Ricky Lee Grove

Archive.org has a great library of LP/vinyl recordings. While browsing through the library, I came across the personal collection of Donald R. Snow , which was donated to the archive by his family. There are 182 vinyl records in the collection, primarily jazz and pop. One of my favorites is George Cates's Polynesian Percussion It was released in 1961 and has 12 great tracks of what I call Tiki music. Here is the album cover and  an embedded audio player for the whole album T  

  Early in the paperback revolution (started in 1939), Pocket Books decided to try a paperback book vending machine. 50 paperback books for a quarter each. It was an interesting idea, but it failed in the end because readers wanted to actually handle and look at the books they were buying. Unlike candy or coffee, which is uniform in content, books vary by plot, genre and cover art.  According to this article , two years after the first Book-O-Mat was released, an updated version was created by Rock Ola, a company that specialized in slot machines and juke boxes. Apparently, it failed as well. However, it looked like a much better design than the original, since you could actually see the covers of the paperbacks

More info on this remarkable duo here

Dimension X was a groundbreaking science fiction anthology series that aired on NBC from April 8, 1950, to September 29, 1951. It is celebrated as one of the first radio programs to treat science fiction as a serious, adult-oriented genre rather than "juvenile" space adventures like Buck Rogers . Format : Half-hour episodes featuring standalone stories of futuristic technology, space exploration, and time travel. Narrator : The series was famously opened by Norman Rose , whose deep voice intoned: "Adventures in time and space, told in future tense... Dimension X!" over a haunting echo and a slow-pounding bass drum. Authors : The show gained instant credibility by adapting stories from the era's leading sci-fi writers, including Ray Bradbury , Isaac Asimov , Robert Heinlein , Kurt Vonnegut , and Robert Bloch . Successor : It was the direct precursor to the even more famous series X Minus One (1955–1958), which recycled many of the same scripts and actors. Not...

  Tom Adams designed a whole series of Agatha Christie covers for Fontana Books back in the 70s. His collage method featured clues from the novel. He also added a level of gruesomeness to the covers that isn't often shown in other designs for her novels.  More on Tom Adams here.

 I love samurai movies. There's something about their depiction men and women in nature and stillness that just thrills me. The Zatoichi Series (Blind Swordsman) is probably my favorite, but I'm in love with all of them, really.   I've collected screen caps from dozens of samurai films over the years. And thought I'd share them with you. Put them together as a collection in a folder and make them your Desktop pix for a month or so.  You can download the 20+ images here And here are few samples:

Mayflower 563 11640 X (1973) It’s a shame that this British Mayflower paperback doesn’t list the cover artist because he/she deserves to be credited for creating this dramatic, surrealist cover that fits Michael Moorcock ’s story perfectly. Mayflower reprinted many of Moorcock’s books in paperback, including several of his most popular books, like Stormbringer , Behold the Man (a fantastic book), and The Final Programme . Mayflower states that the book is “ Science Fantasy ,” which I think describes Moorcock’s work very well, although he leans toward the grimdark style of writing that is directly opposite of Tolkien’s “high fantasy” (he hated Tolkien’s work, by the way). From the blurb on the back of the book (which deserves to be quoted for its over-the-top style : “ The world is sick. The Forces of Chaos have energized the planet. Leaders, fuhrers, duces, prophets, visionaries, gurus, and politicians are all at each other’s throats. And Chaos leers over the broken body of the Order...