Gotten Any Good Trash Records Lately?

I've been buying LPs by mail a bit lately, and have become aware of a phenomenon I think of as the trash record. This is when the seller uses undesirable items from his inventory as packing material, either to save a piece of cardboard or simply to dispose of it. The characteristics of the trash record is that it is something that you would not have the nerve to offer a thrift store, and its condition is You Wouldn't Believe It.

Example one of trash records I have received lately is Mario Lanza singing selections from Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince, an RCA Victor Red Seal opus from 1960 in New Orthophonic High Fidelity (not Living Stereo), with helpful suggestions on the back cover as to which RCA cabinet phonographs you might wish listen to it on. It had no inner sleeve, in what I take to be the classic trash record manner. In the spirit of adventure I gave it a spin. In the quiet passages it sounds as if my stylus is being driven along a gravel road. When there is music to be heard it is exactly the corn syrup that the kitsch jacket painting promises. Actually the jacket is the most desirable thing about it, possibly rising to the level of camp. You have Lanza looking like a lineman from Nebraska in biergarten populated by figures who'd gone directly from a 1950s Good Housekeeping ad for furniture or appliances to Oktoberfest. By the middle of the second side I recalled the line "Once a philosopher, twice a pervert" and bailed on it.

Second example, Burt Bacharach: Reach Out, would not seem to be without appeal. It is produced and arranged by Bacharach, engineered by Phil Ramone, with liner notes by Derek Taylor. What puts it into the category of trash record category, aside from the condition (acceptable if it were last existing copy of Kind of Blue) is that these are instrumental versions of Bacharach's hits from the movies, which only go to show how integral Hal David was to the appeal of these songs. I guess it was intended as mood music for your Playboy Pad. I would have reached out to Dionne Warwick if I could have.

I took a quick look at eBay and found that copies of both records had sold fairly recently in the mid-$3 range, meaning $8 with shipping, which would indicate that they were not entirely without appeal, though probably not in the condition I received them in.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has received such lagniappes, and I wonder if anyone would like to give their own examples – or even unexpected finds that came to you in this manner, which I assume must have happened to someone.