Rock and Roll Drink Coasters

Finding a commercial use for broken-down junk is just good business -- tire retreading's proven invaluable to the transportation industry, while Bonaduce retreading's proven invaluable to TV viewers who apparently don't have anywhere to go. Putting scratched-up vinyl back to work: Rock and Roll Drink Coasters.

Out of Big 12 brother/Texas-tourist lover Colorado, R&R's a husband-and-wife team of eBay 45RPM sellers who decided to transform their unsellable stock into handsome, sturdy drink coasters; the idea was actually hatched by the wife, whose father produced records for Bobby Sherman and the Partridge Family, and so's partially responsible for the aforementioned 'duce. The process, which took a year to develop, starts with cutting away the groove-y outer part w/ a custom-built machine and sealing the label in a secret three-layer coating, then cork-ing the bottom, placing it in a mold, and pouring clear epoxy onto the assembly (give one to a friend, and...epoxy on both your houses). The hundreds of tunes span genres including classic lounge (Dean Martin's "I'm Not the Marrying Kind"), jazz (a 4-piece Charlie Parker set), old-school country (Marty Robbins' "The Hanging Tree"), and classic rock (Manfred Mann's "Pretty Flamingo"?), on up to '80s pop like "We Are The World" -- perfectly appropriate, because when drinking beer, there also comes a time when you heed a certain call.

Recently, the couple launched a blog telling the stories behind rarer finds, and've been discovered by a few musicians who've bought their own hits, including Duran Duran, Pat Boone, and Bertie Higgins, whose 1982 ballad "Key Largo" made #75 on VH1's 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80s -- five hours of retreads that'd keep even the most industrious from getting back to work.