Surface Noise | Bonus Trax: The Anti-Grail - Rare Records We’d Never Buy

The Power Hour of SURFACE NOISE may be over, but the conversation is just getting started. On this edition of BONUS TRAX, the crew sticks around for a spirited debate about The Anti-Grail: those expensive, rare, highly coveted records that collectors are supposed to want…but we simply don’t.

What happens when a record is considered essential, commands thousands of dollars, or sits atop countless wantlists—but the music just doesn’t connect with you? Are some records genuinely worth their legendary status, or are scarcity, collector hype and peer pressure doing most of the heavy lifting?

The panel puts some sacred cows on the chopping block, with Alice Coltrane, rare psych records, The Beatles’ infamous Butcher Cover, Vashti Bunyan, Nick Drake, Nirvana and plenty more entering the conversation. We also get into the difference between appreciating why a record is valuable and actually wanting to own it. As one viewer perfectly sums it up: “My grails are someone else’s dumpster crops.”

Along the way, things predictably wander off the rails with Billy Joel, record-flipping stories, questionable soundtrack purchases, U2 and Bono slander, Bob Dylan’s ’80s output, rare records worth thousands that nobody actually wants to hear—and a little friendly interrogation of Surface Noise viewers caught fraternizing with another livestream.

It’s loose, unfiltered and exactly what BONUS TRAX is supposed to be: the conversation after the conversation, when the Power Hour ends and nobody is quite ready to go home.

BONUS TRAX is part of the Vinyl Community Podcasts network — podcasts for, by and featuring members of the Vinyl Community. Wherever you go, take the music with you. Get some!

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For more on guest Alan Always:

https://www.youtube.com/@Alan_Always

Video link for his VC Lasagna Tag 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03uUcIcLYqM&t=66s

For more on host Concert Buddie:

https://www.youtube.com/@ConcertBuddie