A. The Melvin Records Discography
Their Greatest Unreleased MM01 1975
21 MM02 1975
Wings Over Atlanta MM03 1977
When It Says Beatles Beatles Beatles On The Label Label Label You Will Love It On Your Turntable Turntable Turntable MM04 1978
Ed’s Really Big Beatle Blasts MM05 1978
The New 21 MM06 1978
(The Move) Omnibus MM07 1978
Beatles vs Don Ho / Silver Lining MM08 1979
(John Lennon) Come Back Johnny! MM09 1979
Visit To Minneapolis EP MMEP-01 1979
(Ringo Starr) Down And Out? MS10 1980
Shout/I Forgot To Remember To Forget You 45 MM6-2/MM6-3 1980
Top Of The Pops EP Brown Cloud Records year?
John Paul George Ringo In The 1970s MR-12-S 1980
The 1964 & 1965 Ed Sullivan Shows MR-14-M 1980
2. Supposedly Planned But never Released Melvin Titles
The 1995 book BLACK MARKET BEATLES lists these for 1981 and 1982 but offer no further information. I have my doubts this is more than just an insider joke, I mean The Beatles Order Lunch, seriously?
It does appear that for whatever reason, Melvin Records either decided to cease operations in late 1980 or 1981 or that decision was made for them.
Howdy Y’all MM-15-UNREL
The Beatles Order Lunch MM-17-UNREL
Live Somewhere MS-18-UNREL
Abbey Road under Construction MM-19-UNREL
The Best Of Melvin MM-21-UNREL
3. Not Melvin Records
Apart from Silver Lining, which technically is not a Melvin Records original release, there is of course this imposter:
A Melvin release with simple POD labels (a label associated with several re-pressings from the old TMOQ catalog)? Clearly not possible.
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Around 1985, someone revived the name Overdone Productions for this Beatles bootleg 12″ on colored PVC, I don’t think Eddie or Fred were involved.
4. The Ballad Of Fred & Yoko
“[Fred] went to see George Harrison live in Atlanta, attended both of John Lennon’s “One to One” benefit concerts in New York City, and along with a few other fortunate super-fans, talked his way into spending two weeks in 1974 as a fly-on-the-wall in Nashville, while Paul McCartney recorded a never-released Wings album called “ColdCuts.” As Arnold later told an interviewer, “I was aggressive enough to be at the right places at the right time, that’s all.”
Friends recall Arnold disappearing for weeks at a time, and returning with deliberately vague stories suggesting he’d spent time with John and Yoko in New York. As a local fan club president, he’d get offered occasional promotional opportunities, and meeting the band was apparently part of the deal. “John, you just feel in the atmosphere around you that he’s greater than you are,” Arnold told a reporter about his first visit with Lennon. “He doesn’t necessarily feel that way — you just feel that way.” And Ono? “Yoko,” he hesitated, “I just feel comfortable with. She’s very natural, normal, intelligent and intellectual. A bright lady; very bright.”
In the aftermath of the band’s break-up and Lennon’s death, Arnold had discovered the great cause of his life: “My eventual goal is to one day open a Beatles museum in New York and take people on tours,” he told a reporter, who identified him as the “world’s 2nd largest collector of Beatle paraphernalia.” “Of course I could never sell or part with all my souvenirs and memorabilia,” he told her, “but I’d love to talk to people as I have talked to you.”
In the ’80s, Fred renamed his store The Prism and began increasingly to embrace the avant-garde. Friends wondered openly if Yoko Ono’s influence might be to blame. Fennell and the rest of the city’s old-school Beatles-fan community found his interest in Ono baffling, almost treasonous. “He was much more enamored with Yoko than with Lennon,” Fennell told me, still shuddering at the thought. “We found it very weird.”
The Prism became an important meeting place for Charleston’s emerging punk community, and Arnold enthusiastically embraced the new subculture. His employees wore facial piercings and spiked collars, and Arnold started booking shows for groups like the Dead Kennedys, developing longstanding relationships with artists like Jello Biafra, Wendy O. Williams and GG Allin. He kept a cage of live rats in the center of his store, a gimmick that appealed to his new customers. Online, you can find a number of nostalgic tributes to the ’80s Charleston punk scene, many of which cite The Prism as a crucial gateway to the underground. (Jack Hunter, a radio host and former writer and aide for Rand Paul, told me he purchased his “entire Sex Pistols record collection there when I was in high school.”) You can imagine the appeal of punk’s proudly outcast ethos to the albino child of a paranoid schizophrenic. For their part, the punks made Arnold into a kind of mascot, “Billy ‘Bino,” and several of the online remembrances contain speculation as to the mystery of his whereabouts.
In September 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the coast of Charleston. The Category 4 storm brought with it winds of up to 140 mph, and large areas of the city were devastated, Arnold’s store included. He estimated the initial inventory loss at $10,000 — the roof of the store’s warehouse was dislodged entirely in the storm. He lost electricity for two weeks, and, as he told Billboard in an interview the following month, he assumed the resulting lack of air conditioning had inflicted even further damage. Moreover, Arnold had no insurance. “I’ve been in business for over 18 years, and we never had insurance for our inventory,” Arnold said. “We hardly ever have hurricanes here. I think the last one was in 1958.”
Among the objects lost were important pieces of Arnold’s Beatles collection, artifacts of incalculable sentimental value. On top of everything else, there was the cruel fate of his favorite pets. “When the hurricane came, the rats died in the flood,” Durst told me. “It was a sad day for him.” ”
Fred Arnold died a homeless person at the age of 67 when he stepped into the path of a car in December of 2015 in Little Rock, AR.
In closing of the Melvin Records chapter I once again highly recommend this well written article the above quotes were taken from:
http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/the-ballad-of-fred-and-yoko/Content?oid=4345986
