Stolen from Jerry Scott. Jerry, the former head of Relics Records has a new Antique store on 1st Avenue called This And That And The Other Thing, located in the Ottinger's old used music store site in Cedar Rapids. If you're in the area, pay the old Relic a visit and tell them Crabby sent ya. Update: Jerry sold the store to his partner up there from what Carol told me. So anyway, now that I got your attention we'll return you to the rest of the blog already in progress. Update June 2015, this place closed up and now is yet another empty building on 1 st Avenue.
Not much to report for new bargains as I made my way down to Iowa City and found three things at Record Collector as the zit face dude behind the counter was playing some kind of death goth metal which really made me wish to hear Soul Sister by Train. Let's say I have little tolerance for somebody screaming on loud guitars and bad casino imitations of a mellotron . Fucking awful crap. I really don't want to hear Dante's Inferno The 10th Stage on CD anymore dude.
The Vinyl making comeback hasn't helped some of our record store friends across the mighty pond. The guy from Retrobloke had a big summer madness sale and said nobody showed up. This is their posting off Facebook.
....
Our stock is better than its
ever been, but nobody is coming to see it. What I hate most of all is
'Indie Record Shop Day', we see no benefit
of that at all, while HMV make a big thing of it and get loads of extra
sales - you can't really call HMV a record shop. It's a sad fact that
many record collectors bemoan the demise of vinyl shops, but still buy
all their vinyl on ebay. They'll say how much they missed us when we're
all gone, but it was their lack of support which made it happen. In a
way I can't blame them, the convenience of typing in a name on the
internet and finding two or three copies of exactly what you're looking
for is pretty hard to beat. Maybe Ebay actually killed 'browsing'. Who
wants to browse any more when you can get so specific. Sure, we've got a
great site, and we sell on ebay, but I spent my teenage years dreaming
of owning a record shop, playing records all day and chatting about
great music. I'd love those days to come back, but it's looking less
than doubtful.....Retrobloke
Times are tough all over and in the dying art of record collecting, there's not a lot of them left. In our case you have to drive to get a vinyl shop which is about 45 minutes to an hour from here. Half Priced Books remains the only vinyl place in town and although they do get some interesting imports (Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street Import 23.99) Cedar Rapids has none of their own. With gas prices always rising, we have to combine other things to go with our bargain hunts, which means stopping at Big Lots in Davenport or Audi's in Dubuque. Besides I can assure you that no record store would have had that Chuck Murphy 45 that has eluded me all these years which is why EBAY comes in handy. Sorry to say Barnet England is no where near Crabbland Iowa. I too had grand dreams of owning a record store and talk tunes with folks for days on end, but rap and the internet came around, Universal started buying out all the other labels and nobody can make memorable music anymore. It's a fucking dying career to even if I did open up a store, I'd end up getting the wrong crowd or having to deal with Universal's pricing of their shitty new music. Just better to open up a junk shop and stack plenty of records and hope word gets around.
After hitting 2,000 views last month it looks like we're back in the usual 1500 range. As much as we love that cashcow Brains Blog getting all the views and the Brian Howe Fan Club keeping that one going at second place it boggles the mind that the 2009 best albums gets more views than 2011 which has yet to crack the top ten. I'm still working on some Music Of My Years stuff, perhaps some more things in the Consortium blog. I could also take down the restrictions of posting but then the pornstuff spam would return. I can also retire.....
Life continues on for those who used to be in the Yardbird's Roost, now a lovingly remembered thing of the past. I really don't hear much from Hoop, Vinyl King is more into the Right side of politics and ELO Mark Snider announced that he's a grandfather now. I've never started having any of my own. And never will.
Barton Peterson passed away here in town. He played in various cover bands in Cedar Rapids most associated with Tracer The Fun Band. Also, our late great friend from classic rock Trooper (who passed in 2000), his mom who kept his legacy alive has joined him in the great beyond.
Top Ten Of The Week:
1. Place Your Hands-Reef 1997 They were from the UK but they're more into the classic rock of Led Zeppelin or Black Crowes rather than Oasis so they didn't sell much although this would be at home on the classic rock 90s stations and it should be. Their first album sucked and the second one was more of the same but it rocked harder and they did get The Black Crowes producer on Glow and I like it much better. One of a few CDs that I bought at Erin Tapken's Alter Ego after she opened up the store when Relics closed down. She doesn't sell Cds anymore but she does very well selling comic books and the like. I haven't paid Erin a visit in about a couple years maybe I should see how she's doing. http://www.alteregoia.com/
2. Need Your Love-The Hawks 1981 Homestate band makes good, signs big record contract with a major label, makes a pretty good debut, gets little promo but sells enough to warrant another album then gets dropped from label. Not everybody can be Slipknot I guess but then again Otho is no Des Moines either. It's kinda odd to see no Hawks CBS albums reissued on CD; Not Lame issued something called Perfect World Radio that may have been the third album. B side to Right Away. However they did a much rougher take of this song as a bonus track to PWR which was why Tom Werman did wonders with the Columbia version. After CBS dropped them, The Hawks renamed themselves Junior Wild and made a couple demos for a local station to win a contract with the even worse EMI America label and submitted Runaway Girl which rocked hard but ended up losing out to some new wave crapper All His Friends Are Spies by some Josie Cotton wannabe. The 80s were brutal to power pop rock bands.
3. In The Year 2525-Zager & Evans 1969 If you looked up the definition of one hit wonder, look no further on this future shock statement on how machines were going to take over man. But in all honesty I don't forsee man being around by then. Wars, sucking the oil dry, extreme weather kinda scary if you think about it. Best way to describe this duo is what if Art Garfunkel was the main singer songwriter instead of Paul Simon. Wounded Bird reissued their two RCA albums on one disc and the 2525 album is hippy dippy folk rock. Follow up single was something called Mister Turnkey on their S/T second album. Cd was found for five dollars at Record Collector.
4. Soul Shoes-Graham Parker & The Rumour 1976 Nothing against Elvis Costello but out of all the pub/punk rockers of the mid 70s the lesser of them all got into the rock and roll hall of fame. I've always had problems even with his best known albums and even his best ofs take a lot to get used to. I'm more into Nick Lowe and Graham Parker side of the fence, Parker being more of the R and B influenced pubbers. He even out riffs the Rolling Stones on this nice little rock number to which Bob Dorr played for us a couple weeks ago on Backtracks and made me go seek out the Cd of Howling Wind and revisit a lost classic. While Costello continues to reap the rewards of being in the public eye and Nick Lowe becoming Bing Crosby, Parker still remains true to his R and B and R n R roots, putting out albums for Bloodshot from time to time.
5. Louisiana Coo Coo-The Kentucky Headhunters 2001 Since I saw them last week in Shell Rock I have to give them some sort of kudos and shout out. When I told a friend I went to see them play she looked at me and said are they still around? Guess my friend doesn't get out too often, the Headhunters are still alive and doing well on the summer fair tour. Right next to Los Lobos, these guys have moved a lot in my book of favorite bands, like Los Lobos they are personal and easy to chat to when you see them go off stage and (are you listening Tommy Lee?) you can get your picture taken with them! Country Radio won't play them today, they're too rock and of course you all know rock radio won't touch them with a ten foot pole either. Richard Young's frog croaking on this tune is the worth the admission price alone.
6. Take It Like A Man-Bachman Turner Overdrive 1975 What would classic rock radio be without Takin Care Of Business or You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and both songs I can do without even though I'm a fan. So us fans go with the lesser known as this top 40 hit from the Bicentennial year, got to be number 1 on the KCAM charts here in the sticks. And the piano player is none other than Little Richard Penniman. WOO!
7. Saturday Night-Ram Jam 1978 Judging from who you ask Portrait Of A Young Artist As A Young Ram is either a piece of shit or one of the best metal albums ever. I have this on vinyl but bought the CD when I saw at the other day and it's the mastering job will give you a earache. While some folk consider this to be the weakest track since it borrows from the Saturday Night Fever tag line but it's one of the more easier to take songs off this album. But it's one of those songs that if I want to hear it I'll pull the album out. Or maybe the 8 track if I still had a 8 track player. I guess there's not a lot of love for Ram Jam since our tribute to them in the Consortium has generated one view in the week I put it up. C'mon folks they weren't that bad.
8. You Were With Me-The Open Highway Band 1983 Taken from the Paraphernalia Years CD, they had to change the name to a more user friendly and to get bar gigs as well which was few and far between. The song was written after a three week trial and error with a girl that wasn't too happy with her boyfriend choosing his 4 by 4 over her and somehow she managed to strike up a conversation with the drummer in the band which happened 30 years ago as we speak. Drummer would eventually get tired of being the "other guy" tells her so and ends the whole thing soon after but writes this song. Girl would return to her 4X4 dude, marry him and have two girls in the process while Drummer runs into her at some concert downtown. This song got submitted for a crappy 4 song EP that the winner would get a contract with EMI or least hoping to hear it on the radio but never do. The Townedgers would later cover it for the 1998 Art Of Deception CD. Dedicated to Amy Holtz.
9. Route 66-Asleep At The Wheel 1976 Texas swing music never got any better in the 70s with Ray Benson and company holding the boogie down and Bobby Troup's homage to the Mother Road is one of the songs you can't mess up, heck even John Mayer did a good version of this. A top ten KHAK song to which they would never play it in this day and age. And the 45 version remains one of the all time best sounding discs ever. I mean the 7 inch black circle y'all.
10. Bad Boys-Inner Circle 1992 Among the cheap stuff I found at Half Priced Books this week was this CD classic for a buck, course you know it as the theme from COPS but Inner Circle go way back into the 70s when the late great Jacob Miller was making music with them before a car accident claimed his life in 1980. When COPS became a reality show series, they used this song for the introduction and it would be another 4 years before it was finally released as a top ten hit song. An overnight success but the followup bombed and Inner Circle went back into the shadows again. The other big thing I found was a 3 dollar book Reggae And Caribbean Music written by Dave Thompson and although there's better books out there, this one sorely reviews most of the Reggae stars and they gave Bad Boys the album a 7. Bad Boys originally was recorded in 1987, rerecorded in 1989 for WB and then redone again for the RAS album Bad To The Bone (according to Thompson in this book). Atlantic picked the album up, retitled it Bad Boys (what else) and it sold fairly well although most copies of this album can be found in dollar bins everywhere. Later albums and followups were less and less.
The next five.
We Should Get Along Together Fine-The Sorrows 1965
Flowers On The Wall-Lew DeWitt 1985
I Can't Help You I'm Falling Too-Skeeter Davis 1960
Fele (Crack)-Identity 1989
Hold On-Yes 1983
Next week: 10 decades of music, from 1920 to the present. And to conclude it all, Take a trip into the center of your mind with Pinocchio and the Puppets Fusion (Mercury 72659) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1HkfDzU7QA
Thanks to Flower Bomb Songs for mentioning this Hippy Dippy Classic.
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