• Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High”
  • The classic 70’s band Humble Pie
  • Nick Drake
  • New Orleans legend Dr. John
  • Roger Waters from Pink Floyd
  • and then there’s Oasis
  • KLF
  • and Peter Gabriel

It’s never a recipe for making great art when you’re under pressure to deliver an album to a rival record label due to contractual obligations… though Jimi Hendrix was never satisfied with the result, the Band Of Gypsys album became a very influential album and remains a favorite among Jimi fans and guitar players of all stripes. On this episode, we journey back to New Years 1970 to explore “Message of Love” from this legendary album.

“Message Of Love” (Jimi Hendrix) Copyright 1970 Experience Hendrix LLC

 — Hey, I was just thinkin’… now would be as great time for you to check out the other Rock Podcasts on the Pantheon Podcasts network!

TRANSCRIPT:

Greetings to all, here on the third stone from the sun and beyond. This is the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast beaming across the cosmos on the Pantheon Podcast Network. I’m your host, Brad Page, and each episode of the show, I pick a song and we explore it together, listening to all the nuances that make it one of my favorite songs. You don’t need any musical skill, knowledge or experience here– just a love for music and a little curiosity.

Well, here we are at the start of a brand new year, and I was trying to think of an appropriate subject for a January 1st episode. I thought, “we’ve talked about a lot of guitar players on this show…” I love guitar players. But I realized that, after over 140 shows, we’ve still never talked about one of the most important guitarists of all time. So let’s rectify that. It’s about time we talked about Jimi Hendrix.

Of course, Jimi Hendrix is a legend, with a legacy of some really important and influential records. It’d be tempting to pick a song like “Purple Haze” or “Voodoo Child”, “All Along The Watchtower”, or his version of “The Star Spangled Banner”. Those are all historically important tracks. But I wanted to do something different.

So, I chose a song from very late in his career when Jimi was at a turning point in his career– at a crossroads, to use a cliche. So, we’re going back to a New Year’s Eve over 50 years ago, when 1969 gave way to 1970, with Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys ringing in the new year at the Fillmore East, playing “Message Of Love”.

[Music]

Everybody knows that Jimi Hendrix is a legend, an icon. There are literally dozens of books written about him; there are documentaries. So I’m not going to go over a detailed history of Hendrix, but to understand how Jimi Hendrix ended up playing at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve, first we have to go back to his early years in New York City.

Jimi Hendrix was a working musician, paying his dues and playing as a sideman to people like the Isley Brothers and Little Richard. In 1965, he ended up as a guitarist in Curtis Knight’s band, playing cover songs on the New York and New Jersey circuit. Jimi eventually grew tired of that and formed his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames.

It was during a stint playing in Greenwich Village, New York, when he was“discovered” by Chas Chandler, former bassist for The Animals, who was transitioning into being a manager. Chandler brought Jimi over to England, and they put together the Jimi Hendrix experience with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. And the rest, as they say, is history.

 Now here’s where things get messy. Back in ‘65, when he was playing with Curtis Knight, Jimmy had signed an exclusive recording contract with a guy named Ed Chaplin. Jimi had also signed a contract with producer Juggie Murray. But hey, look, Jimi was a struggling musician, just trying to find some success– any success. He was a guitar player, not a lawyer, and he was naive. He’d sign anything if he thought it could help him at the time.

But now, with the Jimi Hendrix Experience having hit records on the Warner Brothers label, Ed Chaplin came a calling in 1967 with his contract from two years earlier, and he sued.

Hendrix had made some recordings with Curtis Knight back in ‘65. Those records are not very good, but Chaplin licensed them to Capitol Records, who then released two albums worth of that stuff. In fact, at one point, you had the legit Warner Brothers records competing against the Capitol stuff at the same time.

Here’s a song from the Curtis Knight sessions; it’s an instrumental called “Knock Yourself Out”, which Jimi got a co-writing credit on.

{music]

Eventually, a settlement was arranged with an agreement that Ed Chaplin and Capitol Records would get the rights to one Jimi Hendrix album. Hendrix had just finished recording “Electric Ladyland”, which was a double album, so it was agreed that the next album would be given to Capitol.

But things in the Hendrix camp were tough. First, Chas Chandler had left the fold, and not long after, Noel Redding quit.  Jimi brought in his old army buddy, Billy Cox, to play bass. Then Jimi rounded up a bunch more musicians, adding additional percussionists and a second guitar player. He called the band “Gypsy Sun and Rainbows”, and this was the band that played at Woodstock.

[Music]

But a month later, Jimmy broke up that band. It just wasn’t working for him.

Meanwhile, the pressure is on. He still owes one album to Capitol, and Jimi didn’t even have a band. So, Jimi, Billy Cox, and drummer-vocalist Buddy Miles put together a band. They made a deal with promoter Bill Graham to play four shows at the Fillmore East in New York: two shows on New Year’s Eve, and two shows on New Year’s Day, 1970. All four shows would be recorded, and they would release the best tracks as a single live album to fulfill the Capitol Records contract.

Before the show, Jimi, Buddy and Billy, calling themselves “Band of Gypsys”, worked up a set consisting mostly of new material, including “Machine Gun”, one of Jimi’s most incredible guitar performances.

Both Buddy and Billy were veterans of R&B bands, and they brought a funkier, soulful groove to the songs that the Jimi Hendrix Experience just never had. Buddy was also a great singer, too. His lead vocals are featured on two songs on the “Band of Gypsys” album. Buddy introduces this track on the record.

[Music]

The song starts off with a chromatically ascending riff before kicking off into the main riff of the song.

[Music]

Let’s just hear Jimi’s guitar on that riff.

[Music]

Behind that, Billy Cox is playing a pretty busy bass part over a pretty simple drumbeat, laid down by Buddy Miles. Let’s hear their parts.

[Music]

They only play through that riff twice before starting the first verse, which is a variation on the main riff, simplified a bit to leave room for the vocals.

[Music]

I really like the backing vocals there. One of the things about Jimi’s previous band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was that they didn’t have a strong vocalist in the band to back up Jimi. Buddy Miles was a powerhouse singer, and he adds a lot. And with Billy Cox chipping in, these backing vocals were kind of a whole new sound for Jimi.

[Music]

After a few lines of the verse, we get a new short riff with Jimi and Billy playing the same part together mostly. And that brings us back to the verse riff.

[Music]

And that brings us to another new riff. This one’s a little more rapid fire, with Jimi and Billy doubling the part, and Buddy scat singing the riff with them.

[Music]

Now here we have a somewhat quieter or gentler part. Jimi is playing some of those chords he was famous for; as much as he’s thought of as an incredible lead guitarist– and he was– he was also a killer rhythm player.

[Music]

Jimi’s rhythm guitar playing is as identifiable as his lead playing. Let’s hear this part again without the vocals, so that we can hear a little more of his guitar.

[Music]

The verse riff, the backing vocals come back in, but this time, Jimi’s just going to vamp a bit around the riff. At this point, Jimi is going to crank up the volume and play a solo, and I think now is as good a time as any to talk about Jimi’s guitar sound. Though he played other guitars, Jimi was primarily associated with the Fender Stratocaster. As a left-handed player, he would take a right-handed Strat, flip it upside-down and restring it, and that’s what he was playing this night with the Band Of Gypsys.

Now, playing the guitar upside-down like that meant that things like the volume & tone controls and the vibrato arm were in a different position than they would be if you were playing it normally. And Jimi was able to take advantage of that, particularly with the vibrato or whammy bar.

Jimi also pretty consistently used Marshall amplifiers, I think typically Super 100’s, but don’t quote me on that. But that was the standard beginning and end of his signal chain: a Fender Strat into a Marshall amp. But what went between his amp and guitar? That’s another story that changed frequently.

Jimi was always looking for new sounds, and he would explore any new effects gadget that came his way. Guitar effects pedals were still a relatively new thing in the late 60’s. Jimi was friends with a guy named Roger Mayer, an electrical engineer who had worked for the British Navy. He started building effects devices for guitars, like fuzz pedals, and one of the earliest units he built was the Octavia, which takes the input signal from the guitar and generates that sound one octave higher, then mixes it back in with the original guitar sound, and adds distortion or fuzz. Like most guitar pedals, it would sit on the floor between your guitar and amp, with a button you’d press with your foot to turn it on and off.

Jimi first used the Octavia on the solo for “Purple Haze” in 1967. Roger Mayer would continue to tweak and modify the Octavia for Hendrix. And Jimi was using one of those later versions for this Band Of Gypsys show.

You can hear the Octavia most notably on the song “Who Knows” from this show. Jimi was also using a fuzz pedal built by Roger Mayer. It was either a Fuzz Face or an Axis Fuzz, depending on what you read. He had two other effects pedals on stage this night: a Vox wah-wah pedal, which you can hear on the song “Changes”:

[Music]

And he was using a Univibe, a new and pretty innovative pedal for its time. It’s a little tough to explain what a Univibe actually sounds like– it’s a cross between phasing, a chorus sound, and vibrato, but you can hear it in action on the song “Machine Gun”.

[Music]

Now, there is one other thing to take into account regarding Jimi’s guitar sound, and that’s the order in which the effects are plugged into each other. Believe it or not, it makes a big difference in the sound. For example, a wah-wah pedal plugged into a fuzz pedal sounds significantly different than the other way around, a fuzz pedal plugged into a wah. This can lead to endless rounds of debate and conjecture, but luckily, we have some photographs from this show that pretty clearly show the sequence of his pedals that night:

His guitar is plugged into a Vox wah-wah pedal, which is plugged into the Octavia, which is plugged into the Fuzz Face, that’s plugged into the Univibe, and then that is finally plugged into his Marshall amplifier. Wah pedal, Octavia, Fuzz pedal, Univibe.

Okay, so back to “Message Of Love”. At this point, the fuzz is really going to kick in, and Jimi’s going to go for his first solo.

[Music]

And now, Jimi’s going to step on that wah-wah pedal.

[Music]

Now Jimi’s gonna hit a harmonic and quickly bend it down with the whammy bar, then turn off the wah pedal for the rest of the solo.

[Music]

You can hear them slow the tempo down there.

[Music]

The band is going to break, and then Jimi is going to do a little scat singing, this time singing along to his guitar part.

[Music]

They’re gonna build it back up here. Jimi and Buddy are gonna add some vocals.

[Music]

It sounds a little rough coming back into the riff there. I can’t imagine they had more than a handful of rehearsals before these shows, so there’s bound to be some rough spots. But that’s what makes this a truly great live album. There’s a real “edge of your seat” energy to this record. They didn’t go back and fix up every mistake– this is how it really went down that night, New Year’s 1975.

Jimmy’s gonna cut loose with the second solo. Let’s focus in on Jimmy’s guitar.

[Music]

They bring back that chromatic climb from the beginning of the song to wrap it all up. Jimi’s just messing around with the whammy bar and some feedback.

[Music]

The Band of Gypsys – “Message Of Love”

The song has also been credited as “Message To Love”, but on all the versions of “Band of Gypsys” that I have, it’s referred to as “Message Of Love”. So that’s what I’m sticking with.

The “Band of Gypsys” album was commercially very successful. Critics didn’t necessarily love it, and Hendrix himself was never satisfied with it; he felt it was rushed and it didn’t sound great, and if it wasn’t for the contractual obligations, he wouldn’t have released it. Not that it mattered. By the time the album was released, the band had already broken up.

But the album has gone on to be very influential, paving the way for future funk rock acts. And it was an important touchstone, particularly for black artists making their mark in the rock world, like Living Color and Lenny Kravitz. And it remains one of my favorite Jimi Hendrix records, and just favorite guitar records in general.

Thanks for joining me for this musical journey on the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. As always, I’ll be back in about two weeks with another new episode. Until then, get your fix of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast by listening to any of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or find us on your favorite podcast app.

You can keep in touch with us on Facebook, just look for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast to find our page. And please support the show by sharing it with your friends and just telling somebody about it.

On behalf of the Pantheon Network of podcasts, I gently remind you to support the artists that you love by buying their music, and I’ll see you back here next time. Thanks for listening to this episode on Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys. Happy New Year, everyone.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Jimi Hendrix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix

Band of Gypsys
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_of_Gypsys

Message of Love
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_of_Love

Fillmore East
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fillmore_East

Fender Stratocaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fender_Stratocaster

Marshall amplifier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Amplification

Octavia pedal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_(effect)

Fuzz Face
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_Face

Univibe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univibe

Wah-wah pedal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wah-wah_pedal

Billy Cox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Cox

Buddy Miles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Miles

Vinyl records have made quite a comeback in recent years, entrancing new listeners and old fans all over again. “In The Groove” is a brand-new book, hot off the press, that’s a celebration of the vinyl record and the artwork & technology that surround it, as well as the record stores and dedicated fans that have built a community around buying, collecting and listening to them. On this episode, I’m joined by the man who put the book together, Dennis Pernu, to discuss this beautiful tome that should be on every fan’s bookshelf.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back, music fans & fiends, to another edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, part of the Pantheon family of podcasts. I’m your host, Brad Page, and I admit it– I’m a physical media guy. Not really a fan of streaming and MP3 files. I’ve owned my share of cassettes and 8-tracks, and I still have a big library of CD’s. But my love affair with music began with the 12”vinyl record– the LP. There’s nothing like holding a well designed album cover in your hands while you’re listening to the record. And I’m glad to see people discovering and experiencing that again as vinyl has had a resurgence in the last few years, it’s great.

And whether you’re just getting into vinyl now or you’re an old timer like me, there’s a new book that I think everyone should check out. It’s called “In The Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution”. The book is really a celebration of everything about the LP, from its origins through its history, the equipment that it’s played on, the cover art that often becomes as iconic as the music inside it, the record stores that sold them and became places of community, and the community itself, the people who’ve made these records part of their lives.

This is a brand new book, it’s just hitting the shelves now and I really loved it. The man who’s really the brainchild behind this book is Dennis Pernu at Motorbooks. And so I thought I’d invite Dennis onto the podcast to talk a little bit about “In The Groove”, because I believe that the history of modern music is the history of the record album– and it’s all here in this book. So, here’s my conversation with Dennis Purnu about “In The Groove”:

BRAD: All right, well, thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast. I was lucky enough to get a copy of the book, I have it right here in my hands. I really enjoyed it, and so I kind of wanted to get you to talk a little bit about it.  First, where did the idea of the book come from?

DENNIS: Well, the book was something that our publisher, Zach Miller and I, kind of brewed up. With a lot of publishers, they rely on authors approaching them with book ideas. But I would say that probably 90% of what we do at Motorbooks is stuff that we dream up in house, and then go out and find people to create the content for it. So, I mean, it just basically came out of one of our Monday morning conversations, kind of saying, “hey, we should do a book on vinyl”.

BRAD: And the book really is a celebration, I think, of everything that’s great about vinyl records. And you really cover all the bases in the book, from the history of the vinyl album through recommendations on gear, celebrating the great album covers, and the great record stores. How did you pick the people to contribute to the book?

DENNIS: Well, it’s interesting. Three of the five are folks that I’ve worked with in the past on our music publishing at Quatro. Gillian Garr, who’s especially prolific, and Richie Unterberger, they’ve all written books for us in the past, and so I kind of knew that they were well- versed in all aspects of vinyl and turntables and just being music lovers. So, I figured that once we divvied up the book and figured out a table of contents it wouldn’t be hard to find something for those three to do.

Matt and Ken, they wrote more about the nuts and bolts of collecting and of audio gear, for lack of a better word. I found them, they had worked on a book for UK-based publisher, and they’re both based in the UK, and they had written on the subjects before. So I approached them to lend their expertise to the book on those subjects.

BRAD Well, it covers all of these topics really well. I think Richie Unterberger takes the first chapter and he kind of gives a whole history, of kind of going back to before there was even LPs, when there were cylinders.

DENNIS: Right.

BRAD: Yeah, all of this stuff was not formal… We think of the twelve-inch LP and the seven inch single, but there were just all kinds of options. There was, I think, a 20-inch LP that was experimented with. Different speeds, like 80rpm– I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an 80rpm record, but just kind of an interesting history of how we got from this kind of haphazard  options into the formats that we all kind of came to know and love. But that’s a great chapter.

DENNIS: Yeah, I thought Richie did a really fantastic job of kind of digging into the prehistory of the twelve inch 33 1/3 Rpm record. And like you say, kind of showing how we got there from something that was far removed from that. Going back to, as you mentioned, the wax cylinders and other formats.  

BRAD: One thing that I learned, that I didn’t realize before, was that the speed of 33 1/3  actually derived from the records that they used from the early “talkie” motion pictures. I thought that was interesting. And he covers the rise and decline of the 45 single, and the offshoot of the EP. It’s just a really great history of the vinyl record.

[Music]

BRAD: And then you have a section of the book on record covers, and showing some of the classic album covers, as well as sort of the history of album cover art. And there’s definitely stages, right? The way album covers looked in the 50’s, very different from the 60’s, and moving forward. Martin Popoff wrote that section, I believe.

DENNIS: Yeah, I thought Martin did a really good job. Martin, he’s probably the preeminent metal guy, heavy metal writer in the world, but once you get to know him, you find out that he’s so much more than that. He’s really well-versed in all sorts of genres of popular music and rock and roll, and I thought he did a really good job of tracing the early sleeve art, going back to the late 40’s and the first twelve inch record, right up to today, really. And I thought he really explored the breadth of genres and sort of schools of art, and famous design studios and different folks who, like the Hypgnosis people, who became famous for their sleeve art over the years.

So, yeah, I mean, it’s all really basically a big celebration of kind of tactile experience, which I think we’re finding a lot of people are getting back to, or started to get back to, especially during the COVID years hunkered down at home, holding stuff in their hands and looking at it and staring at it, spinning on a turntable rather than listening to it on their phone.

BRAD: Right? Well, you can’t see it, the folks listening can’t see it, but here in my studio I have about 50 framed album covers all around on the walls. Because album cover art is… to me, I can’t separate, particularly with records that I grew up listening to, I can’t separate the album cover from the music, because it was part of the experience. It’s the old cliche about putting the record on and then sitting down with that cover in your hands and reading the liner notes and the lyric sheets and all that stuff, as you listen to the record.

And to me that’s all part of the experience, and you definitely lose that. I mean it was seriously diminished when we went to CD’s but it’s nonexistent really, when you go to streaming and I think that’s a shame. To me, album cover art is really a lost art form. I guess it is kind of making a comeback for many years, but it’s a very unique art form, I think, in that it’s a perfect blend between “art” art and commercial art.

DENNIS: Right.

BRAD: It’s art that’s meant to sell a product, but yet, within that, what you are able to do with an album cover is so much beyond what anyone else was able to do with any other kind of commercial art that I can think of. I mean, you could push the boundaries of commercial art to its extremes in album cover art. And that’s what I loved about it. There’s just something really unique and just special about album cover art. I think you can argue all you want about the sound quality of vinyl versus CD– we’ll be arguing about that forever– but there’s no disputing that album cover art is a unique thing about vinyl that just there’s nothing compares to it. CD’s certainly don’t.

DENNIS: There’s really two sides to it, right, that you kind of alluded to: There’s sort of the crass side which is this is an advertisement, really, for what’s inside. But on the other hand, it is, like you say, it’s a piece of art that someone put a lot of work and thought into.

[Music]

BRAD: Yeah, I mean, creative expression, kind of run wild in a commercial sense. I think there’s really something special about album cover art.

DENNIS: Definitely.

BRAD: And, like many hardcore music fans, I did my time as a record store clerk. So I really enjoyed the section of the book where they talk about some of the great record stores in the country and beyond. Most of them gone now, which is a shame. But the book kind of has a little celebration of some of the great record stores.

DENNIS: That was Gillian Garr. She’s based in Seattle. Again, she’s written a number of books for us and other publishers as well. But, yeah, there’s kind of a through line to that chapter, with all these chapters, which in her case, it’s kind of the history of the record store. The place where the merchandising happens. As with the album covers, we all have memories of those spaces where you would go into, and everyone, I think that the sound of albums, or the CD’s, flipping or clicking as people flip through them, is kind of ingrained in their mind.

And so she kind of explored the history of those spaces, and then within each, there’s sort of like one page, really kind of brief sidebar call-outs about some of the more remarkable record stores. In fact, they’re called “Remarkable Record Stores”, in the US and Europe for the most part, that people have heard of and frequented over the years. Some of them, as you say, gone, some of them still extant.

BRAD: They became places of community and y’know, you’d have customers who’d come and just stand at the counter and chat with you, for sometimes hours. You know, that was all part of it. It was a shared experience that again, kind of goes away when you’ve got Amazon and Discogs and things like that. But there’s still stores out there, and it’s still a fun experience to just poke through the bins and see what you can find. I love it.

DENNIS: Yeah, one of my favorite parts of that chapter is just, more so than the sidebars about actual record stores, is just looking at the photos, of the insides of record stores across the decades, and how the retail concepts differed so widely from one place to the next, and how they kind of evolved with listening stations and just racking and packaging and everything about it is just, like, fascinating to look at.

BRAD: Right.

DENNIS: One of my favorite photos in that chapter is of a place I actually visited once in Turku, Finland called uh, 8Raita, which means “8-track” in Finnish. And just fantastic… you know, Finland being Finland, they had, in the back corner, one of those rod hockey games that you probably remember as a kid. Probably as a way to keeppeople in the store and hanging out and spending their money more than anything else.

BRAD: Right. There was such a different experience between shopping at Kmart and shopping at your local indie record store is kind of a night and day kind of thing.

DENNIS: But it’s even nostalgic to think back… I kind of grew up in sort of a rural area, and I can remember in the late 70’s when grocery stores had a corner of the store dedicated to record albums. They were just kind of ubiquitous, and even the record section at Kmart or Woolworths back in the day was a fun place for a kid to hang out while their mom was buying groceries or whatever.

BRAD: Yeah, exactly. Just browsing through the bins and discovering new bands, and looking at the record covers and just wondering what that record sounded like.

DENNIS: Exactly.

BRAD: Yeah.

[Music]

BRAD: You know, I think one of the most intimidating things for people who are just getting into vinyl is how do you do it– how do you choose your equipment? Because it is everything from cheapo Crosley turntables to multi-thousand dollar setups, and how in the world do you stick your toe in that water? And there’s a great chapter in the book, just kind of going over the different elements of the equipment necessary, and how to get started, and I think that’s pretty useful, particularly for people who are just kind of getting started in vinyl.

DENNIS: Yeah, I mean when we came up with the idea of the book and thought about, if we do a vinyl and turntable book, what should it be? Who should it be for? I wouldn’t say that we approached it as something that should be a primer for people just getting into the hobby… I mean, there’s definitely a part of that, but hopefully there’s something in there for people who have been into it for decades.

But like you say, um, one of the most intimidating parts of the whole thing is kind of sussing out the equipment and gear, and anyone who spent any time at all on a Facebook turntable Group knows how unforgiving some enthusiasts can be when it comes to that sort of thing. So, we kind of hoped it was kind of, maybe “gentle” is a good word for it, something to make it less intimidating.  Something that could say, you can figure this out too, and don’t worry about those guys with their $20,000 Macintosh systems or whatever.

BRAD: Right. Sometimes when you venture into those internet forms or whatever, you go in to try to get some clarity and by the time you’re done, you’re more confused than you were when you started. There’s so many opinions, and people are so entrenched in their particular opinion, that it’s hard to suss out what’s the right path. And I think that chapter in the book gives people a really good idea of where to start, and maybe where to head. Because the equipment itself, that’s a whole other side of it. Audio equipment is a journey in and of itself.

DENNIS: Right. But if you ask five people, you’ll get six opinions.

BRAD: Right, exactly. But I think that chapter in the book is a good place to start. So, anyone listening out there who hasn’t dabbled in vinyl and you’re curious about getting into it,  without having to spend thousands of dollars, check out that chapter of the book. It’s good advice.

[Music]

BRAD: And then there’s the last chapter in the book, just sort of about the culture of vinyl fans and that’s kind of, I think, a nice way to wrap up the book, because there is a great culture around just the passion for the music. And really, that’s what it’s all about. It’s not about the cartridges and the needles and all of that all that fun stuff, and whether you’ve got a first pressing, or the condition of the cover, and all that kind of… I mean, that’s all part of collecting, but ultimately, it’s the joy of the music that really matters, and the pleasure of putting on a great record and turning it up and listening to it.

DENNIS: Yeah. Again, there’s something like that’s so sensory about the whole experience beyond the audio portion of it… the smell of the record store, it gets down to that level for me. The feel of the record in your hands or the sleeve in your hands, it’s just all that kind of fun stuff. And I hope we were able to capture some of that in the book and turn some people onto it, or maybe make them consider exploring vinyl as a hobby.

BRAD: Yeah, I think so. I think the book is a great place for anyone to start their vinyl collection. If you’re just getting started, or if you’re curious about it, this is a great guidebook. It is, in its own way, a primer, but it’s also a celebration of all that’s come before.

And for those of us who grew up with vinyl records, you’re going to find something in this book to appreciate. I love this book, and I would recommend it whether you’re an old fan or a new fan. So I think you guys did a great job putting the book together.

DENNIS: Thanks, Brad.

BRAD: Yeah, well, thank you for joining me to talk a little bit about the book. It is available on, is it October 31, the official release date?

DENNIS: I, uh, think that’s correct, yeah, sometime in October.

BRAD: So by the time this episode is out and available, you can order this book from Amazon, or better yet, support your local bookstore and purchase it from there.

DENNIS: Definitely.

BRAD: The book is called “In The Groove – The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution”, a great book that should be on the bookshelf of any record fan. So thanks for the book, and thanks for joining me to talk about it. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Dennis.

DENNIS: Thanks for having me. Anyone who names their podcast after a Paul Westerberg lyric is all right by me.

BRAD: (Laughs) Thank you, sir. Thanks so much.

BRAD: And thanks, as always, to you for listening. Please pick up a copy of this book. You will enjoy it. “In The Groove – The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution”. Available now.

This podcast will be back in about two weeks with another new episode, so join me again then. All of our previous episodes, and there’s about 140 of them now, can be found on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or in your favorite podcast app. Just look for us, you’ll find us there.

Keep in touch on Facebook or send an email to lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com. And if you’d like to support the show, all I ask is that you tell a friend about it, because your recommendation is worth more than any advertising.

On behalf of everyone on the Pantheon Podcast Network, I thank you for listening. Now go dig out an album that you haven’t listened to for a while, put it on that turntable, crank it up, and get in the groove.