You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'collectors' category.
Up for auction now is a catchy tune on Verve. This song has appeared on a couple of comps and I can dig it. Does it have value? you decide by getting it here
Posted By Guest Writer js:
Where I differ, I think, from Justin and from Geoff, and what always makes me feel vaguely ashamed when I’m talking about music with them, is that I’m not a real collector. I mean, I collect albums, and I am forever slowly expanding the number of songs and sides I have at my fingertips, but I really couldn’t care less about two things that are inherent to record collecting: value and rarity.
I’m not saying that I’m pure of commercial considerations or that I don’t want hard-to-find things, but both of those are sort of secondary. The blunt fact is that there is too much music out there for me to ever worry too much about stockpiling things for cash or for posterity, or even to lord over other music collectors.
This weekend, I picked up a handful of New Wave albums that I had never really thought about owning, and passed on something that I’d been looking for for a while, and basically subverted any inner record collecting instincts that I had.
I picked up Toni Basil’s first album (Devo plays half the backing tracks!), another copy of the Cars first album (mine has scratches and skips), ABC’s Lexicon of Love (their best by far), Blondie’s Plastic Letters (I only owned it digitally), B-52s Whammy (which I haven’t listened to yet), some Tony Orlando gig called The Flirts, and Squeeze’s The Squeeze is On which kind of sucks.
And I passed on The Wild Tchoupitoulas’s self-titled album.
The Wild Tchoupitoulas album shows why I’m not a collector. I had been curious about it for years, after getting a Souljazz New Orleans sampler that included a pretty nice second-line (which is what the Mardi Gras Indians, of which the Wild Tchoupitoulas are one “tribe,” are) tune. It was a full-on percussion stomp, with polyrhythms and call-and-response vocals and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Neville Brothers and the Meters collaborating with a bunch of faux-savages. So, ever since then, I’ve looked for the full album. I’ve seen it on eBay for $50 to $70 (though I always imagine that those are fake bids when I see an album spiral up like that). And yesterday I saw it at a local record shop.
It was a little warped, and a little scratched up, but was $22.50, and I’d likely never see that album again. My best bet would be to either stumble upon it when downloading music, or forget it existed. So I grabbed it up and did a couple of needle-drops at the listening station.
It… It just wasn’t very good. It was a bunch of smooth, relaxed grooves, but instead of The Meters who did Gris Gris with Dr. John, instead of the Struttin’ Meters, it was the “Witchita Lineman” smooth Meters. There was no depth to the production, and the vocals were all inept “Indians” with the Neville Brothers crooning like velure.
If I were a record collector, I would have bought it. But I just couldn’t.
Instead, I bought a bunch of New Wave detritus for $2 an album and loved it. I listened to most of them today, and they were fucking excellent. No one is ever going to want to buy that Flirts album off of me, although (as my girlfriend Amy informed me), “(Don’t Put Another Dime in That) Jukebox” was a radio hit. But it’s a damn fine album. I didn’t know that I was looking for it, but it fills a perfect niche between The Go-Gos and Adult., and I couldn’t be happier.
RA: Resident Advisor - Sounding Off: Why vinyl can’t survive
This guy’s dead wrong, frankly, but the ILXers do a better job of putting him to rights than I would.
popsike.com - rare vinyl records auction results / price guide
What SHOULD you be paying for these rare albums? Popsike to the rescue. Searchable database of eBay results.
jsREVIEW:
The press loved Bittersweet Alley in 1983, these big-haired lads from Detroit who were a “return to rock.” They got similar press to the White Stripes today, which is kinda an odd thing to think about, both in what it says about rock criticism and rock in general. Us writers are always looking for a return to some halcyon days of yore, ain’t we?
And in 1983, they were found in these pouting divas with big hair and prominent crotch-bulges.
Their press pack is a time capsule from that time, with the girls in the BSA tees looking like those print ads from old Rolling Stones; the breathless puff pieces referring to bars long since shuttered (RIP Lili’s 21); the red 45 in a small paper sleeve…
As for the music, well, That’s a-side “Time to Move” (helpfully hosted offsite by Motorcityrock). There’s also the b-side, Society Girl, which is a bit weaker.
In my mind, they sound mostly like The Tubes making out with Duran Duran during a coke binge, and I like that. I like the power pop, I like the easy sense of rock and warmth they bring to the occassion. If I had heard this band in 1983, when I was a wee four-years-old, I’d have believed that there was something in the Detroit water to give bands like The Romantics, The Knack and Bittersweet Alley such great pop songs.
But the first two of those are now barely remembered by “kids these days” (offa my lawn), and BSA’s best google hits come from this article, a Metafilter post that I made, and an absent-minded bit of nostolgia from one of the guys in Porchsleeper.
This is fun memorabilia, maybe never worth that much to resell, but a great forgotten part of Detroit rock. If you buy it, take care of it, OK?
jsREVIEW:
The first thing to do: Turn up your bass.
Now turn it up again.
This is a sexy, funky, bassy, sticky, strutting, fucking album.
“They say I’m nasty, they say I’m wild… Say you will, say you will..” Davis sings on “If I’m In Luck You Might Pick Me Up,” the album’s opener. Davis was nasty, was wild, to the point where religious groups picketted her shows. While she’s rarely overtly raunchy, especially by today’s standards, the permeating sexuality that oozes from her Tina Turner growls and the sparse, punchy basslines would make Bill Clinton blush, and would still earn her brickbats if any of the Religious Right were listening.
By the time this self-titled debut came out, Davis had already had songs written about her (the “Mademoiselle Mabry” of then-husband Miles’ Filles De Kilimanjaro), and was credited with introducing Miles to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, leading to his dark funk rebirth.
Miles would divorce her because she was too wild and too sexy, and on “Anti-Love Songs,” the throbbing bass underscores this perception. Davis isn’t gonna love you because she’d fuck you so hard you’d break, and on “Your Man, My Man,” she’s more dangerous than Me’Shell NdegéOcello ever dreamed of being.
It’s not just Betty on this either, as she’s backed by the very best and funkiest musicians of the time: Larry Graham (bass) and Greg Errico (drums) of the Family Stone, The Pointer Sisters sing backup, Doug Rodrigues an Neal Shon of Santana’s band, classic sessioners like Merl Saunders and Hershall Kennedy make this the Avengers of funk and are the best band since Motown’s Funk Brothers.
This is the Just Sunshine Records first pressing, making this a bit rarer than the usual Vinyl Experience or MPC pressings, and if the rest of Cousins Vinyl would let me, this’d be mine. It’s almost a tearful parting, putting it up for sale, but goddamn… Just give it a good home, OK? Put it on any time you need to fill the floor or have the dirtiest sex of your life.
