One of the most popular questions I get from family and friends when they visit is what I am going to do with all of those records. Right now the count stands at around 1200. A paltry sum compared to some other collections, but I went from voracious collecting to selective curation.
To answer that popular question, though, I listen to them, study them, and here I will write about them. I love all things physical media—we live in this era where you can get any song you want in seconds, but my mindset is still sitting down with a record and looking over the jacket and liner notes while the music envelopes me.
What I’d like to accomplish here is to build an audience and seriously discuss various artists, genres, not just ones from my personal collection, and also try my best to give you that physical media listening experience as described above.
I like to think I have an eclectic taste, but doesn’t everyone? I am always on the lookout to discover or rediscover. I am like a tireless musical nomad, but I often enjoy the nostalgia of various points in my life and the soundtracks that played at that time.
What you can expect:
Regular Posts
Record Review Roundup will be a Friday newsletter covering new music releases, whole albums and singles. I will be rating them using the Zipper Scale. Many of you may know that RCA Victor once had a logo featuring Nipper the Jack Russell Terrier staring into a gramophone—well in the spirit of that famous painting/logo, I have decided to use my Jack Russell Terrier, Zipper, to rate records.
For example, every King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard album is 5 Zippers as depicted below:
Saturday Spins I use the Discogs Randomizer to pick a record from my collection and do a deeper dive into individual LPs and sometimes box sets. On Saturdays, occasionally Sundays.
The 365 Day Playlist was a series in 2024 where I sought to make a monthly and yearly playlist containing songs I woke up with in my head every morning. Paid subscribers can view the archives.
Future ideas I have been kicking around in my head. The more this thing grows, the more stuff I can be doing. This includes more artists/song features, podcast (?), etc. Please see “Anything Else” below.
Your Top 5: It is a series I started where I invite a contributing writer to do a top 5 list of songs or artists relative to a specific topic. I want to continue to use it as a tool to not only showcase my Substack, but to use it as a tool to continue building this Music Stack community up by introducing other writers.
Anything Else
A mishmash of content, deep dives, reviews, assorted musings etc.
Requests are accepted and encouraged! If you have a specific record you want to see written about here, let me know, or check out this link to my collection and pick one.
You can reach me via DM on Notes or at saturdayspins32@gmail.com—if there are any musicians that want their work reviewed, please feel free to contact me.
Other places you can find me are here.
Happy to have you here, please subscribe and share away!
-Chris
