NPR's Turning The Tables: Five Omissions

Kudos to NPR Music for taking on the monumental task of "turning the tables" and creating an alternative canon of the 150 "greatest" albums "made by women." I use the quotes not to be snarky but to point out the mutability and arbitrary nature of the terms "greatest" and "made by women." The first is obviously a term freighted with some subjectivity, and the second has, for NPR's purposes, now expanded to include albums like Rumors, which was made by a band including three men, or a Britney Spears album which some would argue was a form of exploitation. These criteria are discussed in a thoughtful essay by Ann Powers, which lays bare the need for this list and explains the process by which it was accomplished. The other limiter which could be questioned was the idea of cutting off the list at 1964, the beginning of what Powers calls, in quotes, "the classic album era," which leaves out many artists who may have done their greatest work before that time (can I get a witness for Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Pearl Bailey, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Eartha Kitt, Nellie Lutcher, Ruth Brown, etc.). Even Rolling Stone, which was a product of that same age, manages to incorporate artists from a previous time in their canonical lists.

But even accepting all of their criteria, and recognizing that a list of 150 greatest anything is going to contain some results that pander to one constituency or another, there are five omissions to NPR's list that I consider egregious. It would be very easy for me to argue about the more recent entries - is Alabama Shakes "greater" than Holly Miranda, Courtney Barnett, Angel Olsen, Perfect Pussy, Natalie Prass, Nicole Atkins, Jenny O., Kate Tempest, etc.? - but I recognize that the closer we get to now, the more the choices depend on at least one strong advocate. Brittany Howard & co., dull as I may find them, have a number of those at NPR. So, for that reason I'm focusing here on albums solidly rooted in the 20th Century by artists whom I would argue cast an even longer shadow now than they did in their prime. It would also be fair game to question some of the choices whereby an artist had only one album on the list (is any Spice Girls record really greater than Kaleidoscope by Siouxsie & The Banshees or Odyshape by The Raincoats?), but in the interest of expanding the coverage of the list, I'm not suggesting any duplicates.

Here are are the five albums that are deal-breakers for me, presented in chronological order. I did have to bend the rules slightly to include the first - so sue me. 

Patsy Cline - Showcase (with The Jordanaires) (1961) This was a make or break effort for Cline, and maybe even for her producer, Owen Bradley. She was still finding her way, with some success, on her debut in 1957. Trouble creating a follow-up soon became a non-issue as Cline struggled to recover from a car accident. When she finally returned to the studio, she and Bradley were laser-focused on the Countrypolitan sound they had begun developing in the 50's and assembled a solid collection of songs to be their manifesto. With the Jordanaires as a perfect foil (and a better choice than the Anita Kerr Singers as used on the first album), and I Fall To Pieces, Crazy, and a re-recorded version of Walking After Midnight as their tent-pole tracks they delivered big-time. When you consider that she was only able to make one more album before her tragic death 1963, the depth of her influence becomes only more astonishing. K.D. Lang, who is on the list, essentially made her name with a carbon copy of Cline's sound, even down to bringing Owen Bradley in to make it happen. While I love Shadowlands dearly (and more than NPR's choice, Ingenue), attention must be paid to the originator. 

Fotheringay - Fotheringay (1970) Many would agree that Sandy Denny possessed one of the most exquisite instruments in recorded history. And she wielded it just as exquisitely, with a remarkable combination of restraint and deep feeling. While she came to prominence as a member of Fairport Convention, it was in her second act, as putative co-leader (with Trevor Lucas) of Fotheringay, that she made her greatest recordings. Denny wrote or co-wrote six of the nine songs, all among her finest compositions (start with The Sea - it will haunt you) and sang lead on seven, including a stunning arrangement of the traditional song, Banks Of The Nile. Though Fotheringay was a short-lived group, foundering during sessions for a second album, its achievement - and Denny's - stands as a high-water mark for British Folk.

Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different (1974) As Miss Mabry, she was Miles Davis's muse. As Ms. Davis, she helped him update his wardrobe and convinced him of the value of artists like Sly & The Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix, which changed the course of his music - and music in general. But Davis had her own musical visions to realize, the seeds of which were revealed on the fascinating "lost album" released in 2016 as The Columbia Years. But it was when she hit the west coast and recruited members of Santana and Sly & The Family Stone to record her debut that she struck gold, kicking off a run of three albums that are almost interchangeable as far as quality goes. I picked the middle album because it's slightly more assured and features a hand-picked band of young guns, ensuring that Davis was the only diva in the studio. She perfected her combo of stuttering, shiv-sharp funk and vocals that growled, moaned, and insinuated, rarely settling for the ordinary turn of phrase. Nobody had ever heard songs like He Was A Big Freak ("I used to whip him with a purple chain,") or Don't Call Her No Tramp before, but as the missing link between Eartha Kitt and Grace Jones, Betty Davis made the world safe for all kinds of difference. 

Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth (1980) Punk's Year Zero did a great job of clearing the air, perhaps bearing its greatest fruit in the post-punk era when a wondrous variety of unlikely sonics found not only release but an audience. Young Marble Giants was certainly one of the more unlikely to appear, a pair of brothers, Philip and Stuart Moxham, on bass, guitar, organ, and drum machine accompanying the waifish but curiously sturdy vocals of Alison Statton. Her singing style was seemingly unstudied, one step past saying "Is this thing on?" when approaching the mic, but also full of nuance and detail, as were her lyrics. Such songs as Searching For Mister Right, Wurlitzer Jukebox, and Constantly Changing became instantly iconic - if you were on their wavelength. Statton simultaneously occupied the role of a dispassionate observer, while still making you believe she could be your friend. Through her intimacy and sheer cool, she created a new kind of feminine avatar, and one who seemed to be in a genre of one, as did the band itself. But as with the Velvet Underground's first album, many who bought Colossal Youth put its lessons to use in later years. Courtney Love, for one, who covered Credit In The Straight World on Live Through This, Beth Gibbons of Portishead, for another, as well as recent sensations like Novelty Daughter, Grimes and Purity Ring, who ditched the marvelous Moxham brothers for a laptop, an MPC, and a loop pedal. My classic rock minded friends turned their noses up at YMG, saying it was too simple, that anyone could do it. But no one had - and in that simplicity later generations found agency. It should also be noted that Statton went on to form Weekend, which created a brand of jazzy cafe folk-rock that presaged acts like Everything But The Girl and Sade.

Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe (1980) When the extraterrestrials find the golden LP that was shot into space in 1977 and manage to backward construct a turntable to play it on, I doubt they will concern themselves with the gender of the creatures that produced the sounds they are listening to, if they even have a concept of gender. However, in addition to asking for more Chuck Berry they might also request more Laurie Spiegel, the pioneering electronic musician whose work is included alongside that of the rock & roll legend, along with Bach, Beethoven, and others. The four tracks on the original Expanding Universe were recorded from 1974-1976, each piece assembled after Spiegel had painstakingly written algorithms to activate computer musical instruments developed at Bell Labs. But by the time this collection was released, some of the excitement around the golden record had died down and Spiegel was on her way to obscurity. But thanks to a knowledgeable music supervisor for the first movie in the Hunger Games series, interest was renewed in her atmospheric, richly textured work and an expanded Expanding Universe was issued revealing a far more prolific artist than we had realized. Yet even if we take just the original four tracks, especially the side-long title piece, we would have been introduced to a brave and distinctive sound-world that was far ahead of its time.

Although there are hints above, I'll leave it up to you to decide which five albums should be dropped to make room for these landmark records. The next step I would like to see is to take the 50-75 albums I love on NPR's list and use them as a cudgel to dislodge some of the shibboleth mediocrities from the Rolling Stone list. Then we might really be getting somewhere. Which albums do you think they should make room for?

Best Of 2016: Reissues

While 2016 had few precious moments of downtime between great new records, there were still a few reissues and other sounds of the past that forced their way into my listening. The jury is still out on Bob Dylan: The 1966 Live Recordings, however. Thirty-six discs of concerts from that earth-shattering year might just be overkill even for a massive Dylan fan like me. Granted, it's a bargain at less than $3/disc, but what I'v heard so far was not as strong as Bob Dylan Live 1966, which was released nearly 20 years ago. Let me know if you plow through all of it and feel differently. There's also the matter of The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl - while I'm still desperate to see the movie, I'll stick with Atlanta 1965 when I want a blast of the Fabs at their best. From performance, to sequencing, to over-done remixing, Hollywood Bowl is a highly compromised document.

The Big Boxes

Erik Satie & Friends - Original Albums Collection Like the Dylan live box, this is also a bargain, 13 discs for about $30, and it's filled with wonderful music. First of all, you get several different recordings of Satie's best-known piano pieces by under-recognized artists like William Masselos and Daniel Varsano. Second, you get many rarities, like Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhome en bois (Sketches and Enticements of a Fat Wooden Man), a three-movement suite for piano. You also get valuable context, with compositions by mentors, colleagues, and proteges like Debussy, Milahud, Ravel, and Poulenc. With recordings spanning 1930 - 1979 you can compare and contrast performance styles over the decades. The packaging is also great, made up delightful miniatures of the original albums. Squint your eyes and read some of the liner notes to marvel at the fact that once a case had to made for Satie's value as a composer. That he was far ahead of his time is not in doubt. As Jean Cocteau said "Satie teaches the greatest audacity of our epoch - that of being simple," which is one reason he resonates so much with the great popular music of our epoch.

Pink Floyd - The Early Years 1965-1972 Nothing simple about this massive undertaking, which includes 11 CDs, 8 Blu-ray Discs, 9 DVDs, 5 seven-inch vinyl singles, and over 40 items of memorabilia. All of this material gives ample opportunity to focus on both the achievement of Syd Barrett but also Pink Floyd's least understood period, the time between their debut album and Dark Side of the Moon. The new remastering I've heard is fantastic, sharpening up the sound, but also making it somehow more accessible. The live and alternate takes seem to have been chosen with care, and even with all the bootlegs I have, there is plenty that I've never heard before. The set also contains the first ever official audio only release of Live At Pompeii, which is a beautifully recorded snapshot of their performance style on the eve of DSOTM. Here's hoping the next set is as generous with the amazing concerts where they road-tested that album months before it came out.

Cluster - 1971-1981 Although they never crossed over into popular success like Kraftwerk, Cluster was certainly one of the most important German bands of the "Krautrock" movement. This crucial nine disc set puts all of their marvels in one place and allows one to trace their evolution from Art Gallery experimentalists to creators of music of great beauty and wit. One can even hear echoes of Satie in the limpid piano playing of Hans-Joachim Roedelius. The glossy surface of Cluster & Eno, the first of two albums they made with that avatar of ambient, is still stunning after all these years, and the second, After The Heat, contains Eno songs as good as on Before And After Science. The final disc of the set contains two previously unreleased live recordings, from 1972 and 1977, which proves how closely they clung to first principles throughout their career, even as the albums embraced more rock elements. The liner notes by Asmus Tietchens are also a treat. For example, discussing 1979's Grosses Wasser,  he writes: "Whilst nothing is left to chance, each of the six Cluster pieces effervesces with a certain joie de vivre, providing ample scope for artistic spontaneity. Above all, one can hear that, as the saying goes, less is more." When you consider that Roedelius and his partner Dieter Moebius were also mainly responsible for the output of Harmonia, which had an enormous influence on David Bowie, it becomes ever more obvious how important they were. Kudos to bureau b for this landmark collection.

Rock & Pop

Led Zeppelin - Complete BBC Sessions It's hard to imagine anything improving this set, which lived on my iPod for years in its original two-disc incarnation. But if you haven't heard it yet this new three-disc version is a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with some of the most seismic music ever. OK, Jimmy, how about some 1975 concerts now? Or new music??

Big Star - Complete Third Take the full ride to the creation of one of the great almost-was albums of the 70's. I've heard the packaging is less than stellar but the liner notes are well worth your time.

Arthur Lee & Love - Coming Through To You: The Live Recordings 1970-2004 I always say if you're a fan, you can add one star. I'm a huge fan of Love so I would give this uneven set four stars if I used them - but I would hardly recommend a new listener start here. Lee is one of the most contradictory figures in rock, mainly because he seemed to turn his back on the delicate chamber psych of Forever Changes to embrace a harder-edged sound heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix. The fact is that if you look at his career as a whole, it's Forever Changes that is the anomaly, but one he returned to in the 2000's, performing it with expert replicators Baby Lemonade and a chamber orchestra. That's on disc three and some of it is quite good. Vocal inconsistencies mar some of the songs but he seems to be enjoying the adulation for his lost masterpiece, without any of the contempt I've noticed on other concerts from this period. Disc one is my favorite, though, focusing on the vital period following the release of Four Sail, which I hold in as high a regard as Forever Changes. If you're a lover of Love this is essential, just be prepared for some patchy sound quality and shaky performances throughout. 

Elliott Smith - Heaven Adores You (Soundtrack) It's hard to listen to any Elliott Smith without retroactive foreshadowing of his tragic early death, but that's even more true of this sensitively compiled album of fragments, demos, and live recordings. I still need to see the movie but this collection serves as a good reminder that there was always more to him than the mopey troubadour. Like Kurt Cobain, the angst wouldn't have meant much without an astonishing gift for melody. 

Gary Wright's Wonderwheel - Ring Of Changes Don't laugh - I still rock Love Is Alive on a party mix and Dreamweaver is deathless AM radio psychedelia and proto synth-pop. This previously unreleased album is from a few years before those 70's juggernauts and finds Wright and future-Foreigner Mick Jones pursuing an almost cookie-cutter classic rock sound, only the format hadn't been invented yet. This is in no way unfinished, but is rather a fully polished production with layers of keyboards, guitars, and backing vocals. Based on the sound alone, I would say it's nearly as much Jones's album as Wright's. If I were going to put on my A&R hat I might say I don't hear the killer single, but Goodbye Sunday is filled with yearning and has some tasty George Harrison slide guitar, almost sounding like a more polished Big Star, and Creation is a mini-epic with some great harmonies, a soaring chorus, and guitar riffs galore. Take a great trip to a past that never quite existed. 

The Clientele - A Sense Of Falling: Strange Geometry Outtakes When one of your favorite bands goes quiet, you depend on little bonuses like this. Featuring five unreleased songs and an instrumental version of Losing Haringey, this is about as exquisite a 22 minutes of music as you will find. Standouts are When We Last Spoke, which has that wonderful conversational style Alasdair MacLean perfected, and Spanish Night, an intensely delicate skein of acoustic guitars. Come back, Alasdair!

Various Artists - New York Noise: Dance Music From The New York Underground 1977-1982 Sometime in the early 80's, Mike Diamond and I worked our connections to gain entrance to the apartment of rock critic Chip Stern. We heard he was selling promo copies for cheap - and it was true. I remember scoring a white-label advance copy of Remain In Light and Soapsuds, Soapsuds by Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden (you gotta hear their take on the Mary Hartman theme!) but Mike was quick on the draw and grabbed up No New York, a landmark collection of punk funk produced by Brian Eno. I was jealous at the time but this is even better - one song each from DNA, Material, The Bush Tetras, The Contortions, Mars, and more - practically everyone who made the Mudd Club great. This is also James Murphy's Rosetta Stone and, because it's on Soul Jazz, I'm sure the book is filled with great pictures and liner notes that make all the right connections. 

Soul, Funk, Gospel

Betty Harris - The Lost Queen Of New Orleans Soul Think Lee Dorsey's sister and you'll get some idea of the quality of this welcome collection, especially the first half. Dorsey might have gotten the more indelible material but that just means Harris has to work harder and she sings the hell out of the first six tracks. Also, she still has producer-songwriter Allen Toussaint on her side, which is almost always a can't-lose proposition - ditto for house band The Meters. The killer opening cut, There's A Break In The Road, is a case in point. It features some ill feedback and is practically a concerto for drummer Zigaboo Modaliste - it must be heard to be believed. Harris also goes head to head with Dorsey on Ride Your Pony and it's a photo finish. She gets softer - even maternal - on the latter half of the compilation but does nothing to belie its title. Another Soul Jazz special.

Betty Davis - The Columbia Years While this unfinished material doesn't come up to the quality of Betty Davis or They Say I'm Different, it's a fascinating, fun, and funky window into her development as an artist. We also get a taste of her then-husband Miles Davis's style as a producer: "Sing it just like that, with the gum in your mouth and all," he rasps before Politician Man kicks off. This may be for fans only, but if you've heard those other records, there's a good chance you are a fan. 

Johnnie Frierson - Have You Been Good To Yourself Frierson was a minor player at Stax Records who was taken out of the game by military service. In the 90's he recorded these songs in his living room and distributed them himself on cassette. Now, these rough-hewn and committed performances are getting a well-deserved shot at a wider audience. The propulsive title track is the star, an empathetic self-help treatise in song ("Have you been getting eight hours?"), but there are no false notes on this brief collection of spirited gospel. Be good to your ears and give this a listen. 

Reggae & International Sounds

Various Artists - Tape Rolling! Featuring productions by Bunny Lee from 1971-74 this is a typically great Pressure Sounds collection of roots reggae. There are a couple of familiar tunes (Man Next Door, Cherry Oh Baby) but most of it is off the beaten path - and just as good as those classics. They even managed to find three Cornell Campbell songs that aren't on the spectacular two-disc Natty Dread anthology, which is now sadly out of print. Prepare to be transported. 

The Wailers - The Wailing Wailers These early cuts by Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Bob Marley have been reissued many, many times in various forms and varying sound quality. So it's nice to have their first album in the original sequence with the original cover and in smashing sound. Simmer Down never sounded spicier. 

Bob Marley & The Wailers - The Legend Live Flash forward to 1979 and you have Marley in his world-beating years, recorded at the Santa Barbara County Bowl. This is a valuable release as it contains more material from Survival, a slightly overlooked album, than any other official live album. However, I'm not sure it's as sharp as performances from Minneapolis, Wisconsin, or Boston from the same tour - do a little digging a see what you think. The show was professionally filmed - and quite well, too - and a DVD is included. Caveat Emptor: The set list on the CD is missing two songs - but you can hear it all on Spotify. 

Various Artists - Power To The People! A Survey of Zimbabwe's 70's Revolutionary Rock Scene It's become clearer over their years that rock & roll was international from its very beginning. This intriguing collection from Now-Again Records also further proves that where stakes are high the music thrives. All the bands here are tight, anthemic and just slightly off-kilter. Like reggae, which had some of its roots in sounds that blew in on the trade winds from New Orleans, much of the interest lies in how they get it "wrong," sometimes by being unable to avoid the influence of their own traditions. So let Wells Fargo, Stars Of Liberty, et al, school you with unique take on 70's sounds on this brief sampler, which is fortunately a harbinger of more extensive work by Now-Again Records to come in this area. If you're impatient for more, check out the first-ever release of the debut from Wells Fargo, available at Rappcats or by joining Vinyl Me Please. 

Odion Iruoje - Down To Earth This one and only album by the self-proclaimed Sound President is getting a much-deserved re-airing by Soundway Records after an extremely limited release in 1983. An accomplished Nigerian producer who had worked with Fela in the early 70's, among many others, Iruoje tackles everything from updated Afrobeat to Juju to disco on the six tracks. The first track also features a rapper (perhaps Tunji Oyelana?) who is surprisingly facile by the standards of the day. Too bad Sylvia Robinson didn't get the message (pun intended) at Sugar Hill Records! It's also too bad that Iruoje didn't make more albums. 

José Mauro - Obnoxius Brazil is almost as bottomless a source of great musical discoveries as Africa and Jamaica. This full-fledged Tropicalia masterpiece from 1970, features production that is sometimes lush and sometimes wacky - often at the same time. There's nothing obnoxious about Mauro's suave tenor, though, even when he seems terminally amused by whatever he's singing about. The songs are often like little suites, moving from section to section in a series of left turns that always come full-circle. My Portuguese is non-existent but in titles like Talisma, Apocalipse, and Exaltação e Lamento do Ultimo Rei, I detect religious themes. No girls from Ipanema in sight, but don't shy away as this lost classic occupies a nice middle ground between Jobim and Os Mutantes. 

Soundtracks & Soundscapes

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence Unlike that other David Bowie movie whose soundtrack went unreleased until 2016, this one was obviously an instant classic from first hearing. For years we had to be satisfied with the beautiful suite Sakamoto arranged for his Playing The Orchestra album. Now we have every theme from Nagisa Oshima's brilliant film, each little minimalist piece incrementally drawing you into the psychological warfare at the heart of the film. Some of the synth tones are a bit of their time (1983) but it's a worthwhile journey nonetheless. A nice bonus is Forbidden Colors, the vocal version of the theme featuring the dulcet tones of David Sylvian.

Tod Dockstader - From The Archives This is truly a labor of love for Thomas Steenland, who founded Starkland Records in the 90's to give proper release to the music of electronic pioneer Dockstader. This album consists of 15 never-before-heard tracks, the cream of thousands of pieces left behind when Dockstader died in 2015. He was a master of texture, combining bell-like sounds with serrated patterns, for example, and creating as distinctive a sound as greats like Brian Eno and Laurie Spiegel. Each short piece asks you to confront the emotional complexities of sheer sound: this piece is unsettling, you might note - but why? Where does abstraction connect with cultural mores and biographical experience to create moods and initiate narratives? In this way, Dockstader's elemental work is much like abstract paintings, for example by Rothko or Rinehart. This fascinating album is a tribute to Dockstader's memory and a great opportunity to reengage with an artist who was uncompromising toward the end. We owe Steenland and Starkland a true debt of gratitude - start paying it back by making a little room in your life for this music.

Listen to a track from each album below or in this playlist. There are also more things to discover in the complete Of Note In 2016 (Reissues) playlist. What music shouldered its way out of the past and into your life this year?


You may also enjoy:
Best Of 2016: The Top 20
Best Of 2016: Hip Hop & R&B
Best Of 2016: Electronic
Best Of 2016: Classical
Best Of 2016: Rock, Folk, Etc.

This post is my last retrospective look at 2016. Coming soon: a rundown of some upcoming releases and a guide to getting AnEarful of the music you need in 2017.

College Tour = Record Store, Part 2

The No Judgment Zone at Turn It Up

Since part one of this series we've been on several tours that did not equal a record store for one reason or another. Middlebury in Vermont has no record stores for one, preferring to outsource its music shopping to Burlington, at least an hour to the north. Our trip to Connecticut College was tightly scheduled before an important family occasion so I admit to not even Googling the situation. Brunswick, Maine, the town that contains Bowdoin, had an intriguing looking store on the main drag that had a sign saying "Vinyl," but we had to get on the road after indulging over at Gelato Fiasco, a sacrifice I don't regret one bit. 

But this past weekend was Amherst, which not only boasts membership in the Five College Consortium but also proximity to at least as many music emporia. Most of the pins on the map fell just to the west of Amherst, in Northampton and Florence, but the town itself has one store of its own, Mystery Train, which is inexplicably closed on Saturdays, even when school is in session. "Small business fail," my wife remarked as we tucked into the marvelous Tea Rolls at Fresh Side, and I'm inclined to agree, although they are open on Sundays.

So after lunch we drove the six miles to Northampton, which is also a bit of a drive down memory lane for me. My parents both had chronic musculoskeletal issues, especially my father who was nearly crippled by them at times. Somehow they discovered an amazing chiropractor in Northampton, which is about an hour from our country house. I never minded being dragged along to see Dr. Kemper because Northampton was such a great town, even for a kid, and there was a serious ice cream shop in walking distance from his office. Dr. Kemper even worked on me once - and he was everything he was cracked up to be (sorry). 

But it wasn't long before ice cream took second fiddle to a record store I found just down the street. I bought some of my first used records there, including a beautiful-sounding copy of Dylan's Desire that I still treasure. While I can't remember the name or exact location of that store, I am heartened to discover that Turn It Up is holding it down just off the main street and down a few steps. On the map I was a little confused about whether Turn It Up was a nickname for a branch of Newbury Comics, but it turned out they were just across the street from each other. It's a testament to Northampton's record-buying culture that the two stores can coexist in such close proximity. 

They are distinctly different experiences in any case, with Turn It Up being a great example of a classic record store with a ratio of probably 85% used stock (on vinyl, CD and cassette) to 15% new releases. They also had movies on DVD and BlueRay. Newbury Comics on the other hand has records, movies, geeky toys and accessories, and, of course, comics. 

When I entered Turn It Up I didn't really have anything particular in mind at first so I was pleased to discover a robust New Arrivals section which was mostly cross-genre, with supplements for Blues, Soul, Country, etc. I began flipping, happily noting that most everything was reasonably priced. The few exceptions were those "limited edition" colored vinyl releases that were in many cases merely lipstick on a pig. But if you love a pig, you'll pay the premium to make it pretty, I guess. 

I quickly found an intriguing compilation called simply Electronic Music, which looked to be from the early 60's and featured an early work by Walter Carlos - before he became Wendy and had international success with Switched On Bach and the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I also found a double album compilation of songs by Black Roots, one of the key bands in the Bristol Sound of British reggae. Both albums went on the pile for the moment. 

When I was nearly done, there was a woman who was just starting to flip. "Let me know if you find any Hot Tuna," she whispered loudly to her friend across the room. "What?" he responded, "Why are you whispering?" "Yeah," I interjected, "no need to whisper, no judgment here!" After all, Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hits was playing. "Besides, Papa John Creach rules!" "Oh my god, I love him," she responded. I told her how my sister was a huge Hot Tuna fan and had all the albums, including the violinist's solo record. "That was the only one I really liked," I related, "but I hope you find something today." Guess what - she did, and for just $3.00. The only thing better than finding your joy in the record store is finding it cheap!

The new arrivals skimmed, I wandered around a little bit, seeing what caught my eye. While checking out the box sets I overheard one of the guys behind the counter rhapsodizing over a Montreaux appearance by Rahsaan Roland Kirk as he rang up a sale of a CD by the avant garde jazz reed player. "By the way," I mentioned, "Something came into my inbox about a new documentary about Kirk. I didn't get a chance to follow up yet but it might be worth checking out. Pretty sure it's the first film about him." "Wow, cool," said the happy customer, "I'll definitely look into that!" Sure, you might have this kind of interaction on a listserv or in a Facebook group - but it feels different face-to-face. 

One last circuit and I spotted a Bill Nelson section in the CD's. I used to literally be in his fan club (I have the marvelous exclusive singles and EP's to prove it) but I don't actually have any of his stuff on CD and his music is only patchily represented on Spotify. This made What Now, What Next, a 1998 two-CD set compiling songs from his own Cocteau label, mighty attractive at $8.00. I'm glad I got it, too, as many of these songs are old friends for me while some of them are brand new, having never been released elsewhere. It could be argued, however, that Nelson may have been at times too enthusiastic in his embrace of 80's electronics - and that some of his Be-Bop Deluxe stuff sounds better than ever.

My meter was running low and my wife and daughter had transitioned from the hunt for second-hand clothes to the hunt for caffeine. This meant it was time to finalize my choices. A quick check of Spotify and I saw that most if not all of the Black Roots songs were on there so I put that album to the side. I inspected the Electronic Music album and it had some worrying discoloration on the vinyl. Not to worry - there was a turntable and headphones in the corner so I gave it a preview and it sounded great. Sold. A complete listen when I got home revealed a beautiful series of sounds occupying a nearly perfect middle ground between Edgard Varese's Poeme Electronique and some of Eno's Ambient work, a dotted line that needed to be drawn.

While I was paying I suddenly remembered the new Light In The Attic Betty Davis release, featuring a lost session produced by Miles Davis. They didn't have it, but they did have a loyalty card which gets stamped for every $10 you spend. Ten stamps and you get $10 off your next purchase. I think I'll definitely get back to Turn It Up, even if my daughter doesn't go to Amherst! I'm also delighted to discover that Turn It Up has a handful of branches, if far fewer than Newbury Comics, so I might have another opportunity to get a stamp sooner than I thought.

I had a little more time so I dashed across the street to Newbury Comics for a Betty Davis surgical strike. The guy at the counter seemed vaguely aware of the album when I asked if they had it, saying "We should," and punching numbers into an inventory terminal. First he led me to the CD's and started looking. I indicated that I wanted to get the vinyl version so he brought me deeper into the store and started looking through the rock vinyl, unsuccessfully. "If you have a funk and soul section it might be in there," I offered. They did! Done. There's no loyalty card at Newbury but they did add my email to their mailing list, which is another way to try to continue the relationship. And isn't that what it's all about - relationships?

You may also enjoy:
College Tour = Record Store, Pt. 1
Vinyl And Grit: RSD 16
Everybody Get In Line: RSD 2015
RSD 2014
Scenes From A Record Fair
Working In Nashville