, created by the Columbia record company in the United States, classical music simply wouldn't have been introduced to a wider audience. The LP was as significant a development in the democratisation of the arts as the paperback, maybe even more so.

Old Fashioned 45 RPM vinyl records...

Elborough has the passion of a true enthusiast. He has four copies of Michel Legrand's Brian's Songs: Themes And Variations. He found his first copy in a charity shop and loved it so much that whenever he sees another he feels sorry for it and buys it to give it a good home.

This seems to me the right side of madness, if only just.

But he's also an indefatigable researcher, who has somehow seen a clear path through the vast amount of material he has accumulated to write a book that reads not only easily and well but wholly coherently.

He takes us through the heyday of classical LPs and their adoption as a status symbol in Fifties suburban America; the subsequent boom years of 'light' music, Mantovani and his million strings; the way jazz adapted itself to the new medium and stretched to fill it; and finally and at greatest length, the way pop took over the LP and made a vast and fantastically profitable industry.

In this history, the 78 is old-hat, the 45 a mere upstart competitor, and live music something that generally takes place out of earshot..

What particularly comes over is the serendipity of it all. Why should it be that the 40-minute LP remains the most satisfying way of listening to music? With hindsight we can now see that the compact disc contained the seeds of its own destruction. Stretching 40-minute albums to 60 or even 75 minutes meant you could charge more for them, but crucially it also meant they weren't as good.

Downloading now almost seems like a reaction to this: forget the filler tracks, just buy the one song you like. Which, if you think about it, is what singles used to be.

It's one reason why young people download more than oldsters: they like singles, we like albums.

Despite Elborough's pessimism - which, after all, is the spur that made him write the book - I'd like to think the long-player has a little life in it yet. Anyone who agrees will relish this richly enjoyable book.

[DailyMail]

45 RPM Sleeve Reproductions

Covers33 in the UK is an audio/media accessories web store. They carry a huge assortment of classic reproduction 45 RPM record sleeves for £0.41 (about $0.81) each. (Wonder if they had to license these...hmmm)

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45 RPM Record Label Designs

The eclectic blog, NoRelevance, has put together a really nice collection of record labels from 7" vinyl records that is in his collection.

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Here's what the author of this collection wrote:

So much attention has been given to album cover art over the past several years that it has practically been transformed into an actual genre. You can't go into an artsy bookstore without seeing at least a dozen titles on the subject. The clincher has to be that recently, in New York City, there was a celebrated gallery exhibit dedicated to the format.

Being an avid record collector -- and I mean collector in the squirrel sense of the word and not the Sotheby's sense -- I thought I would try to assemble an exhibit of record label art worthy of a Taschen coffee table book. And since the LP format is already grossly documented, I chose the large hole, seven-inch "45" label instead. In this exhibit, I show-off around a hundred or so quirky, interesting, beautiful, absurd, and otherwise notable 45 rpm record labels from my personal collection ranging in date from around 1955 to 1982. Though there are a few famous names here, the focus of this exhibit is on design and typography--not the significance of the artist or song.