logo
The House Where 28,000 Records Burned

The House Where 28,000 Records Burned

Yahoo13-02-2025

Before it burned, Charlie Springer's house contained 18,000 vinyl LPs, 12,000 CDs, 10,000 45s, 4,000 cassettes, 600 78s, 150 8-tracks, hundreds of signed musical posters, and about 100 gold records. The albums alone occupied an entire wall of shelves in the family room, and another in the garage. On his desk were a set of drumsticks from Nirvana and an old RCA microphone that Prince had given to him at a recording session for Prince. A neon Beach Boys sign—as far as he knows, one of only eight remaining in the world—hung above the dining table. In his laundry room was a Gibson guitar signed by the Everly Brothers; near his fireplace, a white Stratocaster signed to him by Eric Clapton.
Last month, the night the Eaton Fire broke out, Charlie evacuated to his girlfriend's house. And when he came back, the remnants of his home had been bleached by the fire. The spot in the family room where the record collection had been was dark ash.
I've known Charlie for as long as I can remember. He and my father met because of records. In the late 1980s, Charlie was at a crowded party in the Hollywood Hills when he heard someone greet my father by his full name. Charlie whipped around: 'You're Fred Walecki? I've been seeing your name on records.' Dad owned a rock-and-roll-instrument shop, and musicians thanked him on their albums for the gear (and emotional support) he provided during recording sessions. Charlie was a national sales manager at Warner Bros. Records and could rattle off the B-side of any record, so of course he'd clocked Walecki appearing over and over again. Growing up, I thought every song I'd ever heard could also be found on Charlie's shelves; his friend Jim Wagner, who once ran sales, merchandising, and advertising for Warner Bros. Records, called it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame West.
Charlie's collection started when he was 6. He had asked his mother to get him the record 'about the dog,' and she'd brought back Patti Page's '(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?' No, not that one—he wanted a 45 of Elvis's recently released single, 'Hound Dog.' He'd cart it around with him for the next seven decades, across several states, before placing it on his shelf in Altadena. At age 8, he mowed lawns and shoveled snow in his hometown outside Chicago to afford 'Sweet Little Sixteen,' by Chuck Berry, and 'Tequila,' by the Champs; when he was 9, he got Ray Charles's 'What'd I Say.' And when he was 10, he walked into his local record shop and found its owner, Lenny, sitting on the floor, frazzled, surrounded by piles of records. Every week, Lenny had to rearrange the records on his wall to reflect the order of the Top 40 chart made by the local radio station WLS. Charlie offered to help.
'What will it cost me?' Lenny asked.
'Two singles a week.' Charlie held on to all of those singles, and the paper surveys from WLS, too.
When he was 12, he bought his first full albums: Surfin' Safari, by the Beach Boys; Bob Dylan's eponymous debut; and Green Onions, by Booker T. and the M.G.s. He entered a Wisconsin seminary two years later, hoping to become a priest. There, he and his friends found a list of addresses for members of Milwaukee's Knights of Columbus chapter, and sent out letters asking for donations—a hi-fi stereo console, a jukebox—to the poor seminarians, who went without so much. Radios were contraband, but Charlie taped one underneath the chair next to his bed, and at night, while 75 other students slept around him, he would use an earbud to listen to WLS. 'And I would hear records, and I would go, Oh my God, I gotta get this record. I have to. ' Seminarians could go into town only if it was strictly necessary, so he'd break his glasses, and run between the optometrist and the five-and-dime. That's how he got a couple of other Beach Boys records, the Kinks' 'Tired of Waiting for You,' and the Lovin' Spoonful's 'Daydream.'
Charlie dropped out of seminary in 1967, at the end of his junior year. All of those five-and-dime records had been in his prefect's room, but when he left, the prefect was nowhere to be found. So, Charlie got a ladder, wriggled through a transom, and got his collection, stored in two crates which had previously contained oranges. ('Orange crates held albums perfectly,' he told me.) Then he hitchhiked to San Francisco and grew his hair out just in time for the Summer of Love. He moved into a commune of sorts, a 16-unit apartment building with the walls between apartments broken down, and got a job hanging posters for the Fillmore on telephone poles around the Bay Area. He'd staple up psychedelic artwork advertising Jefferson Airplane, Sons of Champlin, the Grateful Dead, or Sly and the Family Stone. (He still had about 75 of those posters.) He worked at Tower Records on the side but would hand his paycheck back to his boss: The money all went to records. Anytime one of his favorites—Morrison, Mitchell, Dylan, the Beach Boys—released a new album, he'd host a listening party for friends. When he moved back to Chicago, his music collection took up most of the car. The record store he managed there, Hear Here, would receive about 20 new albums every day to play over the loudspeakers. When Charlie heard Bruce Springsteen's first album (two before Born to Run), he thought it was such a hit, he locked the shop door. 'Until I sell five of these records,' he announced, 'nobody is getting out of this store.'
Next, Charlie worked his way up at a music-distribution company, starting from a gig in the warehouse (picker No. 9). Later, at Warner Bros. Records, he'd work with stores and radio stations to help artists sell enough music to get, and then sustain, their big break. To sell Takin' It to the Streets, he drove with the Doobie Brothers so they could sign albums at a Kansas City record shop; to help Dire Straits get their start, he lobbied radio stations to play their first single for about a year until it caught on. He was also on the shortlist of people who would listen to test pressings of a new album for any pops or crackles, before the company shipped the final version. Charlie held on to about 1,000 of those rare pressings, including Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Prince's Purple Rain.
He moved to Los Angeles in the '80s to be Warner's national sales manager, and in 1991, he bought his home on Skylane Drive, in Altadena. Nestled in the foothills, the area smelled of the hay for his neighbors' horses. Along the fence was bougainvillea, and in his yard, a magnificent native oak that our families would sit beneath together. He started placing thousands of his albums on those shelves in the family room, overlooking that tree.
In Charlie's house, a record was always playing. He had recently papered the walls and ceiling of his bathroom with the WLS surveys he started collecting as a child, in his first record-store job. Every record he pulled off the shelf came with a memory, he told me. And if he kept an album or a memento in his house, 'it was a good story.'
A gold record from U2, on the wall next to the staircase: 'All bands, when they first start off, they're new bands, and nobody knows who they are, okay? … I went up with U2, on their first album, from Chicago to Madison, and they played a gig for about 15 people, and then we went to eat at an Italian restaurant. I went back to the restaurant a couple years later, and the same waitress waited on me, and I said, 'Wow, I remember I was in here with U2.' And she goes, 'Those guys were U2?' I was like, 'They were U2 then and they're U2 now.''
In the kitchen, a poster of Jimi Hendrix striking a power chord at the Monterey Pop Festival: 'Seal puts his first record out, and I have just become a vice president at Warner Bros. And I go to my very first VP lunch, and I announce, 'Hey, this new Seal record is going to go gold.' The senior VP of finance says, 'You shouldn't say that. Why would you make that kind of expectation?' And I'm like, 'Because I know with every corpuscle in my body it's gonna go gold' … So we make a $1 gentlemen's bet. About six weeks later, it's gold.' At the next lunch, he asked the finance executive to sign his dollar bill. Just then, Mo Ostin, the head of the label, walked in and heard about their wager. 'Mo said, 'So Charlie, is there something around the building that you always liked?' I was like, 'Well, that Jim Marshall poster of Hendrix.' And he goes, 'It's yours.''
*Illustration sources: RCA / Michael Ochs Archive / Getty; Stoughton Printing / Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times / Getty; Warner Brothers / Alamy; Sun Records / Alamy
Article originally published at The Atlantic

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

The Beach Boys, with one founding member, set to perform at Alaska State Fair
The Beach Boys, with one founding member, set to perform at Alaska State Fair

Yahoo

time3 days ago

  • Yahoo

The Beach Boys, with one founding member, set to perform at Alaska State Fair

Jun. 5—The Beach Boys will perform at the 2025 Alaska State Fair, officials announced Thursday. The band, led by founding member Mike Love, is scheduled to perform at 7 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 25. Tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday. The Beach Boys formed in California in 1961 with a lineup that included Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, Love — their cousin — and Al Jardine. The current lineup includes lead singer Love and 1965 addition Bruce Johnson. Known for their California surf rock sound and glossy vocal harmonies, the band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. The group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and received a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 2001. The band is performing around the country on its "Sounds of Summer" tour. The Beach Boys join already announced acts Dwight Yoakam (Aug. 31), Wiz Khalifa (Aug. 24), Medium Build (Aug. 15), Rainbow Kitten Surprise (Aug. 16), "Weird Al" Yankovic (Aug. 17), Chris Tomlin (Aug. 18), Billy Currington (Aug. 23) and Foreigner (Aug. 30) on the 2025 fair lineup.

‘Poker Face' Season 2 Review: Rian Johnson Ups the Chaotic Ante in Peacock's Comforting Howcatchem
‘Poker Face' Season 2 Review: Rian Johnson Ups the Chaotic Ante in Peacock's Comforting Howcatchem

Yahoo

time5 days ago

  • Yahoo

‘Poker Face' Season 2 Review: Rian Johnson Ups the Chaotic Ante in Peacock's Comforting Howcatchem

Sleuths, by and large, aren't given the luxury of lying low. Worn-down beat detectives are always getting called to the next crime scene. Part-time investigators can't resist a femme fatale's desperate pleas (or ample pocketbook). But even when you set aside their professional obligations, puzzle-solvers usually don't know what to do with themselves when the game is not yet afoot. Typically, gumshoes crack cases by compulsion. Take Rian Johnson's last 'Knives Out' mystery: At the start of 'Glass Onion,' Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has grown frustrated by the pandemic's stultifying effect on real-world brainteasers. With too much time off (and too much time moping in the tub), he thinks he's going insane. He's tried reading books, he's tried playing games, he's even enlisted help from a few similarly-minded peers (including Angela Lansbury and 'Poker Face' star Natasha Lyonne). But nothing helps. 'The last thing I need is a vacation,' he says. 'I need danger, the hunt, a challenge. I need… a great case.' More from IndieWire How 'Andor' Season 2 Production Design Gives the Empire Its Oppressive Weight 'Poker Face' Season 2: Costume Designing Wicked Looks for Cynthia Erivo's Quintuplets In 'Poker Face' Season 2, Johnson sees this quandary through the looking glass (onion). Lyonne's Charlie Cale has too many cases to solve and too little downtime in between. No matter where her baby blue Plymouth Barracuda takes her, there's another liar, another dead body, and another wrong waiting to be righted. Her situation, like her innate ability to identify a lie, is unique. She's not a cop on assignment. She's not a private eye looking for work. She's happy to make a living picking apples from an orchard or snagging foul balls in the minor leagues. And yet, death haunts Charlie wherever she goes, so it's only natural to wonder: Is her nose for bullshit a blessing or a curse? What a mystery! Resolving this dilemma gives 'Poker Face' Season 2 a sturdy spine, which is especially important since the individual vertebrae (aka the individual episodes) aren't quite as compelling (save, once again, for one true gem). Since we've known Charlie, she's been running. In the first season, she seeks justice for her murdered friend and, as a result of doing the right thing, has to go on the lam. Each week, she's in a new town, working a new gig, caught up in another suspicious story. The lone wolf lifestyle suits Charlie just fine — for a while. Her ebullient personality helps to make friends wherever she goes, but when some of those friends end up dead and the rest have to be left behind when it's time to skip town, well, those losses add up. As Season 2 starts, Charlie's traded one vengeful mob boss for another. She out-maneuvered Sterling Frost, Sr. (Ron Perlman), but after refusing to use her 'gift' to help another crime family, she now has to deal with Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman). Here we go again: Charlie does the right thing, and her reward is a life spent in hiding. For a procedural, starting over is more of a comfort than an annoyance, and the first episode, directed by Johnson, offers numerous pleasures — five of which are all played by Cynthia Erivo! There's also a mini-montage of Charlie trying out odd jobs (and making new friends) before she's chased off by gun-toting mobsters. There's lovely cinematography by director of photography Jaron Presant, and Johnson savors every odd little eccentricity available in the wacky initial investigation. (His ability to reveal key details through playful yet carefully considered camera movements is downright Spielbergian.) Perhaps most importantly, Episode 1 also makes it clear Charlie is enjoying her life as best she can; that is, she's enjoying her life whenever she's not staring death in the face (those mobsters' bullets come awfully close) — a pattern that persists in her subsequent cases. While most of those aren't as satisfying as the first, Charlie always is: Generous and bright, like the long curly locks spilling out from under her various trucker hats, Charlie is an unnatural charmer, her wide smile and gravelly intonation a congenial contradiction that convincingly cultivates curiosity in wherever they're aimed. She makes the most out of her fleeting conversations with strangers, and only the liars among them are ever upset for sharing a few sentences with our affable star. It's a testament to Lyonne's well-honed charisma and attentive performance that Charlie remains the top draw despite an onslaught of shiny guest stars playing distinct characters. Katie Holmes is a delight as a fed-up mortician's wife more than ready to fly the coop. Gaby Hoffman's quick turn from straight-laced Cop of the Year candidate to a feral Florida Woman is batshit fun. Simon Rex settles in nicely as a washed-up pitcher looking to make a little money off losing. Melanie Lynskey and John Cho crackle with chemistry in the season's best episode (of the 10 screened for critics), and Erivo brings the perfect playful pitch to each of her nearly half-dozen characters. Two tweaks to the format help distinguish Season 2's journey from the original run: The first is a notable uptick in chaos — the situations Charlie finds herself in range from psychotic scams ('A New Lease on Death') to absurd send-ups ('One Last Job'), but each episode attempts to ratchet up whatever quirky quality it's working with, including an early entry that nearly goes supernatural ('Last Looks'). The other departure is simpler: Charlie, without crossing into spoilers, gets to come out of hiding. She's free to decide where to go and when, which allows the show to revel in an extended stay later on and serve the season's central conceit: Season 2, by and large, is about accepting who you are, even if living your best life doesn't mean living an easy life. Charlie yearns for enough time to appreciate 'the unobserved pageant of the ordinary,' as she calls the knickknacks filling up random cars, and thus, random lives. A life on the run doesn't allow for much rumination, but neither does a stationary one. Giving Charlie the time to experience both allows her to examine what she really wants, and what she really needs, without deluding herself into thinking things would be different if she wasn't being hounded by mobsters (or, on the flip-side, if she wasn't tied down to any one place or person). She's not like Benoit Blanc, always itching for the next great case to crack; she'd be perfectly happy floating in untroubled waters. She isn't a detective, and she's certainly not a cop; for all the odd jobs she's had, solving mysteries isn't one of them. Charlie is just a person in a unique position to help, so of course she's persistently hounded by people who need it — and lots of people need it! At a time in America when our institutional safety nets are being disbanded and the burden to support each other often comes down to individual efforts, Charlie's struggle feels all the more apt. She wants to help — she just also wishes there was less need for her to do so. And therein lies her salvation. Charlie can't help but love people. She's a people person. Even when she tries to stay out of their lives, she's inevitably drawn in by natural or circumstantial curiosity. Because Charlie thrives around people, so does 'Poker Face.' As a howcatchem procedural, it has to resolve similar issues as its lead: The formula requires a certain amount of repetition, just as the audience demands a new mystery each week. When episodes rely on people to bring them to life — be it famous guest stars, well-realized characters, life-affirming arcs, or all of the above — they're that much easier to enjoy. For the most part, 'Poker Face' Season 2 is quite easy to enjoy. After all, it knows helping people isn't a gift or a curse; it's a calling, and when you realize how fulfilling it can be, the only mystery left to solve is how to help others see the same thing. 'Poker Face' Season 2 premieres Thursday, May 8 on Peacock. Three episodes will be released the first week, then one episode weekly through the finale on July 10. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst

‘Never Touch A Black Man's Radio.' Jackie Chan Does Not Get Popular Rush Hour Line Decades Later, And Does Not Hold Back
‘Never Touch A Black Man's Radio.' Jackie Chan Does Not Get Popular Rush Hour Line Decades Later, And Does Not Hold Back

Yahoo

time5 days ago

  • Yahoo

‘Never Touch A Black Man's Radio.' Jackie Chan Does Not Get Popular Rush Hour Line Decades Later, And Does Not Hold Back

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Rush Hour deserves to sit amongst the best buddy cop movies of all time, and that's in great part due to the performances of lead actors Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. The two stars are down-right fantastic together, and they share a number of great moments together in the franchise's original 1998 installment. One such scene involves Tucker's Det. James Carter scolding Chan's Chief Inspector Lee for touching his radio. As it turns out, over 27 years later, Chan still doesn't understand the iconic line featured in that scene. The moment in question, which can be found on YouTube, happens as Carter and Lee are cruising Los Angeles in the latter's car and Lee turns on the radio, after which he delightfully listens to the Beach Boys. Carter then bluntly expresses disbelief over Lee's actions, emphatically telling him, 'Don't you ever touch a Black man's radio!' It's easily one of the funniest exchanges in the entire film, and I always chuckle at it whenever I rewatch the film. Respectfully, I can't help but chuckle a bit when hearing Jackie Chan's comments about not understanding the gag. The actor, who's been promoting the 2025 movie release Karate Kid: Legends, took part in a wide-ranging interview with People that was shared to Instagram. While reflecting on Rush Hour, which still stands as one of Chan's best movies, didn't mince words when expressing his confusion over the radio-related moment: After the movie finished, I still don't like it. Because I just don't understand a lot of things. The culture is totally different. The people laughing, 'Never touch a Black man's radio.' I just… 'Why? Why so funny?' I just don't understand! [It's a] totally different culture. I was very disappointed. More on Rush Hour This Video Of Jackie Chan Passing Out Pizza On The Karate Kid 6 Set Is The Most Wholesome Thing I've Seen Today The revered movie icon is correct in that Carter's brutally honest line has to do with differences in culture – and not just simply general American customs. Carter's visceral response falls greatly in line with Black culture, in which there's a great emphasis on being thoughtful of how one interacts with or handles another person's possessions. Yes, people of various walks of life exhibit similar habits, but this idea – in the context of Rush Hour – is conveyed as a touchstone of African American culture. And, being a Black man myself, I can definitely attest to the importance of that principle. Jackie Chan later mentioned in his interview that by starring in more American films and living in the states off and on over the years, he's become somewhat more attuned to Western culture. (As he admitted though, he's only come to understand 'a little bit' more.) So it seems while Chan was entertaining the masses with Shanghai Noon, Shanghai Nights, The Tuxedo and more, the production requirements of the movie benefitted him from a personal standpoint. While the Drunken Master icon continues to produce American movies, there's been speculation as to whether he and Chris Tucker might finally make Rush Hour 4. Both stars seem excited about possibly being able to make another sequel. Tucker expressed enthusiasm when asked about the project a few years ago and, just recently, his amiable co-star also discussed a fourth movie while explaining what made the 2007 threequel disappointing. I'd personally be down to see both Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, who still does his own stunts, reprise their famous characters for another bombastic and hilarious blockbuster. Should that happen, I'd hope to see more cultural misunderstandings between Lee and Carter. Also, I'd hope that, for Chan's sake, he'd be in the jokes more so than he was when he filmed the fan-favorite radio scene.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store