As that past few posts have hinted at, I built my very own record bins. After a week of work and a few days of trying to get paint to dry in the cold 90% humidity of the Pacific Northwest, I’ve finally welcomed them into the house and filled them with records.

Having such things in your living room is sort of trippy. There is, of course, no practical reason for someone who isn’t a record store to have record bins. Ikea’s Expedit shelves take up much less space and are fairly basic. However, I like flipping through my collection and so, without any real know-how to make this work, I decided to build my own bins.

So here they are. All built, painted and stuffed with roughly 450 records each. There is another bin that I bought cheap and used from Dave at Jive Time Records with roughly 400 12″ singles from the 80s (mostly). And still my collection doesn’t fit into these bins. I could easily use another one. Someday, I’ll build it. Why not?

Having built them, there are a few things that I would do differently. First, they are too tall. I’m short. Really short. And so one of my biggest pet peeves when record shopping is that the bins are too high. The ones at Jive Time are perfect, being only 42″ tall. Originally, I planned on making mine the same height. For some reason or another, I decided to change it 48″. Why? I have no real idea. But If I could do it over again, I’d make them 42″ tall.

Also, if I had to buy the wood myself, I would have gotten 22/33″ plywood. The only reason I used cabinet grade 3/4″ birch, alder and maple is because it was free. These buggers are heavy. The only up side to that is they don’t wobble and needed no extra support.

Anyway, I really dig having three record bins in my living room, two of which I built with my own hands from my own design (ripped off mostly from Jive Time). If you want to make you own, I could probably help you with design and a few more tips. Till then, I’ll be flipping through my collection.

I’ve never built anything. Nothing physical, anyway. I’ve started bands, put on punk shows, opened a bookstore, self-published books, and fixed scooters. But I’ve never built anything with wood and screws. But I didn’t let that stand in my weird little way.

After cutting all the wood (which I’ve detailed here), I took it home to build in the garage. I had no real idea where to start. So I started at the bottom, forcing the law of gravity to do my bidding.

I somehow managed to put strips of wood on the floor of the bins and then managed to screw the sides into the bottom. And suddenly I had two things that started to look like record bins.

Let me interrupt myself here and say that cutting wood square was fairly impossible for me with just a circular saw. It’s probably super important that all the wood be square, with all those right angles and stuff. Due to it being the first time using a circular saw (and the fact that I didn’t have a huge table saw), almost none of the pieces were perfectly square.

This made things a struggle to line up. Because I measured twice (thrice) and cut once, everything fit (you know, mostly… sometimes I needed to hammer stuff into place). Nothing, however, was perfect.

So anyway, after the sides were on, I wasn’t sure how to put the upper shelves together. Originally, I planned to construct them and then just magically lay them into the bin. That was a stupid idea, so I ditched it and just built it inside the bin. That seemed to work fairly well.

Another issue was drilled. Someone at a big box store told me that I didn’t need to drill out holes to run screws through plywood. This is false. This is incredibly false. For the bottom, I didn’t drill out holes and some of the wood split and other times, the screws just went askew. Drill holes and your life will be sublime.

Also, use longer screws than you think you’ll need. I started with 1.5″ screws, thinking that I could drive them deep into the first layer of 3/4″ plywood. This was dumb of me. I quickly jumped to 2.5″ screws and things seemed to go much better.

One issue that I had was that my electric screwdriver wasn’t powerful enough to drive the screws. My drill, however, was too powerful. Figuring that too powerful was better than not powerful enough, I switched between the drill bit and the philips screwdriver bit. This was incredibly inconvenient, but I had no other choice.

When I finally got the top shelves built, it was time to place the dividers. These little blocks of wood would, as their name implies, divide one stack of records for the next. There are three bays on each shelf, so for three shelves, I needed six dividers. And since the shelves are all different sizes, I needed three different sizes of dividers.

This is where I screwed up. Though my cuts weren’t exactly straight or square, everything basically fit. Except for the dividers. For some reason, I thought that each of the bays was 12″ deep. No idea why I thought that. The weird thing is, I only thought it when cutting the dividers. All of the other pieces were cut as was needed.

Luckily, I cut the dividers to 12″, which was 3/4″ and 1 1/4″ too long (depending on the depth). A few recuts later, and all was peachy as pie.

Once I got the dividers in, it was time to fill in the screw holes (and many drill holes). If I could do this all over again, I would countersink the screws. But prior to this, I didn’t even know what that was, so you can’t fault me too much. Where it really mattered, I drove the screws into the wood and puddied over them. Mostly, you can’t really tell unless you look kind of hard.

And then there was painting.

I’m really really not good at painting. I have next to no experience with it (except for spray painting, which I’m fairly okay at). One of the bins was to be painted brown, the other avocado green. After two days of painting two coats upon each, I think I’m basically finished.

There are a couple of runs, of course. But I’m a bad painter, so that’s to be expected. I’ll sand them down and repaint if I have to. But mostly, I’m finished.

Now, as to when they’ll make an appearance in the house and start to fulfill their rightful duty, I’m not sure. Probably Tuesday. I was hoping to bring them in this weekend, but with the amazingly wet weather, the paint just isn’t drying.

I have a lot of records. And with a lot of records comes the need to have places to put them. Thanks to Ikea’s Expedit shelves, my entire collection can fit nicely in the living room. The problem is that they’re all spine-out. If I want, for example, to find the Genesis’ Foxtrot, I have to tilt my head to the right and squint to read the fine print. What fun is that?

Now, when I was a kid, I used to love going into Listening Booth and flipping through the rows and rows of records. One of my favorite things about vinyl has always been the artwork. While storing my vinyl spine-out probably saves space, you really only see the artwork of the record that you’re playing.

All of this will end.

For the past couple of years, I’ve wanted to have record bins, like the kind you see at record stores, the kind I used to flip through when I was a kid (and still do now, of course). Buying the bins is hardly an option. The kind I want is upwards of $400 a piece. I need two. There’s no where I’d ever spend $800 on something like this. Buying used bins was an option, but finding them, now that vinyl is making a rather huge resurgence, is nearly impossible. I was able to find an old nappy bin from the 70s thanks to Dave at Seattle’s Jive Time, but I need two more.

So anyway, a couple of years ago, I designed my own bins based on the ones at Jive Time. I even made a few alterations and (hopefully) improvements. But having barely ever used a power saw, and never having built anything, I scrapped the idea as a waste of time. Besides, buying the lumber would be costly (though not nearly as costly as buying the finished bins).

The place where I work used to be an old cabinet making shop. The guy who rented the space left a bunch of stuff, including a bunch of old lumber. It had been scattered about, so I never really paid too much attention to it. But after some weird local cleaned the place up, I discovered that the scrap lumber was actually 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood. There were three different sheets: maple, birch and alder. After doing a quick inventory, and finding some oak strips to use as dividers, I did a quick inventory and found that everything I needed was right there in front of me. All I would have to buy were the screws!

I checked over my measurements again, and this morning went at the lumber with a skilsaw. I don’t believe I’ve ever used a skilsaw before. I did a few practice cuts and felt ready enough to go live.

Two and a half hours later, I had all the pieces I needed to built the bins.

I even assembled a little makeshift shelf system based on my designs and was able to tell if my measurements and cuts were right. I had to do a little adjustment, but mostly, I was dead on. Now, I’m not saying that all the cuts were perfect or that it’ll magically fit together like a professional woodworker made it, but it should work. And that’s all that matters to me.

Sometime this week or possibly next weekend, I’ll try to start the assembly. I’m not really sure where to start, so I’ll probably start from the ground up. Maybe this will work. Maybe it won’t. But if it doesn’t, I’m only out the price of a box of screws. Not bad.

Over the past two years, I’ve made upwards of 27ish mixes. All told, it was over thirty CDs worth of songs. Frankly, I’m tired of it.

I mean, yes, I love doing them, but my god, how many of these things can I crank out? By the end of this past year (with the exception of the Christmas Mix and the Johnny Cash mix), I felt like I was cheating.

After trying to figure out what to do, I decided to go back to the road trip mixes for inspiration. Those mixes weren’t just a collection of songs. They told a story using bits from movies, oddities from songs and general randomness. Sure, it wasn’t an entirely coherent story, but there was some chunks of narratives kicking around.

So I through together a quick little thirty-minute mix. It’s a rough draft, but I spent a few days on it. I’ve since decided not to use it, but maybe someone out there might enjoy it.

Springmixside1-30min (Final Rough Draft) by Eric Swanger

This is the track list…

01 The Cure – Listen
02 Duran Duran – Runway Runaway
03 De La Soul – Say No Go (Say No Dope Mix)
04 Nirvana – Son Of a Gun
05 The Pogues – If I Should Fall From the Grace Of God
06 Pretty Girls Make Graves – Head South
07 Anthrax – Got The Time
08 Pink Floyd – Fearless

As with all of the mixes from the past year, the music was recorded off of vinyl from my collection.

It went through several different names, such as the Listen Mix and the Spring Mix, but I never really settled on anything concrete. But, it’s gone now, so no big deal.

So anyway…

The mix above was going to be Side One of a two-sided mix, but I got distracted and lost interest and just couldn’t think of how to make a Side Two. The problem was that I didn’t have any story. It was just a few songs thrown together with some clips here and there. Why? No reason.

And then I sort of became obsessed with the Beach Boys Smile LP. I was floored with not only how it was (and wasn’t) recorded, but the entire concept of a “teenage symphony to God,” which is complete pre-hippie silliness. Anyway, I liked the symphony idea and the idea of using the Elements (earth, air, fire, water) as a guide.

Smile is divided into three main sections, Americana, Childhood and The Elements. So, I decided to take a hint from it and do the same. As with Smile, I also have an intro and outro (and borrow some stuff there and in between).

Here I go talking like it’s a done deal. I’ve barely even started on it. I’ve incorporated some stuff from the Listen/Spring mix, but there’s also a whole lot of other stuff. I’m not even sure what kind of story it’s going to tell. I guess we’ll find out in a few months when it’s completed.

Well, that’s about it. I hope you enjoy the rough draft of the mix. Let me know what you think, okay? I need some feedback, here.

Another Christmas, another mix. This one is probably the biggest I’ve ever done. It’s also the one where I got to do some wonderful musical research. I came up with the idea in March or April and worked on it throughout the year. Each song was either released and/or recorded in 1975, the year of my birth.

It’s pretty common to delve into the music you grew up with, but my folks pretty well stopped listening to popular music when I was born. Sure, there was some odd radio stuff, but mostly it was top 40 and pretty bland.

If I had my way, I would have made tons of these and given them out to everyone I’ve ever met, but sadly, I could only do a short run of them. Lots of folks who I wish could have gotten them, weren’t able to. I do apologize greatly for this. However, at least you can download it here.

I divided the mix into three discs, each representing three different kinds of music. The first covers a diverse array of pre-punk/urban/etc. bands. These range from Funkadelic to the Talking Heads, from Lou Reed to some odd ska stuff. I specifically skipped anything disco-related here. The closest we get is glam like Hello and Slik. There’s a bit of funk, some electronic weirdness and even Brian Eno inexplicably covering “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The mid 70s was a transition period for metal. Nothing really heavy, like Iron Maiden, came until later, but still, there’s some loudness here, what with Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper. Metal was really coming into its own, and it wouldn’t quite get there until a few years later, but it’s great to see its evolution. There’s even a power ballad (“Triumverat’s “Deadly Dream of Freedom”). At the end of the disc, check out Death’s “Politicians in My Eyes.” How this was written and recorded in 1975 is beyond me. It’s at least a decade before its time.

Rounding out the mix is Disc 3, which has an obvious country feel. Country was a big thing in the 70s. There was a resurgence, complete with CBs, truckers and a healthy dislike of cops. The hippies were still holding on and other bands, like The Who and Queen were dabbling in it a bit. Keep an eye on Elf, which was Ronnie James Dio’s first(ish) band. If you know his later work in Sabbath and Dio, you’ll be more than a bit surprised by this one. Of course, no mix would be complete without a sad Bruce Springsteen song, so I give you a depressing acoustic version of “Thunder Road.”

Each song was recorded from vinyl from my record collection. Details of that are at the bottom.

Of course, the music is only part of the mix. I try to see the whole project as a bit of art. This year, I decided to screen print the covers. It was the first time I printed with water-based ink on something that wasn’t a tshirt. Each of the records were from 1975 and I can’t thank Jive Time Records in Seattle enough for this. Inside the sleeves are bits of this and that, some of them hand colored with a big box of crayola crayons (though the ones I’ve included with the mix are uncolored, just in case you wanted to print them out and color them yourself).

The discs themselves were spray painted with three different colors of primer. I’m not 100% sure this was safe to do (for the disc – I know it wasn’t safe for my health). I sure do hope that none of the discs fail from the painting.

I love doing stuff like this. Though it took me months to complete, it was a whole bunch of fun. I’ve got no idea what I’ll do for next year’s mix… well, I mean, I have some ideas, but I’ve also got a whole year to work on it. So by April, I’m sure I’ll have it pretty well set.

So go ahead and down it. I hope you enjoy it greatly.

Thanks a bunch!

Since this mix is spread over three discs, I had to upload three different zip files. To get the whole mix, you’ll have to down all three.

Just click on the button and it’ll take you to another site. Click on the link to download and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Technical Information:
Media Used:
Vinyl LPs from my personal collection.

SoundConverter 1.4.4
-Converted WAV to 320kbps MP3

Stay tuned for 2012 mix news coming soon!

Get the mix here and now and/or continue reading (182MB)

In my fairly pointless commitment to make a mix each month, I’ve discovered that November/December aren’t the easiest months in which to find the time to mix it up. It’s during those months (especially November) when I’m working my little heart out finishing up the Christmas Mix (which will be posted on Christmas).

So this year, I gave Smartz the run of my record collection, and had to pick out 70ish minutes worth of the finest music I’ve got. She did a great job and here’s Smartz to explain why she picked some of the songs she did:

Many of the songs on my mix are songs that I’ve been introduced to by Eric. One of the first mix cd’s the he gave to me was a Pet Shop Boys mix, and while I had never heard anything Pet Shop Boys except for “West End Girls,” I have loved them ever since. We used to listen to that mix ALL the time while driving around on Pennsylvania’s back roads. While driving on the back roads of Utah and New Mexico I became a Mission of Burma fan. The first memory I have of listening to them was while we waited in the car at the north end of a train tunnel to take a photo of the exiting train.

My favorite song on the mix is most definitely Big Country’s “Porrohman.” This also is probably one of my top three favorite songs of all time. Stuart Adamson’s sweet Scottish voice combined with the band in this mostly instrumental is one of the most pleasant sounding songs I think you will ever have the pleasure of hearing. Treat yourself and listen to some Big Country! It’s Smartz approved.

So there you go! Thanks, Smartz!

Just click on the button and it’ll take you to another site. Click on the link to download and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Technical Information:
Media Used:
Vinyl LPs from my personal collection.

SoundConverter 1.4.4
-Converted WAV to 320kbps MP3

Updated January 22, 2012

I’ve (somewhatish) recently come across four more of the Long Beach Bootlegs:

We’ve got New Order, Joy Division, Morrissey, Swervedriver and a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 7″!

-More about them below…

–

As anyone who’s been reading this blog for the past six months has seen, I’m really into bootleg records that have screen printed covers. The origins of these bootlegs and other info about, like press runs and who distributes them have become an obsession for me. Even trying to figure out just how many there are has been quite a challenge.

However, I think I have the answers to all or most of that.

All of the boots are done by two, possibly three, parties. The bulk of them seem to come from Long Beach, California. Many of the boots use fake labels like Alti Philosophi or Arkain Filloux. They also have fake addresses from Germany and Italy printed on them.

I can (almost) safely say that all of the records come from the same pressing plant. I can also (almost) safely say that all of the covers are printed with the same inks on the same blank covers.

That said, there are definitely two (possibly three) series here.

Let’s have a run down, shall we?

The first series started with CDs, I think. I don’t know if the covers were screen printed, but CDs were released by Adam & The Ants, Oingo Boingo and Brian Eno. Since I don’t really care about CDs so much, I’m very glad they moved on to vinyl.

The first vinyl released was an Oingo Boingo bootleg called Marching In Time. It was on black vinyl and originally had a three color printed cover. It was later rereleased with a two color cover and then, more recently, with a one color cover. From there, I don’t really know the order of things, but I’ll try to list them as close to chronologically as possible.

Oingo Boingo – Marching in Time (Polyrhythm Industries) (discogs)
-Black 500(?) (three color print)
-White 75 (two color print)
-Orange 20 (one color print, though there are probably some with two colors)

The Boys Next Door – The Lost & Brave Exhibitions Of…1977-1979 (Il Cane Lento Records, Italy) (discogs)
-Yellow 100
-Black 100

The Cure – Pillbox Tales 1977-1979 (Arkain Filloux Records, Belgium) (discogs)
-Brown 100
-Black 500
-Clear 100

Brian Eno – The BBC Sessions (Il Cane Lento Records, Italy) (discogs)
-Blue 100
-Orange 100
-Black 500?
-Purple 100

Echo & The Bunnymen – BBC Radio Tapes ’79 – ’80 (Arkain Filloux Records, Belgium) (discogs)
-Green 100
-Black 500?

The Smiths – The Old Guard – BBC Tapes 1983 – 1986 (Alti Philosophi Records, Germany) (discogs)
-Red (first cover) 100
-Black (first cover) 500
-Clear (second cover) 100
-Black (second cover) 500(?)
-Green (second cover) 100
-Red (second cover) 100
-Purple (second cover) 100

My Bloody Valentine – Lost Tracks And Rare Cuts (Alti Philosophi) (discogs)
-Test Pressing (white cover/label) 30
-Purple 100
-Clear 500
-Black 500
-White 100

The Pixies – Into The White (Tensionesque) (discogs)
-Blue 100
-Green 135
-Orange 100
-Black 500

The Smiths – The Old Guard – BBC Tapes Volume Two (Alti Philosophi) (discogs)
-Black 500
-Clear (dark) 100
-Blue 100

Siouxsie And The Banshees – Songs From The Void – BBC Recordings 1977-1979 (Alti Philosophi) (discogs)
-Purple 100
-Black 500

Slowdive – Hide Yer Eyes (Alti Philosophi) (discogs)
-Black 500
-Mauve 100
-Yellow 100
-Green (tealish) 100

New Order – Western Works Demos 7/9/80 (discogs)
-Black 250

Joy Division – Autosuggestion (discogs)
-Black 500

Morrissey – Reader Meet Author (Alti Philosophi) (discogs)
-Black 500 (with white or brown covers)
-Orange 100 (with brown paperboard cover)

Swervedriver – Planes Over The Skyline (Alti Philosophi) (discogs)
-Black 500
-Purple 100

They also released three 7″s.

Oingo Boingo – All The Pieces 7″ (discogs)
-Red 200
-Green 200
-Blue 200

The Mars Volta – A Plague Upon Your Hissing Corpse 7″ (discogs)
-Clear 300
-Purple 300
-Green 300
-Red 30 (screen printed on the blank b-side – no covers)
-Blue 30

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – The Willow Garden / The Ballad of Robert Moore and Betty Coltrane 7″ (discogs)
-Black 300
-Red 100
-Clear 100
*Note – “The Willow Garden” doesn’t appear on this release. Instead, “The Ballad of Robert Moore and Betty Coltrane” is where “The Willow Garden” should be. Originally, the covers and labels on the vinyl were wrong, but a new run was made with corrected covers (with the vinyl still wrong). Some of the second covers were also printed on white stock with gray/black and red/black ink.

From what I can tell, the covers have remained the same for all of them, except the first Smiths boot, which was changed once the second Smiths boot was released.

All of these have some copies that were hand numbered, but many of mine are not. This throws into doubt the number of total copies, but from the best that I can tell, my figures are fairly accurate.

Moving on, the second (and possibly third) series, I know much less about.

I believe their first release was the Talking Heads CBS Demos. They pressed 500 (hand numbered) copies of black vinyl and then 250 on very pretty blue.

Talking Heads – The 1975 CBS Demo Session (No Label) (discogs)
-Blue 250
-Black 500

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Send Me Away – Early Demos (No Label) (discogs)
-Black w/ white printed label (?)
-Black w/ red stamped label (100)
*Also some with white covers and blank ink.

The Cramps – Memphis Poseurs, The 1977 Demos (Embassador) (discogs)
-Maroon (?)
-Purple (500)
-Black (?)

The Birthday Party – Welcome to the Car Smash (No Label) (discogs)
-Black (200)

Adam & The Ants – The Decca Demos & More (No Label) (discogs)
-Green (100)
-Black (?)

The last two listed might be done by another party, but they’re definitely from the same people as the Adam & The Ants vinyl has a Birthday Party label on it that (on mine) was very sloppily spray painted over. Also, the Talking Heads on blue vinyl seems to have been recently released.

So how did I find this out? For the first series, I’ve talked to the fellow who is responsible for distributing them. He has most of the information, but probably not all of it (thus the random question marks). For the second (and third?) series, the same fellow pointed me in the direction of the person who makes them.

Both of these people sell on Ebay and a quick search, with a little investigation thrown in, will give you all the details you need.

I can (pretty well) safely say that, at the time of this post, these are all of the screen printed vinyl bootlegs from Long Beach, California. Granted, my figures might be off and incomplete, so if you know something different, drop me a line, okay?