Reform Vinyl Social

Charles Leonard & I have been asked to put together a trial ‘vinyl only’ evening for Stanley Beer Garden. It’s going down on Tuesday 21 May from 7pm at 44 Stanley Aukland Park. Entrance is FREE.

The idea is we pool our 25+ years of vinyl collection into a night of interesting music to match the craft beer drinking in-crowd. If it goes down, we’ll do it every week (with guests)

Nobody remembers their first download. Vinyl is forever!

Although I have a few 1000 records, I haven’t bought any for at least 10 years and haven’t played a vinyl only set since about 93. Going through the collection I found some cool stuff I forgot I had, like Death in Vegas – Dirge 12″, LCD Soudsystem – North American scum 12″, Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood, Calexico, PJ Harvey Peel sessions, Cypress Hill, Love & Rockets, Belle & Sebastian, Via Afrika, UB40 – Present arms in dub, Sabres of Paradise – Wilmot, Hot Chip, B52’s, Butthole Surfers and a bunch more. I even threw in a few old 7″ singles. Charles’ collection is way more up to date so I think we’ll work well playing together.

Sadly, my pride and joy mint Fields of the Nephilim 12″, Swans box set, Laibach, Einsturzende Neubauten, Alien Sex Fiend, Bauhaus, Skinny Puppy and other out-of-date goth collections and oddities will have to remain behind for fear of scaring and/or depressing the general public. Funny how music can do that.

There is no safety net with a vinyl night. You’ve got to play what you bring (hopefully having picked creatively) and make the most of it. There are no libraries of 1000s of MP3s to save the night. Also keep in mind that there are a ton of releases over the last few years that have never seen a vinyl release so it can be limiting. Fortunately there are loads of old and so-corny-they’re-cool-now records to fill in the gaps and hopefully surprise.