Usually New Year's Eve celebrating is the only time I get to be in the company of so many good looking women but it's all good; I've been celebrating New Year's with the hosts for about 5 years straight. I do feel sorry for Jason who had to go to work at 6 AM and when I left at 12:45 he was still up putting chairs away. I begin to wonder if anybody was going to show since I showed up much earlier than usual but everybody seemed to come in about 7 30 and the fun begin. Somebody bought some cheap Little Ceaser's Pizza so I took the rest home and something to chow down while wasting the afternoon watching football and compiling this blog. A week into fighting a fucking cold, I still continue to have congestion but for the most part I seem to be in better spirits. Then again I decided to go into Iowa City on the way home and that was a mistake. It's hard enough to hit every red lights in town and then deal with walking dead drunk students that seem to walk out in front of the car at every corner. New Year, same shit. So much for less red lights and dumbasses to deal with. Since I got off early at work, I had enough time to scour through the open thrift stores before going to party with friends and for bargains not much out there to choose from. Basically picked apart and why the hell Goodwill is charging 1.88 for scratched up 45's makes no sense to me. No sleeves on most of them, some good time instrumentals from the String A Longs (Wheels) and The Fireballs (Quite A Party) but they were not worth 1.88 in their condition and with no sleeves. Sometimes I think Goodwill in Iowa City takes too much advantage of the vinyl revival and charge a lot for poor shape records. There was a Elvis 45, Return To Sender in a interesting record sleeve 29 cents or 4 for a dollar that I would have picked up as a curio but not cost effective. I did picked up the old Replacements CD for the same price at the Salvation Army across the road from Goodwill. So even on the last day of the year I still went out to do some bargain hunting. Some things never change I guess.
Monday, the car had it's annual free oil change so I was in Maquoketa for a hour. I don't like waiting in the waiting room at the car dealership, the channel is always on FOX news and they had quite a crowd up there and since it took 45 minutes to get the car looked at, I had time to walk up to their Goodwill and pawnshop. Their Goodwill store is different than ours or Iowa City, I think they're part of the network that's up around Dubuque, Waterloo and Indpendence, plus the fact their records are much more cheaper. Small town Goodwills are hit and miss and I haven't found much the last two times I been up there. Main Street Pawn, in downtown Maquoketa is not hard to find, three doors down from highway 64, I really didn't know much about it and didn't pay much attention to it till somebody put out a Marshall amp in front of the store and thought may as well see what's in there. After dancing around with some woman who continued to poke her way through the CDs I looking through, I did managed to find a couple to listen to on the way home. For a small town Main Street Pawn does have a big selection of DVDs and a few CDs selling for a dollar each. Where else could you find a Mark Lindsay Silverbird/Arizona 2 on 1, Pure Cult or Best Of Tom T Hall volume 2 at? I suppose they had a great salesman in Tyson the doggie, who promptly greeted me at the door and then come back a few times to get wallowed around with. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maquoketa-Main-Street-Pawn-Shop/320153668001798
Already this year is starting out weird. Snow in Phoenix? Kingman got enough snow to the point that Interstate 40 and US 93 got shut down due to too many slide offs. Vegas got snow, so did Southern California. Up here, we had a snowless December and slightly above temps, but all good things must come to an end since this is now January and this month brings out the most cold and the most snow. A far cry from the 15 inches of the white crap we had this time a year ago. So I'm sure we'll get the arctic express that gave the desert their cold and snow. For now, the weather is nice.
What's in store for Record World this year? Probably the continuing story of the bargain hunts, whatever is found that's worth touting about and of course who departed this world. We had many that passed last year that I knew, this year won't be any different. The Playlist that was a standard feature the past year will be only done once a month via the Townedger Radio Show playlist that you can hear on Lucky Star Radio, every third Wed night at Midnight CST. If you're only here for the cheesecake pictures, you might be disappointed, I haven't posted many of them due to disappearing acts of Google and Blogspot pictures and replacing them with alternative pictures is a waste of time and effort. And those who type in search words like Porn are going to be even more disappointed when they come to find that this is a music site and not porn. Record porn is vinyl record pictures and it's easy to scan off 45 record pictures now as you can tell that I have gone that route. I had to. I was seeing some of my own pictures of records disappearing and that angered me to rescan and post the pictures directly rather to rely on Google pictures. Don't know if it's this computer only but the work computers also showed them gone as well. I'm sure you can replace a Ivy Doomkitty or London Andrews picture easily, but not seeing The Marvellettes' Strange I Know is not acceptable to me. Unless the copyright holders complained to Google about it, I don't know, but there's no reason why a picture I posted, which is mine, gets lost out there, the picture should be there. The pictures of 45 SHOULD be there, like any other collector, it's my intention to honor the forgotten forty fives of a Leo Greco or Chuck Murphy or getting my own copy of a red vinyl Bob Dylan 45. My intention to preserve record history, even though Record World is nowhere near of 45Cat of preserving music and having a broader fanbase. In other words, another record collecting hobby site that a few people read each month.
And ratings have been fairly good. And December usually is when I get the peak readership.
I'm sure this year I'll review some new albums, revisit some old ones and clean the shelves of unwanted stuff only to replace them with new stuff that is found on the cheap. 2014 turned out to be a shitty year for new music, music sales down once again and the only thing on the rebound was vinyl sales went up. Will this trend continue? Studies have shown that the vinyl revival might become a fad once again. And new records are expensive but at the moment it's a reassuring feeling to see more people in record stores and thrift stores crate digging and trying to find the classic in discarded Mantovani or Gospel bands of long ago forgotten and made fun of in various websites. If I can stay healthy, I'll do a Madison bargain hunt once the snows end and the weather gets warmer. And every trip to Davenport or Waterloo has a story to tell. If there's enough interest we'll do another Singles Going Steady or Forgotten bands and musicians series. Right off the bat, we lost Jeff Golub, jazz guitarist at age 59. I remember Jeff with his 2013 album with Brian Auger called Train Kept A Rollin, based upon a miracle accident that Golub fell upon train tracks and survived that. He will be missed. http://jazztimes.com/articles/151334-guitarist-jeff-golub-dies-at-59
Until then, enjoy the ride. This is going to be another roller coaster year for music and you and me.
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