Qua/Sofa King Many Records

Proof of existence or something.

Last April I opened a quaint, but staunch 10’x10’ stall in a cool assed dirt mall by me. As such, I have shifted focus from online sales (thankfully) to local tastes and cultivating a local following as quietly as I can manage. If you look up oblique.nostalgia on the good old IG you will have found my only online presence for the business that I am trying to update more than once a year, but one thing at a time, am I right?

Since I am lightly established after a year, having offered and sold well-played, but quality budget rock, vintage high end jazz vinyl, and sealed old MFSL stuff at very competitive prices but now that the economy is in the shitter I am removing my $50+ stock in the fall and pivoting to soley sub-$50 vinyl with a focus on $25 and under quality classic rock/pop and since I try not to offer an overwhelming amount of LPs at once, I aim to sell about 100 LPs a month so I can keep adding new stock at a reasonable rate.

The drawers of my fixtures are routed for dividers that allow for 3 vertical rows of 45s to comfortably fit, so those will begin being filled with about 500 picture sleeve 45s from the 1980s of generally solid Top 40 of the era along with fun obscurer titles for $5 and less generally.

Genuinely excited to see how it works out. I have high hopes for good, brisk sales since the condition is very solid but also understand if the economy continues to tank, as it were, that weaker-than-expected sales are not reflective so much of the product being offered, but consumer discretionary spending badly suffering as a whole.

I am really starting to distance myself from the internet. The fact that I can no longer share content across platforms easily is so stupid to me. If this shit keeps devolving I’ll probably just stop bothering with social media as a whole. I’m getting old, it’s been fun but it is no longer much fun, so who cares? All I ever see on my TikTok-lite Instagram feed are ads, not my friend’s content, and suggested reels of OnlyFans ladies that I have no interest in. Like, what the fuck? I really think the only way to maybe even consider getting these fucking data harvesting corporations to bother listening to the public is to just stop using their currently shitty platforms because this is just stupid!

So that’s the end of my rant. Here’s my stupid fucking Instagram post:

I listened to the rest of the album on Spotify and felt the same about most of the rest of it as I had felt about her first album. But my love for that one song necessitated my owning it on vinyl.

Upon seeing the prices used reissues were going for I realized I wouldn’t get this unless it was reissued yet again.

Luckily, in 2021 the 50 year anniversary edition was released. I pre-ordered this 3/11/2022 and it finally arrived today, 5/30/2023.

Never have I ever waited so long for an album to ship.

In a few years this won’t be a problem anymore. The US and the rest of the world will have more new record pressing plants and the majority of the people who got into vinyl in the last 3 years will have either stopped collecting vinyl because they realized it was stupid to pay $25+ for a reissue of something like Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” or if they have truly found fun in audio, some will realize they prefer buying new gear as opposed to new records and that a well thought digital system sounds just as good or better than analog and that shit takes up WAAAAAAYYY less space. On top of the fact that old CD’s and quality streaming services are far cheaper than new vinyl and decent turntables. At which point the market will be flooded with even more copies of all the truly unnecessary reissues of the past 10 years and the people still left buying new vinyl will no longer have to wait over 15 months to get record that still somehow comes to you with a slight warp and pressed on noisy vinyl.

This past year was a trying one. Music got me through it. According to Spotify I listened to 146,197 minutes of their service. That’s 101 solid days.

I’ve done a lot of thinking and I resent a lot of things about existing but not enough to want to not keep going and see what this life holds.

This playlist is a strange amalgamation of a life heard through an off kilter brain, which would be mine.

Influences, found love, introspection, loss, exhilaration, exuberance, self doubt, loosely controlled rage, profound sadness, courage, and hope. Maybe happiness?

While I have never been a big Fleetwood Mac fan as a whole, I have always liked her songs, starting as a little boy in the late 80’s. Even as a small child I found her voice sensual.

As I got older and learned more about the band and their history I found I gravitated towards her works. She was a great songwriter and certainly had a style and a vibe that you could feel plus she had that sultry voice.

So I was taken aback when I got that BBC notification and saddened.

In the 18 years I’ve been selling records online, I have developed a certain affinity for the Living Stereo banner not only aesthetically but also for teaching me about quality recording, even if I am not the biggest fan of classical music. I used to be able to find old mint shaded dog records in thrifts for a quarter or fifty cents apiece far easier than good rock to sell, so I learned a lot about this stuff out of necessity.

But really, RCA releases were always attractive to me. They made me curious. Compare RCA’s Living Stereo banner along with overall art and design to Mercury’s Living Presence banner and general album design and you’ll often find the RCA release visually far more enticing. Quality-wise, they are both phenomenal examples and time capsules of early stereo recording and the brilliance of the mid-century orchestra.

RCA has released 3 box sets of 60 CD’s each, this being the third set. To some it is a leftover’s collection, but that is an over simplification of things. Sure, there are less big names featured so far as composers, performers, conductors, and orchestras are concerned. More than half the releases in this box are getting their first CD issue ever. If anything, this set is a bit more obscure but just as deserving.

On top of it all, it has beautiful packaging. I wish I would have bought all three sets a few years back when they were far cheaper as people are starting to recognize the value of these sets. Originally they were about $2 a disc for the first 2 sets. I paid about $4.40 a disc for this third set.

Replace the church with Twitter and God with tumblr and you’re looking at me. Hopefully others of the past will follow. This place and LiveJournal have been my most favorite social media platforms over the past 20 years.

I love Instagram but it’s milquetoast compared to the wonderfulness of vintage tumblr.