Classical Wax : Albums I Bought On Looks Alone

When I first started collecting vinyl I padded my collection heavily with wax from the used bins. It was a good way to build the collection without sinking my bank account. But even used albums weren’t dirt cheap(unless you were pulling from milk crates underneath the record bins.) If they were too cheap then you were probably heading home with something warped or scratched to hell that probably wouldn’t play anyways. Or it was Tijuana Brass or some old Three Dog Night that you didn’t want anyways.

I did find some vinyl gold in the $1 bins at Half Price Books back in the day. In the late 2000s you could still step in there and find some sweet stuff for dirt cheap. Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly and Tangerine Dream’s Tangram were both $1 purchases and HPB and were in fantastic shape. I think most of my Tangerine Dream collection was purchased on the cheap in used bins for less than $5 a piece. Bathhouse Records in my hometown(RIP) had a pretty stellar selection of used records. John Abercrombie’s first Gateway album, as well as his masterpiece Timeless were both procured there for less than $4. The cheap jazz was much harder to find, though. Those two were needles in haystacks.

Another record you could find dirt cheap was classical records. I know, I know, who sits around listening to classical albums except for maybe people who donate to NPR or Hannibal Lecter? Well, I’d like to say that I did but I didn’t all that much. I do enjoy symphonic sounds, it’s just usually not my go-to. But you could get some pretty amazing records that were still in good shape(I’m imagining many came from library collections once libraries stopped carrying vinyl for patrons.)

The other thing about classical vinyl releases is that the album covers for these were absolutely fantastic. Visuals that were baroque, mysterious, dark, and haunting at times, whether you were an orchestral head or not these album sleeves pulled you in. I’d say over half of the classical albums I bought were because of the album sleeve alone, and with the exception of Schubert’s ‘Impromptus, Op. 90 & Op. 142’ and Gustav Holst ‘The Planets’, they were in the $1 bin at Half Price Books.

Today I’m sharing my favorite album sleeves of my classical record collection. There’s one or two that I never listen to but love the sleeves. And there’s another that once I got it home the album in the sleeve wasn’t even the right one. But that’s okay. I bought it for the sleeve anyways.

So enjoy gawking at these album covers on a bizarrely warm February Friday. Forget about the world ending and gawk at my Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Stockhausen why don’t you?