Incredibly Strange Music series

These two books are titled "Incredibly Strange Music", and that's just what it's about: interviews with record collectors and/or performers who acquire music of the bizarre, the kitschy, and the mostly indescribable. Featuring the Cramps, Eartha Kitt, Martin Denny, Rusty Warren (yikes!), Yma Sumac and many more, it's a quirky but affectionate look at the fringes of vinyl collecting, and yes, a sad appreciation of an era more and more difficult to maintain. As most all of the interviewees complain, the days of finding LP treasures in thrift stores or junk shops is pretty much over, since album price guides and online searching has sucked most of the gold from the marketplace.                                                                                                                  

 

                        It's been a few years since I read these, and in re-reading them, I was struck by how much affection was expressed for the weird. Whether it's the tiki exotica of Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, or the electronic experimentation of Robert Moog and Gershon Kingsley, or the innumerable rockabilly, r&b, humor or country albums mentioned, every single collector expresses sheer joy in the treasures they've managed to amass over the years --- and the joy they feel in sharing the information with others.