The Spoils

Winter brings out the housecat in me. Desk next to the best-functioning radiator. Low light, cold weather, snow, rain, wintery mix. These days I get deep, deep into the record collection. It acts as a kind of prescription-strength substitute for sunshine. The last few months have found me both sharpening my dollar-bin game and picking up a few essential goodies. What's in heavy rotation?

This is a prime example of how good record companies are making vinyl attractive in the 21st century. Two-lp set, bonus 4-inch single. Alligator-skin textured record sleeve. Great blue-eyed soul album. Lily goes bonkers for this.




This is like the lost Neil Young album that Lily actually likes. It's not, of course, it's a new band from the Northwest. Still, it's progress.




Issue of several 1970s sessions by a Rhodesian rock band. Extensive liner notes. Great label scans. Photos, ephemera. Another example of how a careful reissue can contextualize amazing, obscure music.




The XX "islands" 45. Hard to describe this band... I have a friend who likes Joy Division, so I thought he'd like this. He didn't. People I know who don't like shoe-gazer stuff really love this band. They're making it difficult for me.




Five lp box. My christmas present to myself. Unbelievable.




Another honey, I turned up this Folkways 2lp/book set (withdrawn from the Mpls Public library, natch) this summer in NYC. Really, $10? Happy ending. One hundred 1-minute pieces.





From the dollar bin:

1970s German synthesizer music. Touch my monkey.




A brilliant jazz album I've been searching for a few years. Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos, Collin Walcott. Recorded in Germany in 1978. Back cover contains a great quote from Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans...



"He certainly was one thinking in being living.
He was completely thinking about some of the things about
which he was thinking. He was not completely
thinking about some of the things he was thinking about
in being one being living. He was completely thinking
about some of the things he was thinking about in being living.
He was not completely needing being one being one completely
thinking in being one being living."




After finding it in the 1Euro bin, I've been revisiting the first TH lp. There are so many tempo changes on this record. Whiplash.




Scooped the DU EP out of an otherwise terrible room full of euro 12." Shock G/Humpty Hump, anyone? (record nerd note: this is the first appearance of Tupac Shakur on wax, rapping on "Same Song.")




oh, and that Neil Young record.




And an electronic shout-out to something I downloaded recently that really blew my mind, by an English guy who started out as a kind of neo-soul singer in the 90s, then recorded this creepy-crazy soft rock/power pop thingy in the early 2000s. It gives me feelings when I listen to it - like, it makes me imagine that I'm hearing it in places I was in the early 1980s, like the roller rink, but I couldn't have heard it there, because it didn't exist yet. But it should have. And I feel sad that it didn't. And happy that it does now. And torn about all of it. See, feelings.