Amassing 78s is a special strain of impracticality: they’re fragile (made of either shellac or bakelite), easily scratched, they take up a lot of space, there’s only two songs per record (three minutes per side), it requires a record player with the correct speed setting and a special stylus to handle the wider grooves. That said, 78s can sound like no other recorded medium: astoundingly warm, deep, and that much closer to the...

Here’s a mere sample of the records I’ve collected over the years while in the field. Again, this isn’t necessarily a buying guide but a survey of the record industry from past holiday seasons.

It’s rather striking to see the faces of Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster on the cover of a record, but that’s exactly what I discovered one day while at my former job at a notorious East Bay record store flipping through a pile of garbage LPs set aside due to their condition or lack of sale-ability.

Easy listening music will never go away. Sorry to be so blunt, but some things just need to be dealt with in a head-on way. Plus, I think you need to hear this from a voice and source you can trust. It crawled slowly but with great determination into our culture’s fabric 60-plus years ago and has often been written off as either a cruel joke foisted upon us by the music gods or just a quaint reminder of a simpler time in our h...

Of course, I was already familiar with Fats Domino’s work, but hearing 12 songs as a whole, and not just as a single squeezing through the radio, was a new, welcomed experience. By the end of the day, Rock and Rollin’ with Fats Domino had been absorbed into my growing collection, and I don’t think I even asked if I could have it. I just kinda took it.

This week’s column has nothing to do with the music. In fact, there wasn’t even a record in the sleeve when I pulled it. That’s not to say Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs weren’t a nifty little rock ‘n’ roll combo. I mean, who doesn’t like “Wooly Bully”? These guys were early purveyors of what was called “Tex-Mex,” a blend of early-‘60s frat rock and Texas/Mexican culture.

One of the more unusual, if not completely forgotten, public struggles by a band is the ninth album by bubblegum/teeny-bopper megastars, the Bay City Rollers.

Of all the hundreds of gems I pulled outta the trash heap while working 15 years at a record store, Kris Kristofferson’s "Border Lord" is the crown jewel.

Oboler’s writing technique – sitting in bed late at night talking out his story ideas into a Dictaphone, playing all the characters himself.