Laserdiscs and a vinyl-loaded trip to Detroit

Here we are at the beginning of another holiday weekend!! Happy new year to you all!!

But let’s talk about the previous holiday weekend, which I’ll sum up in one word:

Productive.

I went to the thrift store to drop off a couple of boxes of CDs, and while I was there, I picked up an old school desk that I had an immediate vision for. Once I got home, it was indeed a perfect fit next to my existing audio/video empire which has outgrown its current space. With the new desk, I finally have a place to set up my turntable AND laserdisc player.

What? You didn’t know about my laserdisc habit? Oh yeah. You can probably picture the amount of cursing that my friends who helped me move, were doing while moving THOSE boxes of laserdiscs and vinyl. As if all of the boxes of CDs weren’t enough….

Laserdisc

I got into laserdisc in the late 80s as a kid, and picked up a number of musical titles, including my prized Japanese copy of Van Halen’s Live Without A Net, which prior to the DVD release, was the only way to get the concert film digitally. The same was true for the Star Wars movies – there were plenty of releases for Star Wars fans to salivate over, including this “definitive edition” box set, which was on my Xmas wish list one year.

Like director Kevin Smith, I was kicking and screaming against converting to DVD. I finally made the conversion when my laser player bit the dust, and I was able to get a Pioneer combo unit that played both lasers and DVDs.

As laser collectors know, there are still a number of titles that remain unreleased on DVD. Sting, for example – the concert video from The Soul Cages tour, the MTV Unplugged performance, and the album-length performance video for Ten Summoner’s Tales.

This was my first chance to use the laserdisc player with the newish television I picked up about a year ago, and I was amazed at how good laserdisc quality still looks, even on today’s TVs.

The Soul Cages Concert was the first laserdisc that I put into the player, a concert film that remains one of my favorites. It’s a crime that it still hasn’t been released on DVD. Sting’s band for this era – legendary drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, guitarist Dominic Miller, and keyboard player David Sancious produced some of my favorite material in the Sting catalog with The Soul Cages and Ten Summoner’s Tales releases. Thankfully, the period is well-documented with the videos that I mentioned above.

So that was Sunday in a nutshell, a good mix of watching laserdiscs, taking care of various biz, and also catching some quality Z’s in between it all!

But let’s talk about Saturday. Oh man. A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from Steve, a radio buddy of mine in Detroit. He’s getting ready to move into a new house, and wanted to know if I’d have interest in picking up his collection of vinyl. With warm weather in the forecast (a rarity at this time of the year,) Saturday looked like a good day to make the drive to Detroit, and the weather forecast held true. With the exception of some slightly crummy weather on the Detroit side, it was a drive that was thankfully uneventful.

Aldo Nova - Subject

Looking through the titles, “Subject” by Aldo Nova was one of the early ones that I saw, “Cool!” I said.

“That’s what he thought,” was Steve’s reply, smiling as he later pointed out an album by Japanese heavy metal band Loudness and asked “how many people bought the NEXT album from Loudness?”

As a fellow rocker, the expected titles are there from bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Armored Saint, etc; although Steve noted that he had “played the Maiden albums to death,” and that the actual Maiden vinyl might be in bad shape, but the covers are in nice shape, thanks to the plastic covers that are on most of the albums.

After I got home and started going through the stacks, I was the most stoked about the vinyl copies of Van Halen’s 5150, Queensryche’s Empire, the self-titled Alice in Chains album, Peter Gabriel’s solo material, and one of my absolute favorites, Joe Satriani’s Flying In A Blue Dream. Listening to the Satch album brought back so many memories – it was one of several albums that was locked in my CD player in the 90s.

I promised several people that I would post the complete rundown of everything that I picked up, and as you can see from the list below, there’s quite a few titles, including probably as much Ted Nugent as any one person needs. Although surprisingly, my favorite Ted Nugent album Free-For-All is AWOL.

Steve did mention that he held back about 40 albums for sentimental reasons, and perhaps Free-For-All was in that bunch!

Ted Nugent - Free-for-All

Apologies in advance for those of you that get carpal tunnel from scrolling through this list.

Enjoy!

2010 – soundtrack
38 Special – Tour De Force
38 Special – Special Forces
38 Special – Wild Eyed Southern Boys
707 – s/t
Accept – Restless and Wild
Accept – Russian Roulette
Accept – Kaizoku Ban
Accept – Balls To The Wall
Accept – s/t
Accept – Metal Heart
AC/DC – For Those About To Rock
AC/DC – Highway To Hell
AC/DC – Back in Black
AC/DC – Powerage
Bryan Adams – Cuts Like A Knife
Aerosmith – Get Your Wings
Aerosmith – Greatest Hits
Aldo Nova – Subject: Aldo Nova
Aldo Nova – s/t
Alice in Chains – s/t
Allman Brothers Band – Brothers and Sisters
Apocrypha – The Eyes of Time
April Wine – The Nature of the Beast
April Wine – First Glance
April Wine – Stand Back
April Wine – Power Play
April Wine – Harder Faster
Armored Saint – Delirious Nomad
Armored Saint – March of the Saint
Armored Saint – Saints Will Conquer (live)
Asia – s/t
The Babys – Union Jacks
Badfinger – No Dice
Badlands – s/t
Batman – Batman soundtrack (Elfman score)
The Beatles – White Album
Blackfoot – Marauder
Blackfoot – Siogo
Blackfoot – Strikes
Black n’ Blue – s/t
Black n’ Blue – Nasty Nasty
Black n’ Blue – Without Love
Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Blue Oyster Cult – Some Enchanted Evening
Blue Oyster Cult – Fire Of Unknown Origin
Blue Oyster Cult – Imaginos
Boston – Boston (2 copies)
Jackson Browne – Hold Out
The Jim Carroll Band – Catholic Boy
The Cars – s/t
Tracy Chapman – s/t
Cheech and Chong – Greatest Hit
Phil Collins – Hello, I Must Be Going
Alice Cooper – Trash
Alice Cooper – Raise Your Fist And Yell
Alice Cooper Goes To Hell
Alice Cooper – Welcome To My Nightmare
Alice Cooper – Killers
Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies
Alice Cooper – Flush The Fashion
Alice Cooper – Lace and Whiskey
Alice Cooper – Greatest Hits
Corrosion of Conformity – Deliverance
John Cougar – Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did?
Robert Cray – Strong Persuader
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Chronicle
The Cure – The Head On The Door
The Cure – Standing On The Beach – The Singles
The Cure – Disintegration
Damien – Stop This War (2 copies)
Deep Purple – Perfect Strangers
Deep Purple – When We Rock, We Rock, and When We Roll, We Roll
Deep Purple – Nobody’s Perfect
Def Leppard – High n’ Dry
Def Leppard – Pyromania
Demon – Night Of The Demon
Demon – Unexpected Guest
Demon – British Standard Approved
Dio – The Last In Line
Dio – Holy Diver
Dio – Sacred Heart (2 copies)
Dio – Dream Evil
Dokken – Breaking The Chains
Dokken – Back for the Attack
Dokken – Tooth and Nail
Dokken – Under Lock and Key
Doobie Brothers – Best of Vol 2
Doors – Greatest Hits (2 copies)
Doors – Strange Days
Doors: An American Prayer
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – Pictures At An Exhibition
Extreme – Extreme
Fastway – s/t
Firestarter – soundtrack by Tangerine Dream
Focus – Making Waves
Foghat – Stone Blue
Foreigner – 4
Foreigner – Head Games
Foreigner – Double Vision
Foreigner – s/t
Peter Gabriel – s/t (car)
Peter Gabriel – s/t (melt)
Peter Gabriel – Security
Genesis – s/t
David Gilmour – About Face
Great White – Once Bitten
Sammy Hagar – VOA
Sammy Hagar – Standing Hampton
Sammy Hagar – Three Lock Box
Sammy Hagar – I Never Said Goodbye
Eric Hamilton Band – Limited Edition Vinyl
Stuart Hamm – Kings of Sleep
George Harrison – Somewhere in England
Heart – Dreamboat Annie (Mushroom Records pressing)
Helix – Long Way To Heaven
Helloween – Keeper Of The Seven Keys part one
Helloween – Keeper of the Seven Keys part two
Jimi Hendrix Experience – Smash Hits
Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis: Bold As Love
Jimi Hendrix – The Jimi Hendrix Concerts
Greg Howe – s/t
Icon – Night of the Crime
Icon – s/t
Billy Idol – Vital Idol
Billy Idol – Rebel Yell
Iron Maiden – Powerslave
Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind
Iron Maiden – Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Iron Maiden – Killers
Iron Maiden – Somewhere In Time
Iron Maiden – Live After Death
Iron Maiden – Number of the Beast
Jethro Tull – M.U. – Best of Jethro Tull
J. Geils Band – Best Of
J. Geils Band – Love Stinks
Journey – Escape
Journey – Frontiers
Judas Priest – Defenders of the Faith
Judas Priest – Point of Entry
Judas Priest – Stained Class
Judas Priest – Hell Bent for Leather
Judas Priest – Sin after Sin
Judas Priest – Sad Wings of Destiny
Judas Priest – Turbo
Judas Priest – Screaming For Vengeance
Judas Priest – British Steel
Kansas – Best of Kansas
Kick Axe – Vices
King Crimson – In The Court of the Crimson King
King Crimson – Three of a Perfect Pair
King Kobra – Ready To Strike
The Kings – Are Here
KISS – Dressed To Kill
KISS – Rock And Roll Over
KISS – Hotter Than Hell
KISS – Love Gun
KISS – Alive
Kix – Blow My Fuse
Krokus – Hardware
Krokus – Headhunter
Led Zeppelin – s/t
Led Zeppelin – IV
Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
Led Zeppelin – III
Led Zeppelin – In Through The Out Door
Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti
Lillian Axe – Love + War
Living Colour – Vivid
Living Colour – Leave It Alone/Hemp 12″
Lizzy Borden – Master of Disguise
The Jeff Lorber Fusion
Loudness – Lightning Strikes
Loudness – Thunder In The East
Loudness – Hurricane Eyes
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Nothin’ Fancy
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Gold and Platinum
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Second Helping
Tony Macalpine – Maximum Security
Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force – Marching Out
Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force – S/T
Yngwie Malmsteen – Trilogy
Yngwie Malmsteen – Odyssey
Ray Manzarek- Carmina Burana
Bob and Doug McKenzie – Great White North
Metallica – Master of Puppets
Metallica – …..And Justice For All
Steve Miller Band – Greatest Hits 74-78
Modern English – After the Snow
Eddie Money – s/t
Eddie Money – Playing For Keeps
Montrose – s/t
Monty Python – The Monty Python Instant Record Collection
Moody Blues – Voices In The Sky (best of)
Gary Moore – Victims of the Future (2 copies)
Gary Moore – Run For Cover
Gary Moore – After The War
Gary Moore – Corridors of Power
Morrissey – Viva Hate
Motley Crue – Shout At The Devil
Nazareth – Loud n Proud
Nazareth – Malice in Wonderland
Night Ranger – 7 Wishes
Night Ranger – Dawn Patrol
Night Ranger – Midnight Madness
Ted Nugent – Little Miss Dangerous
Ted Nugent – s/t
Ted Nugent – s/t (1982)
Ted Nugent – Cat Scratch Fever
Ted Nugent – Intensities in 10 Cities
Ted Nugent – State of Shock
Ted Nugent – If You Can’t Lick ‘Em, Lick ‘Em
Ted Nugent – Scream Dream
Ted Nugent – Great Gonzos
Ted Nugent/Amboy Dukes – Call of the Wild
Ted Nugent/Amboy Dukes – Survival of the Fittest – Live
Patrick O’Hearn -Ancient Dreams
Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard of Ozz
Ozzy Osbourne – Diary of a Madman
Ozzy Osbourne – Speak Of The Devil
Ozzy Osbourne – Bark At The Moon
Ozzy Osbourne – The Ultimate Sin
Alan Parsons Project – I, Robot
Joe Perry Project – Let The Music Do The Talking
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Hard Promises
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Long After Dark
Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd – The Wall
Pink Floyd – The Final Cut
Robert Plant – Pictures at Eleven
Jean-Luc Ponty – Mystical Adventures
Prince and the Revolution – Around The World In A Day
Prism – s/t
Queen – News of the World
Queen – The Game (MFSL edition)
Queen – The Game (regular)
Queen – Greatest Hits
Queensryche – Queensryche
Queensryche – The Warning
Queensryche – Rage for Order (2 copies)
Queensryche – Empire
Queensryche – Operation Mindcrime
Quiet Riot – Metal Health
Trevor Rabin – Can’t Look Away
Ratt – Out of the Cellar
Ratt – Invasion of Your Privacy
Raven – All For One
Raven – The Pack Is Back
Raven – Stay Hard
Lou Reed – Mistrial
REO Speedwagon – Live: You Get What You Play For
Rolling Stones – Hot Rocks
Rolling Stones – Still Life (American Concert 1981)
Rough Cutt – s/t
Rush – All The Worlds A Stage
Rush – Signals
Rush – Grace Under Pressure
Rush – Exit Stage Left
Rush – Moving Pictures
Rush – Permanent Waves
Robert Schimmel – Comes Clean
Joe Satriani – Flying In A Blue Dream
Scorpions – Blackout
Scorpions – Best of
Scorpions – World Wide Live
Shooting Star – s/t
Skunk Anansie – Selling Jesus EP
Soft War – One Day It Will All Come Down
Soundtrack – Heavy Metal
Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen – The River
Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent
Bruce Springsteen – Darkness
Billy Squier – Tale of The Tape
Starz – Violation
Starz – Coliseum Rock
Steve Stevens and the Atomic Playboys – S/T
Stryper – Together as One 12″
Styx – The Grand Illusion
Suicidal Tendencies – s/t (Frontier Records)
Supertramp – Paris
Supertramp – Breakfast in America
James Taylor – Greatest Hits
Ten Years After – The Classic Performances of
George Thorogood – Move It On Over
George Thorogood – Live
George Thorogood – Maverick
George Thorogood – Bad To The Bone
Billy Thorpe – Children of the Sun…Revisited
Three Dog Night – Captured Live at The Forum
TNT – Intuition
Triumph – Never Surrender
Triumph – Allied Forces (2 copies)
Triumph – Thunder Seven
Triumph – Just A Game
Triumph – The Sport of Kings (2 copies)
Triumph – Stages
Triumph – Surveillance
Triumph – Progressions of Power
U2 – Under A Blood Red Sky
Van Halen – s/t
Van Halen II
Van Halen – Diver Down
Van Halen – 5150
The Velvet Underground – VU
Andreas Vollenweider – Down To The Moon
Joe Walsh – The Confessor
Warrior – Fighting For The Earth
WASP – s/t
Roger Waters – Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking
Roger Waters – Radio K.A.O.S.
Whitesnake – 1987
Who – Who’s Next
Who – Hooligans
The Wooten Brothers – My Grass Is Blue
Yes – The Yes Album
Yes – Relayer
Yes – Classic Yes
Y&T – Mean Streak
Y&T – In Rock We Trust
Y&T – Contagious
Y&T – Open Fire
Frank Zappa – The Man From Utopia
Frank Zappa – Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch
Zebra – s/t
ZZ Top – El Loco
ZZ Top – Tres Hombres
ZZ Top – Best Of

7 Comments on “Laserdiscs and a vinyl-loaded trip to Detroit

  1. Man u got me all sorts of jealous. Fastway, Living Colour, Velvet Underground, and the Cure just to mention a couple.

  2. That’s pretty cool, a list that long you must of been psyched. I’ve probably got things you would be jealous of speaking of jealously in one of the above comments. I have the orignal demo’s from Foreigner, Fleetwood Mac, Sammy Hagar, Styx, and the passed on Michael Jackson. Despite demo’s I’ve also been able to track down a couple hundred Radio Promos. Such as a copy of Triumph titled Orientated Rock N Roll, which features live interview with the band I believe in 82′ or 87′. I’ll be 17 in August, and I’ve been collecting Vinyl for probably going 3 years im up to about 750, and I’ve recently started a Laser Collection. I would like to talk more with you, send me an email.

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