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.