Welcome to Spin, Needle & Pop
Dear reader,
My first memories of music were written across bridges in New York during trips to Manhattan.
There, a small Sony cassette player hummed familiar pop songs ranging from Michael Jackson’s three classics, “Off the Wall,” “Thriller,” and “Bad,” and those three albums, in particular, spawned my love of physical music in the present.
Still, even though I was around five years old at the time, in 1999, MJ was certainly not my first introduction to music. My mother, being a native of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, grew up on a wide range of music played on the radio in the islands, which encompassed Earth, Wind & Fire, James Brown, Michael, of course, Prince, of course, and a less pronounced mix of other soul, jazz and pop artists.
So, out of the 320 some-odd records I own, it is probably not surprising, in this sense, that over half of those records encompass one of the three genres I mentioned above. Moreover, my interest in music has grown considerably since I started digging for old and new records, and that will be the basis for my new music publication titled Spin, Needle & Pop.
Spin, Needle & Pop, were a trio of words I used in a short story I wrote called “The Joy of Children Laughing Around You.” The story’s premise is unrelated to music in most fashions, aside from a few lyrical allusions, but I always kept the combination of those three words in mind. Thankfully, Medium.com makes it very easy for anyone to amass a wider range of public interest, so I finally saw the opportunity to start this publication for music enthusiasts and went for it.
SPIN is already one music publication with a healthy appeal, and I’m an old fan of The Needle Drop, but in all honesty I didn’t find any inspiration for this music collection from those sites. Spin, Needle & Pop is the description I used for my turntables at home, and my fascination with the ticks and popping sounds of the needle attacking the vinyl as the music begins. Where those publications, and a few others like Cuepoint, 2DOPEBOYZ, Dead End Hip Hop and Noisey feature various niches and coverage areas, I want to address music from another standpoint, a focus on what I’ve learned about music from collecting vinyl.
In some cases it will be all business and on other ends it will be reviews. Somewhere in the middle I’ll work on columns and features of my vinyl collection, my thoughts on digging, the industry, pricey records, and any other topic related to music. The goal is to provide a wide range of pieces. And, in that effort, I hope to add more writers to the site as the process continues.
So, with all that prefaced, welcome, again, to Spin, Needle & Pop, a space to share music of all genres, categories and histories, preferably, but not limited to a vinyl format.
Sincerely yours,
