Thursday, October 25, 2007

what i'm listening to this week

got a package in the mail yesterday which my brother-in-law in new jersey mailed to us last week (thanks, mike), containing all the vintage vinyl that we copped during our recent visit to the princeton record exchange (cd's and dvd's came home with us in our carry-on baggage). they don't do any mailorder or online sales, so you'll have to take my word for it unless/until you have occasion to visit the home of my b-i-l's alma mater, but i grew up shopping/working in mom 'n' pop rekkid stores (or mainstream stores like sam goody's that were like libraries, back in the day), so i dig the record exchange real much, and feel quite at home there. i suppose the closest local equivalent would be forever young, but i visit grand prairie even more infrequently than i do new joisey; sorry, fellas.

our vinyl finds this time out included cecil taylor's silent tongues on arista/freedom (a monumental solo recital from the 1974 montreux jazz festival and my fave taylor except for live at the cafe montmartre, which i actually found on vinyl at the ridgmar half price books earlier this year -- hooray!), the james cotton blues band on verve/folkways (my fave blues harp rec after little walter's hate to see you go and junior wells' hoodoo man blues: produced by barry goldberg, michael bloomfield, and norman dayron from the era when cotton was starting to play the hipi ballrooms, with a band that includes guitarist luther tucker of "flutter-picking" chess records session fame and drummer sam lay, who played in the paul butterfield band with bloomer, was jim osterberg's pre-stooge role model, and infamously shot himself in the balls while coming to cotton's aid in a westside chicago bar fight; featuring lotsa reminders -- in the form of cover tunes associated with bobby "blue" bland, sonny boy williamson II, and little junior parker -- that cotton was a memphian and sun records star before making the trek to chicago and joining the 1960 muddy waters band); and a double lp kinks kompilation with the self-explanatory title lola, percy & the apeman come face to face with the village green preservation society...something else! (they had a copy of the kink kronikles, too, but this had more songs and i've become enamored enough of mix tapes/cd-r's that this just seemed like a real good vinyl simulacrum of one covering my fave run of kinks albs, inexplicably skipping arthur).





1 Comments:

Blogger andrew m. said...

a trip to the princeton rec/ex was always a special pilgrimage when i was a teen (provided that us public transpo-minded city rats could find someone w/ an auto willing to cart us out there.) i can't remember buying a single item there (my meager teen funds all went straight to a blossoming cigarette habit and, um.. other pursuits,) but i do remember fawning over all the cool vinyl my pals would walk away with as i kept busy ruining my health.

the town itself always had a mythic musical place in heart. my older bro went to choir college there, and it was the home of the (then) legendary (haven't listened in years) WPRB - the place where i heard my first punk records and underground hip hop and what not. it was everything a college station should/would/could be (at least in the limited experience of my young mind) and i wanted to be one of those DJs so badly.

had to chuckle when, before your trip, i read you might stop there while in those parts. haven't been there in well over a decade, but if i remember anything - they definitely had you in mind when they built that place.

2:29 PM  

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