Q&A Remix with Rosy Overdrive

What’s the most treasured album in your collection and why?

Just going off of how much I listen to it, I think it must be Pere Ubu’s Les Haricots Sont Pas Salé 1987-1991 box set. I love pretty much every era of Pere Ubu, but there’s something about listening to this one–their brief stint on a major label, where they genuinely did try to make pop albums–that feels very rewarding in record format. The three proper albums in it–The Tenement Year, Cloudland, and Worlds in Collision, are all distinct versions of pop music, but they’re all Pere Ubu, too. These records were reworked and resequenced to fit on vinyl, and I imagine people who heard the original versions of these albums might take issue with that, but they’re the versions I know the best and they’re right to me.

Are you a completionist when it comes to artists? Which artist do you have the most records from?

I like so much music that I can’t really be a “completionist” for most bands without making an unethical amount of money somehow (plus, one of my favorite bands is Guided by Voices). The one band where I do definitely want to own all of their records on vinyl is Silkworm, though. Fortunately for me, Touch & Go have kept almost all of the records they put out on that label in print, and Comedy Minus One is in the process of reissuing the rest (they’ve done In the West and Libertine, with Developer coming out this year and Firewater supposedly in the works). Hoping for a Blueblood repress one day.

What is your greatest “score;” could be on value or just rarity or something you were looking for the longest?

I don’t know how much most of my collection is worth, but the memory that sticks out to me is from college. The school radio station was running a clearing-space sale, some kind of obscene deal like five albums for five dollars or something (even at the time that was very good). So I picked up a lot of albums, most of which aren’t that wild to find, but what I am proud of is picking up an original double-LP of Game Theory’s Lolita Nation in that sale, marked for college airplay and clearly having been played sparingly if at all. Discogs tells me that the median price that it goes for these days is about $22, so I guess I saved $21 (and, more importantly, picked up an excellent-sounding copy of one of the greatest and most fascinating albums of all-time).

What genre is most represented in your collection?

Like a lot of people who buy used vinyl, old school college rock and power pop are fairly overrepresented in my collection (like that’s a bad thing!). There’s some obvious names–Nick Lowe, XTC, Elvis Costello, Big Country, Marshall Crenshaw–and maybe ones that only people who are really into this kind of stuff remember/care about–The Windbreakers, Big Dipper, Let’s Active, Tommy Keene. You can stumble upon a decent-quality version of these bands’ albums for relatively cheap (or at least you could when I was a more prolific vinyl buyer), and they’re by and large very good. Even if I don’t know the specific album, I’ll pick it up if I recognize the name and I rarely regret it.

What is your most memorable vinyl buying experience?

I went to a John Vanderslice living room show in… 2018? John Vanderslice living room shows are certainly “memorable”, as anyone who has been to one (or even really just followed his social media in the pandemic era) can attest. I remember him sincerely going around to everyone before the show and asking what music they were into and writing it down, of course I remember the LSD and Silk Road discussion, I remember hearing some real truths about record labels and bands he worked with that I probably shouldn’t run my mouth about. I bought Dagger Beach, his then-newest album off of him, and a few months ago I was listening to a podcast mini-series about his Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco where he basically says that that album isn’t very good. Guess he waited to offload those albums before coming out with that! Either way, I still like that album. It’s dark and weird, it’s pretty clearly a “divorce” album even if it doesn’t come right out and say it.

What’s the weirdest record you own?

I don’t really have a good answer for this, but I like this question so I’m going to try to find an answer for it anyway. Let’s see…eh, how about Yup by Divorce Cop, that’s pretty weird. Brock Ginther (who’s been in a bunch of Maine-based bands) sent it to me with an album from his other band, Midwestern Medicine. The Midwestern Medicine is great melodic indie rock for fans of Grandaddy and Built to Spill and whatnot, but Divorce Cop is much more…primal. Lo-fi, noisy basement bashing. Thirty-five songs in forty-two minutes kind of deal. Highly recommended if you like the sound of cymbals crashing. 

“Rosy Overdrive is a mostly-one-person-run pseudonymous music blog that updates a few times a week and specializes in new music from smaller indie rock groups. You will find something you like there. (rosyoverdrive.com, @rosyoverdrive on the socials)”