Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I recognize the excellence of their work during this era, but the mastering on all of those albums is so horrendously cranked up that I don’t enjoy playing them. 110
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Birthday House was one of the many local kids TV programs from that era—every American city had one—and while I never knew any kids who were on it, I knew plenty who appeared on equivalent shows in other cities and had horror stories about their experiences. 010
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I *think* (though I could certainly be wrong) that all those Power/Peter Pan albums—they all had Neal Adams covers—were different recordings circa the late ‘70s. 110
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 05/10/2026A BMG subsidiary won’t sell master rights. (At least not at a realistic valuation, anyway.) The most I could get out of them would be licenses to do reissues. Can I sign you up for the $150 deluxe RSD version of this Batman album? 150
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I recall looking into this a while ago. I think they ended up with a major (Sony?) as a result of bigger-indies-buying-smaller-indies consolidation. 120
Reposted by Andy ZaxAndy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 05/10/2026As indie labels go, Golden Records had a greater influence on me than 4AD, Factory, Rough Trade, Creation, Too Pure, and Basic Channel combined. 3121
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 05/10/2026As indie labels go, Golden Records had a greater influence on me than 4AD, Factory, Rough Trade, Creation, Too Pure, and Basic Channel combined. 3121
Reposted by Andy ZaxAndy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 03/10/2026I keep seeing that “nine albums that made me” meme going around, but the most objectively formative LPs of my life—the children’s records I played over and over when I was a little kid and drove my parents insane—aren’t in their database. So I had to build my own. 6736
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 03/10/2026I’d argue that Dexter qualifies with an asterisk due to the years-long gap between the horrible original series ending and the pretty solid comeback. Similarly: Veronica Mars. 021
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 03/10/2026I keep seeing that “nine albums that made me” meme going around, but the most objectively formative LPs of my life—the children’s records I played over and over when I was a little kid and drove my parents insane—aren’t in their database. So I had to build my own. 6736
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 03/10/2026This must have been Dorothy Kilgallen’s final “Voice of Broadway” column; she died six days before it was published. 000
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Truly. I’ve never taken any special precautions with it; it’s just been sitting on one shelf or another for decades. Maybe it’s a humidity thing? 110
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 30/09/2026It’s the standard UK copy that was imported to the US in fairly substantial quantities. They were still readily available in LA at non-marked-up prices until somewhere around ‘83. 120
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Oh! I just remembered how the Windex came into play: I was trying to remove the little sticker on the back that said “METAL” and there was a ton of adhesive residue left behind that I couldn’t get off by conventional means. 120
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 30/09/2026It never really had a corrosion problem, so why I felt the need to “clean” it eludes me. It has pretty much the same patina now that it had when I bought it c.1981, apart from the Windex damage. 210
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Not sure what the metal itself is. The Windex seemed to remove the stuff that had been applied to the metal to make it look shiny and silver-y. 130
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 30/09/2026I made the incredibly stupid mistake of attempting to clean mine with Windex when I was a teenager. 2223
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Dunno ‘bout you all, but I’m happy the weekend of Discourse about that song saved us from having to have a weekend of Discourse about that book. 050
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 28/09/2026It does have Annette, though not much: she makes an unbilled cameo at the start of the film. 010
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 28/09/2026That’s a fine tribute album, but I was thinking more along the lines of “they made a bunch of records and toured together for years and every night Johnny would sing ‘Ghosts of American Astronauts’ with Sally and people would sob.” Something like that. 120
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I prefer the timeline where he teamed up with the Mekons. 130
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I cannot, in good conscience, recommend watching Ski Party (1965)—an abysmal film—but here’s my ranking of its musical performances from worst to best: 4. The Hondells, on a beach. 3. Lesley Gore, in a bus. 2. James Brown, in a ski lodge. 1. A yodeling polar bear, on skis. 88811
Reposted by Andy ZaxArt Of Coop @artofcoop.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Calling @andyzax.bsky.social youtu.be/gzn06cXkl3A?...youtu.beAlvin Stardust - Crossing Road (1976)YouTube video by Shufti 0101
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Another of these no-name-on-the-spine boxes arrived yesterday, courtesy of a Very Famous Art Director who should know better. 3326
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Lisa told me that someone on Instagram had written a terrible song about Aloka The Peace Dog (“kinda Christopher Cross-y”) so I made up my own version of what I thought it probably sounded like—“peace-y peaceful peace Ah-LOH-kaaa!”—and now the fake song is stuck in my head and I am in hell. 051
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 24/09/2026(It’s a fantastic album, and well worth spending time with.) 020
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Last track on side one.discogs.comFever Tree - Fever TreeView credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1968 Vinyl release of "Fever Tree" on Discogs. 110
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I’ve never understood what the problem was supposed to be. I often think it’s their best album. 100
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Playing it (and Brotherhood) repeatedly was how I survived my first semester of film school. I didn’t know where the title came from until Ivo told me years later. 340
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I never felt that I was helping Kaleb when I gave him advice, but I did feel that way when I bought him a sandwich, or told him about Tom T. Hall, or insisted that he watch the Dragnet episode with the deranged con-man who impersonates a forest ranger. Anyway, I miss him. 0130
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026A few weeks before he died, I sent Kaleb a copy of “Red Harvest,” after a conversation where he told me he’d never read it. “That’s crazy,” I said. “It’s the most YOU book in the English language. You have to read it.” I don’t know whether he did. 110
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Go read it. The fact that it only exists now on a janky-looking web-crawled Internet Archive page is the sort of thing that would have appealed to Kaleb’s fatalism but should make everyone else furious on his behalf. web.archive.org/web/20180225...web.archive.orgA Journalist takes Trump's media-bias surveyHere are his candid responses in full 161
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026The piece is so good that you might not notice that at the center of it there's a sorrow so pure and so disquieting that Kaleb needed to use all the card-cutting and overhand-shuffling and mechanic's-gripping at his disposal to make you forget that it's there: a singular Hortonian triumph. 110
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Kaleb’s old piece, though: it’s obvious that someone gave him a writing assignment that he thought was stupid—“It'd be really funny if you took the Trump administration's media-bias quiz!”—and Kaleb then proceeded to subvert the thing he was supposed to be doing as passive-aggressively as possible. 110
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026If I'd spoken, there’s a good chance I’d have just forced everyone to hear me read a forgotten piece Kaleb wrote in 2017 for MTV News. (Thinking about MTV News in 2026 is like thinking about a torn-down Disneyland ride you went on when you were four; it's a world too remote to feel nostalgic about.) 180
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I don’t know that I had any great wisdom to impart; nothing I couldn’t imagine Kaleb making fun of, anyway. There wasn’t much you could say about him that he couldn’t have said better himself. But Kaleb wasn’t going to be there to say it and I wanted to be helpful, if I could. 120
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Some belated words about Kaleb Horton, who died a year ago today. I was supposed to speak at his memorial last fall, but I got covid and ended up stumbling around my house in a bathrobe instead of trying to say something thoughtful to a roomful of people who felt as grief-stricken as I did. 2304
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I was envisioning something along the lines of an Archie Comics-style underworld of juvenile delinquents: “nice hamburger you’ve got there; be a shame if something happened to it.” 010
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Late-breaking entry for that best TV shows of the century list. 070
Andy Zax @andyzax.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Life is like that; you start off thinking you’re gonna be Marv Marvelous and then you end up as Waxy Tom Nerf. 060
