New Vinyl

Went to FatCat's music today in Boone, NC. They've got a bunch of used LPs for about three bucks, some even for 50 cents. The left album I bought solely for the cover art - I'm thinking about removing the big ass Mirage Records sticker at risk of pulling up some of the album art. But isn't that an awesome looking cover for 1981? It's very 2010 at the same time, just shows you what goes around comes around.

The second one is obviously John Lennon and Yoko Ono's love project Double Fantasy. I'm interested to hear the rest of the album other than "Watching the Wheels."

Tomorrow's release day for tons of albums. Get excited!

Black, White, and Hova All Over

Even with all of the new music picked up at the library a few days ago, today was a day for vinyl shopping. I explored a little outside of my usual section which should be called "Anything Older Than 1983," in favor of a newer artist. That usually means spending more on the record and surprisingly fewer options, but it's a risk worth taking if you find the perfect missing piece to your collection. And today it was a corner piece: The Black Album.

This is the only the third album I've bought wrapped up and scratch-free. Sometimes I can't understand why a $23 new album could be pitted against an $8 copy that's been opened and played once. But Jay-Z's Black Album was offensively on sale, and it seemed too easy to pass.

The top pictures are pulled from the photo collage included in the album. Seems a little cheesy for Jay-Z, a little too thug-scrapbooky, but appealing to dweebs like me who want to know more about the people behind recording and producing.

Middle pics: the list. With the help of Damon Dash and Kareem "Biggs" Burke, Hova produced one of his most successful and appreciated albums of his career. You might recognize a couple of hits with "Change Clothes," "99 Problems" and "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," which make any hit off "The Blueprint 3" seem like mixtape throwaways.

But the real stuff, typical with any rapper, is found on B-sides. "Justify My Thug" and "My 1st Song" along with "Lucifer" are some of Jay's crowning achievements. Take a listen to the whole album, including interludes. The progression is remarkable, the themes dark and unashamed.

Music Turf: CD Alley

While visiting my sister in the town of Chapel Hill, we spent the day wandering around various locations on Franklin Street, the main area for university hubbub and brou-ha-ha like shopping for collegiate regalia, digging through thrift stores and buying archaeic things such as CDs and vinyl.

The last time I was at a record store, I had enough room to do roundoffs in it (that's a fancy-schmancy cartwheel, just to be obnoxious like that). But CD Alley was a crawlspace of floor-to-ceiling CDs, with rows and rows of music jutting from the walls and filling up every corner. Without any objective searching, I strolled a satisfied stroll out of this treasure trove of tunes with:

Nick Drake - Pink Moon

Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls

Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil

Not a bad find from a store I wanted to spend hours in, but couldn't afford such a luxury. If you crouch underneath the sagging shelves of discs, you can find rows of vinyl can be a pain in the rear to look through if you aren't sitting indian-style and have loads of patience. But that's protocol for records - the ones you love the most are diamonds among a Sahara-sized rough.

The next time I'm heading to the Hill, I'll be making a visit to CD Alley once more for some hellagood used CDs. It was, I have to say, one of the most pleasant surprises of my weekend, and anyone who's in the neighborhood should check it out.

Song of the Day

**7/31/09

Pennywise - The American Dream

-------------When most hear the word "vintage" they think of old phones with the turn dials, priceless jewels, and vinyl records. But what about a punk vinyl LP from 1999? When I popped over to Manifest in search of a punk record, I didn't think Pennywise's Straight Ahead would even be vinyl in the first place. The Hermosa Beach punk band has been playing since '88 and has seen many days of the nineties, a time when CDs were taking over vinyl sales and the term "boy band" became sononymous with success.

Rather than languish in late eighties obscurity, Pennywise holds true to the rougish punk scene with "American Dream," a definitive anti-establishment anthem with a commotion of chugging guitars and ruthless drums. Get "American Dream" off of the 1999 album, Straight Ahead.