Addicted To The Needle - The Podcast Where A Vinyl Addict Meets His Dealer

Are you addicted to collecting records? Do you have black wax coursing through your veins? Has your vinyl dependance gotten out of control? Amassing 45s has become an obsession? A brand new podcast will help you get you through until your next fix. Do our hosts Ben Shulman and Patrick Foisy offer a cure? No they don't. In fact, they are afflicted by the same sweet disease. Get ready for a fresh new podcast to hit your data stream. When analog clashes into the digital world, you get... Addicted To The Needle - A Vinyl Addict Meets His Dealer.

I met my good friend Ben on a cold January morning, seven years ago. He's responsible for getting me hooked on collecting records again. I blame him for being the addict that I am. I met him on the second floor of a dingy Montreal flea market. He was tucked away in a secluded corner surrounded by bargain records. He was selling the overflow of a well known local record shop.

Dressed as a Mod would in the Great White North on a glacial Sunday morning, I had my winter parka on with a couple of pins on the collar. I told him that I wanted to get back into collecting. Noticing my pins, he replied: "I think I have an idea of what you would like." He then reached in a box of 45s that was set under a table. I can't recall if I bought more then one 45 that day but one record still stands out to this day. I left with Wilmer and the Dukes - Give Me One More Chance and a dollar poorer.

THE record that started it all.

When I got home and put it on the turntable, I was hooked. I went back to the stall a few weeks later and Ben remembered me. I would later learn how phenomenal his memory is. I said that I wanted him, from now on, to find me gems like that Wilmer track every chance he got. What started has a business relationship transformed into a deep, meaningful and solid friendship.

Barely legal Ben and myself DJing at the Mod Club.

Ben has been an independant contractor for almost as long as we have known each other. In other words, he's a skilled vinyl picker. I affectionnately call him my record pimp. He'll jump into his white beat up Hyundai and drive from Montreal to Chicago or from New York to New Orelans just to scour a musky basements in search of that elusive Soul gem. Luckily, I'm his number one customer. Everything he doesn't keep to feed his own insatiable habit, I get to have first dibs on.

Set aside many exciting road trips, some successful nights DJing side by side, even having Ben perform a song at my wedding, the most memorable times were spent together down in my basement, listening to records and having long talks about changing the world.

Who would have thought that a young jewish kid from the suburbs of Montreal would become close friends with a French speaking Mod elementary school teacher in his mid-forties? Not me. For a long time, I tried to convince Ben to start his own podcast about Soul music. I'm constantly reminded of the depth of his knowledge about 60s music. I swear, he's a Soul savant! In this situation, I'm not the teacher, I'm the student. He knows every little detail about the labels, the producers, the back-up band, the kind of soda the sound engineer likes to drink when he mixes the final track. Everything! Plus, unlike me, he remembers it all.

So the last time he came over to sell me records, I had a flash. "Ben, you know how I'm always coxing you in starting a podcast? Here's the deal. Why not just record our listening sessions? A raw, unedidted version of what we have been doing every other week for the past seven years."

"I think you might have something here..." So I'm proud to official welcome you to the new kid on the block: Addicted To The Needle. You can listen to Episode 1 on Mixcloud, Soundcloud and PodOmatic. A few more providers will be added soon.

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