VMP Magazine

Take away the words Tommy Boy and the famous record label’s logo is still instantly recognizable: three silhouetted figures frozen in motion, one of them completely inverted. Coincidentally, the label has lived through three distinct eras.

Tommy Boy came into this world as a 12-inch singles-only dance music label. Founder Tom Silverman, after years of running Dance Music Report, borrowed $5,000 from his parents to launch his own New York City-based label that would go on to become a pioneer in mashing electro up against hip-hop and soul, and launched the careers of Prince Paul and De La Soul. After Tommy Boy agreed to partner with Warner Bros. Records, the label grew into a home for hip-hop smashes like Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” along with electronic (808 State), synth-pop (Information Society) and lots of other pop, rock and dance artists.

The Wu came through and the outcome was critical. The Wu-Tang Clan put out six proper group albums along with countless solo projects, affiliate albums, an unreasonably difficult video game and a clothing line that maybe didn’t seem as cool once your dad borrowed your Wu Wear sweatshirt to rake leaves.

Even if all the peripherals didn’t quite last, the Wu-Tang Clan’s music hasn’t dulled any of its vibrancy in the 20-plus years since the group first appeared. Though the Clan’s collective output has slowed and recent outings like Banks & Steelz – RZA’s collaborative project with Interpol’s Paul Banks – lack the brick-splitting force of the Wu’s best material, the back catalog is still littered must haves. Here are 10 of the most essential Wu-Tang albums to own on vinyl.

Hair metal is a tough subgenre to nail down. Most bands that could be tied to it shun the label, and most fans likely do as well. But in simple terms, hair metal is mostly just a signifier of the glam metal influence that carried over from the ’70s, which in the ‘80s got blasted with Aqua Net and eyeliner.

Nestled between the begrudging acceptance that “Turn Up the Radio” kind of rules and flashing Kip Winger at the state fair, there’s room for appreciation of hair metal as generally solid hard rock positioned to look like an ’80s suburban mom’s vision of Satanism. Thudding drums and dunderheaded riffs match up against guitar solo sorcery and glass-shattering vocals in advancement of the party-time ethos, macho chest-puffery and glamorous plumage.

If you can dig out these records without your feather boa getting in the way, then these are definitely 10 of the most essential hair metal records to add to your vinyl collection.

If you look at Discogs reviews, or Amazon reviews, or, even Vinyl Me, Please reviews of certain new record releases, you’ll sometimes find a common complaint: “This record doesn’t play right on my turntable. It skips all over the place.”

That a “puck” of plastic can be turned into something that plays music via subtleties in ridges is a miraculous thing, all things considered. There are dozens of ways that a record’s quality could be affected, to the point where before needle meets wax, a labyrinthine series of choices and variables have already come into play that can affect the playback in big and little ways. But ultimately, the variable that is proving hardest to predict, given the vinyl revival’s effect on the booming turntable market, is the variances between turntables themselves, and how different mastering can make some records almost unplayable on different turntable models.

It’s a question that affects all parts of the vinyl business: How do you master a record so that it can play both on a $10,000 set up, and a $65, all-in-one Black Friday set up? And how do you account for people who have their turntables improperly set-up?

Zombie pop culture saturation has reached the level where even the most non-violent among us knows how to best kill the undead. Like vampires and the near universal truth that they hate garlic and holy water, zombies are pigeonholed by a lust for eating humans coupled with a fatal weakness tied to having their heads bashed in.

In short, everyone in the world knows that in the event you are in danger of being eaten by a zombie horde, you smash in and/or cut off a zombie’s head with whatever sharp/heavy/blunt object is nearby.

Digital downloads are one of the most useful, and simultaneously most useless, vinyl tuck-ins. Among stickers, lyric sheets, posters, patches and o...

Your man shot a bottle rocket out of his butt crack on the Fourth of July last year and it was cool at the time. But it's a new year and you need to escalate your game, my pals. This year it's about setting your hair on fire while hitting mortar shells with an aluminum bat, and tackling newspaper stands shirtless after drinking 27 domestic American beers (no craft beers are allowed on the Fourth either). You can do it.

And while we know you'll be BBQing your food and DDTing your drinks, we also know you'll be needing a new soundtrack to the Fourth, because the typical standards are played out (Sousa is washed). So put on any or all of these records to give you the power of poor decisionmaking necessary to burn this Independence Day into the history books.