Melted Wax—Part 2

When A Vinyl Collection Goes Up In Flames

Earlier this year I wrote about a few albums that were part of a 1,000+ vinyl collection destroyed by the Eaton Fire. This is a follow up about 10 more albums I’ve wanted to reach for in recent months. You can read the first Melted Wax essay HERE.

Substack tells me this post is too long, so be sure to click thru to read the whole thing.

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I recently caught a show at a Pasadena vinyl shop/venue.

My friend and I browsed the Healing Force of the Universe bins while waiting for the Uni Boys to go on. A display copy of The Replacements’ Hootenany caught our eye, prompting a conversation about all the vinyl each of us lost in the Eaton Fire.

We’d both been collecting on and off since our teens, lugging our collections around from various apartments to rehearsal rooms, garages, storage spaces, and finally to the homes we bought to raise our families in Altadena.

Neither of us has seriously started collecting again since the fire, aside from the few albums generously gifted or donated to us.

We’re hosting a vinyl donation event & acoustic show to help fire-impacted vinyl lovers rebuild their collections. If you’re in the LA area, please stop by for this family-friendly, all ages afternoon event on Sunday, Dec. 14.

I’ll occasionally pop into a record shop and flip through the bins, but the thrill is still mostly gone.

Talking it out with another fire-impacted crate digger, I realized that more than anything else it’s the origin stories that are stopping me from diving back in. My mind keeps telling me that I can replace the objects, but I won’t be able to replace those personal connections.

Then a friend of a friend mails me an album from England, my daughter’s bestie gives us a stack of her vinyl doubles, an artist offers to replace their albums for free, or Altadena Musicians puts together a vinyl library to help fire-impacted collectors start rebuilding their collections.

Suddenly I can imagine having new stories. Next thing you know I’m thinking about some of the albums I’ve been missing most…and wouldn’t mind replacing. Here are a few I’ve found myself wanting to reach for lately.

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Strange Man, Changed Man by Bram Tchaikovsky

No self-respecting power pop fan’s collection would be complete without this late ‘70s gem. Strange Man, Changed Man has been easy to find around LA in recent years for a few bucks, which is interesting for a band that isn’t exactly a household name in the US. That’s why I had a handful of copies (that I intended to give as gifts to a few uninitiated friends) when the fire struck and reduced the local surplus.

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Transformer by Lou Reed

I remember the sense of awe I felt hearing “Satellite Of Love,” “Vicious,” and “Perfect Day” as a teen. I was already a budding Velvet Underground fan by then, but Transformer unlocked some other part of my psyche that I wasn’t aware of up to that point. I’d been carrying this worn copy around ever since. I gave it a lot of spins over the decades and it informed many mixed tapes in the ‘80s and mixed CDs in the ‘90s.

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Globe Of Frogs by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

I swore off vinyl for many years before getting lured back in. That was a decade or so ago when I stumbled upon a copy of this Robyn Hitchcock album. Like much of my ‘80s vinyl, the original copy went missing sometime in the ‘90s. So, I grabbed this replacement on a lark. I created a rule for myself after that—any time I came across a Robyn Hitchcock album, I would buy it (bank account permitting). I ended up with a pretty healthy stack, but this one always held special significance.

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Scratch ‘N’ Sniff by The Whiffs

The Whiffs are a hooky rock band out of Kansas City, Missouri. I fell hard for their blend of Ramones energy and ‘70s power pop hooks, interviewing them for both Big Takeover and Remember The Lightning. I don’t buy a lot of new vinyl (and I have a self-imposed rule that I try not to accept free vinyl from indie labels or bands), but I couldn’t resist buying a copy of this incredible collection from 2023.

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Horses by Patti Smith

Horses was—and, in my opinion, remains—required listening for anybody with a taste for punk rock. This album really opened my eyes to the art-damaged origins of that amorphous genre, connecting the dots between the hardcore bands that caught my attention in the early ‘80s and all of the ‘60s/’70s music that laid the groundwork for it. Plus: I grew up in Redondo Beach, so…

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Always Comes Back by SVT

SVT was a late ‘70s/early ‘80s San Francisco band I’d mostly forgotten about until I read Bill Kopp’s excellent book, Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave. I was re-investigating bands featured in Kopp’s history of that famed indie label and found myself stuck on the track “Always Come Back” for weeks. The equally impressive double vinyl collection was a splurge worth every penny.

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While You Were Out by Soul Asylum

The last installment in this series featured two legendary Minneapolis bands, The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, but Soul Asylum’s While You Were Out will always be one of my favorite albums from that era. The whole collection is great, but “Closer To The Stars” captures the band’s ferocious proto-alt rock peak while displaying the amazing songwriting that eventually led to their commercial success a few years later. Grant Young’s muscly drumming is fantastic throughout.

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The Best Of… by The Specials

I really wanted the first two Specials releases on new vinyl, but could never justify the expense in those moments when I held them in my hands—so I settled on this “Best Of…” collection to tide me over. It scratched my itch for tracks such as “Gangsters,” “A Message To You Rudy,” and “Ghost Town” (and sounded great on the turntable), but it also meant I was probably still going to buy the first two albums as well. I still might.

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Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco

Wilco was the main band I followed out of the ‘90s and into the early 2000s. I already loved A.M., Being There, and especially Summerteeth, but this album hit different. It’s hard for me not listen to the whole collection when “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” “Kamera,” “Jesus, Etc.,” and “Heavy Metal Drummer” come on. I’d only had this one on vinyl for a few years, but it got lots of spins.

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Out Of Our Heads by The Rolling Stones

The tattered ‘60s mono version of this album was among the oldest in my collection. I got it from my next door neighbor’s mom as a tween, around the time she introduced her son and me to a lot of British Invasion music. “The Last Time” is still my favorite Stones track because of how I discovered it through this specific piece of vinyl.

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Remind the Substack algorithm that RTL exists!

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Melted Wax

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