I Need a Vinyl Education

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This morning I woke up and did my usual routine: first, I checked the news to make sure the world hadn't ended. If it had, no sense in getting out of bed and going to work, right? Then, of course, I check myLot for the latest hot music news. And that brings me to the Vinyl Junkie™, JJ. He made a comment about his copy of Elton John's Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player, stating his copy was from the old RCA Record Club and it was "flat, just no sonics to it at all." For those of you too young to remember the old Columbia House & RCA Record Clubs, you're lucky! They cluttered the center of TV Guide and just about every other magazine in the 60s, 70s, and even into the 80s with their offers of "Buy 6 for just 1 penny!" The fine print was that you had to buy a certain amount in a year or three years (RCA had the better deal there, three in three years versus three per year with Columbia House)...and those were full list price purchases, PLUS a ridiculously stupid overcharge for "shipping and handling." In short, an album you could go to the local record store and pick up for seven bucks would cost you about $18. They're gonna get that money back that they "saved you." But there's another issue about them, and this is what JJ mentioned: record club -- especially RCA Record Club -- albums lacked the quality of a "regular" record (in addition to being about eight bucks more once you threw up, ahem, in the shipping and handling). In fact, I remember taking some albums to a used record store and them flatly refusing to take any stamped "RCA Record Club." So...what was it about the ol' RCA Record Club that brought out the worst in vinyl quality? Somehow I see them having an agreement with a number of record labels: "Hey, anything that falls on the floor at the processing plant? Let us have it for 25 cents. We'll stamp it and sell it at full price through our 'record club.'" (And don't think they wouldn't do that. Those clubs were all about making money.) They're one thing that died with the advent of the digital age that I certainly don't miss. But I do wonder why their vinyl excelled in crappy quality. For the vinyl lovers in the world, who were vinyl when vinyl wasn't cool: