Treehouse Records enters final weeks: Treehouse Records still has plenty of albums to sell ahead of the Dec. 31 closing. Staff members continue to clear out the basement where the owner stashed new vinyl and used records he didn’t have time to price. “People assume that everything has been picked through. It hasn’t,” said owner Mark Trehus. Trehus said his decision to retire is due to many factors, and the biggest is that he sees better things on the other side. Business has been fine, but it’s time to move on, he said. “This has been an absolute dream job, but it allowed me to continue kind of being an adolescent most of my life,” said Trehus, who recently married. “Now I’m facing adulthood at 60 and loving it.”
The Visual Side of the Vinyl Shop, “Queen City Records: Record Stores of Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky” captures the essence of local indie record stores via photography and interviews: Growing up on Grand Vista Avenue in Pleasant Ridge, Mike Spitz would often visit Everybody’s Records, a neighborhood and city institution for lovers of recorded music since 1978…Spitz, age 50, has been living in Los Angeles since 2000, so remembering the favorite record stores of his Cincinnati youth — he also has kind words for ones that have not survived, such as Norwood’s Record Theater and the Wizard and Ozarka outposts near University of Cincinnati — may seem purely an exercise in nostalgia. But it isn’t. He’s turned it into a new book, Queen City Records: Record Stores of Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky.
Discogs Surpasses 37 Million Record Releases Available Internationally Through Marketplace, 27.5 Million Vinyl Records Account For Nearly 75% Of Listings: Discogs, the World’s most extensive user-built database of music, announces a monumental landmark today as it exceeds 27.5M vinyl recordings and over 37M physical music items in total listed for sale in the Global online Marketplace. In retrospect, Discogs celebrated its 15th Anniversary in November 2015 with nearly 10M releases. Over the following 24-months, the Discogs Marketplace has grown more than 370% culminating in a record-setting 130,000 orders over the first week of December 2017, another landmark cementing the Discogs Marketplace as the essential music marketplace of the World.
Pro-Ject Essential III Review: Solid Performance From A Value Turntable: It’s time for an upgrade, but maybe not the stage where a $2,000 audiophile turntable is in the cards. Some vinyl junkies hit up garage sales and vintage stereo equipment dealers in search of a used turntable. Even if you luck out and find something affordable, it’s likely to need service, including a replacement belt and cartridge. Why bother, when the Pro-Ject Essential III is there as a $299 value option? This is an award-winning turntable from an Austrian company that’s developed a rabid following among audiophiles. Pro-Ject sent me one to try out and it quickly proved why it’s such a popular choice.
Recalling a misguided youth spinning vinyl: With the revival of vinyl records in the market place, plus having been a radio announcer during my somewhat misguided youth, let’s harken back for a moment to the early 1960s and the control room of KCLA-AM — 1400 on your radio dial — 1000 watts strong broadcasting from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and spin a few memories. While disc jockeys were the trendsetters of early radio, working in a more tranquil atmosphere we preferred to call ourselves announcers. Either way, it didn’t matter. We were all spinning vinyl.
