The Jubilee Hummingbirds-Help Me to Make It

First, let me start off by saying I know virtually nothing about gospel music. A couple months back I picked up a really cheap Sam Cooke record called the Two Sides of Sam Cooke. I knew very little of his music, and thought I would be more into the pop stuff, but his gospel stuff with the Soul Stirrers blew me away. Thus started my most recent obsession with gospel music. 

Yesterday I found this 45 from the Jubilee Hummingbirds at my favorite local shop, Mecca. The A side, Help Me to Make It is phenomenal, the B side, Heaven Bound is just ok. But the A side has the really gruff male gospel vocals that I like, and the backing band is very similar in style to Booker T and the MGs or James Brown's Famous Flames. 

Check out the song, I won't be doing this too often, but hey, I'm spreading God's word, or some shit like that.

If anyone out there has any gospel recommendations or good sites to check out where I can learn more about this music, let me know. 

Finds in Denver

So I had another conference in Denver last weekend, and this time I spent as little time as possible "conferencing" and as much time record shopping as possible. Too bad I didn't do this in Chicago, because the finds in Denver were pretty weak. I first went Wax Trax Records, which I had planned on going to since I'd been there about 9 years ago and remember it being pretty cool. My memory really failed me, or my tastes have completely changed, but I thought Wax Trax was pretty weak. They have a ton of records, but almost all of it is common junk. I did manage to find these two Esquivel records for $2 each, and my wife wanted the Jay & the Techniques, but we spent a lot of time here for very little. It was a huge disappointment.

A few blocks from Wax Trax my wife and I found another place called Jerry's(?) Record Exchange. They had a slightly better selection, but it was also pretty unorganized, smelled like smoke, and the owner had all these boxes of cds on top of all the records, so it was a little bit of an ordeal to flip through the records. Some of the prices were outrageous, but I did grab this Ten Years After record which I had been wanting for a while, and Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak. I'm not sure why I got the Thin Lizzy record, I think I felt like it was one I needed to have in my collection, but its pretty terrible. 

The rest of the finds were pretty random. We were walking around a neighborhood on South Broadway and happened upon a bar having some kind of rock n roll swap meet inside. I found this fifteen record, and the Miroslav Vituous record which I have been searching for online and off for over a year. The really drunk guy who sold me the Miroslav disc told me him and his buddies used to listen to this and do mushrooms in Alabama back in the 70s. He also kissed my hand. 

There was a book store near the bar, and they also had a big pile of records. The Runaways was probably the best find of the trip, I don't think I've ever come across this before. The Bobby Brown was my wife's pick, and we had a little argument over whether or not I would even add this to the collection list. I grudgingly have...

Finally, I picked up this Cure record (looks mint and unplayed) at a farmer's/flea market. While it was super cheap, I don't even know why I really got this. I have a bunch of Cure records, but I also already own this on cassette and cd. I'm never going to listen to this record. The more exciting part about this flea market was this guy who had a couple portable wind up 78 players that I almost bought. I'm mad at myself for not getting one, but at least I learned a lot about how they worked from the seller. The thought of carrying a big metal box and another box of 78s on the plane with me just was too horrendous. 

Anyway, I'm not that impressed with digging in Denver, although almost everything was pretty cheap. This whole lot cost $46. What a great city though!

Chicago Finds at Reckless

I just got back from a political science conference in Chicago, and luckily I had some spare time to snag a few records. I wasn't even planning on looking for records since my time was so short, and since I stayed right downtown near the Millennium Park, I just figured there was no way a good record store was going to be within walking distance of that part of the city.

Fortunately, I was wrong. Just as I was going back to my hotel to practice the presentation I had to give, I happened to walk by Reckless Records.  I literally started moving in slow motion as I passed by, contemplating skipping my practice time in order to look at records. Thankfully I wasn't so 'reckless' (I needed the practice) and waited until my presentation was over. 

There was a ton of stuff I wanted, but I settled on these four records:

Joe Yamanaka-Live at Nippon Budokan

Sidekick Kato-1st Class Chump

Limp Wrist-one-sided 12"

Archie Shepp-Mama Too Tight

Joe Yamanaka was/is the singer for Flower Travellin Band and I couldn't believe I actually found this laying around a record store. Its a live show from 1978, where he mostly plays his solo material, but he also does some interesting versions of Shadows of Lost Days and Make Up by FTB. Hideki Ishima, the guitar player for FTB, also plays on the album. Its fairly decent, but definitely more traditional hard rock than any of the FTB stuff, although I love his voice so its a decent disc. Some of the FTB records I have are the most expensive records I've purchased, and to find this for cheap was pretty exciting for me.

The Archie Shepp record is great too, and I bought this not having heard this particular album at all. For a while now I've been trying to get my hands on copies of the Magic of Ju-Ju and Fire Music. Amazingly, I won a copy of Fire Music right after I got to Chicago on ebay, and then found this record the day afterwards. I didn't think one could mix free jazz and big band, but that is more or less what is going on with this album; glad I picked this up.

The Sidekick Kato record I heard years and years ago when these guys were still playing around a lot, but I never found a copy until this weekend. I almost wasn't sure I was going to like it, since it had been near 10 years since I heard it last, but its still good. They somehow manage to mix the anthemic punk of the great chicago bands like Sludgeworth and Naked Raygun with the more emo/post-hardcore sound that was so prevalent in the late-90s.

Finally, the Limp Wrist record is great, I had no idea these guys had just put out another record. (It has Martin Sorrendeguy on vocals, the singer of Los Crudos, if you haven't heard of them...). More great thrashy hardcore, not much of a surprise here, but still good. I generally try to avoid buying new records when I travel, but getting copies of Lengua Armada records is so hard and they go out of print so fast that I broke my normal travel rules.