To celebrate today’s release of our 33 1/3 on The Modern Lovers’ The Modern Lovers, we’re pleased to bring you the 4th installment of Modern Lovers Week by author Sean L. Maloney!
First, I need to publicly thank (again) the Research staff at the Boston Public Library. They were very patient with my weird request for some oddly-organized archives and I appreciate their patience and expertise. Second, shout out to all the librarians everywhere. Y’all are great. Third, can we talk about how fun microfilm is?
Sure, it’s just a step above a roomful of Edison containers on a balmy August day in terms of search efficiency. Yes, Google is quicker, but also shockingly incomplete in terms of the recorded knowledge that is actually available. And there is so much amazing information to be gleaned from scrolling through issue after issue of newspapers, each issue hundreds of pages. It is my favorite research tool by far.
In the course of nerding out in the research room, er, researching 33 ⅓:The Modern Lovers’ The Modern Lovers, I accumulated a lot of clippings. Contemporary microfilm scanners are the JAM! And while a lot of them were useful for shaping the book some were just the pure unadulterated nerd-need to collect things. To that note, here are some of my favorite music advertisements from The Boston Phoenix in late winter 1973.
Looking at all of those ads makes me miss Phoenix Media, the publication and WFNX even WBCN. The beat still lives on if you click to RadioBDC or find Dig Boston but Phoenix Media was great. Awesome finds!