Complete, illustrated Strawberry Alarm Clock & Thee Sixpence discography now online

Dec 24, 2009

Our second discography (the first being Sky Saxon and the Seeds) is Strawberry Alarm Clock: http://www.megaministore.com/discography/strawberry-alarm-clock.php Included is the earliest Thee Sixpence single through Strawberry Alarm Clock's four albums, all non-LP songs on 45rpm singles, and soundtrack contributions. Dates, track lists and album covers/45 scans are included. Use it as a reference or as a way to check off the SAC stuff you have. Links are included to various vendors if you are a collector looking to buy CDs or vinyl.

John Frusciante official notice: I quit Red Hot Chili Peppers

Dec 17, 2009

On Frusciante's official blog www.johnfrusciante.com, John says that he quit the band about a year ago because it was not going to be artistically satisfying for him anymore, and that Anthony Keidis, Flea and Chad Smith understood and supported the decision. What will happen to the band? They have risen from the ashes several times; we'll wait and see if they opt to continue with another guitarist (and, consequently, as basically a different band) or pack it in. "Over the last 12 years, I have changed, as a person and artist, to such a degree that to do further work along the lines I [...]

Rare Ya Ho Wa “It’s A Knack”/”Angel Boy” record shows up on eBay

Dec 16, 2009

Here's one you don't see very often, a promo copy of the early Ya Ho Wa single "It's A Knack" b/w "Angel Boy" on the Higherkey label. As of this posting, there are 4 days left in the auction, which has a starting bid of £100 (US$162). Very rarely for sale, this record was included in the 1998 God & Hair 13xCD set compiled by Ya Ho Wa member Sky Saxon. The box set itself is hard to find, but is sometimes found for as low as $100, making this single one for collectors only who want a complete Ya Ho Wa set. Original Ya Ho Wa 13 records, put out by the psychedelic musical band made [...]

New Sky Saxon releases coming in 2010: Exclusive interview with Karl Anderson of GRA Group

Dec 16, 2009

There are hours and hours of Sky Saxon recordings made with an endless number of bands over the past three decades since the early 70s demise of The Seeds. Much of Sky's officially released stuff is only available on hard-to-find vinyl or out-of-print CDs on obscure labels; the rest is tantalizingly unreleased. Enter Karl Anderson. Karl runs Global Recording Artists (www.gragroup.com), a Petaluma, CA-based music label and studio that has been put in charge of organizing and re-releasing all of Sky Sunlight Saxon's solo recordings. Karl was a Sky Saxon fan who happened to meet Sky and his [...]

eBay 12/7 problem fixed

Dec 8, 2009

eBay had a problem with its links, where clicking them would take you to a mostly-blank page that said the item you wanted to see had expired (or something similar). The problem has been fixed. This was a problem on eBay's site, and they fixed it very soon after they found out about it. Things should be normal now. Thanks to those who let us know on Mega Ministore about the problem; by the time we checked into it it was already fixed, and links from megaministore.com were working ok. As always, if there is any other problem leave us feedback. Thanks!

Our first discography: Sky Sunlight Saxon & The Seeds

Dec 4, 2009

We have been putting a lot of work into a new section of the site: discographies. These discographies will be compiled manually, rather than by downloading pre-existing databases. Many online discographies are full of errors and omissions and misspellings, so we're going to be working on some of our favorite artists' CD and LP lists for like-minded fans who visit the site. http://www.megaministore.com/discography/seeds-sky-saxon.php Our first artist is the amazingly prolific Sky Saxon, including all his various side projects and solo work (Dragonslayers, Ya Ho Wha 13, Fast [...]

Quilting blog review: Susan Briscoe’s “Sashiko and Other Stitching”

Nov 14, 2009

Susan Briscoe throws herself whole-heartedly into quilting and quilting events, making her Blogspot site Sashiko and Other Stitching (http://susanbriscoe.blogspot.com/) one of the more valuable and interesting quilting blogs on the net. Averaging, recently, around 15-20 posts per month, Susan includes lots of pictures of events, designs, and people in her articles. Her sashiko blog is part of her larger internet presence which includes her non-blog website where she sells designs, fabrics and her noted books. Since Susan has made quilting such a big part of her life, and is obviously both skilled [...]

Syd Barrett photo auction shows obsessive side of Pink Floyd lovers

Nov 5, 2009

Three photographs of Syd Barrett taken by Mick Rock in 1969 are going to be offered for auction in a large music-themed event on November 21 by London auction/art dealers Phillips de Pury and Company. The first picture is a fantastic black and white closeup of Syd in his London flat, where he lived and took drugs after being ousted from Pink Floyd. Syd has an addled but confident look, staring directly at the camera with an intriguing, above-it-all smirk. The print is hand-numbered 11 of 50, and is expected to bring up to $3,300. The second is numbered 18 of 50, and is another black and [...]

Was the “Country Is Red” 1968 Chinese error stamp without Taiwan really a design mistake?

Nov 3, 2009

"The Whole Country Is Red", says the stamp in Chinese. Indeed, the background of the 1968 issue has a map of China all filled in red. Except, glaringly, the island of Taiwan, which is shown but merely outlined with a thin red line, rather than filled in solid red. (Surrounding countries are not shown at all.) So what is the point? Taiwan is not red... and thus not part of the country? Scandalous! The designer, Wang Wei Shang, claimed it was a mistake, and for several years feared jail time for his transgression. Taiwan has long claimed independence from China, which considers Taiwan (formerly [...]

Jay-Z waxing nostalgic about Atari 2600 and ColecoVision

Oct 31, 2009

While promoting a turntable-based variant of the Guitar Hero video game, Jay-Z mentioned his childhood love of classic video games to someone from the NY Times blog: "I was really, really heavy into video games growing up. I was a fanatic with sports games. Starting with Atari. From Atari, ColecoVision, Atari 2600, to PlayStation to XBox." — Jay-Z That's how many of us started out; in fact, some would argue that you either started out with the classic systems of that era, the slightly earlier Pong era, or you aren't really old school. The [...]

New Arthur Lee “Love Lost” release of 1971 sessions coming November 24 from Sundazed

Oct 30, 2009

This is really exciting news for Arthur Lee and Love fans!! On CD and vinyl comes a very welcome release from Sundazed of unreleased material from Arthur Lee with a 1971 version of Love: Love Lost. The band was briefly signed to Columbia Records, recorded an album, then left the label with no release. These recordings will be released on Love Lost on November 24, 2009. The single CD or double vinyl LP contains the album as, apparently, it would have been released in 1971 or 1972. The vinyl version contains several tracks not on the CD including five acoustic demos recorded [...]

About the new layout

Oct 8, 2009

You will see the layout has been totally revamped on the site. The idea is to make it easier to find the page you want; there are now drop-down menus that you can see by hovering your mouse pointer over some links (such as those in the sidebar). There are some features that require JavaScript now (mostly the ability to see a larger picture when clicking on a thumbnail); we will soon be adding a way for non-JavaScript browsers to access the same stuff. (And why would anyone in this day and age turn off JavaScript anyway?!) We have tested the new layout and features in several browsers on both [...]

Update on the eBay listings

Oct 7, 2009

Over the last several hours we have been in contact with eBay and have been keeping an eye on our pages that include eBay listings. The problem seemed to get better and better, and now it seems like it's working pretty well again. As always, if you have any problem or comment you can use our contact form. For now we'll consider that the issue is fixed while keeping an eye on it to make sure. Good luck with the sales and auctions!

Where are the eBay listings?

Oct 6, 2009

If you are looking for listings from eBay you are probably seeing notices that no items were found. This seems to be a problem with the eBay partner network; other sites are apparently having problems communicating with eBay too. Mega Ministore only lists eBay items that we were able to update within the last 60 minutes; this problem has been going on for at least 2 hours so our eBay-for-sale pages will be empty until eBay can address this glitch. Until then we hope you can sit tight and/or check out other vendors whose sales we include on the site. Remember that you can also post a wanted [...]

We’re back online!

Sep 12, 2009

Thanks to a small overlooked glitch in our code, Mega Ministore was down for several hours on September 11-12. We found it and fixed it and all pages should be ok now. Thanks to the users who alerted us to the error!

New category: Psychedelic Vinyl LPs

Sep 7, 2009

We've added another collectible category under our Music section for psychedelic vinyl LPs. The link is http://www.megaministore.com/mms/psych-vinyl.php. In the future we'll add some dedicated sub-genre and artist pages. If you have any suggestions stick a note in the Psych vinyl forum and we'll take a look at them. As for now, there are a lot of great and very rare (and often not expensive!) psych and prog LPs in our for sale sections. We'll be adding to those soon too, finding a more extensive selection for sale from a larger number of vendors. If you have specific wants or are selling [...]

New, easier For Sale listings format

Sep 4, 2009

We've moved the For Sale listings away from the categories' main pages, and made a dedicated For Sale page for each category and each vendor. This will allow you to see more of what you can get from, for example, both eBay and Amazon; whichever vendor page you are on, there are links to other vendors (where available) on each page. This will allow us to add more vendors in the future much more easily, and branch out into listing products and collectibles for sale that are not available on eBay, Amazon, or other such sellers. We'll still provide links for those vendors, of course; we're [...]

New layout for the site

Jun 27, 2009

We've changed the way the site looks and a little about how the site operates. Things should look nicer now, simpler and more direct, and it should be easier to find your way around between for sale pages, forums, and categories. There are also some new useful aspects to the site, such as on the main page, a few recent pictures of things for sale so you can quickly get an idea of what may be available. Still working on a few more minor points, so if you see something messed up or broken, that's why. Contact us via this simple form if you want to let us know about anything. User control panels If [...]

New discussion forums layout

Jun 12, 2009

We have added some features to our forums, like the ability to add multiple threads like a normal forum (welcome to 1999, MMS!). They are also now put under a separate tab on each category page, making it very easy to switch back and forth between the main category page and its forum. The forums are all new, so there still aren't many posts yet. Be the first! Find a section you know about and start us off. We appreciate everyone who has already posted and those who will take the initiative to start a new thread somewhere in the future. Let's build this forum area up so it becomes useful and [...]

Old sale-specific posts removed from Mega Miniblog

Jun 7, 2009

There were thousands of old blog posts relating to individual things for sale elsewhere on the site, things that had received a significant amount of attention from buyers and that we wanted to publicize more. However since many were outdated, and up-to-date information is available for all items now on viewitem.php pages (clicked from regular for sale pages) there is no reason for them to clutter up the blog, so they have been removed. Trying to access an old page will redirect to the blog proper. The blog now is only used for site news and issues relating to our vendors [...]

New simpler URL structure to our categories

Jun 6, 2009

We have instituted a new structure to the URLs of each of our categories. Now, rather than having separate folders for each level, each page has a unique .php page in a directory called mms/ off the site root. In other words, URLs are easier to remember and type in. Example - Ivory Coast folk music CDs: OLD: http://www.megaministore.com/music/cds/world-folk/africa/western-africa/cote-divoire-ivory-coast/ NEW: http://www.megaministore.com/mms/cote-divoire-folk-cds.php Both go the same page, but the second is what [...]

Item sorting glitch fixed

Jun 6, 2009

We were alerted by some MMSers about a problem when trying to sort listings by any criteria other than the default -- you were being redirected to the MMS home page, asked to log in, etc. Thanks to those who told us about this; we hadn't noticed ourselves! It is fixed now and should work for everyone and for every sort parameter. If you still have a problem or any other problem please contact us and let us know so we can fix it. Happy sorting!

We’re suspending the commissions-based payment system for writers

May 30, 2009

We have just received confirmation directly from eBay that the system we have been advertising by which we pay writers for articles based on eBay commissions falls under a category of business models that eBay is discontinuing its support for effective June 1. To that end, claims can no longer be made on open pages. You are still encouraged, however, to post your comments when you find a section that you are knowledgeable about. This makes the MMS communities much more exciting and interesting anyway! We may still choose certain categories in the future for which we will pay for articles. [...]

Traditional African folk and dance music CDs added

May 20, 2009

We've added a buuuunch of great CDs featuring African Folk Music. We divided Africa up into regions, and then each region (except for the Sudan, which comprises its own region) into further, smaller regions and countries. Lots of great stuff to be found. These, like the others we've been blogging about, feature CDs found from a large variety of Amazon sellers, and are sorted by cheapest price available. Many have 30-second audio samples for some or all of the tracks so you can decide whether the CD is something you want to get (the samples would be located on the CD's Amazon page; click the [...]

Now it’s easy to give us live feedback any time

May 20, 2009

We've added a feedback box to all pages of the site. Effective immediately, you can quickly type in any issue or suggestion you think of in a box and click once to send it to us. An admin will get it ASAP and look it over; if possible we'll implement your suggestion or fix what you may be having trouble with. If you include an email address we can send you a personal reply regarding your feedback. It's easy to find, right in the center of every page. Don't hold back, we want to know about your experience and thoughts on Mega Ministore! (Users who are not logged in are welcome to send feedback [...]