Record World
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Record World magazine was one of the three main music industry trade publications in the United States, along with Billboard and Cash Box magazines. It was founded in 1946 under the name Music Vendor, but since 1964 changed it to Record World, under the ownership of Sid Parnes and Bob Austin, both deceased. It ceased its publication in April 1982. Many music industry personalities, writers and critics began their careers there in the early 1970s to 1980's.
Record World was considered the hipper, faster-moving music industry publication, in contrast to the stodgier Billboard and the perenially-struggling Cash Box. A weekly, like its competitors, it was housed in New York City at 1700 Broadway, at 53rd Street, just across the street from the Ed Sullivan Theater, now home to the David Letterman Show. Rock bands frequented Record World's offices as part of their promotional tours, often leaving questionable promo items in their wake. The band Hot Rats, for instance, presented each writer with a freeze-dried and shrink-wrapped rat to remember them by.
Record World's peak years coincided with the infamous Studio 54 era, when disco was in full swing. Recording artists tottered through on platform heels, bedecked in rhinestones, often seriously impaired by the then-popular recreational drug cocaine. Earnest young writers labored far into the night writing reviews of records, analyses of sales data and music-related current events. Staffers included Mike Sigman, editor-in-chief (who then went on to become publisher of the L.A. Weekly); Howie Levitt, managing editor (later of Billboard and BMI, the music royalty service); Pat Baird, who went on to key publicity positions at both RCA and BMI; (Mike Vallone, editor, charts and statistics; associate editor Allen Levy, who went to become a public relations person for United Artists Records, ASCAP and A&M, and who is now a professor of mass communication at Chapman University in Orange, California; art directors Mitchell Kanner, who went on to become Director of Artist Developement for Elektra/Asylum Records and later Art Director for PolyGram Records, Michael Schanzer,later Stephen Kling and David Ray Skinner; and writers Vince Aletti (later of The New Yorker); Marc Kirkeby (he went on to CBS/Sony Records); Jeffrey Peisch (later of MTV and independent producing); Dave McGee (later of Rolling Stone); Laurie Lennard (later as a talent booker on The David Letterman Show, then wife of comedian Larry David, and producer of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth); among others.
Record World's collapse was the result of discord between the two owners, and a sudden downturn in record sales. Ironically, the introduction of the compact disc as replacement for the vinyl 33 rpm record may have been a contributing factor. Disagreement over the future of the name of the magazine — with Record World becoming an obsolete moniker — may have presented an insurmountable obstacle to its continuation.
