78 O’clock

Like all treasures, I stumbled into collecting 78 RPM records indirectly and not by intention. I wanted to make a dreamachine and needed a 78 player for it. I had a very nice 1952 Zenith Cobramatic that made the wrong kind of noise, and was told to bring it to a place on East Lake Street called Vintage Music Co. A long shotgun shop that was dark with old interesting smells of time and dust and grease and neglect and attics and basements. Scott said something like: “Here is the same belt, in the box. Here’s the same motor, in the box, etc in the box. Look around, every new customer gets a free record. It should take me about 20 minutes.” So I looked around. This was 1992 and I had been doing radio for ten years, been collecting records since the early 1970′s but knew nothing of these old heavy records. This is the free record I took.