A Record Blog

Records by the Foot

Posted on August 16, 2017 at 1:23 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog, Product Spotlight

Whether you’re a professional set decorator or prop stylist who needs to build a record collection from scratch or just a record buyer who likes cheap surprises, check out our Foot of Records. We offer a grab bag of assorted records measured by the foot, or approximately 75 per foot. Think of all the things you could do with 75 records that you paid only $22 for! Arts and crafts types can find infinite uses for both records and their sleeves, from coasters to tote bags to bookends. DJs may find gold to sample when presented with a broad mix of unexpected options.

Please note: Condition of records varies; some may contain scratches and flaws, and sleeves typically show some overall wear.

New Arrivals: Vintage Vinyl

Posted on February 1, 2017 at 12:00 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog

Over the next month we will be filling our bins with fresh new arrivals! Follow us on Instagram to find out what’s going in and when! We have all the classics from The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles… as well as some records from Jazz greats John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman. Pick up releases by Kate Bush, Talking Heads, and Devo. It is quite a great collection of popular genres this time around.

In your home: Record Storage

Posted on October 21, 2016 at 3:45 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog, In Your Home, Inspirations

In small city apartments, we have to constantly think outside the box for ways to accommodate our belongings. And a record collection is no exception. It needs to be stored, orderly, compact, and on display. So we’ve come up with a few ideas for media consoles and record storage based on items we’ve currently got in stock. Get creative and get organized!

Record Sale 10/15-10/23!

Posted on October 14, 2016 at 5:01 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog, Epic Sale

Dates: Sat. 10/15 – Sun. 10/23

Details:

In order to make room for a ton of new inventory, we’re clearing out our current record stock.
All vinyl will be on sale: 10% off regular priced records, 10 ($5) records for $20, and buy an FG tote for $10 and fill it to the max with dollar-records!!
We’ll have the listening station set up for testing out any unfamiliar albums.
In-store only so see you in the showroom!

We’ve also got some great record storage/media console pieces in the showroom right now! Check ’em out here.

A Record Blog Issue No. 4: Jazz Hands

Posted on January 29, 2016 at 9:42 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog

We just received a new batch of records that have been cleaned, priced and are now sitting in our bins, available for purchase! I emphasize “cleaned” in this case because they were not in the best shape when they arrived. I see this sort of thing, and a little piece of my heart dies because of the high quality of the labels and artists in this particular stack. I wonder how someone could have just left Miles Davis and Nina Simone to a life of squalor in a basement filled with muck, grime and space dust.

I continue to die inside and not because the titles in this chunk could sell for a pretty penny if they were properly looked after over the years. Making a quick buck on records doesn’t really concern me when selling at Furnish Green. I want customers to enjoy our records at an affordable price. I try to curate the collection with a bit of everything (heavy hitters, collection fillers, unknown gems, $1 records), despite the fact that our main focus is furniture.

In this bunch, the condition of the covers/media may not be collector-worthy, but if you’ve ever been curious about diving into jazz/soul, this would be a great start! Although there will be some surface noise on most of these, it does not overpower the beauty in the grooves. Records have to take a pretty bad beating to become nonfunctional, and that hasn’t happened just yet.

Some classic labels we have in this round:

Blue Note
Stax
Mo Town
Decca
Impulse
Atlantic
Colpix
Philadelphia International

And now a handful of the featured artists:

Ray Charles
Charles Mingus
Miles Davis
Nina Simone
Herbie Hancock
Dianna Ross
Billie Holiday
Theolonious Monk

Fun Fact: After his contract with Atlantic ran out, Ray Charles released Genius + Soul = Jazz on Impulse. The record became an instant hit, and it helped launch Impulse into what it is today, a showcase of some of the finest jazz musicians!

– Tim

A Record Blog: Amon Düül II

Posted on August 5, 2015 at 3:03 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog

Hailing from West Germany, this band released Made in Germany in 1975. They formed in the late 1960’s and were one of the founders/developers of the genre Krautrock.

Krautrock to me is loose enough to jam around and feels highly psychedelic. It involves an array of instrumentation that ranges from strings to electronics. The genre name was humorously given to a fleet of German bands by the British press. Some such bands include: CAN, Faust, Neu!, Popol Vul, etc.

We have an original copy of the U.S. release of Made in Gemany currently available in our showroom for $15. The lp is in excellent shape! Super clean, crisp, and guaranteed to melt your mind. There is a promo cut out in the top right corner of the jacket.

A Record Blog: Post 2

Posted on May 27, 2015 at 3:46 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog

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Harry Belafonte – Calypso RCA Victor 1956

I’m telling you all about this album because it is crucial to have for this upcoming summer season! Like windows open, rum in hand, friends by your side kinda crucial!

I have it priced at $10: the record itself is very clean, there should be little to no background noise and the cover is still in beautiful shape! This is a first print in mono. The colors of the cover have remained unscathed by sun and storage conditions after all these decades!

This is the third release from the Harlem-born Harry Belafonte and is probably his most popular record to date. Calypso includes Belafonte’s hit recording of the Jamaican folk song “Day O”. Belafonte’s recording of this song is known worldwide and has been a pop-culture staple for decades; played at major sporting events, referenced in movies, etc. Aside from “Day O,” this lp also comes equipped with the upbeat “I Do Adore Her”, “Come Back Liza” and “Man Smart (Woman Smarter)”!

Being a pop culture icon, its not surprising that Harry Belafonte showed up in my purview in several varied incarnations.

When I was really young, I remember watching reruns of the comedy show The Smothers Brothers. Controversial for its time, the show featured a menagerie of influential artists of the 1960s. In the late 60s CBS censors cut an entire Belafonte song and television performance from an episode of The Smothers Brothers. The cut segment was a performance of the song “Lord, Don’t Stop the Carnival” which was performed in front of a montage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Here is a link to a video of that unaired segment:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFE4N57ibUQ)

Harry Belafonte showed up again in my life through appearances on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. Later “Day-O” itself reared its head in an unforgettable scene in Tim Burton’s 1988 cult classic film, Beetlejuice:

You can take this baby home for only $10!!!!

Introduction/The Sweet Collection/The Best Show

Posted on April 29, 2015 at 5:17 pm by Furnish Green / A Record Blog

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I want to welcome everyone to the first post of A Record Blog. This is a recurring blog feature that will cover all things records and mostly will highlight the vinyl we carry in our showroom. Some of you may not know this, but, alongside our vintage furniture stock, we carry an affordable vinyl record selection. Our collection spans most genres of music covering rock, r&b, jazz, soul, country, disco and rap. All records are reasonably priced with a $1 section to boot! Make sure to stay tuned for the occasional record sale here and there. If you are interested in inventory updates and sales please email us c/o (Tim Vinyl) in the email subject to furnishgreen@gmail.com. Happy digging!

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The Band: The Sweet

The Sweet is a pretty amazing glam rock band from the UK that formed in the early 1970s. They sound like Queen and T. Rex dry humping. I really didn’t know much about this band growing up aside from them being “that band whose song was featured in Wayne’s World” where Tia Carrere and her band Crucial Taunt played it throughout the whole movie. The song was “Ballroom Blitz” and it is quite an epic and incredible tune! Perfect for nostalgic roller/ice skating parties or crashing your car into a brick wall at a high velocity of speed on speed.

I was told by a friend of mine to give The Sweet a chance while record shopping in Pittsburgh back in the day. The idea was intriguing but the band still didn’t appeal to me. At this point I had discovered a few more of their hits (“Love Is Like Oxygen” and “Little Willy”). It was not until hearing the heavy rotation of The Sweet on one of my favorite radio shows turned live/archived podcast, which I will dive into after I tell you why you need this record. The lp we have for sale is a collection of some of The Sweet’s finest songs. The pressing is from 1973 from the Bell record label. Bell Records released a lot of popular rock and roll and R&B music with acts such as Gary Glitter and the Bay City Rollers, but I am most familiar with The Delfonics releases coming out through Bell. This collection comes equipped with “Little Willy,” “Wig-Wam Bam” and “Blockbuster”! This comp is a great window into the discography of The Sweet, and the vinyl and sleeve are both in excellent condition! We have it priced at $15 and it’s ready to move onto someone’s home platter.

The Sweet pops back into my life:

The first time I heard The Sweet’s “Blockbuster” was on a radio broadcast of The Best Show on WFMU! The sirens went off and I was hooked. Aside from “Action”, this single went on to become one of the staple anthems of The Best Show. This 3 hour comedy/call in show out of New Jersey has gained worldwide popularity with fans calling in from all over the globe. You can tune in for the live broadcast every Tuesday from 9pm-Midnight or download the podcast from iTunes after each episode airs.

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More about The Best Show:

The Best Show was created by writer/comedian/music video director/lender of voice, Tom Scharpling, and his comedic partner/all star drummer Jon Wurster (Superchunk/Bob Mould/Mountain Goats). It’s hard to really explain this show, but, essentially, it provides its listeners with a sense of escape and community in the three hours of music, comedy and general topic discussion. The show features steady appearances from characters like the brash furry comedian Gary the Squirrel to the eclectic motley crew of Wurster’s characters and regular callers . I highly recommend checking out this show as it just might be the keystone missing in your life.

Aside from the weekly aired The Best Show, Scharpling and Wurster currently have an amazing box set out on the Numero Group label that documents over 20 hours of comedy. The box set features Wurster’s innumerable call-ins to The Best Show under the guise of hundreds of fictional characters from the imaginary town of Newbridge, NJ. The amount of care and precision that went into this thing is amazing.

*You can learn more about this box set here and Tom Scharpling’s The Best Show here.

Stay tuned for further posts from A Record Blog!

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