This Is Book’s Music

If you are new to records and end up starting a collection with a box you found in the garage, or at your grandparents house, you know that it may be covered with a nice layer of dust. But records can be a nice vacuum for anything and everything. There was a time when cockroaches were able to roam the Earth freely, and somehow they found their way onto records, record covers. People did not have proper record listening rooms, a record player could be in the living room, basement, bedroom, wherever it was convenient. If people had a party, they would bring food and drinks, spill it all over the place. Then the records are placed in a box and forgotten until they’re tossed out in the dumpster or given to Goodwill.

Well, some of your insect friends may have had their way with those records, and you wouldn’t know it. Not that you’re going to tongue your vinyl (and even if the records were clean, that’s just dumb) but there are instances where roaches not only eat through the cover and cause a bit of fluid damage, but they are known to eat through records too. Let’s face it, when there is a nuclear attack on our soil, they say roaches will outlive us all, and they’ll have a belly of your wax.

Anyway, roach infestation isn’t just for your dirty grandfather anymore. Those stains “of unknown origin” are bad, so clean your hands if you need that record that bad. Get some rubbing alcohol and clean those records too (91% isopropyl alcohol is best, and if they card you, it’s because the 91 percent alcohol is used by some to create meth). Buying and collecting records doesn’t have to be a dirty job. Buying cheap has its benefits, and one of them is getting roach grit in your fingernails.