16 August 2014

Record Collector Problems

So for my birthday, my grandmother took me shopping. Most females my age would probably buy clothes and shoes in such a situation, but to me, 'shopping' means 'music.' So on the Monday (freaking holiday Monday -- me and the August long weekend have a hate-hate relationship. Actually, me and long weekends in general have a hate-hate relationship), I hit the vinyl shops (all two of them) and came away with a pretty good haul if I do say so myself.

Some points I would like to make about the excursion:

Do you have any idea how much willpower it takes to leave the second copy of DA's ¡Alarma! at the store? I was seriously tempted to get both copies. Even though they were exactly the same. And I had already bought the first one. And I have the deluxe CD reissue they put out last year (buy it here. It is just as awesome as they say it is).

Found an After The Fire album that I only bought because I vaguely remembered reading about it on the 500 Greatest Albums blog. In fact, I found three copies of this album. Of course I bought the one with the skip in the middle of the best song.

Bought the 1977 Pantano/Salsbury album (entitled Hit The Switch) purely because of the ravings of those over at the Jesus Music forum on Facebook. Completely worth the money. Imagine mixing the songwriting of Prodigal with the playing of early DeGarmo and Key. And a talking guitar that puts the then-future Bon Jovi to shame.

Found the one Margaret Becker album we don't have... for $24.95. This at the shop where I snagged a pristine copy of DA's Horrendous Disc (which is, to my understanding, the most sought-after and hard-to-find DA record) a month ago for ten bucks.

Also saw Stryper's To Hell With The Devil not once, not twice, but three times... in the same store. In three different places.

Was hoping to find some Randy Stonehill -- nothing.

Why do they make the crate units at the shops so darn high? I had to stand on my very tiptoes and lean forward onto the tableau to flip through the records at the very back of each crate. I'm not very heavy, but those things were wobbling.

I realised today, while importing the ATF record and trying to classify the genre of it, that I really only need two genre tags for my iTunes library: Rock and Not Rock.



Also, two big pieces of music news!

1. White Heart is touring... and we have cities! Columbus, Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago -- go buy your tickets now and bring these guys out of retirement! If these shows go well, we may just get another tour in 2015... and maybe they'll venture up to Canada for that one. Also, they've been dropping hints on a new album. They haven't actually come out and said, 'we're making a new album,' but they keep talking about new music coming soon, which is basically (hopefully) the same thing.

2. One of my favourite albums of all time, Daniel Amos' Doppelgänger, is being reissued in a deluxe CD package. This is cause for extreme excitement. No timeline on that yet, but I assume it'll be by the end of the year.