July 29, 2006 Section: Arizona Living Edition: Final Chaser Page: E1
EACH THURSDAY, GROUP GIVES NOSTALGIA A SPIN Kathleen Quilligan, The Arizona Republic
It's Shey Blanchette's turn, and her record has a pink label.
"A pink one!"
The eight men in the semicircle of plastic chairs groan as Blanchette hands the record to that night's DJ, Samuel Hill.
She smiles and smoothes her Elvis print dress as the needle hits the record's first groove and music spills out of the two speakers. The men's mutters switch to discussion of Blanchette's song, Meant to Be, by Mack Vickery.
A giddy Blanchette rocks forward in her chair.
"Now, there they are discussing my record, and I'm thinking, 'Umm, hmm, they like it.' "
Blanchette is the only woman in the nameless group of self-taught musicologists who gather to take turns playing music from their vast collections of 45s, small vinyl records with usually a single song on each side, and wallow in the nostalgia. For nine years, members of the group has gathered at 7 p.m. on Thursdays to share their passion for the music of the 1950s and the vinyl it comes on.
Avid collectors, those with 2,000 records, have collections that are considered small.
"We're sick, " says Mike Bell with a laugh. He owns 3,000 45s.
Some of the group's members have more than 30,000 records, gathered from estate sales, yard sales, thrift stores and swapmeets, such as the one Hill is sponsoring Saturday at the Italian American Club in Phoenix.
Hill organizes a swapmeet about every other month to give collectors a chance to sift through a large number of records in one place. Hard-core collectors line up before the door opens at 9 a.m. Admission for them is $5 until 9:30 a.m., when the admission fee drops to $2.
Wandering around the 40 or so tables at the meet, Hill has met people who want 45s to display in their jukeboxes; collectors of records with specific album art, such as motorcycles; or albums with cover designs by certain artists, such as David Martin Stone or Jim Flora.
The meets also attract DJs looking for music to sample before they buy; they come armed with record players and headphones.
As Blanchette's 45 spins, feet tap, heads bob and bodies rock back in forth to the music. Most of the members are older than 40, and the music they play and collect each week is what they heard on the radio while they were growing up.
Hearing that music on the radio again as an adult enticed Hill to begin collecting in the 1970s and to unearth the first record he bought, Beep Beep, by the Playmates. The record makes Hill hang his head in shame.
"It's really lame," he says.
Blanchette will be at the Italian American Club looking for the obscure "teen" music she loves -- music the other members of the group love to hate. When she was 9, Blanchette taped songs off the radio on a reel-to-reel machine that her father bought. But when she moved from Canada to Arizona 10 years ago, the tapes were lost, and she has spent the past decade trying to recover the music she grew up with.
Sometimes at the weekly gatherings, one of the other members will play a song Blanchette has been searching for. Her temperature rises and her heat beats faster when she finds one of her lost songs. She needs only eight more songs to recover all of the music she lost in the move.
The group has grown too large to meet in its members' record-filled homes, so it meets at Chronic Car Audio, a trendy chain owned by Blanchette's son, which sells and installs audio equipment. Members sit in a corner of the store with their record player and two small speakers, surrounded by the latest stereos, amplifiers and subwoofers used to "pimp out" the cars of the young and hip.
But on Thursday nights, the music that flows from the speakers inside Chronic Car Audio is not so trendy.
"The baby boomers have taken over," Blanchette said, "and this is our music."
RecordSwapMeet
What: Thousands of records available for browsing.
When: 9 a.m.-
1 p.m. today.
Where: Italian American Club, 7509 N. 12th St., Phoenix.
Admission: $5 from 9-9:30 a.m., $2 after 9:30.
Details: www. rare-az.org or (602) 265-9853.
Copyright (c) The Arizona Republic. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
