Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
The arty, retro, sometimes eccentric world of Cow Records in Ocean Beach
For Greg Hildebrand, crackles and pops make it snap
Greg Hildebrand and his group of friends’ LP, “Chimpos”
“Crackles and pops?” says Greg Hildebrand. “They’re the most valuable part of vinyl recordings. They give them individuality.” Hildebrand owns one of the better-known havens of hard-to-find LPs in the county, Cow Records in OB, and he doesn’t apologize for vinyl’s lo-tech imperfections. “I like to repeat something David Peele (of The Lower East Side Band) said, which is, ‘Crackles and pops are natural, because there are crackles and pops in life.’ Vinyl is personal. Take The Wailers,” he says of the Northwest rock band.
“My copy of their LP The Fabulous Wailers, ever since I was a kid, was never in great condition. All the crackles and pops defined my album. So the crackles and pops are exactly where they are supposed to be on my version of this album. If I listened to anybody else’s album, no matter what condition it was in, the crackles and pops wouldn’t be in the exact right spot. It wouldn’t be my personalized copy of that album. One of the most expensive albums I have is the Christian Marclay LP, which is valued somewhere between $1800 and $2200” — his art is at museums around the world, including the LA County Museum of Art. “He made a [performance] piece in an edition of 300 that was from his show in New York where he had several turntables with New York art folks present. And he took the LPs to the opening of this show, laid them face down on the floor, and 300 guests stepped on the 300 LPs. And the records developed crackles and pops. And so those crackles and pops are [mixed] as if they were the voice of a singer. The crackles and pops are the stars of these $2000 records! So if you’re against crackles and pops, you don’t want that record.”
These days, says Hildebrand an increasing number of folks belonging to what I might term “the younger generation” are making their way into the arty, retro, sometimes eccentric world of his Cow Records shop. “All different ages come in here. But a lot of youth. Vinyl is cool. I asked one girl, ‘You can’t be more than 16, 17, but here you are buying [vinyl] records.’ And she said, ‘Oh, it’s more than that. At Mission Bay High School, I started the Record Club. And now there’s three vinyl record clubs there. Because once you get enough people, everybody can’t really share. There are too many people.’” Oftentimes, says Hildebrand, kids start out into the vinyl world when they’re given the old stuff by an aunt or an uncle. Or maybe a partner dies, and the survivor will come directly to him. “People want to give me, say, their late husband’s entire record collection, for free. Because it’s not just records. This is their whole emotional life collected on these tracks. Whatever the case, the kids are interested. That’s the main thing.”
Hildebrand is a musician and composer himself, and a bunch of his musical friends who grew up in Ocean Beach in the ‘70s, have come back together and are just releasing this record, Chimpos. By now, these buddies have developed connections, and some have become big time music stars. Oceanside guitarist Stevie Salas (Mick Jagger, etc) was here to record his track “Apache Surf” (he is Apache) for the LP. Chimpos is being pressed in France by Vinyl de Paris. It’s coming out April 2, selling for $14.93.
All this activity makes you wonder: could the rumors of vinyl’s demise have been exaggerated?
Here's something you might be interested in.
The arty, retro, sometimes eccentric world of Cow Records in Ocean Beach
For Greg Hildebrand, crackles and pops make it snap
The arty, retro, sometimes eccentric world of Cow Records in Ocean Beach
For Greg Hildebrand, crackles and pops make it snap
Greg Hildebrand and his group of friends’ LP, “Chimpos”
“Crackles and pops?” says Greg Hildebrand. “They’re the most valuable part of vinyl recordings. They give them individuality.” Hildebrand owns one of the better-known havens of hard-to-find LPs in the county, Cow Records in OB, and he doesn’t apologize for vinyl’s lo-tech imperfections. “I like to repeat something David Peele (of The Lower East Side Band) said, which is, ‘Crackles and pops are natural, because there are crackles and pops in life.’ Vinyl is personal. Take The Wailers,” he says of the Northwest rock band.
“My copy of their LP The Fabulous Wailers, ever since I was a kid, was never in great condition. All the crackles and pops defined my album. So the crackles and pops are exactly where they are supposed to be on my version of this album. If I listened to anybody else’s album, no matter what condition it was in, the crackles and pops wouldn’t be in the exact right spot. It wouldn’t be my personalized copy of that album. One of the most expensive albums I have is the Christian Marclay LP, which is valued somewhere between $1800 and $2200” — his art is at museums around the world, including the LA County Museum of Art. “He made a [performance] piece in an edition of 300 that was from his show in New York where he had several turntables with New York art folks present. And he took the LPs to the opening of this show, laid them face down on the floor, and 300 guests stepped on the 300 LPs. And the records developed crackles and pops. And so those crackles and pops are [mixed] as if they were the voice of a singer. The crackles and pops are the stars of these $2000 records! So if you’re against crackles and pops, you don’t want that record.”
These days, says Hildebrand an increasing number of folks belonging to what I might term “the younger generation” are making their way into the arty, retro, sometimes eccentric world of his Cow Records shop. “All different ages come in here. But a lot of youth. Vinyl is cool. I asked one girl, ‘You can’t be more than 16, 17, but here you are buying [vinyl] records.’ And she said, ‘Oh, it’s more than that. At Mission Bay High School, I started the Record Club. And now there’s three vinyl record clubs there. Because once you get enough people, everybody can’t really share. There are too many people.’” Oftentimes, says Hildebrand, kids start out into the vinyl world when they’re given the old stuff by an aunt or an uncle. Or maybe a partner dies, and the survivor will come directly to him. “People want to give me, say, their late husband’s entire record collection, for free. Because it’s not just records. This is their whole emotional life collected on these tracks. Whatever the case, the kids are interested. That’s the main thing.”
Hildebrand is a musician and composer himself, and a bunch of his musical friends who grew up in Ocean Beach in the ‘70s, have come back together and are just releasing this record, Chimpos. By now, these buddies have developed connections, and some have become big time music stars. Oceanside guitarist Stevie Salas (Mick Jagger, etc) was here to record his track “Apache Surf” (he is Apache) for the LP. Chimpos is being pressed in France by Vinyl de Paris. It’s coming out April 2, selling for $14.93.
All this activity makes you wonder: could the rumors of vinyl’s demise have been exaggerated?
Comments