There won't be much to this blog, I promise. Time is short, good writing is hard, and the internet is full of temptations. But some of you have from time to time encouraged me to start a record collecting blog, and damn if I didn't suddenly think that was a great idea in a moment of utter procrastination. (Though, frankly, it's Friday night, 10.30pm, and unclear what I'm putting off doing. Living my life?)
What's really got me going is what I'm calling Project 90s, an attempt to track down the vinyl of some of my favorite records from my youth, from what some might call the grunge era. That said, not every record on the list is grunge, and certainly not all are from Seattle. Today's pickup is an original pressing on Virgin via Caroline Records of the Smashing Pumpkins' sophomore LP, Siamese Dream. A cute girl in my eighth grade drafting class (the teacher wore a toupee) made me a tape of this record and I listened to it a lot while staring at her adorable handwritten track listing. "Today" got the most radio play off this record, but it might be the worst song here. To my ear now, it plods too much. "Hummer" is the secret star, "Rocket" also great.
Pressing-wise this sounds decent. One frustrating aspect of this record is that it's a double LP pressed on purple-and-orange marble vinyl, which is just silly. Novelty wax makes the whole thing feel more packaged, more of a collector's item than a straight-up issue. And the format begs the question, is this really a record I want to flip three times? Only a handful of records draw a yes (Exile being the most obvious). Still, Howie Weinberg did the mastering at Masterdisc and it shows. This sounds as good as the CD, though perhaps not better, owing to the marble crap it's pressed on. Cool gatefold, pic below.
Jonny at Good Records dug this out of a recent 90s collection he picked up. He's promised further goodies from this trove but I'm not sure when he's putting them out, and I'm not sure how much more I want to drop this month on records. Major label vinyl from the 90s don't come cheap, after all. But if he's got some Soup Dragons albums, I might have to pawn my grandfather's watch. You understand, I'm sure.
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