​It started as a simple question: What albums would you leave your unborn children, if you knew you were on borrowed time and may not be around to show them the way. At first I asked for albums for sons, but then it grew broader, not out of needing to pacify the PC-thug in me, but to make sure everyone, regardless of gender, had a sort of Rosetta Stone of musical history in their hands.

You could leave them pristine vinyl versions of these, a collection of cassettes, or maybe just a diamond-covered flash drive, if are so inclined. As for me, I will also leave my unborn child my Rdio account. That's not a paid endorsement, that's just me being expedient.

To get some obvious picks out of the way, the entire Beatles catalog will come standard with being my child, like seat-belts in cars. As will George Strait's Strait Out Of The Box, and ZZ Top's catalog.

More >>

​"Never come with a list."

Those words of advice came from a vendor about four hours into the fall Austin Record Convention, at which point we'd purchased only a single piece of vinyl, a Lovin' Spoonful greatest-hits album complete with commemorative, frameable photos of the band in the sleeve. We weren't interested in collectible Beatles records or Elvis 45s. We wanted the obscure stuff. We didn't find it.

We heard a lot of this: "Yeah, I have that record at home. But I don't bring it to conventions because that stuff doesn't sell." Meanwhile we're standing there, crumpled list in one hand, cash in the other. Regarding Mel Tormé, one vendor told us. "I have that record in my personal collection. It's in my beatnik section."

More >>

Two meaty man-slabs of Cramps-style psychobilly make up this new release from Beau Beasley's KGBeasley & the Leather Violence project.

Encased in a hilariously profane pink cover, with a beefy man literally banging out with his wang out, the seven-inch - no pun intended, seriously. Come on, we mean it. Really - is a crusty exercise in depraved psychobilly, taking Lux Interior's signature template to a dungeon and beating it senseless with a leather whip.

Side A's "Sonic Bondage" opens with Screamin' Jay Hawkins howl before Beasley bellows like he's eating gravel over a Trashmen drum beat, ending with a diseased saxophone vamp. Side B, meanwhile, is a veritable postcard from the seamy side of Montrose, intoning the pleasures of a night at the neighborhood's leather 'n' Levi's playhouse, Ripcord: Fairview Street stories of locked doors, black-leather love, hungry bears and menacing spikes.

You really can't get any more H-Town than our very own Battle Rifle and its latest vinyl EP, Guaranteed To Rattle Dat Trunk!!! Unless, that is, we taught Mayor Bill White to how to make blast beats and had Quanell X rhyme over them and the pair played guerrilla shows outside the Rodeo during a ZZ Top concert.

Guaranteed runs about ten minutes in length over two sides of "Luv Ya Blue" colored vinyl, with the Oilers logo emblazoned throughout. Its eight or so tracks would make a good soundtrack for a highlight reel of Mike Munchak and Bruce Matthews' greatest gridiron beat-downs. Hell, the EP even has an ominous picture of the Astrodome on it, looking like ever more like the pissed-off and forgotten landmark that it is.

More >>