Dig Up The Roots

78 RPM Summits

Listen to a radio show that featured four of the DJ’s.

The 78 RPM Summits were the idea of the Pepper Patriot, a 78 DJ in the twin cities, world traveler and sound artist. These were gatherings of a dozen or so record collectors who played old records on a variety of old machines. Most of the equipment was brought in by Scott & Mike from Vintage Music Co. They keep us all going with records, their expertise on repair and inventory of parts.

The posters were designed by Dale Flattum.
The films were shot by John Akre.

The video below is from the first summit. There is some nice footage of Doc Rock – may he have the rockin’est bones in the bone yard. He played a few songs about bums to start things off. Where else could the night go after that but down hill fast.

These events gathered fans, collectors and DJ’s together. The wide variety of music played was surprising, varied and great sounding too. The second event had many of the usual suspects showing up along with another crowd of younger folks just discovering the analog world. It must be the tubes and the smell of the grease in those old motors warming up. It is a pheromone like attraction that just pulls a certain person in. The first capacitors used in radios were coated in beeswax. Shellac records were made from billions of dead, spread, squashed, mashed, boiled, roiled, pressed and generally messed up Beetles. So maybe the pheromone attraction isn’t so far off.

Minnesota No Tamago-Uri

The playlist for this show is at the end of this post.

This is an old Japanese 78 RPM record about a Minnesota egg salesman who traveled around Japan. It was a big hit back in the day. I didn’t know what the song was about until a very excited phone call during a radio show one day in 2004.

I had been playing some of these old Japanese records that I’d just gotten. This one had an English title and very clearly the word Minnesota in it. After the song ended the phone rang. On the other end was a man almost yelling and laughing loudly. He was listening while driving through town and couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He said that when he was in his early 20’s he had lived in Japan doing missionary or Peace Corps work. When he would mention to elderly people that he was from Minnesota they would smile big and say: “Oh. Minnesota Egg Salesman”. He knew it was a song but had never heard it before that morning. For me, until that point, it was another interesting find but for him it was so much more. He was so happy to finally hear the song. This type of experience is what community radio is all about. Priceless momentary unplanned connections you achieve with unknown and unseen listeners.

A good idea is worth ripping off, er, researching further. Radio Rumpus Room had their All-Japanese Sukiyaki Stomp (which you all should listen to on our archive while you have the chance). So, on Tuesday December 4th we presented 2 hours of songs and music from pre and post WW 2 Japanese Pop 78 RPM records. This is the sort of stuff that should be listened to in history class. The delightful and sad; boogies and rhumbas, and a visit from the Minnesota Egg Salesman. These records are part of one of my prized obsessions and we listened to less than 1/2 of them today. Most of these records have little or no English on the labels, so the following playlist is vague in places.