Larry Jaffee, Author - "Record Store Day" (#60)

We are. It's more than just a champ. We are inspirational creators, difference makers, world changers, and we are one community. Join alums, Jared and Ross as they uncover stories of Penn Staters and their unique professional and personal journeys. We are Penn State, and this is Lion Legacy. All right. Episode number 60 of Lion Legacy, also known as the. Halloween episode, a special time of the year for kids. And Ross, what are Evan and Julia going as for Halloween this year?

after they changed their mind about 17 times, which I'm sure most kids do that, Evan, is. 10 and a half years old and a little bit of satire, but he's got a big Elmo costume just because he thinks it's funny. He's like, I'm going to be Elmo. I like, cause I'm a big Elmo. And I'm like, all right, I guess that's funny. I don't know, he's going to be at this big red thing.

And he actually, believe it or not, may turn this into a little bit of a side hustle because he said, friends and family that have like little kids are like, Oh, we should come to a little kid's birthday party. You can be like the big. Mike Elmo mascot. So he might turn this into a little bit of a side hustle. I was going to say we could put him in times square as well. And you can take photos with the tourist and get a dollar or two.

Yeah. Apparently some of his friends are like, they're going along with this. It must be something I don't quite, understand what the kids those age, but they're like, like doing a little throwback to Sesame street at their age. It's kind of, like funny in some way. I don't quite get it, but whatever. And Julia is going to be, have you seen this? popular Disney show. They did a couple of movies called zombies. Have you heard this? It's like a Disney, like tween musical type thing.

with these like zombies. So it's these check this out. It's werewolves, zombies, and humans that all coexist in this town. And it's these are all friends and it's all, they put three movies out zombies, one zombies, two and zombies three. And it's anyway, so Julia loves it. And so she's going to be one of the characters from zombies. And are her friends part of the zombie crowd as well? They didn't coordinate. They didn't coordinate. But it's pretty cool. Maybe your nieces are familiar with it.

I don't know. Yeah, I'll have to get into it or at least I'll ask them at least about that. Cool. hopefully they'll also get a lot of candy because that's, I know, an important part of the day. Oh yeah. I'm just, I'm happy to give out the candy, walk around a little trick or treating. It's fine. I'm over the weather holds up, but, Halloween's always a good time. I don't ask me to dress up. I'm not a costume guy, but I'm happy to go along with everything else.

are you going to be at the door or are you going out with them? My neighbor sets up a fire pit at the end of the driveway. And we pull out some chairs, we hang out, we, have a few beers and we hand out candy to the passersby. Nice. Awesome. That's actually my favorite part of it. Don't tell anybody else, but that's my favorite. you'll have to give us the Halloween, rundown next time we, we talk, but you're sure. this episode is all about music and Ross. I know you are a big music aficionado.

I love it. I love it. I, remember getting into music when I was a kid I think back to certain styles and when I was in like middle school, high school that really, just like anyone else in your formative years, really sticks with you. and, that music, whether it was, great, or I just remembered being great, just, built. My, my taste in different music styles, it's evolved, as time goes on. I just appreciate, appreciate good music. I'm not most styles.

I'm not this guy that I don't eat up everything. I'm not a hip hop doesn't really do it for me. Country music doesn't really do it for me. I'm a rock and roll guy. But I can, I appreciate the old stuff, the classic rock, the new stuff from when I was growing up, even pop music today just fascinates me. let me give you an example. Taylor Swift, right? Taylor Swift is everywhere. She is the biggest thing going. So you know what I did? I'm curious. I go, what makes it so good?

I listened to probably about half a dozen of her albums, like while she was touring and like all over the news, I have to hear for myself what the big thing, and it's good stuff. It's really, it's good. I like her newer things or early stuff, man, not too much, but she puts out some good music and I can appreciate it. it might not be my favorite, but I'm all about music appreciation. And so that's what that is, you know, who I got into as you were talking about during the pandemic.

Yeah. I got into Frank Sinatra, love him, classic, just such a relaxing, I would pour myself a drink during the pandemic Friday night with a book. hit after hit. Yeah. that's a great thing about it is that there's so much, no matter how old you are, there's so much music that came before you. I remember being in high school and I would go hang out with my buddies and we would dive into classic rock. So this was in the nineties and dating myself here.

And we would go back and just listen to stuff from the sixties and seventies. And we would just, in addition to stuff that was current at the time, we would learn about educate ourselves on. Classic rock. And that's how I got into it. And so there's still stuff, even for you think about a kid today, right? College student, high school student, they can go back. They can listen to stuff from the two thousands, the nineties, eighties, you work your way back. It's the same thing, Jared.

Like you're like, I never really listened to Sinatra. Let me just dive into it and learn about his music. Start with the hits. And maybe I go a little deeper. And that's the great thing is just, there's just so much out there, so much good music out there from whether it's our era or a prior era and you can consume it, that will. Yeah. And we had a great conversation tonight with another music aficionado. Yeah. So we spoke with Larry Jaffe. and Larry is a journalist by trade.

He's also a, an adjunct journalism professor. and he's also a writer, a long time writer about the music industry. we're going to talk about his book called record store day, which I, I'm going to repeat what you'll hear it a little bit, but, it was featured in the Penn state or alumni magazine. And I'm like, this sounds good. This is right down my alley. He wrote about record store day and the resurgence of vinyl, over the last 10 years or so. And I'm like, Sounds great. I'm going to read it.

And I read the book and afterwards we reached out to him and said, Hey, we're want to talk to you. And he was happy to join us. we covered a lot of ground about journalism, about music, about the industry, music industry that is, and, what he's done over the course of his career, and just really cool background and a lot of cool stories he shares with us to Jared, with that, we're going to put some records on here. We're going to drop the pin.

on the record, we're going to go spin some vinyl with Larry Jaffe. RAAAWR RAAWR All right, let's welcome Larry Jaffe, a 1986 graduate with a master's degree in journalism. Larry is a journalist, communications professional, and a professor. Larry has written about cybercrime, pop culture, the media business, and most recently wrote a book called Record Store Day about the resurgence of vinyl records, which Ross actually read and thoroughly enjoyed.

We'll get to hear a little bit more from Ross about his perspective. Larry is also a lecturer of journalism at Rutgers University. After spending a decade teaching at the New York Institute of Technology, where he won the 2021 Presidential Award for Excellence in Part Time Teaching. We're excited to have you on, Larry, and talk about your career, your writing, and also some music. Thank you. Really great to speak with you here, Larry.

As a fan of journalism and a fan of music, I admire the fact that you made a career Out of the former and found a way to be involved in the business of the latter. We'll get into the music business later on, but first, at what point did you know that you wanted to pursue a career in journalism?

It was when I was a senior in high school and all the president's men had come out. And I said, that's what I want to do. not necessarily be a political reporter, but just. I liked the whole idea of a newspaper or magazine. I would've been perfectly happy just being the, rock critic, if that was an actual job to have. Sure. Yeah. And in those days it actually was, now it's almost impossible. But, so I knew I was gonna be in journalism.

I did always think about going to law school, but I didn't wanna go into debt to, to be a lawyer. my, my daughter is now her in her second year. so I'm living precariously through her. and those late nights probably of studying as well, right? Right. So you have a ton of bylines, right? New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Huffington Post, among many other publications. You've also written about a wide variety of subjects, but found yourself coming back.

To the arts and to the media business when possible, curious, how would you describe your reporting or writing style? And how is that style also allow you to be versatile in the subjects that you've covered?

Well, I think it goes back to being curious about everything. and I tell my current students this all the time that although I have two degrees in journalism, that's not how I learned how to be a journalist. It was from the age of 16 weeding cover to cover the New York Times on a daily basis and also actually doing it. and interviewing people.

Once I got into college, only me and a few other friends were writing professionally while we were still at my undergraduate degrees from Hofstra University in Hampstead. I realized I always aimed high, that's how I made it into the New York Times. Rolling Stone, I just got lucky. I had met Ed Asner at a political fundraiser and I said to him, I'm a freelancer. I, don't have an assignment, but I'll get one if you would do an interview with me. Ed's show had been canceled.

Lou Grant was canceled about six months earlier before we met for the first time. So I knew, I knew it was somewhat controversial. And in those days, I was still using a manual typewriter. I actually typed 10 letters to Newsweek Time. you name like the major magazines of the day. And, I got 9 rejections very quickly. The 10th was Rolling Stone. And, in fact, Terry McDonald, the editor at the time, he called me and wanted to see if I wanted to do it. So I said, don't toy with me.

I'm a freelancer. Are you serious? He goes, no. He said, we were just discussing ASNR and we were all too busy. Everyone on staff was too busy to take it on and then somebody said, I just received this query letter and that's how it happened. It was perfect. do you feel like you have a particular style though? Out there is from writing wise, it is conversational, but it's also journalistic.

I never really attempted fiction, although, I did read, when I was a student, both that, I guess in graduate school as well, literary journalists. type people like Kanto Thompson at Penn State. I was very lucky. I had a great, writing instructor, Toby Thompson, who is still there. And I was familiar with Toby's work because I'm a Bob Dylan fanatic and Toby wrote one of the first biographies of Dylan.

so I had read his book before I knew he was teaching at Penn State, and then I was lucky to take his course. And, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure it made me a better writer. Being in his class, I like the point you made. I feel like you could go for almost any career, but especially in journalism, right? it's one thing to learn the textbook material, but you know, as with any job, you're not actually going to get better at it until you're doing it.

And I imagine you could write whatever you want until you're actually out there covering a real story and having that be published. and then I imagine your work as you got go along, your, You're gaining confidence. you can tell that you're, becoming a little more seamless to you. And, to your point, that's how you get better. also, I just told my, my, supervisor recently at Rutgers that my students would never be able to use chat, GBT, or, any kind of artificial intelligence.

And do my assignments because they're so tailored to what's going on in my head, I'm very confident that, they couldn't cheat to get by, how big of a concern is that though?

I'm concerned that my stuff is going to get ripped off, I recently started blogging for medium about all kinds of topics and. I hear other writers that, face this, that they feel they're being ripped off. Sure. anything that's on the internet, right? you're at risk of that, especially, yourself with all of these publications and bylines you've had over the years, So you worked for a number of publishing companies, right? You managed, editorial production staff.

So when you were, a little more tenured in your career and you're working with, let's say somebody that was a little more junior in their career as a journalist, what was the important piece of advice or guidance you gave them? Again, the people that were serious about it at the time. how did you feel like, what did you share with them to help them along in their career?

be thorough, double check. don't just give me the first draft and say you've done, really read it over, read it out loud. In fact, I do that, and I'll catch things that if I just mentally looked it over, I wouldn't see. every writer can be improved and I was lucky early in my career. I had one editor, who, Just showed me how I use too many words often, and to consolidate like less is more and it really I learned more in those like five seconds than I did four years at Hofstra.

literally, and definitely made me a better writer, and there's other things that I do now is, I try not to repeat the same words and whatever I'm writing. just mix it up. There are other ways to say things. Talk to us a little bit about how you became an adjunct professor. I believe you, originally didn't plan to go into teaching, but certainly you've had a great career at a number of universities.

Yeah. So it was around 1983 and I wrote a freelance. article for a magazine called the press and, I saw it on a newsstand once and, they weren't answering the phone like six months after it was published, and I was still wasn't paid. So I, I just randomly chose one of the names in the magazine. I think his article was in the page after mine. And, he said, He didn't get paid either. His name was Peter Coper. And he said to me, what are you doing? So I said, I'm looking for my next gig.

So he says, you want to teach? And I said, yeah, where? And he says, Hofstra. I said, I just graduated from there three years ago. So then a month later, I'm sitting in this interview with three of my four, three of the four on the panel. professors, and I had, I had good relationships with all three of them. so it was just total by accident. And so while I was there for a year, on the bulletin board, I saw a, a flyer that Penn State was looking for graduate assistants.

And this was one of the periods of time when I was seriously thinking about going to law school. I really didn't know what a graduate assistant was or what it did. there was some description. So I figured I might as well apply because by that point, I was already published in the New York Times. It was already published in Rolling Stone. So I figured I had a pretty good shot. and I already had taught at Hofstra for about a year and a half, news and feature writing.

I was able to get the assistantship. Did you ever get that check from the magazine? No, So let's talk a little bit about baseball. tough couple days for Ross here because he's a big Phillies fan. But I understand you're a huge baseball fan. Did you ever have the opportunity or interest to go the sports reporting route?

I've done some sports reporting occasionally. it's more on the business side of Sports. in fact, I had interviewed the former president of CBS sports last year for broadcasting and cable magazine.

through the nineties, eighties, nineties, I wrote a lot about the cable television business and, ESPN, sports rights and, all kinds of, streaming when that started coming out, but, the only time I ever actually reported on a game was that, Hofstra, the sports editor, I don't know, for whatever reason, didn't want to cover the football game. So I volunteered to do it and it actually was a very exciting game in the last second, like a field goal.

Won the game erotic thing is now I actually despise football. So what? No, I was teaching a sports reporting class at St. Joseph's College in Long Island. And the Will Smith movie concussion had just come out.

but instead of showing that I decided to show the documentary, League in Denial, that the, that the, fiction film was based on, and, it was so eye opening that the NFL knows that half of their players are brain damaged, and yeah, they've made some, changes, but, it just showed me how the, how football especially is just about greed, I was also not only dismayed that the league would You know, exploit these players, but so would, the union, so I give you an idea of how my brain works.

I heard yesterday in the news that the Olympics are going to have flag football and NFL players are going to be. able to, be on the American team. you know what? Why don't you just make it all flag football at this stage? you want to like, it would be a lot safer. Right. So yeah, I recently wrote a piece about that. it was for medium. It was a titled, I wanted to play football for the coach, but now I hate football. and that, that was a reference to a Lou Reed, song, Coney Island baby.

we'll segue into music, eventually, but I do want to we're getting there before we get into music. I do want to just ask. So who's your baseball team? now it's still the Mets, I listened to probably half the games on radio like I did when I was a kid. and I would follow on the ESPN, app, the game cast, which was a little bit delayed from the radio. but I grew up, it's interesting. I grew up in meth van when I was a teenager.

I switched to the Yankees to piss off my father because I realized he brainwashed my brother and me to be bad fans. I rode the Yankees for a while. especially, my college years when they were pretty great. and I switched back to, the Mets in the early eighties, mainly because I was living on Long Island at the time and most of my friends were Mets fans and they kept on telling me about, these guys, Strawberry and, Doc Gooden and, and. I realized that they really did have something special.

And I remember being at Penn state in 1985 and they lost like the last day of the season, like they didn't make it into playoffs, but they looked like they were poised to be a real serious threat the next season. And I remember actually in September, We had a blackboard in the graduate assistant room and I put the starting rotation and I was like, yeah, try to talk about that, love it. as promised, we are going to talk about music now.

we're going to discuss your book record store day in a moment, but first, I want to talk about making vinyl, which you co launched in 2017. correct me if this is all based business to business networking platform that helps promote the resurgence of traditional record album, right? Is it like a platform or consortium? Is that the best way I guess to describe it?

it's principally a conference, so it's a networking platform that, we brought the industry together so that, no matter where they were on the supply chain, they could meet their customers or the future customers or suppliers. It's interesting. I had pitched my co founder, Brian Ekes back in 2013. I, and honestly, I didn't know there was a vinyl resurgence. I did write a piece for the magazine I used to edit called MediaLine back in 2002, and there was a producer.

For Sony, who, reissued, he just reissued mostly CDs, but he started licensing for his own label Sundays, the Bob Dylan catalog, the birds catalog, and would, put them out on vinyl and mono, and he told me he had no doubt back in 2002, this is actually in the book, Bob Irwin, that he had no doubt the vinyl was coming back and I thought he was, Being ludicrous. I never really thought anything that it could be possible. He proved me wrong.

the book, I think the key to the book is actually the subtitle. the most improbable comeback of the 21st century, because try to think of another technology that we did 50 years ago that came back, we embrace. Right. It doesn't exist. It's only vinyl. Yeah. rotary phones. I don't think so. Hardly. So hang on, we're going to get to the book in a second also, before we get off of making vinyl. you mentioned a moment ago, like connecting the, the suppliers with the shop owners and so forth.

what are their like mission and goals? Like how has it been successful since it's launched? let me give you an idea of what happened when we first started it. Sure. at the time we knew there were 35 pressing plants in the world and we had most of those 35 speak at our conference. about 6 or 7 were like the biggest plants in the world. And then we had a another panel that had about 6 or 7, operations that had just started in the last 5 years. we didn't know.

Was there was like another dozen sitting in the audience that were about to start their operations. Same thing happened the next year, like doubled the amount. So right now there are 200 pressing plants in throughout the world, half of which are in the U. S. and what drives us crazy is. The way that the media report stuff, but they don't do, this goes back to what we were talking about with reporting.

they just basically repeat a press release, which by the way has been discredited, Luminate basically admitted that their projections are just projections. and I knew this for a fact because, last year they said that the vinyl growth was 4%. And we know that's physically cannot be possible because we have a line, a direct line to all the pressing plants in the world. We know how much they're producing. and I, this actually came to light in 2018 when the RIAA.

Had just issued their six month report and I'm just reading from the press releases as well according to this 9. 2 million units were distributed in the first half of 2018 and they're yelling from the audience. Those numbers are ridiculously low and then afterwards one of the pressing plan owners Steve Sheldon who had a company called rainbow in Santa Monica, he said I did six million on my own. it just shows, the stuff that's being distributed to record stores is being bought, now true.

It's the most popular titles that probably move the most amount of units, like the Flea and Mac rumors, Michael Jackson, the Beatles. If you look at the top 10 of last year, the top 10 bestsellers, 7 of the 10 were like either millennial or, or, Gen Z artists. they weren't just the classic rock type stuff. So that bodes really well for the future. the Taylor Swift's and Olivia Rodrigo's, they're basically the future. and my, daughter is 25 years old. She. loves vinyl.

it's funny when she called me when she was in college and she said, are you still doing that vinyl thing? So I said, yeah, she said, I want a record player. I know what I want. It's a Crosley. It's like one of those little suitcases. I know what color I want. And I was like, Oh, I probably could get you something better than that. She goes, no, no, it's exactly what I want. So two years later, She calls me again and she says, I think I'm ready for a better, looking for an upgrade.

Yeah. And her system sounds better than mine now. This may be a bit of a naive question and I don't own a record player. Is the sound quality that much better or different? Is that something that I could pick up? It's all relative, really. so the Crosley doesn't sound that great and it chews up the records, but the Crosley does have better models actually, but it depends to your question. It depends on how that record was recorded, how it was mastered, how it was pressed.

It's such a complicated. process that any little screw up along the way can make a record sound not that great. On the other hand, when you compare it to a CD and do an A B test and you have a decent pressing, I think, yeah, I think it sounds better, and I've done that actually. but I loved CDs when they first started. And in fact, I was at Penn State when I bought my first CD player. and I remember the first semester I still was playing vinyl. I went came back to Manhattan for Thanksgiving.

And I went to the new then new Tower Records in the village. And I bought what I thought was the five LP set of Bob Dylan's biograph. And I opened it up. And there were three CDs. And I was like Surprise. I was planning on getting a CD player, but I don't have the money to get one right now. that was like my first CD purchase. it's funny, years later, I wrote about the packaging side of the business and it was just a bad QC, that ended up with the CDs in the box and they misprinted it.

But, and I recently actually got the vinyl biograph, I had a huge record store. There you go. After all those years, you finally got it. Yeah. No, Jared, though, I think, just speaking as a, in layman's terms, I think there are a lot of people that do think that, right? I don't know if it's, just what people, people, of the, the boomer generation or whatever they grew up with, grew up with records and they like, yeah, they swear by it. Like this, nothing sound tapes. Didn't sound the same CDs.

Didn't sound the same, even, highly refined digital streaming. it doesn't matter what kind of equipment you have. Nothing sounds like vinyl. And I'm sure you hear this also, Larry, right? just people that just swear by it, no matter what. Yeah. I have like old vintage records, Booker T and the MGs from, it was like 1969, I think. And it looks beat up when you look at it, but it sounds amazing.

Sure. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, even like some of the, the RCA David Bowie flexi discs that they called, those sound great. it really depends on the actual press. Got it. So Larry, we are going to move on to your book now and bear with me on the next question is a little bit long here, but I think it's important to build it up. So record store day was released last year.

I actually saw the feature in the alumni magazine and being a big music fan, I was very curious and went and bought it on Amazon. I read the book and one of the several things that impressed me was the depth to which you were able to tell the story of Record Store Day and the people that helped drive the effort. as a quick synopsis, and I'm going to read this, actually from, I've got the hard copy with me and I want to read part of the back cover because I think it's important.

Record Store Day managed to revive the vinyl format from Oblivion over the past 15 years with some of the biggest artists jumping at the chance to support independent record stores. This alliance and renewed camaraderie between artists and record stores set in motion the world's largest annual music event, Record Store Day. we're getting to the question now. What was the motivation to tell the story more broadly?

And secondly, I imagine the independent record shops, being a tight knit community, it was probably difficult to piece together the whole story. Given you had so many moving pieces, right? You had the store owners, you had the label executives, you had the musicians involved. So just, there's a lot there, but how did this all come about? How did, were you able to kind of knit this whole story together?

it took a lot of work. I must have done at least 35, 40 interviews with various people. I believe it. On the research side, the Association of Recorded Sound Collections gave the book an award last week. I didn't even know it was nominated. And the category was Best Research for General Recording. The ironic thing is one of my colleagues at Rutgers at the Institute of Jazz Studies was the former president of this organization.

I saw him yesterday and, he was telling me about how the awards come about. he's not that active in the, organization anymore, but he, certainly knew the whole inner workings of the awards and things like that. So we both might go to Minneapolis. I'm definitely going to go to collect the award, but he said he might come this time too. That's fantastic. congratulations. that's great. I love that. Yeah. to your point, it's almost there's some of the articles you'll see from time to time.

Like they call it the oral history of something, Oral history of a TV show or some event. And that's almost what I felt like when I was reading the book, To your point amazed at how, like the whole thing, it's like, you spoke with all these people. It's first it was like, the gang from the, all the independent record shops, right? Then it was the executives and then it was the musicians involved. And it's just the way you pieced it together was very well done.

And it helped tell the story in a very, chronological methodical way. and I. To your, point. I know that I imagined as I was reading it, that wasn't easy. And so I appreciate your experience. I mean, it also had sort of an arc to it that, it's turned out that way. the book ends with the pandemic and how record stores, how to adapt and learn e commerce all of a sudden.

we're going to talk about Penn state in a little bit, but I do want to touch upon your master's project while at Penn state, which centered on MTV's impact on the record industry and record buying habits of Penn state students. Let's go back in time. early, mid 1980s. Give us the synopsis of what you learned and shared as part of this project.

Well, you know, it's interesting. I did some research of other academics, who were writing about popular culture. And I had published actually while I was at Penn State, two articles for, a, journal called Popular Culture and Society. And One of the pieces was actually did some reporting about, State College. I bought a used record of, Kate Tell's greatest. Hits or something, from, 1971, I think it was.

And I interviewed one of the local DJs, at, at the radio station, to talk about those songs in that era and, things like that. so basically at graduate school I decided, I really didn't wanna. focus on like heavy journalism, first amendment topics and things like that. I had already given up the idea about going to law school at that point. had I, thought I was going to take that path, I would have done that. But you know, so I figured I'm gonna make this fun for myself.

So MTV was like a pretty new phenomenon at that point. It was only around for a couple of years. and then I figured, around my Thanksgiving break and things like that, I'll do some interviews with, record executives, maybe I'll get some free records. And then I was taking a course in qualitative research with, My graduate advisor, John Pavlik, who, now is at Rutgers for the past 20 years. and it was really helpful because even my later media career, I learned how to write a questionnaire.

And get qualitative answers that, we're not skewed to whatever biases the organization was looking for, which is probably the problem with a lot of research. I remember, being at. Can't remember the exact name of the record store, but it doesn't exist anymore. A few years ago, I actually researched this. It was like ambrosia or something like that.

And, I still have a couple of the CDs with the, has the price tag with the name of the store on it, I think, but anyway, I would stand in front of the, the store and hand out the survey and have the students fill it out. by that point, I was already being published in a magazine, that was put out by Town Hall Records called Pulse. so I, I told... The editor at Tower Records, Pulse, I was doing this research and it was part of my master's project.

The reason actually why it was a master's project and not a master's thesis was because I was having a problem with my, my desktop computer. the software wasn't working properly and I couldn't get the, citations right. And, when you're doing a master's thesis, the really sticklers for that type of thing. Sure. I forgot how, I think I got three less credits for it, but I made up the three credits some other way so that they said, but you can't call the master's thesis.

And it was all because of the citations and the software I was using, it was so ridiculous. But, but anyway, I was able to get it published in a, widely circulated magazines. I was really happy about that. but at that point I had. Already, I knew right after I graduated from Penn State, I was going to be working for a cable television magazine, which is one of the few places that I've worked at that's still in business, multi channel news, which I still contribute to once in a while.

And it was interesting when I first arrived at Penn State in 1985, the National Cable Museum was supposedly there at Penn State. It actually turned out to be like a little showcase with a coaxial cable in it. It wasn't a museum of any sort. But, they claimed that they were like the, the place where cable was, founded, although there were other parts of the country that claimed that as well. it was, the right time for me to be somewhere other than New York.

I was just getting a little tired of, I needed a change of scenery, essentially. and I was really happy. It was only a one year program, actually. It's, it's interesting, though. I'm curious, what role and impact you may think MTV has today on, the music industry as a whole, knowing that. Things have changed, right? Yeah. what's the thing I've realized, is it when you teed up the question is like, there's a whole generation, the students listening now, like they don't know what it was.

I remember coming home from school. I think I was like in junior high or high school. It was like, total request live was like must watch television. And That if you wanted like the top songs, it was like you watched the videos and and the artists made a big deal about making the video. there's no music videos anymore. this was like, that was, it was pivotal in how, in what you listen to based on, on pop music, back then. there are still, there are music videos being made.

In fact, a friend of mine, on Long Island had, like MTV for independent musicians type of he basically copied the format and going back. some of them are performance videos. Some of them, are actual concept videos. Sure. they don't have the production values. And that was actually one of the problems with the music industry in the 80s and 90s.

it was just another way to screw the musicians because they would charge them 4 million back on the advance that they got because that's how much the video cost. And then they wouldn't make no money off of their album. and then also with streaming now, this is the great thing about vinyl musicians make far more money from their vinyl release than they would ever from any kind of stream, right? the pennies that they make from Spotify or what have you. Yeah. So Larry, we're going to move on here.

I know you mentioned you had your huge collection, right? Which you sold most of it. Have you, you built that back up over the years? I have about 4, 000 LPs now. Okay. while we've got, you'll want to make sure we have a little old school record store chat, right? I'm going to give you the softball of all softball questions. Rattle off your top five records of all time.

Yeah, that's pretty easy, actually. I've, given it a lot of thought. I've been asked it before. I would say, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Patti Smith's Horses, Velvet Underground, and Nico. Nina Simone, wild as the wind. and, what else did I give you four or five? I wasn't counting, but as many as you want to give us, I actually wrote it down here somewhere. Oh, the soul mining, which was a record that came out in the eighties. And I listened to a lot when I was at Penn State.

Okay. And I still listen to it. What do you like to listen to today? are you like, you're all over the map? Or you go back to some of your old favorites? I understand. Yeah. When I was walking around home on Tuesday, there was this guy selling records on 125th Street. So I bought a Smokey Robinson Live, a Dionne Warwick, which, I had Dionne Warwick, like all of her, Grace Hitts type albums, but this had, these amazing songs from the 60s that weren't hers, basically other artists.

like MacArthur Park, other people made them famous. so that, that was, it was amazing for 10 bucks. I couldn't believe I would get that kind of value. I got, and also I got a Louis Armstrong live. so it's all over the map, but at the same time, I, I think Olivia Rodrigo's album is better than the Rolling Stones album. It is very good. Actually. I actually listened to the new Olivia Rodrigo.

I will say, I love pop music and I'm always curious to see why popular music, no matter when, whether it's 20 years ago or now is popular. I listened to it. It's excellent. It came out the same day. I think it came out the day after the Rolling Stones single, Angry. And I pissed off a lot of close friends of mine by saying that it was a crappy single, and I don't understand why they did it. I hope the album is better. The album, the Stones album, is better than I feared.

It's still just... a bit above, Bigger Bang or, Steel Wheels. Both of those albums, I think are awful. but the Lady Gaga track is really great. What really disappointed me most about the record is there's not a song about Charlie Watts. And I, Mick and Keith, they just like basically, checked it in. they're capable of writing a song. Maybe at 80 years old, they don't want to, but right. look, if they're interested to go put a whole album together, then they're good. They can do this.

They can make a song, right? There's a lot of, they're working on the styles. my friend, Craig Braun actually designed the tongue and he posted on Facebook yesterday and saying, how much royalties do you think I'm getting from this? Zilch.

Well, let's transition a little bit. Talk about your experience at Penn state. We're going to put you in the lines then brought to you by our friends at lion's pride. Remember to visit lions dash pride. com to pick up all your Penn state fall sports apparel and gear. So Larry, you were only a Penn state for a short time, right? Doing your master's. you mentioned it was a nice, a little bit of a change of pace from, being in and around New York city.

Could think about back when you left Penn state. You went further into your journalism career. How do you feel like your time at Penn State prepared you for those early days once you left there? Well, like I said, I knew what I was going to do. I had a job to go to immediately, but I remember the year after I graduated from Penn State, watching the bowl game.

And Penn State won, and I was with my friend, my graduate assistant co worker, Stuart Goldstein, who's now the vice president of communications at, William Patterson University in, New Jersey. when we realized that Penn State was going to win. We both looked at each other and was like, networking opportunities, so he was still at the times to work in public relations.

looking back on it, no matter where you're at, you just have to, make the best of the resources there, go to everything, read the alumni magazine and, see who, has similar interests of working in similar areas. I think that, no matter where you went, I think that's key. as far as being at Penn State, my favorite story, I think, is when I first arrived and I had my car apparently in the wrong parking lot. Which was near the practice football field.

And I go to my car, like I only, because I lived a few blocks away and I really had no reason to use the car anyway. I go there and there's 10 tickets on the windshield. I was literally three feet away from where I was supposed to be. Apparently it was like this little pole that basically had graduates that way and undergrads that way or something like that. it was like so ridiculous. So I tried to argue my way, to get the knock down and they wouldn't budge.

So I had 150 fine, basically, parking, in parking tickets. so as I'm leaving, after I, I tried to, to no avail, I, I had the car in the right place, and I'm walking along the adjacent football field, and I see a football on the other side of the fence, and I still have that football, and it's still branded. that has a little Penn State branding thing in it, but it's funny. My son found it recently and he gave it back to me. so I look at that as a, as my 150 souvenir from Penn State.

I was about to say, there you go. It's 150 football. The year before, when I was at Penn State, my father came to visit me. My father was a New York City taxi cab driver. And. We're driving around the campus at 8 30 in the morning and you know what you remember the creamery was sure Who do we see and now this is like the day after they lose that ball game? Who do we see walking towards us Joe Paterno?

And I almost told my dad to let's drive over and see if he needs a ride because I think Joe grew up in the Bronx or something like, but, we didn't do that. He looked like he didn't want, he was like, not in a good mood. So we left him alone. Probably not. I did interview Joe actually for a magazine article that I wrote while I was at Penn State, for the magazine that I was working at prior to going to Penn State. it was called Fundraising Management.

It was all about the machine that Penn State had in terms of fundraising and alumni and, how it was state of the art at the time. So Joe actually, I did a sidebar about, him giving back to the, To the, library. So Larry, you mentioned it earlier. You went to Hofstra for undergrad, and then you made your way to Penn State, a few years later. If you could go back and visit with yourself right before you started your master's program at Penn State, what advice would you share back then?

I think I would have, learned how to edit video. I was always branded as like a print person, I probably would have done more radio broadcasting. I probably would have done podcasts, things like that a lot earlier. I did jump on the internet as soon as possible. back in the mid 90s, but, I just, I don't know. I think video was one thing for my career that I probably should have paid more attention to. I always looked at myself as more of a writer.

I've written scripts for films and things like that. I've not. directed a film or anything like that. I, although I think I could direct like a news broadcast, I loved all the stories tonight, Larry. This was great. I gotta said, I maybe didn't know all the artists and musicians you mentioned, but certainly a lot of great stories there. And as, as we think about kind of, the theme, one of those. Themes that comes to mind is really your curiosity, right?

Your lifelong learner, you publish stories and very diverse publications. And then really even to go down this vinyl route as well was really centered around your curiosity to really pull out some of those great stories. So I want to thank you for coming on the podcast and also congrats again on, on that award that you just won. Hey, thank you so much. Jared, just looking back on it, not that I'm done, but, it goes by very quickly.

we'll look out for that next book whenever it lands and we always end the podcast with, we are, up in state, RAAAWR RAAWR Lion Legacy is a Bar Ruter production. If you enjoy this Labor of Love podcast, we'd certainly appreciate it if you would subscribe and write us a review on your favorite podcast platform.