Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled

Subject: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 May 08 - 05:59 PM

I'll be back later. Carol just got home and the groceries need to be put away before they melt.

Later,

Art

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 17 May 08 - 06:10 PM

Now that's on odd start for a thread!

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 May 08 - 08:36 PM

Is that the one from the early collection of Methusalah?

My commiserations, regardless, darlin'.

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 May 08 - 09:57 PM

Yes, Fantasy Records bought Kicking Mule Records a long tome ago. Both of my LPs from the 1970s were on Kicking Mule. Fantasy is just sitting on them--like some bastard is doing with Nic Jones' older albums. Now, I know many records go platinum or gold all the time, but last night I had a bizarre dream. I dreamed that the album I called "Art Thieme--OUTRIGHT BOLDFACED LIES", of which I still have 2 copies on vinyl, had actually begun to rust and turned shades of that pukey red color we all know and love from the times the rust moths attacked our favorite old automobiles. When I awoke, I saw the flakes of red have broken through the LP covers for real. Many have sprinkled themselves profusely on our floor.

Gold and platinum happening to a recording, they say, is an honor.

A query: Is going rust an honor too---even if it only means I have survived long enough for it to happen???!??! I never knew that plastic could oxidize. What gives?

Tonight I'm planning on dreaming that someone has actually made a bootleg of the damn record!!---What goes around, comes around, I suppose!!

Art

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 May 08 - 10:01 PM

I didn't want all that bold ink and underlined stuff.

Whatever.
Art

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Anglo
Date: 17 May 08 - 10:21 PM

Art, Stefan Grossman was a co-founder of Kicking Mule, I think, and is currently putting out some of the old Kicking Mule guitar series on CD. People like Duck Baker, Mickey Maker, Dave Evans, Happy Traum.

Maybe you could contact him and see if there's a way they would release your masters. You can contact him through his webpage, www.guitarvideos.com, HERE.

Best wishes,
John

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:32 AM

Wow, I hope that can happen, John!

You know Art, I have tapes you made off of your vinyls. Do you want me to put those on CD for you, or tape?

I am sorry, for real, to hear about them really rusting. I didn't know that could happen!

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:08 PM

You have only yourself to blame for the rust. Once a year I take my LPs out of their sleeves and spray them lightly with WD40. This is especially important if you keep your vinyl in the basement, as I do.

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: pdq
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:32 PM

I believe Fastasy Records was sold In the last year or two. That may make getting the two records harder or maybe not. Have you ever thought about asking to buy the masters? I know Eric Thompson got his Kicking Mule LP back a few years ago and released it under a new company name. The CD is "Heringbone 101".

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 18 May 08 - 12:49 PM

I would imagine that going rust is a rare honour! Celebrate!

Seriously, I guess I'd better check my vinyl collection! It's not in the basement, but you never know. Bob...are you serious about the WD40?

Art..if you do get your LPs into CDs...I'd buy one!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 May 08 - 03:10 PM

Pete,
The 2 LPs I did for Sandy and Caroline Paton's Folk Legacy Records in Connecticut are BOTH available as CDs from them at www.folklegacy.com ---- and I thank them heartily for finding a way to do that. My latest CD is also with them at Folk Legacy---title is: Chicago Town And Points West

Another CD is at Andrew Calhoun's Watwerbug Records -- www.waterbug.com
title is: The Older I Get, The Better I Was.

Art

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 18 May 08 - 04:38 PM

Art,

Thanks for the info...however trouble is...I already have those! (and it isn't a trouble but a joy!)....(and very good they are too).

Good luck with the WD40!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: johnross
Date: 18 May 08 - 05:36 PM

WD-40 is a solvent. It's entirely possible that it would dissolve vinyl. And I don't want to think about what it does to the stylus asssembly...

Art: Is it just your own Kicking Mule LPs that are rusting? Are any others suffering the same fate? May I have your permission to relay this question to some of the experts in the Association for Recorded Sound Collections? If anybody knows how to deal with this problem, they're the ones.

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 May 08 - 05:47 PM

With that clue, I found the following. I would guess it is the same outfit? Maybe we need to do a letter-writing campaign to them, again, now that is has been sold! From Wiki:

In 2004, Fantasy was sold to a consortium led by Norman Lear and merged with Concord Records to create a new company called Concord Music Group. While some operations are still located in Berkeley, the record label is now headquartered at the Concord Music Group location in Beverly Hills, California. Fantasy Studios is still operating in the Zaentz Media Center and continues its legacy in recording and mixing. Through the reshuffling, many top acts and engineers alike work out of the original building, which has now incorporated a multitude of mixed media projects. Fantasy Studios is a Bay Area landmark, as well as an award-winning studio whose repertoire includes Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green Day, Carlos Santana, to NPR's "Hearing Voices" series. Top sound engineers Steven Hart, Jesse Nichols, and James Willets all have worked at Fantasy.

Shortly after Fantasy was purchased by Concord, John Fogerty, the lead singer and songwriter in Creedence Clearwater Revival, re-signed with the label after leaving it in the mid-seventies after a falling out with former owner Zaentz.

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: 12-stringer
Date: 18 May 08 - 07:09 PM

Fantasy also controls the old Prestige catalog. Back about 1967 they were selling off the Prestige 13000 and 14000 Folklore LPs at something like $1.39 each, and I wish I'd bought one of everything. But in those days I was going to school and didn't have the spare money. (Gas was 32.9 cents a gallon, and each LP represented a week's worth of fuel for my VW.) Not that much of the Prestige stuff has been reissued, though more than the Kicking Mule.

And I do have one of Art's KM albums -- the one with "Cottage Cheese," which was a local radio hit in the mid-late 70s. It played 6 or 7 times a day by request for months on WKKW in Bridgeport, WV -- the first alt.country station though the name hadn't been invented yet. A tip of the old 12-stringer's sombrero to the late Chris Boyles, a program director nonpareil.

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: pdq
Date: 18 May 08 - 07:59 PM

Another label Fantasy bought was the late John Fahey's Takoma, which includes many wonderful "Live at McCabes", including one with Seldom Scene and Linda Ronstadt, recorded about 1976. Please ask for that to make the CD format along with Art's two.

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Escapee
Date: 18 May 08 - 10:11 PM

Could the red flakey stuff be from cardboard album covers or liners?
SKP

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 May 08 - 11:34 PM

Folks, it's all new news to me that Fantasy was sold.
(What goes around, comes around.) They had picked up so many great jazz labels through the years. Much of that they did get out on CDs. The Riverside Records folk and jazz stuff including Bob Gibson's early tracks, where he mostly played banjo and sang roots and trad songs---one CD of Bob was made of that material---mostly from the LP named "BOB GIBSON--OFFBEAT FOLKSONGS." -- Chet Baker had several CDs on Fantasy in recent times. Monk too. MANY OTHERS!----- So the new owners have thousands of titles---all sorts of music.

Truth is, I generally gave up thinking those LPs might survive in this era. I had just thought up the hopefully HUMOROUS concept that LPs could/might "Go rust". I thought it would be funny to start a thread about that--so I did! And then, when I started expanding the post, I got carried away and again fell back to my carping about Fantasy having my 2 albums. So be it. That's life. These days I'm beyond dealing with it all.-----Thanks again!

--------Art

Subject: RE: Obit: My 1st LP just went RUST! crumbled......
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 May 08 - 04:04 AM

Just thinking about Art's "original recordings" brought to my mind the question of "just how long a cylinder is one of his oldest LPs?".

I know, from having heard it, that the standard ~5"(?) long cylinder could hold enough to run Teddy Roosevelt out of wind in one of his speeches, but he was probably sort of an amateur compared to a young Art.

John