Posts by Bob Lange

In my last column I discussed the difference between a seller who describes the condition of a record versus one who actually grades the record as well as what questions to ask and what to expect with the former.  This time, I'll discuss the seller who is at least sophisticated enough to attempt to grade as well as the catches involved in dealing with the less-than-concrete world of record grading.

The Gaslight Anthem released one of 2008's best records, were a highlight of last summer's Vans Warped Tour, released a fantastic 10" on Record Store Day and are now on the verge of opening for perhaps their biggest influence, Bruce Springsteen. There really couldn't be much more of a positive vibe or greater expectations (yeah, pun intended) coming into a show than that.

When you go to your local used record shop, it's easy to determine if a record is in the desired condition.  A visual appraisal right there in the store will give you a really good idea of how the record will play.  Sure, it might look clean and still have some surface noise or have visible scuffs and still play clean, but by and large, when you get it home on your turntable, there shouldn't be tremendous deviation from your expectations at the time of purchase.

It seems like there's never a shortage of new holidays that pop up and, sadly, marketing is almost always the force behind them.  Well, add one more to that list:  Record Store Day.  This holiday is certainly about marketing, but it's not quite what you'd expect.  You see, this is about marketing for the underdog, the independent record store.  It's also about community, because, in many ways, that's what these stores are about.

In 1977, at age 6, Glide's Bob Lange bought his first record, Kiss Alive, and started an obsession that's lasted a lifetime.  Welcome to Bob's new column dedicated to that very obsession, "Vinyl Lives" 

Everything Burns kicks off as a fairly typical post-emo mainstream rock album. There are bits of alt rock and emo tidied up in a nice, easily digestible package and yet…there's something else, something deeper going on with this record.

Most bands are contained by the genres from which the draw their influences. Pomegranates effortlessly ingest guitar pop, walls of jangle, sweet indie pop, punk agitation, gentle folk, mathy precision and wild psychedelia, yet the album is so big that it contains these rather than being contained by them.

Probably the biggest trap into which a live album can fall is that of sounding too much like a studio album. After all, if it sounds pretty much like the studio cuts with crowd noise in between, what's the point? A live album should inject different energies or arrangements into the songs we already love, not just rehash them. It's an all too common disaster and any band on the verge of it would be wise to use Still Dangerous as a guide toward righteousness (just as much as Lizzy's established classic Live and Dangerous).  

"The Wrestler" is the bonus track on Springsteen's latest album, Working on a Dream. It's a honest tale set to poignant music. It connects in the way we expect Springsteen to connect. However, it is appropriately labeled as bonus material, because it really doesn't fit the rest of the album.

There's a fine line between grand and grandiose. Most concept albums are so much the latter that they never even get close to the line. Sepultura, veterans of the concept album, aren't close to that line either, but they're on the good side.