Mellotronists

This guys knows just about everything about music of any genre the 
world over. I met him in the mid 1970s when he and John Saltzgiver 
(who most recently did prog & obscure music radio shows in Seattle) 
were running Intergalactic Trading Company, which was a division of 
Music Millennium in Portland, Oregon in the biz of distributing 
import records. They put together this incredible loose leaf mail 
order catalogue (so done to be expandable with updates and 
supplements) filled with reviews of whatever oblique import record 
they could get their hands on. They had an incredible biz 
capitalizing on imports that came out a few weeks before the USA 
versions came out--in those days, domestic pressings had a real 
problem with quality control--and who wouldn't want the thicker 
pressings with the original artwork, etc. of the land the music 
hailed from in the first place, even though it cost a few more $$?

Archie, if I'm not mistaken, was "discovered" by the higher-up's at 
the Millennium (who have two stores in the Portland area) and was in 
Los Angeles working as a tailor. John and Archie did this excellent 
radio show on KINK FM Wednesday nights called "Other Worlds Of 
Music". Of course it got to the point where I'd hear music on that 
show, and the next day run over to the store and spend all my 
disposable cash. I wonder if Salzgiver has a Mellotron...he was such 
a fanatic for anything 'Tron.

One real fan of the radio show and prog music in general was a blind 
man I only knew as Blind Al. He lived down E. Burnside from the main 
Millennium store about a mile and one-half towards downtown. This guy 
managed with his red-tipped cane to get through all the horrific 
traffic up to the store, and get back to his basement apartment with 
loads of records. One day we all payed him a visit. It was amazing 
the racks and racks of record albums in piles everywhere. Since he 
was totally blind, he filed all his records by the texture of the 
covers as opposed to alphabetizing. There's the fuzzy Bee 
Gees' "Odessa" Atco gatefold, the Captain Beyond debut and 
the 'Stones "Satanic Majesties" with the paste-on little 3-D cards on 
the front, the bubbly Gracious! Vertigo cover, the leathery texture 
of the debut Nitzinger...you get the idea. Amazing how you adapt and 
can find everything, no? I bet he could find any early Rare Earth 
label album with the rounded tops, or an Alice Cooper record easy 
enough...!

Anyway, back to Archie...it's amazing the knowledge and connections 
this guy has...from the experimental electronic music of Artemiy 
Artemiev and all his relatives and friends to traditional music of 
faraway lands backtracking to early prog and psyche gems not even the 
folks at Arkana probably heard of.