So it has come to pass that Best Buy is planning to close 50 of their big box stores across the US. The cracks are beginning to appear and this might be the start of the long decline that eventually will consume Best Buy just like it did with Circuit City in 2009. I don't think that they will all go out of business, but it seems that Best Buy feels like going to a Circuit City the way things are leveled out inside. Some of the music buying folk would love to see BB suffer the same fate that the mom and pop bricks and mortar music stores had when BB started buying up property and so on. After all the parking spot used to be where Relics Records was at, 20 years ago where I called my very own place of residence.
From the ashes of Borders has come the arrival of Books A Million to which they have also replaced the Borders at Ames and Davenport on 53rd. BAM as they are called remind me of a Borders or Barnes & Noble, but with a slight exception of having more vinyl albums in their inventory. To which I brought Elvin Jones Midnight Walk (Atlantic) and It Is Finished by Nina Simone (RCA). The Midnight Walk album mastered quite nicely and plays very well on the turntable, It Is Finished on the other hand suffers too much of a compressed mix on Side 1. Another vinyl purchase Richard Hell & The Voidoids Blank Generation (Sire) has a very bad and crappy mix of the drums. Seems like whoever put it on vinyl didn't EQ it right, for the drums lost their bright sound on the original mix years ago. I'm sure the CD doesn't sound that muffled either. 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl isn't going to save a crap mix either. Save the 12.99 for something else.
Small town Iowa doesn't have much in terms of music stores but rather they're called Antique stores, or better yet Junk Shops. In Springville, there was a garage sale of sorts at the old Hardware Grocery store on the old 151 highway and the old guy there had cds for 2 bucks and I brought a few. I think he told me to get the word at, that he's going try to get this store off the ground to sell things. Didn't have time to check the DVDs and the LP's were your run of the mill vinyl of what your grandparents listen to. I also surprised that the old guy had some punk rock, something from LA's hardcore punks The Fartz. So if you're ever on the way to Cedar Rapids from Dubuque or vice versa and is looking for more stuff to hoard around, take a drive off the beaten path into Springville on X20 and turn right and go down three blocks. You can't miss it.
Needless to say we didn't win that 640 million dollar Mega Millions, we weren't in Maryland to get the winning ticket. I would have been happy with a 10th of that. I'm sure I could have lived nicely.
Last week, you may have missed it among the usual Sammy Hagar bashings of Van Halen or Stephen Adler bashing Axl Rose but Eric Lowen, half of the acoustic folk rockers Lowen & Navarro passed away at age 60 from ALS or the infamous Lou Gehrig Disease. It actually got me to thinking and replaying Pendulum, their 1995 album for Mercury on the way to work today. Their best known song We Belong (covered by Pat Benetar) is on Walking On A Wire but perhaps the best way to hear them was on Interchord's reissue of Live Wire, a live performance that got them signed to Chameleon in 1989. All of their albums have something worthwhile to listen to and the better recording featuring Jim Scott producing and recording. Eric Lowen will be missed. RIP.
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