Sunday, January 22, 2012

Zine Review: WTF Records




WTF Records  Issue #1

Full disclosure: I am an aficionado of Dana Countryman’s Cool & Strange Music zine & the Incredibly Strange Music books from RE/search Publications. Therefore the moment I stumbled across the WTF Records zine, without a blink of hesitation I ordered it.

Vinyl records will always be my “media of choice” in the way that iPods /  mp3s might be the media of choice for teenagers who are growing up now in thirty years, regardless of what technological formats have arisen to supplant iPods in the intervening decades. There is magic in the LP grooves, in letting the needle drop. So too, there is magic in the endless diversity of records that were created and released in the golden era of vinyl.

WTF Records features some of the most oddball, quirky, peculiar, bordering on depraved records and record jackets ever pressed. Finding titles like “A.A. Allen Preaching God is a Killer” and “My Lips Are For Blowing” in a dusty flea market somewhere is akin to unearthing shards of the holy grail. One wonders how these records ever came to exist, and how by some stroke of serendipity, into your hands (and ears).

Joe Wallace covers everything like a sardonic journalist introducing you to the most beloved archives in the library. There’s Christmas with Colonel Sanders and The Six Million Dollar Man, sex and bondage with the Ohio Players, the dour female stalking records of Conway Twitty … this zine is a virtual feast of weirdness and wonder. One request to Joe, our tourguide – more, please!!!

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