The Jayhawks
Blue
American Recordings
1995
Here’s the blue vinyl 45 version of The Jayhawks‘ Blue. While it’s actually not a Christmas song, this promo 7″ version was packaged as a Christmas Song.
The Jayhawks
Blue
American Recordings
1995
Here’s the blue vinyl 45 version of The Jayhawks‘ Blue. While it’s actually not a Christmas song, this promo 7″ version was packaged as a Christmas Song.
Band Aid
Do They Know It’s Christmas?
Columbia Records
1984
Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.
KISS
Dressed to Kill
Casablanca Records
1975
Lookin’ good gentlemen…
Pink Floyd
The Division Bell
Columbia Records
1993
The best Pink Floyd is Pink Floyd without Roger Waters. This is one of my favorite albums from Floyd, and it has also a fantastic album cover by artist Storm Thorgerson.
Guns N’ Roses
Appetite for Destruction
Geffen Records
1987
The greatest album in history turns 30 years old tomorrow.
Here are copies of the the original LP, the cassette, and compact disc. It still sounds as good as it did 30 years ago and better than anything that anyone has made since then!
Styx
Paradise Theatre
A&M Records
1981
I was never the biggest Styx fan, but as a kid, I loved this album. It had some screaming guitars by James Young (“Snowblind” and “Half-Penny”), new-wave-ish pop by Tommy Shaw (“Too Much Time”) and some funky theatrical jazz by Dennis DeYoung (“Nothing Ever Goes As Planned”).
The packaging was cool. The LPs had laser etching and the cover and back paintings were fantastic – truly a lost art!
Soundgarden
Down on the Upside
A&M Records
1996
Most people think the trend of vinyl records “coming back” is a recent thing. But as early as the mid-1990s, vinyl was making a comeback, mostly by cool grunge bands who issued new albums with an LP version. A great example is this limited edition (only 10,000 copies were pressed) of Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside.
Pink Floyd
A Collection of Great Dance Songs
Harvest (UK) / CBS Records (US)
1981
I like the joke title of this “best of” collection as Floyd is not known for music for the dance floor. It includes a cool re-recording of my favorite Floyd song, “Money” with David Gilmour playing all guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and vocals himself.
Van Halen
Diver Down
Warner Bros Records
1982
The last VH album before Eddie discovered the synthesizer. This album is 99% guitar and 1% clarinet.
President Ronald Reagan
Reads Stories From The Old Testament
Nickelodeon Records
1984
My strangest #TBT #Vinyl post so far. This 1954 recording of President Reagan reading Bible stories was released in ’84 on a small indie label — make that an extremely small indie label… It was pretty much the back of a record store in small town Dixon, IL.
This record was actually banned after a one million dollar lawsuit from RCA Records against some shady businessmen including the mayor! Read more about the small town scandal here from UPI’s archives.