Gold Records Are Getting Jazzed Up

Every rock ‘n’ roll film, it seems, has this scene: The scrappy young musician walks wide-eyed into a record label office lined with glistening rows of identical platinum records--the star-making machinery in action!

The folks at Jewel Box Platinum have plans for that scene. Kids may never stop dreaming of rock-star fame, but those generic awards are changing. Jewel Box Platinum turns the standard-issue gold or platinum record award on its head, creating adventurous custom plaques from novel materials such as guitar parts, rhinestones and speaker fabric. At the Marina del Rey company, the standard metallic disc has morphed into ant farms, shadowboxes, silk screens, 3-D art and fantastic wall hangings.

Award certification plaques mark milestones in top-selling artists’ careers (gold awards signify sales of 500,000, platinum a million), and recipients often treasure them for a lifetime. It’s no surprise, then, that well-known artists such as P.O.D. and the Deftones visit the Jewel Box office to help the staff draft that perfect design. The company is one of a mere eight certified by the Recording Industry Assn. of America to produce commemorative plaques.

The RIAA certified 327 gold, 227 platinum and 243 multi-platinum albums in 2001. Each has an RIAA certification number and hologram seal of authenticity, and production is tightly monitored. “Even if Madonna calls me up and asks for a gold record,” says company owner Deborah Lotz, “I still have to ask the record company.” The number of copies made of an award varies greatly; in addition to the artists, industry professionals instrumental to the record’s success and performers’ friends or family often get copies, too.

For Beck’s platinum “Odelay,” Lotz and her team worked into the wee hours hand-assembling about 350 miniature hurdles along with trees purchased from a hobby store on Astro Turf backgrounds for dioramas based on the album cover art of a dog sailing over a hurdle. For the eight-time platinum “Forrest Gump” soundtrack, a special Bubba Gump shrimp box was constructed for each award, which included a single white feather individually approved by the label’s art director. In such a tiny industry, attention to the details-- whether a perfectly fitted wooden frame or meticulously placed pingpong balls--is necessary to stay competitive. “It’s not an open playing field,” Lotz points out. “There’s only so many gold records a year.”

MARA SCHWARTZ