WESU, our friendly community radio station, writes in:
WESU’s (Wesleyan’s college radio station) will be hosting our annual fall record sale on October 8th in Beckham Hall. There will be record vendors from all over the Northeast selling everything from vinyls to concert memorabilia. Live DJs will be spinning vinyl all day!
Date: Saturday, October 8
Time: 11 AM-4 PM
Place: Beckham Hall
Dan Esposito ’17 invites you to WesTunes:
A new student group, WesTunes, is holding its first event. WesTunes is a weekly album listening party featuring full-length vinyl records played in their entirety. The first meeting will include a brief informational talk, followed by our first album presentation: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles.
Date: Tuesday, November 5
Time: 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Place: Nicolson Lounge
I have the good fortune of working at Scores and Recordings, the music section of Olin Library. I can objectively say that it’s one of the coolest academic hubs on campus. S&R has a massive CD and vinyl collection, a pretty strange assortment of cassettes, shelves of musical scores, a bunch of turntables and other media players for student use, audio and video recorders on loan, and a whole room devoted to Wesleyan’s renowned World Music Archives. It is the home of Notations 21, a collection of creative visual scores that is possibly my favorite book in the whole library.
Scores and Recordings is kind of a metaphor for liberal arts in general— it’s a huge assortment of stuff that you can’t imagine you’d ever be able to string together in a way that makes any sense, but that doesn’t matter because it’s all awesome and interesting and the perfect vehicle for discovering new things. Especially when you choose items off the shelves at random (which is what we all do when navigating WesMaps, amirite?).
It’s always interesting to see what people check out at the circulation desk — everything from recordings of Tuvan throat singing to John Cage scores to Eminem CDs — but my sense from working at S&R is that not nearly enough people know about what’s available here. In an effort to mine some of the treasures that are tucked away in this section of the library, I summoned fellow Wesleyinger Gabe to join me in my adventures, AKA pulling random stuff off the shelves and writing about what we found. For this first installment of a continuing series of S&R adventures, we explored the vinyl collection and made some, er, unusual discoveries. Read about our findings after the jump.
I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords…
Watch out, dude, they’re trying to sell us out to the man!
In brief, the University is trying to change up the way it manages the vendors who visit Usdan. As of now, Frank Marsilli, the Usdan facilities and events manager, directly books the vendors, as he has been doing so for the past sixteen years. This year, the University is planning to hire a third-party company, Kiosk Connections, to manage this program and bring in more vendors beginning after Spring Break. These guys are a pretty big company that, as they put it, connects “corporations and specialty retail vendors”: Mary Kay, Avon, to name a few. Their clients range from AT&T to Pfizer to Lockheed Martin.
In other words, not universities.
Alright, so this sounds pretty shitty. And if you’ve been talking to Malcolm Tent—the goateed guy who’s been selling used records at Wesleyan for seventeen years, bonding with more than a few students in the process—it definitely sounds shitty. According to Malcolm, with the way the new program will work, he—and presumably the other regular vendors—won’t be able to afford to keep coming. He really appreciates the Wesleyan community and doesn’t want to lose being a part of it.
Can’t wait until WESU’s Community Record Fair on October 28? Malcolm Tent, worshipper of all things Devo and former owner of the Trash American Style record store, is bringing the records to Usdan today. Buy some goddamn records:
I, Malcolm Tent, am returning to your benighted campus. I will be loaded with the best new + used underground/ overground RECORDS, DVD’S, CD’S, JEWELRY, and….? The date is Thursday, October 11. I’ll be at Usdan from approximately noon – 5 pm. Not only will I be selling stuff, but I’ll be buying and trading so bring all of your unwanted records, tapes, cd’s, or whatever!
If you have any special requests let me know and I’ll do my best to hook you up.
Date: Thursday, October 11
Time: 12:00 pm – 5 pm
Place: Usdan, by the staircase
Cost: Yes.
A WesBand you haven’t heard (of)? At least, I haven’t. In support of musical diversification at Wes, Daniel Ferm ’12 writes in:
We’re Speedy Ortiz. We’re from Northampton and Connecticut. I, Daniel Ferm, am the only one in the band from Wesleyan. We play lots of shows in New England and New York, and we played a show here in March in a house. We just got signed by Exploding in Sound Records. We are Speedy. Take a listen to our latest single.
The biannual WESU record fair is still over a month away (April 15, if you’re keeping score), but why wait? Malcolm Tent has been seen round these parts many times before (and even interviewed once or twice), and he’ll be setting up shop again today in downstairs Usdan:
I, Malcolm Tent, am returning to your benighted campus. I will be loaded with the best new + used underground/ overground records, DVDs, and CDs.
The date is Monday, March 5. I’ll be at Usdan from approximately noon – 5 pm.
Not only will I be selling stuff, but I’ll be buying and trading so bring all of your unwanted records, tapes, cd’s, or whatever!
Date: Today, March 5
Time: 12 – 5 pm
Place: Usdan
There’s no better way to wash down a Usdan residency policy protest than with an icy swig of dusty post-punk vinyl. Good thing everyone’s favorite traveling record vendor Malcolm Tent is returning to Wes tomorrow to sell you records and raid my wallet:
Friday, February 18 marks the return of Trash American Style and our full complement of awesome vinyl, CDs, cassettes, jewelry, clothing, and whatever else I have room for on the table. We’ll be at the Usdan Center, indoors by the staircase where it’s warm and dry. We expect to be fully awake and operational at noon, and we’ll stick around till 5:00. If you have any requests or special orders, let me know (email: mt(at)trashamericanstyle(dot)us) and I’ll do my utmost to hook you up.
Did you know Malcolm’s table was recently voted the number one most romantic place to buy bootlegged Bauhaus cassettes in Middletown? For more information about Malcolm and his least favorite Leonard Cohen records, click here and here.
If you know me, you’ll know that my wallet regularly falls prey to a reasonably compulsive vinyl habit. So when record/CD/DVD vendor Malcolm Tent sets up shop in Usdan every month or so, I can’t resist spending upwards of half an hour flipping through crates, admiring the display of rare and bootleg concert DVDs, and generally shooting the crap with the amiable former record store owner. The guy knows his way around ’70s and ’80s post-punk and indie underground as well as anyone. He’ll spend twenty minutes telling you about his favorite rare Devo single. If you’re curious about a record, he’ll throw it on the turntable and give you a listen.
Here’s a brief roundup of Malcolm’s record-selling experience yesterday, 10/29. Full disclosure: before conducting this interview, I spent $16.50 and walked away with Tom Verlaine’s self-titled LP and Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Ladies’ Man and I’m Your Man.
Beloved former record store owner and post-punk enthusiast Malcolm Tent will once again be making downstairs Usdan his own personal vinyl playpen. He owned a Danbury record store for 21 years and has been coming to Wes since ’98, so he knows his shit. Ask him what his favorite Devo album is, if you dare:
Lucky you! I, Malcolm Tent, am returning to your benighted campus. I will be loaded with the best new + used underground/overground records, CDs, DVDs, jewelry, posters, patches, pins, and….? The date is Wednesday, September 15. I’ll be at Usdan (by the staircase) from approximately noon- 5 PM
Not only will I be selling stuff, but I’ll be buying and trading so bring all of your unwanted records, tapes, CDs, or whatever!
