Every once in a while, people ask me to take their old vinyl records off their hands. I’ve been offered hundreds, even thousands of them. Since I already have quite a few, and still listen to them, I can only ever take a small fraction of what’s offered.
My father-in-law is the latest to rid himself of his vinyl and the above photos are of the labels of the records I kept. There’s some good stuff here, but also among the others I left behind. Maybe because I used to work at a record store (Tower Records on Sunset, in the classical annex), I have a fondness for record labels.
You can click on the individual labels for larger views.
Classical Life 
Fun to look at those. Also, never heard of Andre Vandernoot. Is that a good performance of Pictures?
He was a Belgian conductor and quite young when he made this recording, 33 or so. What I heard (most of the first side) wasn’t all that special, actually. I wanted the record for a couple of reasons … for the 35mm film recording and for the French orchestra. The French orchestra is more weird than good here (lots of vibrato in the brass) and I think the recording itself has seen better days, though there are not a lot of pops. It sounds faded, let’s say. The liner notes are by a friend of mine, Martin Bookspan.
A treasure trove indeed. I saw Earl Wild twice while at university in New Zealand in the late seventies, and it was a powerful experience, full of energy and emotion. One of the great pianists unforgettable. Thanks for rekindling the memories. Good to see vinyl on the comeback trail!