Tag: Record Fair

WXNA Crate Digger’s Week – March 18, 2025

WXNA FM

In honor of the first WXNA Record Fair on Sunday, March 23 at Eastside Bowl, March 17-23, 2025 is Crate Digger’s Week on WXNA! Today we have a double-sided serving of Crate Digger’s stories, and you don’t even have to get up to turn the record over!

 

Fleetwood Mac – Live at the Boston Tea Party
Jaimie Hart – Web of Sound

My dad, the infamous Rick Hart, was in the audience for these legendary shows during the weekend of his 22nd birthday — February 5-7, 1970. I love listening to these records, not just for the music but because I can imagine him having the time of his life. I like to think that some of the applause captured in the recordings includes his own cheers and claps.

I’m also a big Peter Green fan, thanks in part to my dad’s impeccable taste in music, which he passed down to me. It’s wild to hear live versions of some favorite songs bursting with even more energy than their studio counterparts. The band sounds completely unhinged at times — especially during a 24-minute version of “Rattlesnake Shake.” Other highlights include the punch of “Oh Well,” a ridiculously punk take on “Tutti Frutti,” and the mesmerizing call-and-response between Peter Green and Danny Kirwan on “Like It This Way.” No one held back that weekend, and it’s easy to lose yourself in these recordings… almost as if you’re right there with Rick.

I also love how the three releases form a cohesive design. When they came out, I’d buy one, listen to it, and then get excited to pick up the next — stretching out the joy a little longer. If you want to feel like you’ve traveled back in time (or just need a good way to disassociate), I highly recommend giving these a listen. If you haven’t yet experienced the raw power of OG Fleetwood Mac, you’re welcome.

Happy listening—and don’t forget to wish Rick a happy birthday!

 

Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed
Gwil Owen – Salty Candy

When I was nine years old I was obsessed with the Rolling Stones. I had one album; the greatest hits record with the octagonal cover. I’d asked for it for my birthday and I played that thing over and over and over.

One day my dad offered me a penny for every dandelion I dug out of the yard. He went off to work and I worked all day too: I dug up 500 dandelions. That evening we sat in the grass and counted them, then he handed me a five-dollar bill.

So, next morning I walked downtown to a little store called Huzza Huzza. It was the local head shop. It was dark and mysterious in there, and the air was full of incense. They sold paraphernalia, blacklight posters… and records. The records were in the back room; I pushed through a bead curtain, found the Rolling Stones section and started flipping through the albums. But they all seemed very dated: the covers were black and white and the band had short-ish hair and some of the guys were even wearing suits.

The girl behind the counter said “Are you looking for the new Stones album?”

I didn’t even know they had a new album, but yeah, I guess that was what I was looking for. She pulled out a copy and handed it to me: Let it Bleed. It definitely did NOT look dated; the cover was just… weird, like nothing I had ever seen before. I forked over the five dollars and walked out of there with my new prize: the first album I had ever bought.

And it did not disappoint; I still have it, and it’s still one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve ever heard in my life.

Watch this space for more Crate Digger’s stories all week long!

WXNA Crate Digger’s Week – March 17, 2025

WXNA FM

In honor of the first WXNA Record Fair on Sunday, March 23 at Eastside Bowl, March 17-23, 2025 is Crate Digger’s Week on WXNA! Watch this space for stories from our DJs about some of their favorite record finds!

 

Ramones – It’s Alive
Randy Fox – Randy’s Record Shop

Some record collectors are born, others are made, and then there are those of us that get struck with divine revelation. Although I’ve always loved music, all through my childhood and teenage years I was never a fanatic about it. Sure, I would hear something I liked on the radio and buy the record occasionally, but for the first 18 years of my life my obsession-gene was satisfied with being a comic book collector, a science fiction and horror fan, comedy nut, and cinephile.

The music thing began to appeal to me more when I was 15 and bought my first Beatles record — The Beatles/1967-1970 aka “The Blue Album” — in 1978. I was soon on the hunt for every Beatles record, but my obsessiveness only applied to that one band. The rest of my record collection was movie soundtrack albums and comedy records. (I could recite, from memory, the entire contents of The Album Of The Soundtrack Of The Trailer Of The Film Of Monty Python And The Holy Grail (Executive Version) just to give you an idea of how big a nerd I was!)

I blame part of my lack of musical interest on the fact that I lived in the sticks. No, scratch that, Dunmor, Kentucky was on the other side of the sticks. I was at least 50 miles from any record store, even a crappy mall chain store. I also had no “music mentor”— an older sibling, cousin, friend, etc. — who could hip me to the good stuff. All I knew about music, other than John-Paul-George-Ringo, was what I heard on the couple of radio stations I listened to, most of which didn’t excite me much. Even when I heard something that I kinda liked, I was often disappointed by the vinyl follow-through. I remember hearing some song by Foreigner that seemed catchy, so I actually ponied up the cash for the LP, which I found to be pretty damn bland. It ended up behind my 45 of the Welcome Back, Kotter theme song in order of preference.

In October 1979, movie critics (and my biggest pop culture “rock stars” of the time) Siskel & Ebert aired a special “Midnight Movies” episode of their movie review show, Sneak Previews. They reviewed and discussed The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which I had the soundtrack album!), Pink Flamingos, Dawn of the Dead, and most significantly, a little film called Rock’n’Roll High School starring The Ramones.

Now here was a band that I could dig! From just a few film clips, I was hooked. I knew nothing about punk, new wave, or whatever ya call it music, but these Ramones guys looked awesome! However, finding a Ramones record in Muhlenberg County was pretty much impossible. Who knows why, but none ever turned up at Uncle Lee’s Discount Center in Powderly, Kentucky in between the ample supply of Skynyrd and 38 Special LPs.

Flash forward to late August 1981, and my first semester at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The second week of school, the campus bookstore announced a “RECORD SALE!” which turned out to be just a table full of cut-out LPs, budget line releases, and cheap imports. But that’s where I found a Portuguese import of The Ramones’ 2-LP live album, It’s Alive, for the cheap price of just $6.99. It was my first Ramones record, my first punk record, and it changed everything!

The “Brothers from Queens” not only proved to be a perfect embodiment for my late-teens frustrations and growing sense of weltschmerz, they were also simpatico with my MAD magazine-nurtured love of snot-nosed absurdity and general disdain for so-called normal society. Plus, it was all wrapped up in three-chord bubblegum pop hooks that I’d loved since I was a card-carrying member of the Banana Splits Fan Club.

Beyond the Ramones however, the record hipped me to the fact that there was an ENTIRE WORLD of exciting music out there that I knew nothing about. Not only punk rock, but even older music that had never breached the walls of late-70s Classic Rock radio playlists. I pretty quickly met a couple of “music mentors” who began pointing me in the right direction (“You’ve never heard the Sex Pistols? You need to go buy the Sex Pistols album RIGHT NOW!!!”), and I was on my way!

Within weeks, I was full blown record collector — haunting the “hip” record store in Bowling Green, seeking out record stores whenever I traveled, checking out new albums as soon as they hit the racks, reading magazines like Trouser Press and Goldmine, digging through crates of old records looking for that outta print Kinks album I read about, special ordering weird indie releases, dreaming of someday starting a radio station that played nothing but the good stuff — you know, CRAZY ideas!

More than four decades later I’m still at it. So hey, ho, I gotta go. There’s a crate full of records somewhere I gotta dig through!

Watch this space for more Crate Digger’s stories all week long!

 

WXNA Record Fair – This Sunday!

WXNA FM

WXNA Record Fair - March 23, 2025 - Eastside Bowl, Madison, TN

WXNA 101.5 FM, Nashville’s listener-supported freeform community radio station is happy to announce the first WXNA Record Fair!

Love rare, hard-to-find and even bargain priced vinyl records? This is the place to find the platters you’ve been looking for! On Sunday, March 23, from Noon to 6 p.m. at Eastside Bowl, over 25 dealers will be on hand selling discs of all sizes and varieties, including your new favorite record.

Sponsored by Daydream Records, Grimey’s New & Preloved Music and Eastside Bowl, there will be live sets from your favorite WXNA DJs. And what goes great with records? Howabout drinks, food, and bowling!

Admission is $5 with proceeds going to benefit WXNA 101.5 FM.

More info in the coming weeks here on wxnafm.org . For vendor info, email daydreamrecordshop@gmail.com