Record Store Day 2026, My Father's Furniture and What is a Masterpiece?

Here's the Stereo and Record Cabinet my father made for me in the Winter on 1973. It was originally created for a stereo receiver and turntable on the top, speakers on the sides and record albums in the middle and in the cabinet, for a couple decades, that was indeed the configuration I used, supplementing my vast record collection with wooden fruit crates.  He used a Frank Zappa album for the specs, Another Band From LA if memory serves me correctly (and it does). My dad loved making furniture - sketching things out in a ballpoint pen on yellow legal paper, coming up with measurements, then going to get the wood at the lumberyard. This piece, as were almost all of his pieces, was made in the dining room of our Apartment at 17 Nottingham Court in Montvale NJ. We lived there from 1971 until 1975. My Dad knew how much I loved music, it was actually his idea as a gift for me. What a guy! I remember him sawing the lumber with a manual saw, sanding it,  making grooves n' joints with his old pen knife, glueing them, nailing it all together. It has traveled with me far and wide. It is the only thing that has remained with me from my youth.  It now houses my huge CD collection. They are stacked two deep and my father's piece fits everything perfectly as though it was custom made for this evolution of media. It almost resembles a secular altar to both music and to my father. Thanks Dad!

The other day I stopped into my local record store Pitchfork in Concord (NH) during a walk around the city (city? haha!). You never know what will reveal itself to you there. Eno's Another Green World caught my attention. An old favorite more like an old friend. Eno meant the world to me in the early seventies, he was the soundtrack to my discovery of art.  I can remember getting this album on sale at Harmony Hut in Paramus Park Mall when it came out in late 1975.  Truly captivating. I consider it a masterpiece. Why? I believe a masterpiece is a work by an artist that contains where they have been, where they are in the present and where they are going in the future. I once saw a small 8" X 10" de Kooning work on paper at Xavier Fourcade Gallery in NYC. On that small piece of paper was de Kooning's entire life. It was then that I could fathom what a masterpiece was. Another Green World does the same thing. Eno's work gradually became something altogether different as time went on - ambient meditations and subtle sonic backgrounds that were even used in airports. 

(wait for it, it builds)

Go Visit a Record Store today!