ORIGINAL STARS, ORIGINAL HITS

Hands up if you remember K-Tel Records.



Michelle Catalano of Forbes does. She’s written a nice piece about how K-Tel was the 70s version of Spotify – at least when it comes to discovering new music.

That was sort of true for me as well. Until Al Gore invented MTV in the 80s and the Internet in the 90s, radio was pretty much the only way to discover new music, and you were limited to whatever the local program/music directors felt like putting in rotation.

K-Tel was really good at compiling singles from bands and artists that weren’t necessarily getting airplay in yr local market, as well as collecting them in different formats, from disco, soul and Top 40 to novelty records and "southern rock". In that respect, it’s safe to say I learned a lot about the art of making mix tapes from K-Tel.

I admit I bought them more to listen to music I already knew about (after all, a $6.00 album of 20 hits was way cheaper than buying the same 20 songs on 45rpm records – value for money!). But I did manage to hear a lot of music I otherwise never would have heard, although I can’t say my life was necessarily changed from hearing, say, Kenny Nolan. And it's not like they were turning anyone on to bands like (say) The Ramones and the Sex Pistols.

Meanwhile, of course, the TV ads are almost as famous as the comps themselves.

It’s only fair to add that K-Tel wasn’t the only comp game in town. Ronco (which was better known for selling kitchen gadgets on TV) was their main competition. I had a few of their comps as well (like this one here) and they seemed to be better at coming up with music I’d never heard before (for example, Patti Smith Group, whose “Because The Night” sounded sultry and dangerous somehow when I was 15).

Amazingly, K-Tel is still around, and they license old music for ads, films and TV shows.

Ronco hasn’t done so well, having filed for bankruptcy in 1984, and again in 2007.

As seen on TV,

This is dF

BARCELONA APARTMENT LIFE TOUR 2013 #2: THE ARCHITECTURE

As some of you may know, Barcelona is big on funky architecture, thanks to Gaudi being a local. 

As it happened, his most famous building, La Sagrada Familia, was so close to my apartment that I had a view of it.

Sort of.



Also, Torre Agbar (not a Gaudi project) was a five-minute stroll away.

 

There’s an obvious joke here. Feel free to contribute in the comments. 

And finally, there was the Hotel Porta Fira across the street from the venue of the event I was attending.

It looks like this.



And that’s all I got on architecture.

Up next: the airplane!

They don’t build ‘em like they used to,

This is dF