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Monday, August 18, 2008

Books and Music on the internet

Today marks a new generation for moneyblows books & music. We are hibernating the moneyblows.com address for awhile, ditching the virtual "storefront" in favor of stashing our stuff in the internet bazaar. The web storefront has become a standard feature of e-commerce, helping us grow our world market. There's a special place in our hearts for the aggregators who host premium services such as moneyblows books & music. We trundle around in America past, giving new life to old flea market treasures. We have been at this for ten plus years now, so we have learned a lot about stopping the advance of old age in collectible books, magazines, and records. We anticipate what someone might want and maybe we have it when they come looking. The internet is great for that.
So, here are links to some of the places you can still find moneyblows books & music, while our legacy address of moneyblows.com is being re-purposed.
http://moneyblows.gemm.com/
http://moneyblows.musicstack.com/
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BooksBrowse?vendorclientid=28647&page=CLIENT
http://www.amazon.com/seller/workbook
http://base.google.com/base/search?authorid=1044995
http://www.moneyblows.net

To our wonderful customers for record styli, we eagerly await your feedback on our new approach to self-service record stylus ordering. Please use this link to browse through pictures, and then just call us when you see the one you want! Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.pellecchia/Needles
And, while promoting a picasaweb album, might as well also point you to album covers we have recently posted:
http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.pellecchia/MusicLPSpecials
Let us know if you like to shop for record styli this way. Moneyblows Books & Music was the first internet only store to enable self-service stylus selection, so we have done our part to get some old turntables rolling again. Viva vinyl.

Friday, August 15, 2008

A story and a side note

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I was sitting around at my brother's record store, in the shadow of the White Mountains, listening to some blues.
"Is that Gatemouth Brown," I asked.
"You're close," said the bro.
"T-Bone Walker."
"Close. next generation. Swingmasters."
"I was gonna guess that."
"You were scared to."
"No bad notes, that's for sure."
The phone rang.
"Yes, ma'am, we'll be right over," my brother said after listening for a minute.
He locked up the shop and we hopped into my 1987 Volvo 240 wagon with the graffiti all over the headliner.
A couple miles down the road past some mountain vistas, my brother pointed, and we pulled into the driveway.
A nice lady came out and Harlan introduced her to me. She led us down the hatch way into a dank cellar.
All around, there were boxes of old vinyl records. She gave us the tour.
"There's these," she said, pointing to some dank mildewy boxes.
"Those over there." We took a peek at the frayed dust jackets of tag sale detritus. Beethoven box sets. Stereo demonstration records. Old 45s.
Squeezing through the cramped aisle of the tiny basement, a light peered from the distance.
Harlan said to the lady, "can I show him that?"
We followed her toward the light. The dank smelly boxes gave way to some tidy shelves. The shelves had records on them. Ones that didn't smell.
The doorway to a little office was creaked open. That's where the light was coming from.
"This was where he worked," she said.
Until he dropped dead of a heart attack while skiing, she went on. Her late husband was pretty close to retiring from his teaching career. This was his lair, where he sold and traded records by mail order. His great hope was to retire, and then spend full time transferring his massive record inventory to the internet for sale at collector prices.
We tiptoed into the brightly lit office. Not a hair was out of place. I looked straight ahead at the shelf opposite me, just above eye level.
I reached for a record album that was displayed up there.
"This!" I hope I didn't startle the lady.
"I used to vacuum the floor to this record!," I said, startling myself.
By way of explanation, I said, you know how loud a vacuum cleaner is. Well, I would play this record even louder than the vacuum cleaner. It changed your whole perspective on mundane household tasks. Made you feel like you were in a widescreen epic film instead of chasing dust mites on the floor.
"And...."I climaxed, opening the box to show the booklet accompanying the record, "the liner notes are by my good friend, Michael H. Price."
This was none other than the rare limited, annotated reissue of The Big Country soundtrack, by the estimable composer Jerome Moross.
You could have heard a pin drop.
My brother Harlan let out a big gasp.
"We were just listening to the Swingmasters Revue," he noted accurately.
I put the record back up on the shelf.
We all looked at each other.
"I guess we better finish this job," somebody said.

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Side Note: Moneyblows.com has been down for all of August and our hosting company hasn't been able to get us back up yet. We apologize for the inconvenience