Um sure, I'll buy that for five dollars...

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.

I've been looking for At the Gates records for years, but I never thought I'd actually find one in person.

Finds in Connecticut

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.

Reverend Columbus Mann-They Shall Be Mine b/w Jesus Loves

There was another record show in Albuquerque last week, and this was the first time I tried to look for gospel records at this show. I didn't do too well, and I'm not surprised, how many gospel records are floating around the southwest? I did find a few 45s from one seller, and since he didn't know anything at all about the records he had, I got a pretty good deal. This record here by Rev. Columbus Mann I got for free. I had never heard of him before, but after some checking around online after I got home (one of the few slightly successful gospel searches), the LP this single came from is a highly sought after and very expensive gospel gem. The first track is much better, check it out.

The Virgil Lights - what a meeting b/w I've got a new home

My search for the perfect gospel song continues. I've managed to start a small collection of 45s from the Memphis-based label, Messenger Records, and nearly every record from this label has ranged from decent to mind-blowing. The first track on this record, "what a meeting" is one of those mind-blowing tracks.

I don't know anything about this group. It is both incredible and frustrating how little is available online about gospel. This means to find anything, I have to just take a chance. Luckily, chance is exactly how I found this record. I purchased 3 45s on ebay for literally pennies from a seller who had a few gospel records. The Virgil Lights was one of those records, and while the other two (from The Jubilee Hummingbirds and the Sensational Six) were just ok, the first track on this disc made it all worth it. Enjoy.

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.