Westwood Avenue (featuring Erin Rae)
Bachelorette Screams b/w Tennessee
scum stats: two versions, 25 copies on Wax Mage variant, the rest on pink (mine is pink)
HAPPY SEVEN YEARS OF RECORD OF THE WEEK WRITE-UPS!!!!!
Each anniversary here, I choose a record from the local Nashville label Soul Step. As a local vinyl focused label that is (essentially) a one-man operation.
I am disappointed in the missed opportunity to rhyme "bachelorette screams" with "Jason Aldean's" but otherwise, the a-side is a charming country ode to the "change" that has gone down in downtown Nashville, specifically the neon jungle of Broadway. Even more in the spirit is that Melvin, main man behind Soul Step, oversees a large corporate operation in the heart of Broadway and he described to me his release of this song as some quasi-payment of karmic debt to the situation.
Melvin explicitly said to me "I might only ever sell a handful of copies, but I just felt like I needed to put it out."
Having been in the game for nearly 25 years, shit, just this morning digging through decades old boxes of Cass Records backstock looking for a single copy of a record long-since declared unimportant by the masses of record buying public...I know the exact feeling. It's real. It motivates. It is arguably the reason I'm even here.
So while it seems like once a year is too infrequent to relay such a message, I will continue to relay it...SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDENT VINYL RECORD LABELS. They are not forever. They are not lucrative. They are not easy. They NEED it. They are imperative to the success of the overall vinyl (and music) ecosystem. Without small labels doing the leg work, taking chances, discovering the unknown...you don't ever get huge successes of the "next big things."
As a celebration of seven years of you folks continuing to read what I put here...I'm doing a giveaway. Post a comment here before Friday October 6th. Just make it good. Maybe it's about something YOU JUST HAVE TO DO. Maybe good equals funny. Maybe good equals emotionally heartbreaking. Maybe good is clever. You be the judge...until I be the judge.
Prize is...since I don't have anything specific sitting in my hands that makes me think that the winner will be all "oh boy oh boy oh boy!" I'm gonna call the winner, we're going to have a conversation about records and music and we'll decide, together, what record from the depths of my closet is commensurate with their award-winning commenting abilities.
This upcoming Saturday, I’m headed to Avalon, Mississippi for the Mississippi John Hurt festival. They’re apparently going to finish filming the documentary about Hurt at said festival. It sounds like it’s going to be really really awesome, there’s going to be an open mic as well, so it’s gonna be my first time playing for a live audience, and the stage is hurts porch, so it’s going to be a pretty otherworldly experience.
Music is beautiful, and to be with it is a love that is unique in of itself, keep on preaching, the Lord is coming soon.
As I continue to collect, I lean more and more towards the obscure and limited. Especially 90s 7" from DIY labels and the like. It’s like picking up little pieces of history, of a thriving scene in places like Seattle or even cuts from Albuquerque and others. Someone out there was making what they loved, and they were so proud they put it out on a little plastic disc, sold it at shows or gave them out to friends. Supergroup, Caspar and Mollusk, Flake (later Flake Music), and more are artists who exuded passion in these early recordings. Also present is one of my all time favorite concepts, the non-album B-Side. Nothing is better than loving an album, and then dipping into a little research to find that there’s just one or two more little drops of that particular sound waiting for you, though the back side of a lead single or a special appearance on a compilation for the label. These songs and 7"s all have a place in history, and in my collection, no matter how small.
You know why I love music so much? There isn’t any other form of art that can instantly change my mood…if I’m sad and want to be sadder, sad and what to shake that and be happy, getting ready to work out and need a shot of adrenaline, or heading out on a road trip, music can alter your mindset immediately ….like an aural equivalent of a drug.
Thanks Ben, Look forward to this every week.
I usually research and try to find
(if it’s in my price range) your record of the week. Have gotten cool personal notes from Tootawl, Loose Koozies, and Wooing. Thanks thanks thanks. Anyway, don’t call me cause I’ll just get tongue tied.
Hey Ben! I wanted to say thank you for replying to my email 4 years ago this month about how to acquire the rights to do small batch vinyl pressing which is in the spirit of your post. I ended up reaching out to the small label about issuing Hagfish’s album called, Buick Men. The label replied saying they weren’t interested at the time, but they later reissued the album and I was lucky to get a copy of the limited run. I really appreciated your thoughtful advice, and I like to believe that we may have inspired them to take a shot at pressing the record.
There’s a metal sliver in my finger
It’s been there for 13 years
I occasionally feel it(invariably after it’s long
Forgotten)
Painfully, like a nagging memory
Of some other self
The one who worked with his hands
The one who fought in bars
Or paraded drunk downtown Rockford
At 330 in the morning
He was a real animal
There’s a metal sliver in my finger
It’s been there for 13 years
I occasionally feel it(invariably after it’s long
Forgotten)
Painfully, like a nagging memory
Of some other self
The one who worked with his hands
The one who fought in bars
Or paraded drunk downtown Rockford
At 330 in the morning
He was a real animal
Life is a fatal sexually transmitted disease. Incurable but music makes it tolerable.
Sometimes you have to get up and live life to remember how much you love it
- me to myself
Last year, I dyed my hair the same shade of blue as Jack’s…the same day I went to see him perform in St. Augustine.