Salutations™!!

The BCPF and I had a great listening day yesterday. We got by Underdog Records and grabbed a good bit of stuff and came back and listened. It was really a great listen. Okay, here’s the haul:

• Wolf Parade – Thin Mind — Great Canadian band out of Montreal and on the Sub Pop label. Good straight-forward indie power pop. Well-written tunes and full of hooks. I heard their lead single, “Julia Take Your Man Home” when I was doing the Underdog Records ad for this past week’s The Less Desirables. New.
  

  ©MCA

• Angelo Badalamenti – Music From Twin Peaks — The BCPF and I love this show and we love the music. I think we both had it on CD or something. But, this is on limited edition clear green vinyl. It sounds fantastic and brings back good memories of going back and watching the show together. I love the lounge aspect of the music. It’s so fun! New.
• Pet Shop Boys – Hotspot — Brand new Pet Shop Boys! It’s their first since 2016. Which, to me could have been their first since 1990 and I wouldn’t have known any better. I didn’t even know they were still together. That being said, I loved listening to this. Great dance electronica with some grit and humor (or humour, since they’re Brits), which is what they’ve always done. This was so much fun to listen to. I recommend it if you were ever a fan of their stuff. New.
• Oingo Boingo – Dead Man’s Party — I heard an audible gasp out of The BCPF when she found this one in the “newly acquired” section. I knew of a few Oingo Boingo songs, most notably “Weird Science” and a few others and I didn’t realize that my entire Oingo Boingo knowledge was this album. “Just Another Day,” the title track, “Stay,” and the aforementioned “Weird Science” are all here. The whole album was amazing and I thought to myself, I could listen to this again. I don’t usually do that, but it would have been worth it! EX/VG++.
• Rage – Rage — So, it’s been fun doing what I call “Pulling a Bob” and no, that’s not a euphemism for something dirty… get your head out of the gutter (although that would be a funny one). Pulling a Bob is in reference to the drummer from my old band Heavens Sake. We joked that he would go and look through albums, cassettes and CDs and look for whatever bands he could find that had a lot of hair. He was really into that kind of thing. Well, my “Bob” isn’t necessarily that. I just like finding those early-to-mid 80s bands that look like they’d be hard rock or sound like they would. This is listed as hard rock, and I had to do some digging to find anything on them. Apparently, they were Nutz before this and consisted of John Mylett, Dave Lloyd, Keith Mulholland, Mick Devonport, and Terry Steers. They’re Brits. I think the cover looks more like Loverboy than an early 80s hard rock band. Then again, I guess you could call early 80s Loverboy a “hard” rock band. VG+.
• Sugarloaf – Spaceship Earth — All I know of Sugarloaf is “Green Eyed Lady” and that’s not on here. But, it was just a couple of bucks and I said, why not. I like “GEL.” VG+.
• Don Henley – I Can’t Stand Still — Henley’s debut solo album with “Dirty Laundry,” “Johnny Can’t Read” and the title track. He looks so young on the cover. VG+.
• Re-Flex – The Politics Of Dancing — I love the title track and really, that’s all I know from them. I hope the rest of the album is in the vein of that song. A couple of bucks, I couldn’t turn it down. VG+.
• Bonnie Raitt – Sweet Forgiveness — This is the album that has her cover of Del Shannon’s “Runaway” on it. That song reached #57 on the chart. The BCPF picked this one up. VG+.
• Chris de Burgh – The Getaway — I knew the big hit on this album, “Don’t Pay the Ferryman” from the K-Tel album Hot Tracks which was partly the catalyst for me breaking my “KISS Isolation.” I listened to nothing but KISS for so long and then this was given to me by my mother for Christmas and I found myself really into pop music. I have grown a lot since then. Anywhat! I liked that “Ferryman” song and this was there for a few bucks, I said, yes, please! VG+.
• Blue Öyster Cult – Some Enchanted Evening — A live album from BOC. Okay. It’s pretty rough but Jonathan has it listed as VG-. That’s what I’m going with, too.

So, a solid haul. We loved listening to the new albums and revisiting the older ones. A long listening day full of goodness. We were talking with Jonathan in the store and he was devising a new way of labeling his used records, with barcodes. His system is kind of confusing to me, but I’m sure I’ll learn it better. He hunts down the exact version that’s in Discogs (which I know from experience can be daunting and sometimes downright impossible) and that’s included in the code, too, so it takes the work out of it for you. Another thing we talked about his how he always makes sure that, unless it’s a $1 bin find, he or De or Adam cleans each record by not only washing them but running them through the vacuum system so that it doesn’t only dry the liquid cleaner but also sucks up all the bad particles and such. Unless we buy some $1 records, I don’t have to come home and run my records through my cleaner, I just use the static brush to get a few straggling particles and I have the cleanest listening experience possible with the records I get.  Jonathan takes such good care of his customers and friends. Thanks, buddy.

Listen to each new episode of TLD for the TLD/UR special of the week. I use Discogs to track my record collection and Jonathan may have just made it easier.

Until tomorrow, same blog channel…
Scorp out!

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“We got the bubble-headed bleached-blonde, comes on at five. She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye. It’s interesting when people die. Give us dirty laundry.” – “Dirty Laundry” (Henley/Kortchmar)