Hypertext: coming soon

In July 1990, Spin magazine ran this little blurb about something called Hypertext:

Altern 8 photos from 1992

By special request, here are some Altern 8 photos from the July 1992 issue of Select magazine:



Click the image for a full page of candid photos.

Raiders of the Lost Ark publicity sheet

Here's a Raiders of the Lost Ark publicity sheet that arrived in my mailbox soon after I joined the Star Wars Fan Club back in 1980. It appealed to my love of graph paper, and it had angled photos and drop shadows, concepts 9-year-old me incorporated into my own "artwork" for years to come. The movie's release date seemed to be so far into the future!


(200-dpi scans also available)

This was already posted on Neato Coolville last year when the 4th Indiana Jones movie came out, but I had already made the scans of my own copy before I found it. Doesn't hurt to have more than one out there and Google-able.

If you're a Raiders of the Lost Ark fan, you may also be interested in this transcript of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan brainstorming ideas for the Indiana Jones character the film's plot:

· 6 MB PDF (indirect link)

This was in 1978, back when their creative juices were still flowing. It's a fascinating read. Thankfully they nixed the idea of making him a Kung-Fu master. And apparently it was George Lucas who had all the good ideas. Spielberg and Kasdan sound like idiots half the time.

At one point, George Lucas says "And we want to spend our money on stunts. We want to have 'Wind and the Lion' action. Spend it all on stunt guys falling off horses, rather than one crowd scene with sixteen thousand extras for one shot...it's much better to have a terrific stunt than to have a scene with eight thousand extras. I don't think we need lots of crowds."

So what happened with those Star Wars prequels, then, George?

It seems just about every movie this decade has been all about computer-generated hordes. In the rare times when there are stunts, they're all done with effects, with no real appearance of danger. Nothing approaches that guy hanging off the train in that one scene in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Anyway, thanks to Cinematical and my friend Jenni for posting about this transcript!

Criminal Records dance music record store, Dayton, Ohio

Criminal Records was a dance music record shop run by John Bard and Todd Robinson in Dayton, Ohio, from late 1988 or early 1989 until sometime in 1990, when I was in my late teens. This shop changed the lives of many who visited it, and to my knowledge, there hasn't been anything quite like it since.

John and his partner had a living space in the back of the tiny converted warehouse/machine shop. The front had all the walls lined with records in metal racks. A low DJ booth faced outward. Customers were welcome to sit at the booth's custom metal barstools and chat with the proprietors, who would play anything in the shop except the sealed remix service records. The rest of the floor was open and custom-decorated, like the booth & stools, with spattered paint. I believe there were many private parties held there.

Going to Criminal Records was an adventure and education in electronic music. The proprietors were very friendly and were eager to figure out exactly what their customers liked. At the time, I liked extended remixes of mainstream pop music, and I liked moody, melodic instrumentals from Italian and Belgian artists, and I liked my longtime favorites The Art of Noise. John made sure I never left the store without something I loved in-hand, even if it was something he couldn't stand, himself.

I once phoned him on a Sunday morning and said I was in town "with a wad of cash and itchin' to buy". He agreed to open the shop for me, and indeed met me at the door, hung over and wearing a bathrobe, hair mussed since he clearly just rolled out of bed after a late night of partying. Scratching his head, he put on a pot of coffee, and started playing some records while I browsed. Before long, he was full of energy, bobbing and pumping his head as he started selecting and mixing more tracks he thought I might like. He didn't care if I bought them or not; he was having a great time just playing records and exposing me to music. Despite his best efforts to get me to buy some Italo Disco, I walked out with Janet Jackson's "Alright". I don't regret getting Janet, but man, I really wish I had his entire Italo section now.

Since I was a teenager living an hour away with no money, I was only able to visit Criminal Records less than 10 times before it closed. I probably only bought about 10 records there, total.

My friend Dan Smith in Springfield, Ohio, told me sometime around 1995 that he had run into John at some point, somewhere else in Ohio. When Dan suggested reopening the store, John said "No way! I lost a fortune on that thing!"

I've tried in vain to find John or evidence of Criminal Records ever having existed. All that's left is memories, apparently. Until now. Here's my complete Criminal Records ephemera collection.

1. Part of a letter from a friend, telling me about the shop. He taped a newspaper ad to the front of the envelope.



2. The ubiquitous Criminal Records yellow flyer distributed with newsletters and tucked into shopping bags throughout 1989.



3. The December 1989 Criminal Records newsletter. Page 1 was a late-1989 feature from the Dayton Daily News. Page 2 was "background investigations", an overview of new stock.

Page 1: HTML version (recommended)
Page 2: 816x1056 PNG

Alternative versions of page 1:
1000x1138 PNG · very large 2.7 MB TIFF (for printing)

4. The May 1989 Criminal Records newsletter.

Page 1 · Page 2 · Page 3 · Page 4 · Page 5 · Page 6
(816x1056 PNGs only, for now)

5. The June 1989 Criminal Records newsletter.

Page 1 · Page 2 · Page 3 · Page 4 · Page 5 · Page 6

6. January 1990 sales charts.

816x1056 PNGs: Page 1 · Page 2

Do you have any more info, photos, or other ephemera related to the Criminal Records record shop? Please leave a comment if you do!

About Ephemerarchive

Ephemerarchive is an online archive of ephemera from one individual's personal collection of digital and physical media. The material is provided here for noncommercial research & education only. Much of this material could not be located on the Internet via search engines at the time it was posted. If you have any questions or concerns about anything posted here, please leave a polite comment on the post in question, and include a contact email, and the curator of the archive will get back to you.