Featured Conversation: Author Libby Cudmore

Published on Feb 11, 2025

Today we’re talking with Libby Cudmore, author of Negative Girl and The Big Rewind, and former host of Record Saturday on twitter.

How long have you been collecting records for?

Well, my parents had records, so I grew up listening to them, II grew up listening to, as a kid, Jethro Tull’s Songs in the Woods. So I have my mom’s copy. My first memory is listening to my dad’s copy of Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy at four, because I think my sister Hilary was two, and sitting on the couch in my living room and watching the Asylum record label spin around and around. I’ve told that story a million times, but it’s such a formative memory for me. The first record I ever purchased was The Who’s Tommy.

That was also my first album.

It feels like it needs to be a first. And I had it on CD when I was in college, and I just got this idea that I needed it on vinyl. I didn’t even have a turntable.

You were the host of Record Saturday on twitter. Tell me about that.

So Record Saturday was something I developed and ran from 2016 to 2023, maybe mid 2024. My husband used to work Saturday nights and I had kind of nothing to do. So I was thinking that for me, the best part of vinyl is listening to it with other people. When you put on a record, everyone’s hearing it. It’s not headphones, it’s not a cassette tape, it’s not a Walkman, it’s not a Discman, it’s not an iPod. So there’s a communal sense of listening, and I wanted to bring that to the digital age. Twitter was such a great place to do that, I’d post a link to the song and everyone would actually have the record playing. We could converse about what we were listening to, and I encouraged people to listen on their record players, on CD, on whatever they had, but I was playing it live. One of the other things I would do, which I didn’t start out doing initially, but I wanted to prove to everybody, yes, I do have this record. So I would recreate the album cover art. There was always sort of a deliberate Lo Fi effort, using whatever I had, it wasn’t like elaborate cosplay. I would do sort of as best I could, like I would recreate the splash from the Flashdance in my kitchen. Some of them got pretty, pretty risque. Definitely, some tasteful nudes in there. I had a lot of fun with it. Now, as I grow older, I have a lot of really great cheesecake photos of myself to look back on and be like, I used to be hot.

So you would play the record, and people would tweet while they were listening to the record. You were having a communal experience.

Yeah, and it was so much fun. I made so many friends, people I’m still friends with. I miss doing it, but my husband stopped working evenings. So I stepped away from it. It was time. But I really, really enjoyed it. I had a character. I had a couple characters. I had an evil Libby character who was clearly me, with just a fake mustache, who would play albums like that I didn’t like, but I knew other people liked. So she would play 45s by Billy Joel, who I hate, and sometimes I’d play We Built This City, songs that everybody hates and just be like, this is the best song ever. She was truly evil.

I’m sorry I missed that.

It was fun. I miss doing it.

Let’s talk about your vinyl collection.

I don’t know how many I have, I’ve never counted, but I think the jewels of my collection are all the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies records, except for The Ding-Dong Daddy of the D-car Line 45.

What does this ecompass? How many records do you have of Cherry Poppin Daddies?

Six, which is everything they’ve put out on vinyl. But they’re an indie label, so a couple of them I had to get from Germany.

I found their first album, Ferociously Stoned, at a record store in Germany, and when I brought it to the show to have them sign it, every member of the band, except for, obviously, Steve Perry, the front man, was like, I don’t even have a copy of this. Where did you get this? So Steve was like, oh god, I think I still have a couple of these in my basement.

I have everything that the Vapors have put out. I have all the 45s. I have the American and UK versions of New Clear Days. I get into these weird little niches where I have to have everything. Probably my weirdest niche is that I have everything that Steve “Spit” Spingola, he was the frontman for the Fontanelles, which intersects my love of Mystery Science Theater 3000, with my love of post punk, because their band, the Fontanelles, was featured in Hobgoblins. And I was obsessed with that music. There’s a three song seven inch that they were just kind of an LA darkwave band in the 80s, just trying to make it playing clubs, and never had a major label release, and so this was probably just sold at the show. When Datura acquired Negative Girl, I treated myself to a copy. I spent, like. $90 for three songs. The recording is terrible, but I now have everything he ever put out on vinyl. I have two from his first band Outer Circle; the Blind Venetians EP and the “My Mona Lisa” 12 inch. But I was like, I have to have everything that they’ve recorded.

Is this with your whole collection or just certain bands that you’re a completionist?

With weird random niches, I’m a completionist. As far as albums with Steely Dan, I have all of their albums that have been released on vinyl, including a European pressing of Everything Must Go which I spent way too much money on. And then Record Store Day announced that they were pressing it. Oh, wow, fantastic. But I did buy Two Against Nature. I believe I have every 45 I’ve got a demo that has, like, “Dallas” and “Sail the Waterways.” Like I said, it just gets kind of weird, as far as what I get obsessed with. And I have a lot of 45, so I’ll get completionist about that as well, and then a great collection of 90s jukebox, 45s..

What is the weirdest record you own?

I was at a record store, Fat Cat in Seattle, and the guy was like, do you want something really weird? And I was like, no, I actually like to listen to my vinyl. And he put on a record of cult speeches, volume 13. And it was like, cult speeches.

That would be an interesting thing to listen to.

I was like no, I will get stopped by the TSA.No, that will not make it home. The weirdest pieces in my collection are that I have 2 45s where Walton Goggins sings on them. One was sent to me from the film John Bronco which was on Hulu, it was a short film. So I’m very, very proud of this one . It was a promo that I asked them for, and they sent it to me. The other was the “Misbehavin’” 45 that came with the Righteous Gemstones soundtrack.

What do you take out when your friends are there? Do you take out something that they haven’t heard before? Do you have comfort records that you play for company?

We have what we call cult movie parties, which is where we invite people over to watch a weird movie. And so I will usually put on something thematic, if I have a soundtrack that’s sort of similar, or if I have the soundtrack to the movie. Showgirls is our February picture. So I might put on a couple records from the pinups series. Or I might put on a record of burlesque tunes or something like that. Sometimes I’ll just put on 1960s Cocktail Jazz, just really fun, exotic, like Martin Denny. I like to think of myself as a 1960s dinner party hostess. Again,it depends. My friend Heather comes over, we listen to metal records, or Kate Bush or Tori Amos, or when my friend Matthew comes over, it’s jazz or Yacht Rock.

What do you listen to when you’re alone? Do you get a lot of use out of your records?

I listen to a record minimum every morning. I’m actually traveling this week, and I’m a little stressed because I only have what is on my iPod from 2011. I will miss my records.

Do you have a favorite record store?

I have two. Reimagine Records in Utica or New Hartford. Michele and Scott are two of my favorite people. There was another record store there that I also loved, Music and More, but they have closed, so that leaves Reimagine as the one in my heart. So absolutely shout out to Reimagine Records and then Jacks in Red Bank New Jersey, I actually did the first reading of my book tour for Negative Girl at Jack’s.

The last time I was there, I picked up a Reverend Horton Heat record, which was really fun. And then they’ll do flip throughs on Instagram, and I’ll just be like, oh, can you pull that for me? And Tim, who works there, had messaged me that they had a copy of Echo and the Bunnymen Songs to Learn and Sing, which I’ve been looking for. He also had a copy of Amy Grant’s Heart in Motion. I was like, oh, pull that for me. I love Amy Grant, and I firmly believe that - not to get spiritual or anything - Amy Grant is the only person among us who’s guaranteed to go to heaven. I maintain Amy Grant is more punk than GG Allin. It’s like, oh, cool, GG, you took a shit on stage. Amy Grant left behind her entire audience. She’s like, you know what? I’m switching to secular music, and they were pissed, that is so punk. And then she’s like, yeah, and my gay nieces are getting married on my lawn. Amy Grant is punk as fuck.

What was the last record you listened to?

The Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs, this morning.

Libby Cudmore is the author of Negative Girl (Datura, 2024) and The Big Rewind (William Morrow, 2016) as well as the Wade & Jacks PI series in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Tough. Her work has been published in Smokelong Quarterly, The Dark, Stone’s Throw, Dark Waters, Shotgun Honey, Orca, Monkeybicycle and The Coachella Review, as well as the anthologies At the Edge of Darkness, Burning Down the House, 120 Murders, Shamus & Anthony Commit Capers and the Anthony-nominated Lawyers, Guns & Money (which she co-edited with Art Taylor). She is a 2005 Binghamton graduate and a four-year Barrelhouse Writer’s Camp alumni, and the recipient of the Shamus Award, the Black Orchid Award and the Oregon Writers Colony prize.

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