Super-misogynistic-expialidocious!

Herb Jeffries (name misspelled on the cover), Devil Is a Woman (Golden Tone, 1957)

No, I'm pretty certain the so-called devil woman who inspired the conception and delivery of this red-hot piece of trash was not actually a woman, but a group of men, who, were there any justice, never enjoyed the company of women (or licked their boots) again.

Fantasies of a Country Clown

File under Comedy/Fantasy: Miserable Moe Bandy's 1979 vinyl turd, It's a Cheating Situation.

Sorry, Moe, but you're dreaming. That said, I doubt your sister (or right hand) will mind.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers: Summer Sausage Edition

Summer is here, ladies and men! And Michael Henderson (known for his electric bass work with Miles Davis, among other more notable accomplishments) has waxed up his ... um ... surf board and is expecting you to join him (and his junk) for a little summer frolic and fun on the beach of Lake Flaccid. Won't you come? I love that this masterpiece is titled Slingshot. I guess it could have alternatively been called Packin' Heat or Holster or Banana Hammock or Summer Sausage Fest or Low-Hanging Fruit Cocktail or Love Cradle or P-Junk or Strapped On. Yeah, Slingshot seems to do the trick. By the way, there's a tune on this record called "Geek You Up." Not quite sure what to make of that. I suppose I could have listened to the song, but why spoil the mystery?

Pin the Singer on a Pinto

You know you’re in trouble when your record label believes so much in your new album that they slap a Ford Pinto on the cover. Named for the Jim Croce hit song that country singer Tony Booth turned into a hit of his own, Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues may not have been the product of Booth's actual experience slathering suds on Pintos, Pacers, Gremlins, and the like; however, Booth was no doubt singing these blues for real after this 1974 album stalled in the bargain bin.

Reggae Fever

I’ve always been fanatical about music, and that fanaticism goes way back—all the way to when I was a toddler and my parents would send me off to slumberland to the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” When I was 4, I remember sitting at the breakfast table anxiously waiting for Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” to come galloping from single-speaker kitchen radio. A few years later, I pestered a radio station’s request lines with pleas for the Knack’s “My Sharona.” (That power-pop juggernaut had me so spellbound that I vividly recall a fourth-grade me weeping in the “way-back” of the family station wagon because my dad swiftly changed stations when the emphatic opening chords and funky bass line of “My Sharona” announced themselves on the radio.) When I was 11, I slept almost every night with my Sears radio-cassette player beneath my pillow and recorded broadcasts in hopes that when I woke the next morning, sore neck and all, the tape would contain “Back in Black” or “Crazy Train” or “Stairway to Heaven” or even “Heaven and Hell.” Shall I go on? Sure, it’s my blog….

As I grew older, my passion for music only intensified, and the lengths to which I would go to hear or acquire new music only grew more extreme—even ridiculous. Remember that in the ancient times of the mid to late 1980s, when I was coming of age, discovering or getting your hands on music could not be done instantaneously with a simple mouse click or tap on a phone screen. So imagine the challenge a teen with no money or driver’s license faces when he’s bewitched by a song he heard on a scratchy-sounding radio broadcast and there’s no easy way for him to get his hands on a recording without resorting to some pretty comical measures. And in 1988, this is exactly what I had to do to track down a fairly obscure album by a local reggae band called Boom Shaka. (Silly name, I know.)

I became enamored of reggae music as a high school freshman, and for the ensuing four years it served as my everyday soundtrack. I was introduced to the genre by my friend Tim, a high school junior who drove the neighborhood carpool to and from school, Pasadena to Los Angeles—a 36-mile roundtrip in gridlock traffic; plenty of time for reggae's deep bass vibrations and soulful melodies to assuage the anxieties and insecurities of my high school existence. Tim had a sizable record and tape collection—and the taste, knowledge, and zeal to go right along with it. I had no older brother, so for the next two years until he graduated, I adopted Tim as mine. Every day, Tim’s brown VW Rabbit rattled with rhythmic pulse of everything from Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and Steel Pulse to U-Roy, Dillinger, Ini Kamoze, and Yellowman. While I suffered through high school to get the education I needed, in Tim’s Rabbit I relished the musical instruction I sorely wanted.

In Southern California, where I grew up, reggae music was more accessible than it was in most places. Half the record stores had dedicated, albeit small, reggae sections; public/college radio stations aired weekly reggae music programs; and the midsize venues and amphitheaters in the L.A. area (I was too young for clubs) regularly stocked their summer lineups with some the genre’s bigger names and festivals (UB40, Steel Pulse, Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, Reggae Sunsplash, et al.). Tim exposed me to all this. He also told me about KCRW’s Sunday afternoon reggae show, “The Reggae Beat,” hosted by the legendary DJ Roger Steffans, and showed me copies of a magazine by the same name, also founded by Steffans.

Best of all, Tim introduced me to Poo-Bah Records, a record shop housed in a tired-looking dirt-brown bungalow in a gentrification-neglected part of Pasadena. Since its opening in 1971, Poo-Bah’s had been an institution, an indie record store that was close to everything and near nothing at all, a hidden gem in plain sight (on the corner of Walnut and Wilson), a dilapidated sanctuary for various species of music lover—hippies, punks, jazz freaks, rockers, etc. In these waning days of the vinyl record, Poo-Bah’s bins overflowed with just about everything, except the crap you’d hear on mainstream pop radio. Which meant Poo-Bah also had a fat, thoughtfully curated reggae section. Anytime I had some money, you would find me there thumbing through the stacks.

Following my freshman year of high school, I got my first summer job, pushing papers (and removing staples) as a file clerk for $4.50 an hour. At last, I had some disposable income, income I could happily dispose of toward amassing my own reggae record collection (records, by the way, I still own today). Every Wednesday—pay day—my work buddy, Tony, would drive us to Poo-Bah during lunch so that we could dutifully surrender our paychecks. Eventually my mom tried to bar me from bringing new reggae albums into the house (my theory at the time was that she was either frightened by the sight of dreadlocked Rastafarians adorning their covers or worried that I’d end up selling pot from my bedroom; really she just wanted me to save my money), so I would stash my new LPs in the garage until it was safe to retrieve them later. When that tactic ultimately failed, I switched to cassette tapes, which, while not as appealing as records, could be easily concealed in my pants pocket.

More often than not, I was broke, but I could still satisfy my jones for new reggae sounds by taping the local radio broadcasts. One show I never missed was “Reggae Revolution,” which aired Tuesday nights (or Wednesday mornings) at 1 a.m. I preferred this show to KCRW’s “Reggae Beat” or KPFK’s Saturday afternoon show, “Sounds of Jamaica,” because it was on KROQ, and KROQ was a commercial station. Meaning, its transmitter was a blowtorch to the public/school stations’ matchsticks—meaning, I didn’t have to keep messing with the antenna for static-free reception. I also favored “Reggae Revolution” because I had a connection, albeit a tenuous one, to the host, having met him when he DJed my friend Tim’s high school graduation party (Pato Banton was also there). “Reggae Revolution,” whose name I would later crib for my own college radio reggae show at Gonzaga University, was an hour-long program that featured a mix of classic roots reggae, the latest dancehall sounds, as well as tunes from the area’s local talents.

As you might imagine, one in the morning is a long time to stay awake for the opportunity hear a dozen or so songs. I was not a night owl, so to keep from dozing off, I’d swallow a handful of No-Doz, which would wreck my stomach well into the next day and obliterate all chances of getting the rest I might have gotten between the show’s conclusion and my alarm clock’s rude intrusion four hours later.

So there I’d be, just like the 4-year-old me, listening to “Reggae Revolution” in the dark of night, nervously anticipating the hour’s 12 songs as the rest of the house lay silent with sleep. If just one song reached through my crappy headphones and rattled my eardrums with its sublime frequencies and fat-bottom bass, it would all be worth it. Sometimes that song would never come. You’d hear the requisite Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, ’80s production Steel Pulse, crossover hits from Pato Banton and Aswad, a dancehall track or two, and some American-made crap with phony Jamaican accents. But sometimes Roberto would spin a song so incredible it would stir me from my groggy state and trigger a welcome jolt of adrenaline. Sometimes its origins would not be from Jamaica, or Birmingham, England (another reggae stronghold). Sometimes it would come from a local singer or band. At the time, Babylon Warriors and Swelele ranked among my favorites.

Then one September night in 1988, along came a rockers-style song called “Wicked Man” by an L.A. band dubbed Boom Shaka, whose singer bore a distinctive baritone both biting and smoky-smooth, somewhat reminiscent of Gregory Isaacs. Who the hell was this? I wondered, a surge of caffeinated excitement coursing through my body. His was a voice that cut through the din atop a vibrant laid-back sound unmoored to the lyrical clichés of genre (i.e., obligatory references to ganja, generic complaints about Babylon/“the system,” love for Jah). Or maybe it was, but to my naïve ears Boom Shaka sounded authentic, unique. So much so that I was already mentally filing their debut LP, Creation, between my Black Uhuru and Burning Spear records. Now if I could only get my hands on the actual record.

Eager to hear the song again, I rewound the tape as soon as the broadcast concluded. “Wicked Man” still captivated me. Again I rewound the tape. A few hours later as I lay on my bed in the jittery netherworld of No-Doz semi-consciousness, my feelings for the song remained undiminished. Armed with the knowledge that the band’s album had just been released, I had to get it—and fast. That same day, preferably. And I knew exactly where I could find it.

This is where my music obsession takes an even tighter turn toward the ridiculous.

It was the middle of September, which made it cross-country (running) season. Which meant practice every day after school—long, punishing runs in the late-summer Southern California heat and smog. Coming on the heels of an all-nighter, that afternoon's practice would be its own special hell. But, as luck would have it, it would be a city run from my school’s L.A. campus west along Venice Boulevard. And up that road a few miles away sat Ashantites, a tiny record store that dealt exclusively in reggae music. If any shop in L.A. had Boom Shaka’s Creation, it was this one.

Getting to my destination wouldn't be easy. Besides exhaustion, I was nursing a painful abdominal muscle pull. Also, we runners weren’t allowed to deviate from the route to, say, take a shortcut … much less shop for records. But I was determined to get my record and would use my ailing physical condition to unhitch myself from the pack: I’d let my fellow runners drop me so that by the time we were a few miles in I could duck into Ashantites undetected. After, LP securely in my possession, I’d link back up with the team a couple blocks north as they made their eastbound return along Pico—albeit keeping a safe distance behind so that I wouldn’t be seen schlepping a record as I ran.

My plan worked. Hot, hurting, and gasping for breath, I stammered up to Ashantites’ storefront and hustled inside—lest I be spotted by any stragglers who may have gotten a late start or by my coaches trailing behind in a van (which they did periodically to safeguard us from the “mean streets” of Los Angeles). Inside, before I could be soothed by the air conditioning and perfume of incense, I made a beeline for the counter, behind which the owner, a diminutive woman whom I would later befriend, sat reading. “Boom Shaka. Album. Creation,” was all I could muster. She pointed over my left shoulder to the spot on the wall where it stood prominently displayed on a shelf along with the other new releases. I grabbed it, handed her a sweat-dampened wad of cash, apologized, and then hurried out, prize in hand.

The whole transaction took less than a minute. 

Outside, I cut up a side street and stood for a few minutes, watching for my returning teammates to intersect a block up as they raced back along Pico. When runners finally started crossing, they were no longer a pack, but a stream of smaller groups and lone suffering souls who had been thinned out by the withering pace and heat. After about five minutes, I started my limping, lopsided run back to campus. Unpleasant as it was to run with an aching side and a 12-by-12-inch cellophane square of hot sweat beneath my arm, I was stoked. I had my record.

When I got home that evening, I tore off the cellophane, pulled the black shellac from its sleeve and dropped it onto the turntable of my cheap Emerson stereo. There Creation remained, in heavy rotation, for the weeks that followed. 

Today, I’m hardly as obsessive about acquiring new music, although I do hit up the same Goodwill store a couple times a week in search of discarded treasure. I still own that Boom Shaka album, as well as the second version issued soon after the original with extra tracks. But until recently, I hadn’t listened to the album since spinning it on my college radio show more than 20 years ago. While I was pleasantly surprised by the undeniable catchiness of its songs—chief among them, the aforementioned “Wicked Man,” “Never Be Alone,” and the title track—I was disappointed to discover how dated and overproduced it sounded—which was characteristic of 1980s reggae. That’s not to say the record doesn’t hold up; it just doesn’t hold the same appeal. But how could it? My tastes have changed, my ears have changed, I have changed. Still, I must admit that I was a bit bummed: I guess I was naïve to think that listening to Creation all these years later would rekindle some of that magic I felt all those years ago, lying in bed, when I heard Boom Shaka for the first time.

Note: Events detailed in this post are as I remember them; I make no claim to historical accuracy. But it's all true.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers Again: One More Wicker Man

Oh, Danny Boy! Sharp-dressed in his wicker nest.

Discovered another Wicker Man hiding on an old SD card. I snapped this pic last year, and I now regret not saving Danny from the oblivion of the Goodwill junk bin. I just have too many damned records. You may recall that I blogged about 1970s album covers festooned with wicker chairs a few months back (original post here). I'm just sorry for bringing Danny late to the party. At least he's fashionably late.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers: Let's Get Physical

Hmm … judging by the illustrations, this doesn’t look like any ordinary exercise album. Backdoor pantomiming, pelvic thrusting, and checking a counter’s sturdiness are generally associated with exercises of a different sort. Not to mention, the whole shebang is narrated by a “physical fitness expert” named Vic Boff. Vic fricking BOFF, ladies and gentleman.

Young Hungry Bastard

Christian folk's Captain & Tennille take on the great orphan crisis of 1974.

This 1974 album details one child’s harrowing and heartbreaking journey through the foster care and orphanage system. Ron and Haven's opus garnered 47 Grammy nominations in 1975, including “Best Mustache Depicted on an Album Cover,” “Best Use of a Prop on an Album Cover” (for Ron and Haven's use of a real orphan as their fictional adopted son), and “Concept Album of the Year.” I’m Adopted is still in print today, available for sale on Ron and Haven’s website (which I'll let you search for); however, the song titles have all been changed. Should you be interested in adopting this landmark LP for your collection, seek out the original, with its hard-hitting, unvarnished songs, such as: “Orphanage Head Lice Blues,” “If God Is My Father, Who Is This Guy?”, "Wallpaper Paste Tastes Like Oatmeal," “Bedbugs and Dried Boogers,” “Adoption Day Blues (No Home for Me),” “Ballad of a Young Bastard,” “They Found Me in a Dumpster,” and “I Come with a Warranty.”

Acid Casualty

In conceiving this terrible LP in the early 1970s, well-meaning Christians had tried their darnedest to re-brand the initialism of LSD into “Leadership, Service, Dedication.” Big mistake. No one bothered reading the fine print on the cover. And when some talking head on national TV declared that the cover of The New LSD alone had the power to transform minds, hordes of pimple-faced teens took heed of his innuendo and stormed the nation’s record stores for a taste, ripping the cellophane from the records and ravenously ingesting their covers, expecting them to be laced with acid. The only trip they experienced was a ride to juvie, though. As punishment for the destruction of merchandise, the aspiring acid casualties were ordered to suffer through the LP's sermon, “The Price of Leadership and Discipleship” as told by one Charles “Tremendous” Jones. But that was of no consolation to “Tremendous” Jones and his record label. While the contents of The New LSD may have been wholesome enough, its image was forever tainted thanks to those no-good kids. Record stores wanted nothing more to do with the record and refused to restock it. And just like that, The New LSD had evaporated from the market.

Music to Be Murdered By

Long before they instigated the Good Friday massacre, during which they torched dozens of churches and committed innumerable heinous acts of violence and in so doing transformed a normally tranquil if hopelessly clumsy Norway into an unimaginable dystopian nightmare. Long before they slaughtered their pet goats and drank the blood, donned corpse paint, rechristened themselves as Demonic Infestation, and unleashed a towering inferno of black metal chaos so menacing and intense that it induced legions of young evil-doers to take up guitars, embrace the southern Lord and wreak unrelenting havoc across Northern Europe. Long before all this, they were Norway’s most delightful export since lutefisk, a husband-and-wife folk duo known as Mike and Else.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers II

Since when is pinning down and forcing one’s self upon an incapacitated and presumably disinclined partner a “Serenade for Love”? A year after this controversial record hit stores (only to be withdrawn and deleted by the label), Dick Hayman found himself donning a new set of stripes. This time it was he who was the unwilling recipient of another man’s “Serenade for Love.”

A forgotten Bourbon Street fixture, Rev. Bob Harrington achieved a bit of infamy in the 1970s for changing booze back into water, and tacky wallpaper into blazers.

What could be more terrifying on Halloween than a “Christian perspective” on the holiday? Fear not. Come October 31, this record won’t be knocking at your door for a trick or treat. All known surviving copies—four to be precise—have been consigned to haunting the basement of a small, dilapidated chapel in Beaver Dam, Kentucky.

Barbra Streisand: Unmasked, Unplugged, Ungodly!

A Guy with Kaleidescope Pipes

I bought this album for its cover. Look at it: It comes in colors, everywhere. It’s like a rainbow. In fact, it’s a bright psychedelic lovefest of colors, a cross between the Kinks’ Face to Face and the Chocolate Watch Band’s No Way Out. And check out Virgil Fox: He has pipes sprouting from his head. And that bow tie, might it have belonged to the Electric Prunes? While Into the Classics: Meditations and Sonic Spectaculars may have psychedelic connotations in the title, this is no psychedelic record. It wasn’t even released in the ’60s, during the psychedelic era, but the early ’70s. Virgil Fox plays the Aeolian-Skinner Organ—without accompaniment. And he’s not guiding you on a wild magic carpet ride into new sonic and sensory realms; he's taking you to church. Yep, Virgil was letting the flowers of his imagination sprout not in some incense-clouded harem, but in some incense-clouded cathedral. On this album, he sticks to the classics, working his dizzy fingers through Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Bohm. Psychedelic or not, his choice of material is inspired, his performance superlative. Just imagine yourself seated alone one lazy summer afternoon in the cool comfort of a gothic cathedral, the sun gleaming through stained-glass windows, letting dusty rays of beautiful colors shower down on you as you take in Virgil’s virtuosity. This record may venture down some well-trodden paths, but with a little imagination, you can set your sights for the center of the sun.

I wrote this piece a few years back. I pulled it out of mothballs (and gave it an editorial bath) after listening to Fox’s record on my hi-fi last week.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers

This record goes to show that you can stuff a schlock-slinging goober into a leather jacket and put him on a motorcycle and he’ll still be a schlock-slinging goober. When kids tore the wrapping paper from this record on Christmas Day, where their parents saw good, clean, rockin’ fun, they saw a literal and figurative square.

This was released hot on the heels of Ruth Welcome's worldwide smash hit, Lo-Fi Lute.

Sadly, ol’ Dizzy Fingers never made another record. While promoting his LP in Africa, Cope was gunned down by ivory poachers who wanted his teeth.

“Hey, boys, before tonight’s gig, why don’t you say we all head down to the Sears Portrait Studio for our album close-up? We can shop for Toughskins afterward.” This so-called auspicious debut is so good that the LP’s original owner didn’t crack the seal—no doubt to keep it “mint.”

For every new album being stamped on wax these days there seems to be several more being reissued. Somehow I don’t think this record will ever get its 180-gram colored vinyl deluxe redux. Call it a hunch.

Chilling, Racist Sounds of Halloween?

You’ve probably seen this album over the years. Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House is the cornerstone of the horror soundtrack/sound effects genre; from what I can tell it’s been in print the longest and is perhaps the only horror LP relic to live on—undead—in the digital age. If you’re as old as me, or older, you probably had a scratched-up, dog-eared copy of the LP that Dad would dust off every year and blast from an open window to unsuccessfully frighten trick-or-treaters from your front porch.

Released in 1964, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House contains all the requisite audio chills, thrills and spills of a Halloween record. There are dragging chains, howling winds, baying hell hounds, groaning monsters, creaking doors, blood-curdling screams and more. On side one, a narrator sets up each scary scenario before letting the sound effects take over to illustrate the protagonist’s imminent demise. It’s all pretty hokey and predictable—and low-budget.

But how is Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House racist? Glad you asked. At the end of side one is a track titled “Chinese Water Torture.” The narrator opens the track with an explanation of the torture method’s origins and then shuts up to let the water droplets do their trick of undoing the protagonist’s mind. With ten seconds remaining, the narrator returns one last time and, under the spell of bad taste, speaks in stereotypical, monosyllabic fake Chinese, rather exaggeratedly, too. “Ming, my, ywai hoi….” She goes on like this for a few moments before catching herself and feigning surprise, “What am I saying? I’m not even Chinese.”

Indeed, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds… was a product of 1964, a time when perhaps few considered such xenophobia to be, well, xenophobic. In the ensuing 50 years, attitudes have changed. We’re hypersensitive about race and culture—as we should be. We even go out of our way to out-PC one another. There’s no chance in Disneyland that anyone would let something of this ilk into today’s marketplace. (South Park’s another story.) Remember Song of the South? Disney pretends not to. So one might think that Disney would keep "Chinese Water Torture" forever buried in its storied haunted vaults (along with the bones of Walt). Song of the South it ain’t, but it’s still racist.

Curious, I decided to see if Chilling, Thrilling Sounds… has made the leap to digital. It has. It’s currently out of print on CD (though not hard to find), but it’s readily available for download on iTunes. Spotting “Chinese Water Torture” in the album’s sequence, I paid a buck to download it and see if the original piece remains intact, fake Chinese and all. I skipped to the track’s final seconds and to my surprise, “Chinese Water Torture” hadn’t been edited. Everything’s still there just as it was in 1964, a stupid, undead relic of Cold War xenophobia. Chilling, indeed.

Burning Man

If you’re a record collector, particularly one who haunts thrift stores, garage sales and swap meets seeking out the bizarre and obscure, you’re probably familiar with the pair of Incredibly Strange Music books by RE/Search Publications from the 1990s (out of print). These books feature long Q&As with numerous record collectors—including Jello Biafra, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of the Cramps and Billy and Miriam Linna of Norton Records—who show off their records while sharing interesting stories and anecdotes about the artists who made them. Both volumes are invaluable repositories of music from the fringes, particularly between the 1950s and 1970s. And by fringes we’re talkin’ about private press records, ill-conceived novelties, assorted kitsch, Jesus-freak music, third-tier rockabilly, outsiders—anything meeting the incredibly strange description.

Among the thousands of records and/or musicians covered in the two ISM volumes, one artist in particular stoked my curiosity. His name’s Merrill Womach, a gospel singer and former undertaker from Spokane.

Besides possessing an extraordinary voice, Womach also owns an extraordinary face, the result of third-degree burns sustained in a plane crash in 1961. What might have snuffed out the lives of others served to energize Womach’s. Legend has it that Merrill sang all the way to the hospital after being pulled from the flaming wreckage. Naturally (or supernaturally), Merrill credited his survival to Divine Intervention. Following a long spell in the hospital where he endured painful skin grafts and facial reconstruction, Merrill emerged a new man, more determined than ever to share his God-given gift—not to mention his man-made face—with the world.

And so it would be that for the nearly 20 albums he recorded between 1967 and 1985, Merrill would never shy away from making his miraculous face the focal point of their covers. On one album, In Quartet (shown below), four Merrill Womachs appear, striking poses in their polyester lounge-lizard disco suits—one Merrill for each of the four octaves of his glorious tenor.

Judging by his Wikipedia page, Womach is alive today and resides in Spokane. He’s 84 and still making music—albeit canned Muzak for funeral homes. He was an undertaker after all. (Surely, there’s a joke in there somewhere.) What follows are some of the Merrill Womach records I’ve acquired over the years, including one I picked up just last week from St. Vincent DePaul in Lynnwood, Wash. As you’ll see, one of the records, My Song, depicts Merrill before the plane crash. (Actually, it shows 42 Merrills—a full chorus!) Merrill Womach records aren’t all that hard to come by; you can always find a dozen or so listed on eBay—at pretty reasonable prices, too. But if you hunt around, you’ll likely find some at the junk shop for a $1 or less.

Also, for your enjoyment, you can watch a video here, taken from a documentary about Merrill’s accident and recovery called He Restoreth My Soul. In this scene, Merrill sings one of his signature songs, “Happy Again,” to a roomful of hospital patients. Is it just me or would this song make a decent flipside of a Scott Walker single? Maybe not.

My Song (1960) -- Acquired from Value Village in Ballard. This is Merrill Womach one year before his face went up in flames.

I Believe in Miracles (1967) -- Purchased at St. Vincent DePaul in Lynnwood. This is Merrill Womach's triumphant comeback album. The illustration does not show Womach inside plane. You'll just have to take him at his word that he was singing the Lord's praises. Believe it or not this is the second pressing of this album -- I also own the first, which was issued by a different label.

A Time for Us (1969) -- I don't remember where I got this one. On this album, Merrill gives the gospel a rest to bring us the good news of show tunes and weepy love ballads.

Surely Goodness and Mercy (1970) -- I think this came from a Texas thrift store where it was acquired by my friend DH.

I Stood at Calvary (1973) -- Purchased from eBay. Little-known fact, but Merrill was there at Jesus's crucifixion. This 2000-year-old painting proves it. Merrill was also believed to have introduced polyester and pleather to the nascent Christian movement.

Happy Again (1974) -- Found at the Goodwill in Lynnwood. This is the soundtrack to the aforementioned He Restoreth My Soul and is probably the most famous Womach record cover.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory... (1976) -- I don't remember where I found this one. I love the way Merrill's purple fly-away collar matches the scenery.

In Concert (1977) -- Picked this up at St. Vincent DePaul in Seattle. Merrill doesn't make his face the focal point of this cover, but it's there.

In Quartet (1977) -- Found at a Texas thrift store by my friend DH. Notice how Merrill mixes and matches two suits to make four. Genius.

I'm a Miracle Lord (1981) -- Found at a record store in Montreal, Quebec, of all places.

Thar She Blows

Thirty one years ago (yesterday), Mount St. Helens blew its top. One year later, with volcanic ash still blanketing large swaths of the Pacific Northwest, the not-so-legendary Seattle trad-jazz combo the Uptown Lowdown Jazz Band issued the hardy-har titled Hauling Ash. That the LP failed to blow up on the national (or even local) scene can be attributed to multiple factors, including the man-made disaster of its horrendous cover. Which as you can see simply blows.

Hooray for Record Store Day? Nah.

I skipped Record Store Day this year. (Yes, I know it was three weeks ago—forgive me for being slow.) I just wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Sure, there were records I really wanted, like the Fucked Up punk compilation LP, David’s Town (limited to just 750 copies), or the Beach Boys 78 rpm double 10-inch, or the Radiohead 12-inch (which turned out to be a U.K.-only release). I just couldn’t will myself to get out of bed on a Saturday morning and queue up for the mad scramble to the limited-edition vinyl RSD display and the subsequent wrestling match/feeding frenzy for the store’s one copy of Nirvana’s Hormoaning—which would be flipped mere minutes later on Ebay for five times the original list price. I don’t need records that bad.

I did the Record Store Day thing last year. I hit a local shop (not one I normally frequent, but the one closest to home), thinking I’d easily get my hands on a couple RSD exclusives I wanted. I got there just before the store opened only to find a mob of about 40 people massing at the store's entrance. It looked like Walmart on Black Friday—albeit on a smaller scale, though the crowd was just as pathetically dressed. Anyway, most of what I had come for had already been snapped up by the time I squeezed inside. I still managed to acquire a handful of records I was interested in and picked up some decently priced non-RSD used records as well.

However, most of the hour I spent in the store was focused on observing the activity and behavior at the dedicated RSD-exclusive vinyl display. One fashionably disheveled dork indiscriminately grabbed one of every release and then walked off with a massive stack toward the counter, where he flipped through his bounty and cast aside the ones he didn’t want—which themselves would get snatched up by circling vultures who had followed him. It was ridiculous. Mostly what I witnessed was disappointment from late arrivals (i.e., the sad sacks who got to the shop 10 minutes after it had opened) and found the RSD carcass virtually picked clean of its exclusives—save for those Hole 10-inches, overpriced Wilco box sets and assorted other major label crap. Another observation: most RSD shoppers never left the RSD quarantine area to browse the store’s impressive (though mostly overpriced) vinyl inventory, as well as the small section devoted to the remainders (or dregs) of 2009’s Record Store Day.

I admit it: I have record problem. I have a fairly large collection of LPs, 7-inches, 10-inches, etc., and I’m always tempted by events such as Record Store Day. But the corresponding ugly consumerism, greed and Ebay flipping that accompany this special day are a real turn-off. Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for events that help preserve the dying business of the record store. I just don’t wish to be part of the collector scum scrum.

Tales from the Thrift Store

For 2010, I resolved to do my record shopping at the thrift store. It wasn’t so much a financial decision—though I saved a few bucks in doing so—but a fun experiment to see what I could unearth or be turned on to. In this age of instant gratification, music can be had with a simple click or tap, and elusive records are within easy grasp on eBay. But for me, and I’m sure most every other record collector, the hunt is just as thrilling as getting your grubby hands on that desired LP.

Ever since I started shopping at thrift stores in college, I would always thumb through the records. Occasionally, I’d find something worth spending 50 cents or a dollar on. But never had I considered the second-hand store to be my main source of music. And for good reason: If you’ve shopped for music at Goodwill, Salvation Army, Value Village, et al., you know that most of what they have is the pop culture waste of previous generations. The Al Hirts. The Andy Williames. The Art Garfunkels. That and much worse: Grandma’s crappy classical collection? Check. Ten copies of Firestone Christmas? Check. Ferrante and Teicher? Check. Mitch Miller? Check. All that crap, no matter which day or what store—the thrift store is where the bad records go to die. So I knew that getting some decent LPs was going to be a hell of a task.

You're likely familiar with the smell of thrift store. It’s not a good smell. Yet, every time the musty-dusty scent of the second-hand shop greeted me at the door, anticipation would pulse through my arteries, so excited I was by the prospect of finding some forgotten castoff or maybe a decent copy of a well-known favorite. Mostly, though, after rummaging through the usual detritus of moldy oldies, that feeling would soon yield to disappointment, and I’d inevitably leave empty-handed. But undaunted. If it’s treasure you’re hunting in the junk store, well, you have to be patient and persistent. Even then, you’ve got to be lucky, and on several occasions over the last year, I got lucky.

For these next several posts I am sharing some of the highlights of my 2010 vinyl thrifting. Have a look.

Today’s entry is Dark of Light (Buddah) by Norman Connors.

I won’t lie to you, I had no idea who Norman Connors was prior to seeing his face look back at me from the dusty stacks at a Value Village (location classified). Upon close examination of the LP’s cover, though, I saw that the record features a who’s who of jazz luminaries, including Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Gary Bartz, bassist Cecil McBee, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, et al. (a good sign) and was recorded in 1973 (an even better sign—I’ll get to that in a moment). Seeing that the actual vinyl was far better shape than its well-worn (or well-loved) only made me happier. Indeed, I had high expectations for this record, expectations which were easily surmounted once I dropped the needle on it.

Dark of Light comes from an era when jazzbos, be they avant-gardists, hard boppers or free jazzniks, explored the outer limits of electric funk, drifted off into mystical meditations, freaked out in the cosmos or improvised deep into the unknown. It was an interesting period for jazz—at least to my ears. A time before all that sonic exploration was synthesized and diluted into the catch-all commercial ghetto of fusion (bad fusion, Weather Report/Return to Forever-style fusion). Accordingly, what flooded from my speakers were sounds both exciting and expected (not a bad thing): cosmic, mystical jazz, a head trip of mood- and mind-altering mellow gorgeousness and ecstatic fire, tugging grooves that bubble up to the surface, and some truly inspired improvisations.

Dark of Light was Norman Connors’ first album as a leader, but he was hardly a newcomer. Connors, a drummer, most notably created percussive thunder behind two jazz legends, Archie Shepp and Pharaoh Sanders. As his solo career progressed, though, he changed his tune from jazz to more commercial-friendly R&B, creating super-smooth soundtracks for singers such as Michael Henderson and Phyllis Hyman, scoring several hits late into the ’70s. However, if I come across any of those records in my future thrifting, I’ll leave them well enough alone.

Case of the Half-Written Blues

I've got a bunch of new posts in the hopper for the new year. Sadly, this is not one of them. No, the new stuff just isn't quite there yet. So while I agonize over the nascent posts, I thought I'd tide you over with the covers of two uncommonly awful recent thrift store acquisitions. Dig in.

James Lockridge Sings Joy in My Heart (1974)

James' love interest on this record is ... Jesus. But of course.

The Wheeler Family City of Gold (197?)

Looks like a perfectly innocent album of Christian gospel hymns sung by a pleasantly homely and inept quartet of siblings, until ...


... you take a gander at the back cover. This is the Wheeler Family's "Dad" as he appears on the back cover. Kind of makes Murry Wilson or that puppeteer father of the sisters Shagg seem almost rational, reasonable, loving even.

Thrift Store Scores

Ninety percent of all music I've purchased this year has come from thrift stores. It was one of my New Year's resolutions -- to acquire any and all music from the junk store. Had it not been for Record Store Day or new albums from Refused, Melvins and Sun City Girls, I might have kept my resolution. But nine out of ten ain't bad.

In my quest for new, moldy tunes and the discovery of vinyl gold, I haunted thrift stores like a hunter stalks his prey. My searches were often frustrating and fruitless, but in eleven months I managed to acquire almost 200 records -- some good, some rare, most mildewy and awful, and all cheap. As for what I'll buy, sometimes it just comes down to the cover. So for this post, I give you some of the best/worst album covers I temporarily spared from their inevitable date with the dumpster.


Hmm ... why is Brother looking at Sister that way?


I love Jesus people. Their records never disappoint.


I know what it looks like, but the guy on this record is not Will Ferrell. As far as I can tell, this was the only Peters and Lee album. At least these lounge losers had the good sense to make their first album their last. Or maybe there are other Peters and Lee recordings. I'll keep looking.


More like Bobbin' for Crapples. Who thought a photo of this goober would sell records? Presumably the goober himself.


A reflective "Frankie Chop" looks back on his career. Despite his violent-sounding handle, Frankie was not a hit man but a polka twat. By the way, there's something so masculine about posing with your hands under your chin.