Dynagroove
by Bob Ham
illusration by Dave Dawson
Good day, hipsters, flipsters, and dripsters, and welcome to a brand new column for the likes of this fine mag which you hold in your meaty paws. Allow me to tell you a little bit about what you are going to be seeing if you don’t mind perusing the words offered here: This column is devoted to cheap record buys. I figured I’d inflict my garage sale and thrift store vinyl buys on you folk by reviewing the best of the most recent bunch and offering some tidbits on how to make sure you ain’t buying a completely worthless piece of wax you’ll end up selling at your next garage sale. Plus, it’ll give you wayward record fiends some albums to look for while you’re at it.
Now, having not lived on the East Coast for about seven years now, I don’t know if it’s the same over there, but in this neck of the woods (Washington State at the mouth of the Columbia River), when Labor Day weekend rolls around, the people around here don’t think family get togethers and barbecues, we think: GARAGE SALES.
It seems for three to four glorious days, people here just pull anything and everything they can out of the nooks and crannies of their houses and slap them on card tables with little multi-colored round stickers naming their price. For such vinyl hungry losers like myself this means: CHEAP RECORDS. What time I had on the weekend that I wasn’t working, I spent scouring over second hand skis and boxes full of discarded Happy Meal toys trying to find those little nuggets of gold.
On Friday, I didn’t have a lot of luck, but did find two interesting pieces of wax at one small stop. One was a Pearl Jam Christmas promo 45. It was probably one of those things that was hastily put together when the band was shooting upwards toward fame because the A-side sounds like a slapdash acoustic Noel and the flip is the boys sitting around backstage at a concert hall wishing people “Happy Holidays.” If you’re faced with such a choice, pay no mind to the fact that it’s crap. Little buggers such as these could actually be worth some money someday. The other thing I found, though, blew even my cynical senses away. The name of the record is Songs of Couch and Consultation, performed by some Soho-folk singer/vixen in a satin dress named Katie Lee. What the liner notes let you know is that this record was written and arranged by a gentleman named Bud Freeman in response to the burgeoning use of psychological explanations for people’s ills that crept up around the late ’50s/early ’60s. Anyone could have gotten that just from the song titles though (“Repressed Hostility Blues,” “I Can’t Get Adjusted to the You Who Got Adjusted To Me,” and, my fave, “Schizophrenic Moon”). The music is equally cheeky with boppy little arrangements centered around the sophomoric guitar playing of the lead chanteuse. Brilliantly bad, and to top it all off, only 50 cents.
Saturday was much better. It all started across the street from work actually. I was working the 5 am-noon shift at a radio station that sits across from the local high school. Conveniently enough, a rummage sale was going on in the parking lot. So, at the crack of 12, I was out the door with the only five dollars I had. Only one box of tattered records though. I did manage to find five of them to buy, but found out the price was a dollar each. I wasn’t about to blow all my cash on hand here when there were other places to go. When faced with such a situation, do as I did: haggle. Don’t be afraid to hem and haw your way into some savings. Why? Two reasons:
1) I don’t care if it’s a fundraiser (as the rummage sale in question was) or not, the prices are usually low at these things and the people know they aren’t going to walk away millionaires, so they should be willing to cut you some slack. 2) These places usually don’t stock things like a copy of the Beatles’ Yesterday and Today with the original “butcher-block” cover. Therefore, if #1 doesn’t work, kindly remind them that you know of maybe one other person who would actually pay for the George Shearing Quartet‘s Satin Affair or Perry Como In Concert as you are about to do, so they should take that into consideration when pricing these things. (By the by, both records mentioned are ones I did find and take home).
In the end, I shuffled my feet and sweet-talked the two nice ladies there into saving me two dollars.
(Minor note: As you may have noticed, my tastes can run into what some people may consider the migraine- and suicide-inducing. Allow me to point you back to the lead paragraph. I said “cheap” records, not “good” records.)
The next rummage sale of the day was another benefit, this time for the local Elks lodge. Apart from the lamb that was for sale, this was a dull and sparse little affair, so, only one box of records. To my chagrin, the price again was a buck a piece, but, lucky for our homed brethren, I only found two records to buy. The gem here was Casino Royale by The George Mann Orchestra, featuring something called “The Golden Trumpet.” This little monster was pretty obviously very cheaply put together by some obscuro label (Custom Records) to, I guess, cash in on the James Bond craze of the ’60s. The cover features a very uncomfortable-looking couple (man in a jacket made from the hide of the mighty Nauga with porn star mustache and a gun with some [of course] blonde girl in a bad go-go dancer’s outfit) standing in front of what could be an Aston Martin, but may just be the front end of such a car as that is all you see. The music consists of wonderfully cheap spy movie theme knockoffs that do sometimes deliver this supposedly walls-of-Jericho-toppling horn, with great titles like “Oh! Oh! Seven” and “Shiny Chandelier and Silk Stockings.” Definitely, as the back cover says, “Music for the Entire Family.” Sunday and Monday I did not have any time to run around, but (God bless when I was still living at home), my mom sure did. Upon returning home from work on Monday, I found in my hovel a small stack waiting for my eyes only. Mother must have hit a home belonging to someone with some taste because there were actually some good records in there. So, instead of focusing on the Steve Lawrence or Ferrante & Teicher albums, I thought I’d discuss The Ink Spots collection I got.
Admittedly, virtually every song on here starts off with the same repetitive guitar bit that starts off “Happy Trails,” which can wear on you midway into side two of this double album, but, that foolish little consistency soon goes away and you are hooked once these guys start singing. The four gents wrap their smooth voices around a bevy of old standards and keep it as simple and pure as great music should be. Any blues, jazz, folk, or early rock ‘n’ roll/doo-wop lovers will dig this.
Beaten up by a weekend of work and thrift, on the fifth day, I rested. Therefore, my retrospective must end here. I will (hopefully) be back to regale you with more next month.
