Not long ago my wife posted an Instagram video of our nephew, a 4 year old growing up in South London, banging on a toy guitar/synthesizer and loudly singing shouting a song he had just written on the spot and…
Author: MTS
“I hope they never find out that lightning has a lot of vitamins in it, because do you hide from it or not?” – Jack Handey
If you’re a record collector who has spent any time keeping up with new releases within your preferred genres, surely at least once you’ve missed out on buying something “limited” that went OOP within minutes of being put up for…
“I Thought Solihull Was For Snobs: The Mell Square Musick Story” by Paul Panic
In the Summer 2001 issue of Ugly Things Magazine, author/archivist/curator Johan Kugelberg wrote a feature describing “The godlike glory of DIY records; the shoddy xerox sleeve; the rubber-stamped label, the cheapest pressing imaginable; the inside jokes in the label copy;…
Post-Punk Spring Cleaning
Sometime in the late 90’s I was working at a record store in Boston when this guy, probably early 30’s, suit and tie, came in and asked “Hey, you guys buy CD’s right? Do you also buy records?” I informed…
“I am WAY worse than Tupac.” – K-Solo
I spent the first 18 years of my life in NJ and CT just close enough to NYC that in the late 80’s and early 90’s I could tune in to WBLS, KISS-FM and occasionally WKCR Columbia (where Stretch &…
“To succeed in life you need two things: Ignorance and confidence.” – Mark Twain
Being a collector of indie/punk/etc records in New York City for any period of time in the 90’s/early 00’s means at least one of two things: 1. You’ve been in a record store somewhere below 14th St in Manhattan and…
“Lot of things in short supply right now, gang. Let’s not make smiles one of them.” – Colin Quinn
I first learned of the world of Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster AKA “Scharpling & Wurster” around 1999 or 2000, not too long after they first started collaborating together on Scharpling’s weekly call-in radio show on WFMU in New Jersey,…
“My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.” – Jack Nicholson
Whether it was Star Wars figures, baseball cards or records, I’ve always had a proclivity for collecting things that appear on lists. The catalogs that came inside Star Wars boxes, the checklist cards that came in sports cards packs and…
“If you feel like dancing, please, don’t hesitate..” – G.B.
My initial introduction to disco in the 80’s was being told by music connoisseurs much older and wiser than I, that it (and I quote), “SUCKS.” These same people would then proceed to play me Journey or Twisted Sister or…
“Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain.” – Homer Simpson
I think I became aware of the concept of “sampling” well before I was a teenager. Two of my uncles had gone from wearing KISS makeup on Halloween and outfitting their vans with full size beds and working B&W television…