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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Memoirs

OLD RECORDS NEVER DIE

Eric Spitznagel

One Man's Quest for His Vinyl and His Past

High Fidelity meets Killing Yourself to Live in this memoir of one man's search for his lost record collection. With a forword by Wilco`s Jeff Tweedy.

As he finds himself within spitting distance of middle-age, journalist Eric Spitznagel feels acutely the loss of…something. Freedom? Maybe. Coolness? Could be. The records he sold in a financial pinch? Definitely. To find out for sure, he sets out on a quest to find the original vinyl artifacts from his past. Not just copies. The exact same records: The Bon Jovi record with his first girlfriend's phone number scrawled on the front sleeve. The KISS Alive II he once shared with his little brother. The Replacements Let It Be he’s pretty sure, 20 years later, would still smell like weed. As he embarks on his hero's journey, he reminisces about the actual records, the music, and the people he listened to it with—old girlfriends, his high school pals, and, most poignantly, his father and his young son. He explores the magic of music and memory as he interweaves his adventures in record- culture with questions about our connection to our past, whether we can ever recapture it, and whether we would want to if we could. Eric Spitznagel writes for magazines like Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Men's Health, Maxim, Billboard, Details, The Believer, and the New York Times Magazine, among many others. He's the author of six books, including Ron Jeremy's bestselling autobiography The Hardest (Working) Man In Showbiz, a project that exhausted his literary reserve of penis puns. He's also edited several humor anthologies, most recently Care To Make Love In That GrossLittle Space Between Cars?, which features questionable life advice from people like Louis C.K., Zach Galifianakis, and Dave Eggers. His latest book, Old Records Never Die—about his attempt to track down all the vinyl records from his past—will be out in April, 2016. With a forword by Wilco`s bandleader Jeff Tweedy.

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Book Published 2016-04-12 by Plume

Comments

piece by Eric Spitznagel, “An open letter to Amy and Brian about their lost Lionel Richie album.” “If you’re out there, Amy and Brian, and you want your record back, I’ll make sure you get it. Listen to it again, either together or separately, and remember those old feelings, and get choked up by Lionel Richie’s terrible but perfect poetry.” Read more...

Eric Spitznagel is the only music nerd in the world who’s not entirely insufferable. Old Records Never Die will make you wish you were his roommate.

I’m working on a list of things that make me laugh harder than Eric Spitznagel’s writing. So far, it includes old Albert Brooks movies, videos of animals riding bicycles and… well, that’s about it. What I’m trying to say is: Eric Spitznagel is hilarious. And this book is perfectly Spitzagelian: Funny, smart, even a bit wistful at times. The way he feels about the Pixies—that’s similar to the way I feel about Spitznagel’s writing.

OLD RECORDS NEVER DIE is Amazon Best Book of the Month, Humor & Entertainment (June 2016) Read more...

Spitznagel’s quest for the actual records of his youth could have been a gimmick. Instead it’s a touching exploration of loss: of opportunities, of loved ones, of the ability to even remotely discern what’s hip. Hilarious and heartfelt, this is a book for anyone who has ever spent entire years of their lives haunting record stores, dissecting the merits of Doolittle, and studying liner notes with the intense focus of a Talmudic scholar.

Picture Rob Gordon, the record-obsessed protagonist of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, then add 10 years…. Oh, and yeah, he scores a few records along the way. Were they the droids he was looking for? Well, let’s just say he finds a few whose scars may well have been inflicted by his younger self, bangs up a few more in the process, and he and his family and friends make up the rest. But as any crate digger knows, it’s all about the hunt. Read more...

In this,Old Records Never Diefinds its true purpose. It’s a classic,High Fidelity-esque revelation that has Spitznagel in the midst of a “what does it all mean?” moment wherein he begins exploring what-if situations and finding that things often pan out just as they should. Read more...

I can’t remember when a book had me get out my black pen and underline so many wonderful things. Maybe never. Loss and laughter and all those denizens of sonic ghost town record stores willing but often unable to make us all whole again. Something on every page to stoke the geek heart with sad recognition and hope.

Eric Spitznagel is just like Captain Ahab, if Ahab were chasing Billy Joel albums instead of a white whale. As he recounts in this very funny book, Spitznagel found way more than he bargained for. And just like Ahab, he dies in the end. (Spoiler alert.

A funny and heartfelt memoir about music collecting that gives birth to a new branch of social science: Gen-X archaeology.

To say Old Records Never Die is a book about music is to say On The Road is a book about cars. Really, Eric Spitznagel’s energetic and endlessly engaging memoir is a book about the ways we seek to discover and recover our essential selves. Music lovers will love this book; unrepentant nostalgiacs, like myself, can expect to be absolutely riveted.

The perfect combination of a vinyl completist’s dream and nightmare.

Calling someone’s work Nick Hornby-like is a bit cliché, but Spitznagel gives high fidelity to Hornby’s feel for music and its relationship to life. Read more...

Memories are far more indelible when married to the physical world, and Spitznagel proves the point in this vivid book. We love vinyl records because they combine the tactile, the visual, the seeable effects of age and care and carelessness. When he searches for the records he lost and sold,Spitznagel istrying to return to a tangible past, and he details that process with great sensitivity and impact.

Spitznagel knows that a good story can sometimes lead to a greater truth. Read more...