Dang, what the heck is happening in that tunnel? Everything’s gone crazy!
So as I’m sure most of you have heard, Harvey Pekar passed away this week. He was an incredibly influential figure in comics and his death, despite his 70 years of age, was quite a shock for most of us. I think I really believed he would be around forever, being cranky and writing comics.
Inspired in part by Pekar, I drew this two-page story Record Collecting and the Cartoonist Tradition about my personal history of how I got started collecting records, and its connection to the history of underground/alternative comics. I posted it on Twitter first, but now I’m posting it here to show you as well. Click the images to see them bigger.
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Fables of Freewheel – $47 till the next page goes up!
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Oh Harv… I hope he’s giving someone a hard time wherever he has gone.
I’m pretty omnivorous musically, which makes record collecting great fun. For the $10 I would pay on Amazon, I can usually get three or four weird sides in used stores. And while we seem to think the Internet has everything, there are actually thousands of really strange records that have been lost to the ages, only available on vinyl. Thanks for posting that collecting comic!
Yeah that’s what’s awesome about records! I love the idea of all these records floating around out there, with this music on them nobody’s heard in years, maybe even 50+ years! It’s just sitting out there somewhere waiting to be heard. I bet if there was a CD or tape like that you wouldn’t even be able to play it anymore after 50+ years! That’s what’s so great about records!
very nice. other than stuff that was only available on vinyl, i’ve mostly only bought records for a buck or two at thrift stores. my white whale is the mtx cover of road to ruin. there’s a tour only pressing that’s half blue and half yellow that they only did 300 of, but even the regular version they only did 1700… i have an alert set for it on ebay, but it’s always too expensive for me.
Oh yeah, I LOVE buying cheap vinyl at thrift stores and yard sales! Where my mom & stepdad live they had a huge neighborhood yard sale recently and I really cleaned up! There was a guy selling all his old records and 45s for 75 cents each!!! I picked up some great Roy Orbison albums (not worth jack, but just great for a listen) and some really awesome old 45s from Tommy James & the Shondells and Sam Cooke and stuff.
At the moment, my white whale is the Bouncing Souls’ Ugly Bill 7″ on green vinyl (preferably with all the inserts). I won one on eBay once but the guy never sent it to me and I had to get PayPal on him to get my money back. I would’ve rather had the record!
oh yeah, i forgot i’ve got some great ones from garage sales too! some misc johnny cash, sons of the pioneers, and other fun old stuff. i’ve also got some great stuff from when my uncle was getting rid of his records… a couple tom waits albums, a ton of old delta blues, and an r crumb record!
my most recent purchase (and the most i’ve ever spent on vinyl) was i preordered the live conan obrien record from third man records… haven’t received it yet, but i’m sure looking forward to listening to it!
Oh dang, I somehow had not heard that he died! Wow.
Records are too much hassle for me in too many ways, but for some reason it comforts me to know there are people still caring for them.
Oh man, sorry to be the one to break the news! I’m surprised you hadn’t yet been inundated by all the people of the internet posting their “RIP Harvey” posts and whatnot. It’s really a terrible loss for our comics community, even though he was 70 it seems like he was still too young to go just yet!