I was compelled to buy my first jazz album after hearing Siouxsie and the Banshees haunting cover of Billie Holiday’s "Strange Fruit". It was during my goth punk phase (long before goth was trendy) and I was immediately taken with its dirge-like horn section, which brought to mind a Southern funeral procession. I remember going to Mystery Train Records in Cambridge, MA in search of a Billie Holiday album with her version of the song. Amidst the bins, I found what I was looking for. I don't recall which album it was, I only remember it had her face on the cover. I took it home, put it on the turntable, positioned the needle to the corresponding thick black line, sat back and got chills as I listened to her unique vocals render the lyrics of one of the saddest, most heartwrenching songs I've ever heard.

                                                                                                                                                                                     Cheryl

It was in the summer of 1964 that I received my first jazz record as a gift from my brother -- Jimmy Smith's The Cat, arranged and conducted by Lalo Schifrin, on the Verve label. As I remember it, the first time I listened to it, it was late July in the suburbs of Kansas City, Kansas. No one else was in the house, the air conditioning was on, and it was about 95 degrees outside and very humid. The record player was in the corner of the dining room and I put the record on and looked at the jacket. The first song was "Theme from 'Joy House'", some movie at the time which I've never seen or tried to. The song starts with an upright bass: bum- bum- bum-bum-bumbudit/bum-bum-bum-bum-bumbudit, followed by Jimmy Smith's moody melodic Hammond B-3 setting this atmospheric, beat, urban, late'50's-early '60's sonic sketch, part movie house, part nightclub, part street -- melodramatic, cool, thrilling.

Then there was a knock on the window and I threw the window open to find BillBob O'Brien and his younger brother, sweating in the summer heat, wanting me to come out and play. I thought for a few seconds, the song still unwinding behind me, and said "Nah, I'm listening to a record, I'm just going to stay inside." They cocked their heads, shrugged their shoulders and said at the same time "OK" and left.

I listened through the rest of the record and rather than flipping it over, played it again, this time with the arm back so it would just repeat and repeat. I eventually listened to the other side, but have still probably heard it less then ten times. The A side I've easily heard over a hundred times, the jazzy blues of the rhythm section and the big band brightness of the full horn section meeting my childhood's beating heart to form a love of jazz, a love of vinyl, love of liner notes and a love of long listening in solitude.

--John Evans

 Strange things happening at our Oakland store--large wooden structures to be hidden in the basement--encrypted emails and hushed phone calls. Curiouser and curiouser.

It’s a confusing time to be a young record collector. All the hip kids are pirating thousands of digital tracks for free, gluttonously downloading years of listening time that they’ll likely never enjoy. The sole purpose of the CD has been reduced to something musicians’ girlfriends can sell at the merch table (well, it’s more like: “You like that hoodie? We’ll throw in the CD for free. Okay, just find us on facebook”). Cassettes are an ironic image to be printed on a t-shirt. And I actually have no idea how an 8-track works, but there’s a chick at the farmer’s market who makes furniture out of them. Essentially—and this is the modern crisis we face when it comes to all physical media—we’ve become poor consumers of music, unwilling to truly invest and truly listen, more concerned with quantity than quality.

A few years ago, in an attempt to infuse my life with some intentionality (see also: veganism, Skechers Shape-Ups), I bought a record player. Sony actually does a nice $99 turntable with a USB port so you can rip audio tracks from your vinyl. My dad donated an old Pioneer receiver he had in his garage and some speakers that work great, once I evicted the resident spiders. The whole set up sounds pretty good, considering that I have no AV powers. The first night that I sat in front of my speakers, spinning a Simon and Garfunkel album at a volume much greater than my computer can produce, I was struck by The Great Vinyl Truth—the thing you’re told over and over but never believe until the day you just realize—EVERYTHING SOUNDS BETTER ON A RECORD. There’s no comparison. Close your eyes and you can almost believe that the band is in the room with you, no drugs required, this is experience-enhancement at its best.

Of course, many of you know this. Have known this. You’re probably shaking your head at the sad state of today’s youth; twenty-two year old girl thinks she discovered the magic of vinyl. But I did, didn’t I? And against some pretty terrible odds. Vinyl, though seeing a little spike in popularity lately, is fetishized; tucked into a niche market along with typewriter repair and straight-razor shaving. People either do it because they’re old and inflexible or because they’re young and counter-culture. This doesn’t leave a generous space for those (and I suspect it’s actually a pretty big club) who simply love music, who want to hear great things and curate a well-rounded and intentional record collection. For this very reason, my first vinyl purchases were out of dollar bins at the thrift store (it takes a while to warm up to the $20 price tags on new, contemporary albums). It is why I have more than one Barbara Streisand record, the orchestral score to The Man of La Mancha, and a Best of The Lawrence Welk Show. They were cheap and I was confused--trying to apply my millennium consumption sensibilities to a measured, life-long pursuit.

We at Diesel are great proponents of physical media. We are library-builders, loaner-outers, and book-cuddlers. It is not lost on me that a society who forgets about vinyl is more likely to forget about books, eventually, someday. The reason I’ve got records on the brain (besides the fact that I just found a pristine pressing of ELO’s Out of the Blue), is that we recently announced the publication party for Michael Chabon’s latest, Telegraph Avenue, which is about the Bay Area vinyl scene. In conjunction with Chabon and Harper Collins, Diesel will be throwing quite the shindig on Wednesday, September 12^th and the first 200 customers to pre-order a signed copy will get an invitation (for details, click here). That’s not the only reason I’m excited about vinyl today…but that’s a surprise for later so stay tuned.

President Obama was campaigning in Oakland on Monday, so, of course, he and his wife visited their favorite bookstore. Of course...

Here are a few books for your presidential reading list:

1. Comic-Con. I want to attend Comic-Con before I die. Story workshops, artist talent searches, expert panels, exclusive screenings, and great, literary characters come to life--the heroes and villains of comic books and graphic novels. It's like grown-up Disneyland (ish) with the colorful labyrinth of booths and epic photo opportunities and swag. So much free stuff. And, of course, I'm a supporter of any time a group of people gathers to discuss the art of storytelling and encourage young artists...while wearing costumes. 

2. The American Novel. PBS has launched a series about the American novel, covering 50 novels over 200 years. Starting with The Last of the Mohicans and going on through Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, the in-depth review hits all the high points that you'd expect, as well as unearthing titles I'd never heard of. What are you, A Hazard of New Fortunes? Who are you, Frank Norris? They also break down the prominent themes of "the American novel," offer synopses and author bios, and have an interactive element where you can sound off about the novel that really gets your nationalism going. Once again, PBS, you've tricked me into thinking that learning is fun. 

3. Book Bookmarks. 

These are little printings of poetry collections from James Wright and Robert Bly. This is almost as charming as when the promotional material for Lloyd Kahn's Tiny Homes book was a tiny tiny copy of Tiny Homes. 

"The books, published by Wesleyan University Press, are so small you can put them in your back pocket, your shirt pocket, or maybe even that little vestigial pocket inside the pocket of your jeans. They’re so small that I’ve used them as temporary bookmarks for other, regular-size books."

Read the rest of the article here. 

 Natalie Serber, author of Shout Her Lovely Name, for the ABA's Why Indies Matter campaign at our Oakland Store.

Check out the great literary tattoos of some of our customers.

Have a bookish tattoo you'd like to share? Show us, via email or in person, and we'll post it on the blog!

1. Page to Stage.

 Hebbel am Ufer, an experimental theater group based in Berlin, has taken on a 24-hour-performance-project of adapting David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, not just for the stage, but for the city of Berlin. Slate's Aaron Wiener writes: "This isn’t entertainment in the traditional sense. It’s Wallace-style capital-E Entertainment, whose primary purpose isn’t to bring enjoyment—though it can be enjoyable—but to captivate, to incapacitate, like the novel’s deadly eponymous film whose viewers are so thoroughly entertained that they cease to eat, drink, sleep and, eventually, live."

Read more.

2. Getting Out More.

 There's a general consensus, when it comes to the myth of the productive writer, that one can only battle writer's block in a Kaczynski-chic cabin with a fifth of whiskey. I'm not saying that that doesn't sound like fun, but a new study from the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that the moderate commotion of, say, a crowded coffee shop actually boosts creativity. It has something to do with the mind's natural response to distraction--or perhaps it is the by-product of fighting distraction--it's very scientific. Read the article in The Atlantic. 

3. Building a Child's (digital) Library.

 Every year it gets more and more difficult for books to compete for a child's attention. These aren't the green-slime evils of Nickelodeon anymore, friends, kids have their own iPads and those iPads have Angry Birds. Here are some great tips for re-purposing those touch screens as e-readers in a productive way. I love that the second tip is "co-reading," that is, reading with your child. We may find entertaining substitutes for a good book, but there's no substitute for story time, just the two of you.