It has been a long time since I last posted. Too many other things going on in my life to worry about blogging. But alas, I am back for the first post of 2010.
I recently spent a week in CT for the holidays, and came back with a few finds. I visited three stores while I was there. Unfortunately, I didn't have more time to hunt, but I still came away with some records that are next to impossible to find here at home.
First up, I visited
Brass City Records in Waterbury, where I came away with The Stranglers - Rattus Norvegicus, Life Sentence-No Experience Necessary, Pharoah Sanders-Black Unity, and Joe Henderson-Power to the People. The store itself is quite the unorganized dive, has records scattered all over the place in some strange categorization scheme that really only works for personal collections. The prices, however, were pretty reasonable, and if anyone is looking for old 80s youth crew and straight edge hardcore records, this place has a lot of early gems. Supposedly, this store also doubles as a woodworking tool shop, so I brought my dad along who collects old planes. The tools were in terrible shape, and that goes for many of the records too. While the vinyl was in generally good shape, the owner doesn't seem to care much about the condition of the jackets. I almost purchased Life Sentence's 7" but it had a serious warp in it.
For me, the Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson records were great finds, I love both of these albums and I'm glad to finally have some copies on vinyl.
I was staying almost an hour away from Brass City, and got caught in a terrible snow storm on the way there. Luckily, we made it back in one piece, although I saw 7 or 8 car accidents on the drive home. Living in NM has made me soft, I can't handle the snow like I used to.
I also made it to
Redscroll records in Wallingford, which was a pretty great store for punk and metal records. I picked up Out of Order-Paradise Lost, Overkill-feel the fire, and Believer-Dimensions.
They had a slew of 80s thrash metal records I would have liked to brought back with me, but I was trying to be selective. The space was incredibly tiny but had so much crammed into the place it was hard to find anything. One of my pet peeves in record shopping is having to look at records by the spine, and most of their used records were organized this way. Hopefully they fix this in the future.
I've been trying to collect old Chicago punk and hardcore records from the 80s for the last couple years, and was pleasantly surprised to find the life sentence and out of order records in CT.
I found this on Friday at a local record store, which shall remain nameless, for a whopping $5. Not sure what was calling me to the 12" singles section loaded with depeche mode, erasure, and madonna singles, but as I was flipping through this dreck, I came across At the Gates' first ep, Gardens of Grief. At first, I couldn't believe what I was looking at, and became really nervous. Was this for real? Was the owner of the store really going to let me buy this once I brought it up to the counter? I continued to browse for about a hour or so afterwards, but I kept this hidden in between the other records I had found (the 2nd killing joke album, what's THIS for...!; Linn County's till the break of dawn, and Econochrist's trained to serve), just in case any other customers saw it and decided to talk to me. 
