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By Max Conroy
This past week has been one of the most eventful/busy of my entire life. In seven days I saw Jandek, wrote about it, interviewed Donita Sparks, saw Blind Mellon in Flint, crashing that night in East Lansing, saw Solomon Burke in Detroit and motored immediately after to Grand Rapids to hang out with Uncle Fucker. I got back to Ann Arbor last night around midnight. I had a real good time, but I’m glad to be convalescing here on this beautiful Memorial Day. In my travels to East Lansing and Grand Rapids, I picked up some great records at some great shops. If you’re anywhere even close to Grand Rapids and like records at all, you have to go to the Corner Record Shop, just outside of GR. It rivals Encore and is about to become an entirely analog recording studio and venue as well! Another surprise is that Uncle Fucker dusted off the Telecaster this weekend in a moment of clarity, and I recorded some of it for you. I have also edited some of what I recorded at the Solomon Burke show. Featured here are Lay My Burdon Down, performed by the choir before he went on, and Diamond in Your Mind, the song that Tom Waites wrote for him on his first comeback album. The choir provides an accurate representation of the enthusiasm of the crowd, along with a healthy dose of ecstatic joy in loving Jesus. Diamonds is just a great song and was recorded by Burke recently, so it captures his sound now. The third track is Uncle Fucker shredding All Down the Line, the Stones song.
Lay My Burdon Down:
Diamond in Your Mind:
All Down the Line:
Stay tuned for the Donita Sparks and the Stellar Moments review and interview.
Cousin Justin posted a nice selection of old school rap LPs and 12″s.
Included is Run DMC’s first, self titled LP:
From All Music:
Prior to this, rap felt like a block party — the beats were funky and elastic, all about the groove. Run-D.M.C. hit hard. The production is tough and minimal, built on relentless drum machines and Jam Master Jay’s furious scratching, mixing in a guitar riff or a keyboard hit on occasion. It is brutal urban music, and Run and D.M.C.’s forceful, muscular rhymes match the music. Where other MCs sounded cheerful, Run and D.M.C. prowl and taunt the listener, sounding as if they were a street gang. And while much of the record is devoted to braggadocio, boasting, and block parties, Run-D.M.C. also addressed grittier realities of urban life, giving this record both context and thematic weight. All of this — the music, the attitude, the words, the themes — marked a turning point for rap, and it’s impossible to calculate Run-D.M.C.’s influence on all that came afterward. Years later, some of the production may sound a bit of its time, but the music itself does not because music this powerful and original always retains its impact and force as music.
Check out the rest of the All Music review on this LP and listen some audio clips.
There’s also Lord Finesse and DJ Smooth, Funky Technician:
Both Justin and I have heard this played a lot on Sirius on XM - it’s definitely a classic among classics. From All Music:
It’s a simple formula: bring together one of the East Coast’s finest rappers with some of the most clever trackmasters in hip-hop, then add in a stellar DJ, and the results are bound to be exciting. Funky Technician was just that, an excellent LP of battle rap with Lord Finesse simultaneously claiming and proving his immense skills over a set of funky backing tracks that used the familiar James Brown blueprint but delivered it with unobtrusive class and innumerable displays of deft turntable wizardry. read the rest of this review and listen to some audio clips
Justin has just posted a smallish but nice collection of what I dub the Happy Hippie LP Batch. Condition looks to be excellent on them. Mention “Happy Hippie” to Justin and get a discount on shipping.
Justin whipped up a sweet batch of soul 45s this time. They’ll be selling like hotcakes, but you might catch a bargain or two because a lot are in VG condition. What does VG mean anyway? It literally means Very Good, but it really means that it’s just OK. But for a soul 45, that means it was well-played, the way a 45 should be. Now it’s your turn to enjoy it. A little warm crackling sound of well-loved vinyl never hurt anybody, now did it?
Justin just listed a small but very solid rock batch. Some of the highlights are a Rolling Stones Satanic Majesties 3D cover, Bob Seger System’s Mongrel, an early mono Chuck Berry on Chess, SRC’s 1st album, SRC’s 2nd album, a very nice mono T 2047 Meet The Beatles, a mono Beatles Revolver, an original The Crickets first album (which I wish I could keep), and a bunch of other stuff including some dance/funk in front that ends sooner.
Also, let me mention this again, in case you missed it, an interesting exchange and occurance that happened here at Cousins Vinyl dot com recently. Max wrote about Thunderclap Newman last week, which made me interested in learning more about a then 15 year old guitarist that recorded with them named Jimmy McCulloch who died at 26 of a heroin overdose. Max then looked into him more and wrote a follow-up post and mentioned this other guy who posted video footage of him on Youtube - which I replied and said it would be cool if this guy commented on our site and sure enough he did. Paul is his name, and although he’s only 20, he’s in the early stages of writing a biography about McCulloch’s life, which would be a fascinating contribution to music history. I believe he and Max exchanged emails, so look for more entries in the future about this subject. Really cool stuff! Good job Paul, keep going, man.
Justin is getting ready to release an absolute monster batch of old school rap LPs and 12″s. Look for them to go up today or Monday. Some really rare stuff will be in there.
****JUST LISTED****
CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We’ve never had a batch of old school hip hop like this, EVER. Included is some extremely rare Detroit old school, private pressings, test pressings, rare versions, funky, booty, soul, an absolute DJ’s treasure. Some of these I know we’ll never come across again.
And all this came as I’ve really been into XM’s Channel 65 The Rhyme, which is classic and old school hip hop. I was pretty much drooling over the collection, as was Justin, but we did our best to restrain ourselves as we’ve dumped a little bit of cash to aquire this. The whole collection came from an old Detroit DJ and producer, who brought it in little by little over the past week. Justin has been listing like crazy - I think there are close to 500 listings.
God bless him, Cousins Justin worked his ass off and put up almost 400 45s off a collection he bought recently. A real solid batch, it features soul to modern soul in real nice condition. Here are some that intersted me on first glance:
This just looks sweet. It’s on Bang - Justin claims it kicks ass.
Billy Lamont - Girls Girls Girl/Shake and Jerk
This cool janitor I used to work with used to ask me all the time if we had any Willie Hutch. I wan’t hip to Willie Hutch, but I figured he must be sweet with a name like Willie Hutch. This title has to be good.
Willie Hutch - What You Going To Do After The Part
Bill Withers, on Sussex, one of my favorite labels. Sussex put out some great stuff - catchy funk and soul. Lean On Me is one of those songs you just gotta have.
Justin, is this any good? I’m extremely interested - on a Detroit label I’ve never seen, last name the same as mine, great title.
This looks really promising.
Jimmy Delphs - Do You Know What I Mean
So does this.
Well, I’m going to stop here. But I encourage you to go exploring because there’s a ton more cool Detroit stuff and a bunch more classic mod soul and other more obscure hidden gems. This is a much better batch than I realized. I gave Justin this lead and he sounded kind of excited but not like jumping out of his pants or anything after he bought the collection. After looking this over, it’s good. The condition is excellent too. If you’re hunting, browse around and take some chances here - I think you’ll get some good deals. We don’t really know what’s what - like always, it just goes off starting at $7.50.
This is very preliminary, but Justin and I are looking into the possibility of opening a walk-in record store in Ypsilanti. The online store would still exist - we’d have both. This is by no means a certain thing, and in fact it is still a longshot, but we’re investigating an opportunity that may make it possible.
Do you think a record store would be successful in downtown Ypsi? I’m sure the city would like to see one go up. There have been two other vinyl record stores in Ypsi in the past 10 or so years that haven’t made it - so we would have to do things a bit differently. I’d also like to support local artists and community events. We’d need a ton of community support and rallying for us to be brave enough to do it.
We’ll see how things shake out over the next few months. A lot depends on a lot of things for this to happen. Pretend I didn’t mention this.
We got Auction 45s, we got more soul…
We got Store 45s, we got more soul…
Don’t forget about Motown 45s, doin’ their thing…
We got Ray Charles, James Brown, Johnny Taylor, Aretha Franklin…
Doin’ their thing now…
We got everybody, doin’ their thing…
We even have a song, by Dyke and The Blazers, We Got More Soul:
Justin just launched a new batch of Soul 45s. These came primarily from one collection - and there’s some real good ones.
Speaking of soul, the Detroit News reported this morning that Motown is kicking off it’s 50th anniversary celebration - even if it is two years early. They also have a fantastic black and white photo gallery of some early Motown artists and behind the scenes stuff that is really worth checking out.
Why go to the flea market when you can dig right here?
Mention this promotion by Oct. 7th to Justin and get free flat rate shipping on your next order (unlimited records). US customers only. Email him at cousins AT cousinsvinyl DOT com, subject SUNDAY DIGGING PROMO. If you’re not a funk/soul/R&B fan, check out our store for more genres, which also apply.
