Recently, Joey Jenkins and I were giving Vinylandia its once every 7 years cleaning. I guess you could call it the 7 year itch, maybe the 7 year sneeze, as that's all I did for two days afterwards. You would not believe the amount of dust that accumulates when you are sorting and cleaning vintage vinyl... Anyhow, we found quite a few gems tucked away in all the nooks and crannies. One of the best finds is this collection of covers that Chris Guttmacher has set aside over the years. These are THE  "Bad Boys At Nite"...

So here we have another batch of LP's with artwork in the "Modern Rock" style of the early 80's.  Kicking it off with a Paul Butterfield Back to the Future cover and into Lucifer's Friend/Uriah Heep golden throat John Lawton's 1981 make-over Heartbeat...

 

The second installment in my October favorites series starts with an opera LP from Brazil, it's a single LP of excerpts from Johann Strauss' "O Morcego" or "Der Fledermaus" or "the Bat" if you must.  Issued on the Copacabana label, the sound quality is radio broadcast level and the performance by the Zurich Radio Orchestra is fine, but it's the cover art that makes this a Halloween treat. Cool record store sticker from the Loja Gomes store on Av. Afonso Pena. It appears that the store was once in the center of Belo Horizonte-a huge city about 300 miles above Rio...





Up next...a classic American mix



Folkways and Edgar Allen Poe...Folkways records released this version of the Pit & the Pendulum in 1967, the orator is David Kurlan.  I was abe to dig up a little about  his Broadway work, mostly roles in musicals. He also did a couple of other Folkways voice overs. His reading is straight forward and very effective, kind of like the polar opposite of the Lou Reeds double CD nightmare based on Edgar Allan Poe. The LP comes with a small pamphlet containing instructions for teachers as well a sheet of transparency images for the old mimeograph...