I'm trying to relax on spending on records, but it's not really working out. Mind you, I did find some albums at a nearby thrift store for only about a buck apiece. Then I paid a proper, but still very reasonable, amount for a long wished-for record. More on that in a moment.
So... last weekend, a little bummed out that my flea market trip a week earlier was a bust (absolutely no record sellers there at all!), I ventured to the Salvation Army thrift shop just up the road. They have a few big stacks (not piled, actually... just sensibly standing on edge in a nice display unit that I wouldn't mind owning myself) of resident LPs, pretty much all of which have been there for the past five years. Like the whole catalogues of artists like Anne Murray, Zamfir, Perry Como, and other similar un-sellable stuff).
Anyway, nothing I got was outstanding, but the one that I do truly like is Rhinestone Cowboy by none other than that cheesily-white-garbed Glen Campbell. Awful album cover aside, the music is quite cool, of you like 70's country-pop crossover music. I've always liked his Rhinestone Cowboy song, even way before I ever liked a single other country tune. And the rest of this album is quality stuff, so no wonder this was the one that put Campbell on the map big-time, allowing him to cross over from the country charts to pop... so, more record sales and cash for everybody (and hopefully Glen, too). At times on this album, I get an Elton John vibe, and that's not a bad thing. Paid just one dollar for this.
In addition to the Campbell record, I also grabbed a 1968 country and western collection called, well, Country and Western. All big names on there, just a couple I didn't know, singing songs I don't think I ever heard before. So it's good music, just not familiar hits. It'll take some time to get to know it. There are Jim Reeves, Dolly Parton, Chet Atkins, Hank Snow, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Pride, and some others. One dollar.
The third and final album I got at the shop was a 1974 K-Tel album featuring a bunch of artists I'd heard of (big, big names) plus several I'd never heard of before in my life. So I wonder if some of those songs were actually "hits", as claimed, or maybe they were one-hit wonders. It's possible.
Anway, the long and the short of it is that this record skipped A LOT. Most of the songs needed manual assistance to continue playing. No fun at all. The one and only song that I really really liked that played fine was 70's rock gem Free Ride by The Edgar Winter Group. Very cool, and since I've known very few of Winter's tunes, I may seek out more by him. Olivia Newton-John appears here, too, with her crystalline vocals over strings and country twang on Let Me Be There. S'okay, though not a highlight. Kool & The Gang provide a smokin' performance on Jungle Boogie... yeah, gotta find more by that funk group, er, gang. Barry White's epic R&B soul classic Never Never Gonna Give You Up is a cool track, but sadly, it suffers from skip-itis on this defective disc. I might hunt for another K-Tel collection or even the artists's proper studio albums for the music that I do like from this mangled sampler. Strangely, this LP was two bucks. I guess they priced it without listening to it first.
Then... a little something arrived in the mail that I'd finally located for a decent price, and from a fellow Canadian seller, a 1972 vinyl pressing of the A Clockwork Orange movie soundtrack. Somebody had the good sense to take care of the record and its outer sleeve so that decades later, a mook like me could own and enjoy it further. And boy, oh boy, it sounds very nice. From the title music to the variations on Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and from choice pieces by Rossini (like The Thieving Magpie and William Tell Overture) to Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, and on to the electronic segments by pioneer Walter Carlos... it's all pure gold to me. I bought this soundtrack on cassette tape back in the early 80's, after seeing the movie for the first time, and played it on a regular basis for years and years. I never did upgrade to CD, though, so a vinyl purchase seemed to be the logical thing to do. Clockwork is among my favourite movies of all time, and the music of the film, especially the Beethoven, is among my fave of all time, too.
The week was a success then, if you consider this little record haul. Other than that, well, work sucks and life is generally "meh". But good music will get me through. Keep spinnin' those records!
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