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Alex Steinweiss Cover Art – Morton Gould for Columbia Records

Here’s a beauty that came to me via a friend and fellow 45 collector—an Alex Steinweiss cover for a box of Morton Gould 7-inch records on Columbia. Here’s the wonderful Steinweiss script we’ve come to love contrasted against some microscopic Futura type amid some rather basic geometric line art. Simple and beautiful and a great example of Steinweiss’ thin-line, slightly jittery, script lettering. Enjoy!

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Alex Steinweiss Album Covers (in the wild)

I found these two Alex Steinweiss-designed and illustrated album covers gathering dust in a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in South Austin. None of his beautiful, signature, curly script, but still fun nonetheless. They’re still there, so go grab ’em!

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Austin Music Posters in the Wild [an online photo gallery]

Austin Music PostersI’ve occasionally collected band/concert posters that I’ve managed to un-secure from walls and poles around the various cities I’ve lived in and visited, but they’ve always ended up rather mangled due to whatever packing tape, wheat paste or staples were keeping them in place. Not to mention have taken up a lot of space, what with their average 12″ x 18″ dimensions. And, no, I don’t remove posters before they’re “old,” so as to ensure they’ve lived out their intended purpose. Well, I’ve recently decided that I don’t need to own every piece of graphical ephemera I come across—mostly because I’ve mainly collected these posters as design inspiration rather than whatever precious little objects I or anyone else might believe them to be. So, here’s my online photo gallery of Austin Music Posters in the Wild. I’ll add new ones as I see/snap them. Sorry if the quality of some seem fuzzy. They are in the wild, after all. Please feel free to comment if you like and/or know the designers of any. Credit where credit is due.

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Bap-Tizum

The home page on Bap-Tizum.com contains two lines of text. The first of which reads: “Bap-Tizum.com is an archive of Black-American Christian spiritual music & sermons from the 1930s to the 1980s.” ‘Nuff said. Nothing about the drab, gray background or  the poor quality Polaroid image that embellishes this page would clue you in to the fact that the site is a goldmine of forgotten audio recordings, ripped from the original vinyl records and organized by record speed: 33 (1/3), 45 and 78 RPM. Being a fan of old gospel music I’ve been loyally listening to Kevin Nutt’s Sinner’s Crossroads show on WFMU for years and I discovered this site from its contributions to the Free Music Archive.

But what pulled me into this site was its rather humbling collection of album cover and record label designs, which make up the entire user interface for listening to the audio tracks. Clicking on 45, for example, in the top navigation bar reveals an ever-expanding page displaying small-ish images of 45 label scans, each a link to their respective audio recording. I wish there were larger images available for us lovers of visual junk, but that’s just me wanting more of an already good thing. Spread the good word,  Bap-Tizum.com is an inspired feast for the eyes and ears.

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Western Swing on 78

Western Swing on 78

Got a yearnin’ or a hankerin’ to hear some scratchy 78rpm goodness? Then listen no further than Wester Swing on 78, a blog chock-full of freshly-ripped vinyl and acetate just waiting to turn your computer into a dusty ol’ Texas dance hall. Consisting of mostly ZIP archives of MP3 song collections, the blog entries contain historical information, publicity photos and playable sample songs of such iconic western swing artists like Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys as well as flour-pushers like the Hillbilly Boys and the Light Crust Doughboys. Click, download and two-step the afternoon away.

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45 RPM Record Labels are Back!

By popular demand, my ever-growing collection of 45 RPM Record Label Designs is back online with a new and improved gallery widget. I’m currently updating the images so that they’re as large and beautiful as possible and I will eventually get around to populating them with all of that delicious meta data about the artists, labels, songs, etc.. Enjoy!

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Record Envelope – The little library of factory sleeves

Those of you familiar with NoRelevance.com and perhaps my other blog, CrateDiggersGold.com, know of my love, er- lust for 45 RPM records and their label art. Well, I’ve had to practically be medicated to prevent myself from starting another collection: 45 RPM factory sleeves. I thank Ms Kavel Rafferty for taking on this task and doing such a swell job of it. Design is certainly part of the allure of collecting paper ephemera, but process is also part of my curiosity. As modern printing goes digital it’s nice to have on hand several references of one and two color printing that look great despite their age and the cheap papers and inks most of these sleeves consisted of. I still consider the large hole 45 RPM record label and sleeve to be among the more difficult design challenges. Good think vinyl’s making a come back!

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Record Store Day 2009

How quickly time passes when you’re busy. Here we are again, one year later, observing Record Store Day, this time in Austin, TX–truly the “live music capital of the world.” In fact, I stopped in to a great Austin record store (one of many), End of an Ear, to pick up some vinyl and happened to catch the last four songs by BeauSoleil avec Michael Ducet before they headed back to southwest Louisiana. They were in town playing at the Old Settler’s Music Festival (one of a gazillion fests here this time of year) and were gracious enough to give us a free show in the parking lot. Oh, and I scored this UK pressing of Pete Kelly’s Blues featuring the silky-smooth voice of Peggy Lee and sporting some great typography to boot.

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Record Store Day 2008

Though I’m still mourning the loss of Final Vinyl in the East Village, that won’t stop me from seeking out and patronizing my local record store this Saturday, April 19th, on Record Store Day. Get out there and support your local music retailer–more specifically, the ones selling vinyl!

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Demon Fuzz Records – Singles Bar & More

While I do own a lot of the 45s in this collection, NONE of my singles have their original picture sleeves. This is where my jealousy of Michael, Erwin & Alex begins. These guys are the proprietors of Demon Fuzz Records, what appears from their photos to be quite the vinyl record store located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. I’ve never been there in person (unless it was unknowingly in 1991), but I have been on their website, which sports such wonderful record cover and picture sleeve galleries as “Mysterious Ladies” (Ritual), “Products” (Steinski), and “Singles Bar” (Nina Simmone) among others. Join me as I gaze in the greenest of envies at the seven-inch picture sleeves of Ray Barretto’s Soul Drummer or Willie Henderson’s Funky Chicken…

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The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora

If you’ve ever been crate-digging and stumbled upon an LP or 7-inch with Jim Flora’s cover art, you most likely bought it regardless of the music the record contained. At least, that’s been my experience. These covers are truly works of art and often outshine the music therein. Long the stuff of record geeks’ collections, Flora’s art has managed to slowly infiltrate the public’s consciousness largely by the efforts of one man. Irwin Chusid, a long-time WFMU DJ and Jim Flora archivist coined the term “Outsider Music” and was responsible for bringing to light such important, but previously overlooked artists as Esquivel, The Langley Schools Music Project and Raymond Scott just to name a few. The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora is the second book on the artist by Chusid, who is by now considered the authority on the subject and even co-maintains the official Jim Flora blog. As the title suggests, Flora’s normally playful graphic style is taken for a more sinister ride in the works featured in this book, which also includes several unpublished sketches and paintings. The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora is an absolute must-have for both music and art lovers, fine or otherwise. And if you are going to be in the Seattle area now through October 24th, be sure to catch the exhibition of the same name currently on view at the Fantagraphics Book Store to see many of these works first hand.

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45 RPM – The Book

I’ve now received as gifts both the paperback and hardcover versions of 45 RPM: A Visual History of the Seven-Inch Record, an interesting and amusing survey of 45 RPM record sleeves from the 1950s through the 1990s. And while my preference is (obviously) for label art, I can’t help but to pull these books out from time to time and flip through the actual-size reproductions of such visually interesting covers as the Plastic Ono Band’s “Give Peace a Chance” donning a photo of one of Yoko Ono’s installations or a Jackie Gleason “Lonesome Echo” single with a custom Salvador Dali painting on the cover or the Rat Fink-inspired Man… or Astro-Man? seven-inch. Quite possibly the main selling point for me is the index in the back of the book that lists all of the meta data on each record including, whenever possible, designer and illustrator. Turns out I have a couple of Burt Goldblatts in my collection.

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Vinyl Record Day

Join “black crack” addicts worldwide on August 12th as we celebrate Vinyl Record Day commemorating the anniversary of the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison. Go crate-digging at yard sales, flea markets and thrift shops, support your local vinyl record store, shop for new and used vinyl online at such great stores as Dusty Groove and Gemm, or finally get a replacement stylus for that used turntable you bought off Craig’s List.