Making Records

WarmTone™ Record Press Promo
I've been listening to KQRZ lately and I've been hearing some strange stuff. Occasionally I will hear something I recognize but it's usually stuff that sounds like it's from the 50's or 60's, but they are tunes I've never heard. And then I realized that for every tune that makes to the top 40 on the radio, there are probably a thousand or ten that don't, which makes Don Kirshner (the man with the golden ear) in The Brill Building all the more extraordinary.

Every one of those records needed to be recorded in a studio and then the recording had to be turned into a master for pressing vinyl records and then you can finally start the press and start cranking out copies. A complicated and exacting process.

Looking for pictures I turned up a photo essay on LSD about the old record making business, and then a Pop-Sci story about a brand new company making new record presses. Back in the 50's and 60's most of the records were 7" 45's. You bought it on a whim, played it until you got bored and then threw it away, or you did if music was that important to you. At a friend's urging I bought one (85 cents as I recall), I didn't particularly care for it, and I never bought anymore. 85 cents was more important.