Getting started: your first vinyl record 

Starting a vinyl collection is an exciting hobby, but deciding on that inaugural record purchase can feel daunting. Follow these 5 essential tips when selecting the perfect debut album to start your budding vinyl library:

1. Consider your favorite musical genres and artists. Are you currently listening to a lot of classic rock, old-school hip-hop, or 80s pop? Choose a brand new release from a musician you already love, like the latest indie folk from Bon Iver or a vintage heavy metal album from Iron Maiden. This ensures enjoyment while appreciating vinyl’s signature warm sound.
2. Revisit a nostalgic album that defined your childhood. The tangible experience of spinning beloved records from your upbringing is unparalleled. Dig into coming-of-age favorites, whether that’s Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, or a Spice Girls dance-pop classic.
3. Ask friends and vinyl collectors for recommendations. Music lovers with their own extensive libraries can suggest foolproof debut albums perfect for first-time buyers. Take notes and explore new-to-you artists.
4. Inspect the condition thoroughly before purchasing. Carefully examine both new and used records for scuffs, warping, sleeve damage, and other flaws before buying. This ensures your first vinyl meets quality standards.
5. Check independent shops for unique finds. While browsing online retailers is convenient, don’t overlook local record stores. In addition to the advice of experienced counselors, in-person crate digging unearths one-of-a-kind vintage gems or special editions. 

Following these tips will help you be well on your way to curating an amazing vinyl collection over time.

Building your collection

Building a vinyl record library is exciting, but the real joy comes from gradually growing your record collection. As your musical tastes expand and change, so does your vinyl collection. Make discovering new albums part of your hobby.

One way to expand your record collection is to visit local indie record stores once a month. Meet the staff’s selection and dig through new arrivals and used containers for hidden gems across genres. Sign up for this store’s email newsletter with sales or pre-sale codes for concert tickets.

Another option is to search in online stores. eBay and Discogs are the meccas for finding affordable used vinyl records online, both common and rare finds. Bookmark retailers with items from your favorite decades or genres.

Visit your local record fair, where vinyl fans sell albums straight from their favorite collections. Haggling over prices for box sets and stories about unique rarities heighten the excitement of the hunt.

It’s equally important to use social media if you want to grow your record collection. By following record labels, artists, and podcasts on social media, you receive release announcements and vinyl pre-sales so you can purchase limited editions. Let your collection evolve eclectically with your musical taste by visiting these vinyl stores regularly.

Vinyl care and maintenance

Taking care of your beloved vinyl record collection will ensure that the records will last for many years to come. There are a few record care rules that you need to follow. It includes:

• Always handle records with care. Never touch the grooved surface, but instead, hold the records by the edges or use the protective inner sleeves when sliding the cover in and out. This avoids fingerprints and oil getting on the skin, which can cause wear.
• Invest in quality antistatic inner sleeves. High-quality internal bushings prevent the build-up of static electricity, which attracts microparticles that cause tears in the grooves. Buy special antistatic sleeves lined with plastic or rice paper.
• Clean regularly using proven vinyl cleaning methods. An initial wash with a carbon fiber brush removes dust before each game. Then, clean your vinyl surfaces twice a year with proven specialty vinyl cleaners like the SpinClean system to remove stubborn debris stuck in the grooves.
• Skip the cheap players with heavy tracking that damages recordings. Well-maintained vinyl still requires a quality turntable, needle cartridge, and speakers to prevent unnecessary wear and tear during playback. Also, study the optimal downforce settings.
• Store upright in protective outer covers in a temperate climate, away from sunlight and heat sources. Vertical storage in plastic or high-quality, acid-free paper sleeves protects jackets from ring wear and seam tears. Place it on a special shelf away from warm windows where the heat could warp the vinyl.

Following these simple guidelines for safely handling, cleaning, and storing vinyl will help the albums in your growing collection last indefinitely while maintaining sound quality over time.

Connecting with the Vinyl community 

Beyond music, vinyl collecting creates a real community. Take classes at local record stores to connect with like-minded fans in person and discover new albums. The annual Record Store Day celebrations also build camaraderie in the lines. Online forums like Reddit and Facebook vinyl groups offer places to share tips, organize album rankings, and network over niche music tastes without geographic barriers. Personalized record fairs and flea markets also stimulate lively discussions with vendors and other crate diggers through negotiations and general excitement about the buried treasure. Together with other audiophiles, you can even enjoy vinyl rarity hunting. Connect with other music fans online and offline to find like-minded people and expand your knowledge and friendships in the craft.

The post Tips for Starting and Growing Your Vinyl Collection appeared first on Swizz Beatz Online.

Surely there will be those who won’t reproach me for saying that an article about Laura Pergolizzi is not the most appropriate topic for a rock music website. After all, she doesn’t fit the generally accepted definition of “rock personality” at all, because if you believe Wikipedia’s genre definition, LP (Laura Pergolizzi for short) is pop, pop rock and indie pop (a more melodic and not as abrasive subgenre as indie rock). And some people consider her music to be outright pop.

But here I would venture to argue. All these genre definitions aren’t that important when there’s an emotional and semantic component: LP is a singer, worthy to be considered a real rocker.

Why? Yes, because the kind of emotion that LP’s music is imbued with, the chippy pop can’t carry! And I think you will agree that the rock is not only the sound, but equally the emotion that is carried through the lyrics and the singer’s voice.

Besides, LP started as a real rock’n’roll band – 250 concerts a year, endless traveling with the band through small towns in a shabby van and spending nights in cheap hotels (often all together in one room).

Then the producers tried to squeeze her songs into a format in order to reach as many listeners as possible. Luckily, they weren’t very good at it and today we have what we have – LP in her true form with the soulful creativity that got a lot of listeners hooked.

The beginning of the LP’s journey

Laura Pergolizzi, or rather her extraordinary image, at first sight is often confusing – it is not always clear whether you are looking at a man or a woman. LP owes such a striking appearance to her parents: her mother is Neapolitan and her father is half Sicilian, half Irish.

But when you hear her powerful, deep songs, it immediately becomes clear: Laura Pergolizzi is a woman from short jeans-boyfriends to the last curl (about orientation we will talk separately), though with a certain admixture of a punk girl.

Laura Pergolizzi’s biography begins in Huntington, New York, where she was born in the spring of 1981.

The next 15 years of her life are rather poorly covered in the media – the LP hardly talks about this period in numerous interviews. Except that she once mentioned that as a child she was terribly ashamed of her voice and preferred to sing while the lawnmower or vacuum cleaner was on so no one could hear her.

It was not until 1996 that events began to happen that radically changed the life of the singer-to-be.

After graduating from high school, Laura Pergolizzi moves to the capital of her native state. Here begins the LP biography as a singer-songwriter: she gathers her own band called Lionfish, with which she starts giving concerts, performing the repertoire of her own composition.

At the same time Laura Pergolizzi for the first time began to use a pseudonym – LP, although this nickname stuck to her in the school summer camp.

Her first successes, or still a long way to popularity.

In ’98 she was noticed by David Lowery of the band Cracker. He was so impressed by Laura’s voice that he invited her to participate in the recording of his band’s album. Later he also became the producer of the debut LP “Heart-Shaped Scar” (2001).

Laura Pergolizzi’s further biography was marked by the release of another album – in 2004 “Suburban Sprawl & Alcogol” (I recommend listening to the supporters of the opinion that LP is pop), which was the result of collaboration with Linda Perry from the band 4 Non Blondes.

Around the same time, Laura Pergolizzi received as a gift from a friend a cross earring that Madonna had given him during the filming of one of her videos. Laura Pergolizzi has not parted with it for a single day since. At the same time she claims that this cross does not have any religious meaning – it is just her favorite earring.

Laura Pergolizzi’s first albums did not bring her fame, despite the fairly warm reception from music critics and a major tour to support Suburban Sprawl & Alcogol. There was still a long way to go.

A period of grounding in the music scene

2010 was the beginning of a new era in LP’s biography – she moved to Los Angeles. It is in this city that Laura Pergolizzi’s active musical activity begins.

In November she writes the song “Cheers (Drink to That)” together with Rihanna. Later she collaborates with Christina Aguilera, Backstreet Boys, The Veronicas and Cher.

But LP has always seen collaborations with pop stars as an additional option to her work. The best songs, with deep personal connotations, she always kept for herself.

In 2012, LP’s creative biography is marked by a breakthrough: music lovers finally appreciated the track “Into the Wild” released as a single, which will later be included in her 3rd album.

Laura Pergolizzi began to use artistic whistling in her songs after this song. In the studio, preparing to perform “Into the Wild,” the LP, out of habit, whistled the tune. The producer and director liked the sound so much that they decided to record it. Since then, almost no Laura Pergolizzi performance is without whistling.

In 2014, a full-length LP, Forever for Now, was released. Its release was preceded by two singles – “Night Like This” (March 2014) and “Someday” (June 2014).

The album “Forever for Now” was praised by music critics. Thus, the LP’s official Wikipedia page says that Stephen Thomas Irlevine in his review gave the record five stars. And American Songwriter’s magazine noted that LP songs can take the leading place in the prime time of any radio station.

Finally a well-deserved worldwide fame

This period in LP’s biography began with the release of their fourth album, Lost On You, in 2016.

The first single “Muddy Waters” from the then unrecorded LP “Lost On You” was released in September 2015, and the following summer it was played in the finale of one of the episodes of the popular series “Orange Is the New Black” (“Orange Is the New Black” – in the original).

But the album’s key track is Laura Pergolizzi’s song “Lost On You,” which gave it its title. She first performed it at the Coca Cola Summer Festival 2016 in Rome. As a result, the song reached the top of the charts of most European radio stations in record time.

And no wonder, because “Lost On You” is a deeply frank track about Laura Pergolizzi’s personal life. In it she literally portrayed her own love tragedy.

Laura Pergolizzi’s song “Lost On You” is dedicated to the singer’s close friend Tamzin Brown, whose relationship ended in failure. This fact takes on a special meaning when you learn that Laura Pergolizzi is a lesbian. The LP doesn’t hide that fact, though.

She claims that her parents have always been lenient about their daughter’s every “eccentricity”. True, Laura was fully aware of her sexual orientation and told everyone about it only after the death of her mother. Her father had only recently taken this seriously, because he had always preferred to think of her daughter’s confession as just a teenage hobby.

The literal translation of “Lost On You” sounds something like “Wasted on You” or “Lost in You”. True, in this form, the phrase taken out of context doesn’t carry the semantic load that it’s meant to carry.

But if we turn to the text of the song, it becomes clearer what meaning Laura Pergolizzi put into this phrase. The key vector of the song is the question addressed to Laura’s ex-girlfriend (played in the video by model Laura Hanson Sims): “…all those things I spent on you [time? nerves? feelings?], tell me – was it all for nothing?”.

It turns out that the point of “Lost On You” isn’t about trivial worries about lost love, but about trying to figure out if that relationship left any mark on the LP’s ex-girlfriend’s soul. Also, from the last frames of the video, in which Laura kisses her new girlfriend Lauren Ruth Ward, it is clear that life goes on for her, despite the still fresh image of her former lover in her mind.

The post Biography and review of the work of LP extraordinaire appeared first on Swizz Beatz Online.

Scorpions greet the fans

As far as one can tell from the crooked post-Soviet canned music market, the love and reverence for the Scorpions has now taken a partly archival form and partly gone to the level of genetic memory: the generation that was supposed to follow the stages of the Germans’ great journey with rapt attention, but preferred just to sigh nostalgically, is responsible for it.

Scorpions at the height of their fame

Scorpions and Gorbachev in 1991 (photo) “Perestroika” and Scorpions coincided – so much so, that they became mutual symbols: Mr. Gorbachev had his photo taken with Scorpions in Kremlin, where they were given a sign “music of new thinking”, and Scorpions willingly sang about wind of changes and apologized for ancestors who had fought with such nice people.

But by and large, all this is nonsense – Scorpions had their biggest success in the period from 1984 (when “Love At First Sting” with the outstanding hits “Rock You Like A Hurricane” and “Still Loving You” was released) till 1990, which was marked by the last in a row very strong album “Crazy World”.

Six years as a “decent world-class band” and that was it. Or almost that’s it.

But what to do? Forget and recognize the right to exist only those who measure music by the number of records sold? And allow only those who “produce results” to be respected? And so our people’s love for Scorpions has the same nature as fools and roads, and that love is sacred.

The unexplainable love for Scorpions music

In a way, Scorpions became, as psychoanalysts say, a “projection” or “sublimation” for our listening public: People projected their aspirations to see the home band in a halo of international success onto these German rockers, and having projected, sublimated in “Scorpions”, as if they were that mythical “our” band, with which the giants, titans and other oversized heroes of the epic are honored to play on the same stage.

It was impossible to be sublimated in the Beatles-rollers: a midget might as well imagine himself as a basketball player.

Scorpions became the first band to break through the language barrier and, leaving it behind, to cross the sound barrier as well: as soon as the foreign language became native and close, the bar, over which serious people in places with the highest concentration of serious music, ceased to seem unattainable.

This time the Germans succeeded in “conquering the whole world.”

Klaus Meine told what difficulties Scorpions had to face in his homeland, when the homeland understood, that songs in English were the repertoire of Scorpions and they would never sing in German:

That’s right, if Scorpions had sung in German, only Austria and Switzerland would have sung under them, but this was a chance to fight for something more substantial in the territories, where before, having seen a living German, citizens usually didn’t calm down until he was a bit dead.

All the books about the Scorpions say that in 1984 they conquered America – meaning that MTV started the “heavy rotation” of the video for the single “Rock You Like A Hurricane”. This single reached double platinum, and Scorpions spent a part of the US tour as a headliner – in total, out of 25 millions of CDs they sold there almost ten million.

Previously, no German band had ever closed a concert after a Kiss! This was a success, even though no Kiss, let alone Scorpions, no other Iron Division band, not even their whole cavalcade in America had ever grossed more than a million spectators on a concert tour. With the exception of Metallica, but that is another story.

The leader of legendary band Scorpions, Klaus Meine, said, that their hour had come in the Soviet Union. In spite of the fact, that those, who forged their success, knew for sure: they would never see Scorpions band live.

Well, Soviet people in 1984 had no idea that everything would change! And here was a success, impossible in any other country, because it’s impossible to imagine any other place in the world, where a hysteria around music begins to unfold in the absence of a performer playing music!

You might say that this was how hysteria around any other band in the USSR arose, but there were not many such “other” bands, or, rather, almost none at all. “The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Uriah Heep were always loved, and loved with the smooth and gentle flame of a country fireplace.

Because they loved each in his or her own little den. The eternal lights in the squares with a large gathering of people began a little later, and one of the first to be lit was the torch in honor of the Scorps. To be fair, though, it should be noted that the very first torch was lit in the name of Rainbow – not Deep Purple or Mr. Gillan and his band, but exactly Rainbow. Why? And then why Scorpions, and then Queen? That is a question for a psychiatrist.

The leader of legendary Scorpions is more alive than ever!

In editorial offices of magazines were pouring letters with one demand: “Tell me about Scorpions!” And as a consequence, then came the letters demanding to declassify the burial place of the beloved Klaus Meine – that he died in terrible convulsions, singing “Still Loving You”, no doubt almost one and a half million domestic readers!

That’s the kind of success almost no one else had in the USSR! And if one were to compile an absolute Top-5 of “eternal lights” (celebrities that our fans had for some reason “buried alive”), it would look like this:

• Rainbow (because readers buried Richie Blackmore most often).
• The Beatles (Paul McCartney “notoriously” died back in ’66, and who was there in his place is unknown).
• Damis Roussos.
• The Scorpions (goodbye, Klaus!).
• Elvis Presley (because every fool knows he’s alive).

In this Top-5 is hidden not only answer to the question “why Scorpions?”, but also to the most important one about “mysterious post-Soviet soul”: Scorpions – because it is beautiful.

And in this Top-5 everything is beautiful, and everything is in its place: Ritchie Blackmore – the most beautiful guitar, Damis Russos and Elvis – the most beautiful voices. Not something expedient, necessary and relatively important, but “beauty as we understand it.”

That’s why Scorpions is both beautiful and understandable: Klaus Meine’s voice is not the primal fear of the Earth that Ian Gillan was the conductor of. And therefore not Deep Purple, but Rainbow – beautiful and far more understandable.

And the place in the heart of a special nation between the Beatles and the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is the very precise place of Scorpions on the, as it is now fashionable to put it, cultural space of the countries that appeared on the ruins of communism.

In fact, the rumor about legendary Scorpions leader’s death – incomparable Klaus Meine came after 1980, when “Animal Magnetism” was released – some of our especially closely connected with world cosmos compatriots had a vision that Klaus not only played in a box, but the penultimate will of the dead band was to appoint Don Dokken from Dokken to his place.

Klaus Meine, say “thank you” to our pirates!

What’s 25 million CDs sold?!

Who counted how many “pirated” “scorpions” CDs came off the presses of all the Russian and Ukrainian filibusters, who estimated how many CDs back in draconian times were replicated and sold in the most illegal, but most necessary way? Even if the piracy fully touched all our revered bands, and it touched Scorpions proportionally, it turns out that it is not 25 millions, but two or three hundred millions already! And this is already the reason for full-flowing love.

Scorpions forever!

All of us dissolved in Scorpions a bit, and if that part, which never dissolved, understands with some analytical organ, that this process is some strange and inexplicable, but the souls, merged with their music, are not thinking too much about what happened: it could be worse, the “strange” could be not so worthy.

Klaus Meine once said that they like it that we love them so madly, but such love must make a normal person a little uncomfortable: what would happen if I did something wrong and they hated me a little?

They don’t understand that here they are given an indulgence for any stupidity, here they will be forgiven everything, not even realizing that they are forgiven, and that there was something to forgive. This is the love of one’s idol.

The post Scorpions: a place in the heart appeared first on Swizz Beatz Online.