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DUST & GROOVES IN MEDIUM

APRIL GREENE DIGS DEEPER INTO THE WORLD OF DUST & GROOVES

Dust & Grooves in Medium – April Greene Digs Deeper

Medium‘s April Greene, who has been part of the Dust & Grooves family since 2008, tells the stories behind a handful of Eilon Paz’s photos. She picks 11 of her favorite collector shots and asks Eilon about what it was like being behind the camera, the interviews sessions, and the full story.

Below is a snippet, and you can read the whole article here.

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The Secret Lives of Vinyl Hoarders
By April Greene

“Although I’ve known Dust & Grooves founder Eilon Paz since he moved to New York from Israel in 2008, and have been a follower, fan, and contributor to his documentary project about vinyl record collecting since nearly its beginning, I don’t know everything.

[…] I realized just how much there is to know about the book when I sat down in a park with Eilon recently and asked him to tell me the stories behind a handful of my favorite photos.

Dust & Grooves has grown into its own universe of fascinating information about people, music, records, travel, culture, obsession, emotion and history. Here’s a tiny lens onto a cramped corner of it.”

1Greg Casseus

“Greg was, I think, the third collector I ever interviewed. I met him DJing in Williamsburg [Brooklyn], at Miss Favela. I met him at the bar. It was my first year in New York and I had a friend who used to bartend there, so I was hanging out. He was DJing, and he used all vinyl, of course, so I asked him a little about the stuff he plays. He’s into Brazilian stuff, he’s known for his Brazilian knowledge, but seriously the guy is everywhere—in a good way. He knows about so much […]

I used to keep seeing him at Tropicalia in Furs [erstwhile East Village record shop], we used to hang out there. And he never really liked this photo. It took me and Joel [Stones, the shop’s owner] a couple years to actually talk sense to him.”

3Debra Dynamite

“It looked like it was an amazing love story, you know? It was so romantic. The entire house was like one big piece of music memorabilia in a time tunnel of American kitsch […]

But we haven’t revealed the sad truth yet: that they got divorced. And one of the real bummers about that—on our end—was then they wouldn’t let us publish the story.”

22Questlove

“But when we all got there, we discovered that no one had a key. So we were waiting in this corridor for a while, knocking and shouting for someone to hear us. But then, Ahmir became resourceful. How do I say this? He utilized some different creative techniques that granted us access to the studio without requiring a key.

So that was a little drama, but then everybody was happy. It was the perfect icebreaker, actually. From that moment, it made us feel really comfortable with each other, even though we didn’t know each other. After a bit, Ahmir forgot about the context and became like a kid getting back to his candy store—he was playful. It had been a while since he had been there.”

2Allesandro Benedetti

“I met Alessandro while I was spending a month in Italy, at this nice, rustic house on top of a hill in Tuscany, and I was shooting food and learning to cook. And I remember seeing Alessandro’s book—he wrote this book about colored vinyl and picture discs. He holds the Guinness record for most colored vinyl in the world. I saw it once in a store and wrote it down in my notes, and then I stumbled on it again and then I thought, Okay, I need to get a hold of this guy. You know, once again, Dust & Grooves was always a low-budget project. I couldn’t travel specifically to shoot this guy, so I had to wait for the right opportunity. And it arrived when I went to Italy.”

Check out the full article at medium.com.

The second edition of his Dust & Grooves book is coming out on November 28 and available for pre-orders now. He also created a postcard box that includes some personal favorites and never-seen-before photos from the Dust & Grooves archives.

1 Response

  1. Fank

    I would love to have seen that guys colored vinyl collection ! I know all about vinyl record hoarding ! I cant stop. I just bought a bunch from Discogs and Records Albums which has filled my shelving in my records den. I trying to figure out what to do now. Nice read Lily.

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