New Additions to the Record Shelf

Whew, the hot weather is back, already 40 degrees Celsius with humidex... at barely noon. If I dare play any records today, I risk dripping sweat on the album sleeves and the stylus sinking clean through the molten vinyl. No A/C in my place, so I'm roughing it.

What the.... ?

But speaking of records, I added a couple more to the collection in recent weeks. After the passing of Dusty Hill not long ago, I decided to complete my ZZ Top collection - up to and including Eliminator, that is. I found two on vinyl, and another two on CD. The first was Fandango!, the half live, half studio LP from 1975, and the second was 1973's Tres Hombres, the disc that put the Texas trio on the map. The former boasted their big hit single Tush, plus the super chill Blue Jean Blues and the groovin' Heard It on the X; the latter album of course had the down and dirty La Grange, and other major favourites Waitin' for the Bus, Jesus Just Left Chicago, and Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers. All top-tier ZZ music. Fandango! was a gently used LP, while Hombres was a brand new fairly recent vinyl reissue.

Now though I wanted all of these ZZ Top acquisitions to be on vinyl, the prices on the last two were skyrocketing out of my price range, so I made the decision to get them on compact disc instead. Looking on the bright side, that sure saved me a lot of money. Both were brand new but very reasonably priced. These two were Rio Grande Mud, the band's second album, from '72 (so long ago!), and the '76 release,Tejas (which I learned is pronounced tay-haas - and is a native American word meaning "friends", and is the origin for the name of the state of Texas). The Mud CD had only a couple of familiar tunes, the classics Francine and Just Got Paid, so lots of music there to dive into and explore over time. Tejax is completely new to me. Sounds very cool though, so there'll be more beer-sipping listening sessions to come.

Then - something completely different. The three studio albums by the Spice Girls. Yep, you read right. A guilty pleasure, I guess you'd say. Ever since my young daughter started playing their CDs back in the 90's, I realized I sort of liked some of that bubblegum music. Hey, it's expertly crafted pop, much in the same vein as 60's and 70's pop - just in a more modern dancy way. I think a lot more people like Spice Girls than will admit it. Revisiting these albums after many years, it still remains obvious that Sporty (Melanie C) carries the group with her superior singing ability. They weren't all bad, but at least one, maybe two of the "girls" were clearly not hired for their talent.

 Anyway, a downloaded compilation of Spicy hits (from the early 2000's) wasn't really cutting it for me any more, so I finally bought their three studio albums for a pittance on used CD. No need to break the bank on this. But it's still light, fun boppy stuff that mostly holds up very well... certainly better than the vast majority of pop these days. So when I'm not spinning thrash metal albums, I'll bounce to the other end of the spectrum for some Spice. It picks me up when I'm feeling down in the dumps. Which is rather often these days. Happy, positive, fun tunes.