FRANK SINATRA - PICTURE DISC - NEW YORK - NEW YORK - THE BIG APPLE BAYBEE

$

250

 COOL ITEM RIGHT,  BUT YOU MIGHT JUST BE ASKING YOURSELF,  WHAT IS IT ?
       This is what is known in the business as a picture disc.  From my understanding it was a promotional way to get people to buy more records.  This are what is known in the business as VINYL !  Yes before CD's there were vinyl records, of course some of you might not be familiar with either one. I guess people just download their music now days.  But back in the day if you wanted to hear your favorite songs without having to wait until the DJ played it, you bought yourself the record.
       Basically you had a choice of buying the album, which had roughly 16 songs on it, both sides of the record played.  Or you got the 45 which usually only had 2 songs on it, the A side was the hit recording. And the B side, usually was just ok.  Although when the Beatles were just starting out just about every song they made was a hit, so when you got there 45 record on some both side A and B sides were hits !  
      But the funny thing is the record companies were trying to save some money on the 45's or try to get you to purchase the album. So what they did was they started putting the 45 records in just plain white jackets, or sleeves.  It used to come with a cool picture of the person or group doing the singing. 
      The albums still had the full pictures front and back, but since the 45's didn't contain all the songs as the albums. They had the artist go in for a photo shoot to make the cover for the 45's. See they didn't know for sure which songs if any would be a hit. So they couldn't take them at the same time when they did the album covers. And they didn't want to use the same pictures that the album had, they didn't want people getting confused. So they would do a separate photo shoot for the 45's. I can see where it would get a little pricey...
     But the thing is, you felt cheated, rushing out to buy the new 45, and it has no artwork just a plain wrapper. The name of the song and artist were on the plastic protective wrapper. but you had to take that off to play your record. I remember my sister (she's a little older than me) complaining because it wasn't easy like before, you could just look for the singer you wanted. Now all the records looked alike, you had to pull each one out of the jacket to see what it was. My sister was writing  the songs and or the artist on the sleeves but it just wasn't the same!  
     Record sales were down, the people didn't buy more albums like the record companies hoped. They just stopped buy as many of the 45's !  But if there's a will, there's a way! If the people wanted a picture of there favorite recording artist but without having to buy a whole album, they might only like the one song, why pay for 10 or more songs by having to buy the entire album? 
    The picture disc will solve all the problems.  The albums still come with all the art work as they used to. But now you not only get a picture of your favorite singer, you get a super cool picture that's right into the vinyl . And when you play the song the picture is spinning, groovy man ! Of course these costs more than the old 45's but people don't mind paying more if they are getting more.  Taking away the pictures, and still charging the same, that's not cool.  But putting my hero' picture inside the record itself, special collectors limited production ! YES that will work !        
      The problem is, the CD came out of nowhere, they didn't get scratched , they were smaller easier to carry around, you could get a CD player in your car ! No one had record players in there cars...  
      We never got to find out if the picture disc was going to revolutionize the record industry,  because the CD was so high tech, no one wanted records anymore.  Although records do sort of make a come back years later, it's never like it was even a high tech marvel like the CD couldn't match the price, 99 cents a song, or convivence, you didn't even have to go to the store just download the songs you like with your home computer, as many different artist as you wanted. People don't seem to care about the artwork. If they feel the need to see a picture of their favorite recording artist , they just google them on there smart phones !   
     Well you do have to admit, this is super cool ! The disc is even in the shape of an APPLE, because the featured song is Frank's big hit  "New York, New York"  and New York's nick name is, The Big Apple !
    Please check out my other cool Rat Pack items. 
    The frame is Red Italian Rock Crystal , and the record rests gently on a red velvet mat with a baby blue boarder, which matches perfectly with the baby blue letters they used to spell out Frank Sinatra ! It's truly breath taking and is ready to hang on your wall !
 The frame measures approximately  15 inches wide, and 15 inches long.