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.
“Im tired of following my dreams, I’m just gonna ask them where they’re going and hook up with them later”. Mitch Hedberg RIP
Since you posted a soul record I wanted to post if you haven’t heard of Lee Fields “Sentimental fool” what a amazingly brilliant record. Daptone did it again!. I would like to say they are perhaps the soul funk version of thirdman finding brilliant older artists that were overlooked and bringing them to light. End of transmission……..
How do you have the patience to sift through this boring drivel?
Here in Halifax, a friend of mine recently started his own record label, and his third release is coming out shortly, a limited press of a Sun Kil Moon album. Pretty amazing thing to do out of a boutique record store in Halifax, but Obsolete Records Records is a going concern, and I hope it continues to send those platters flying.
Waiting at the Santana train station in OC to head up to the Greek tonight, after 5 free busses. The car threw a shoe, and the faces don’t care I’m an old man, a White Sox fan who cheered for Miggy…‘cause, well, Miggy. But we will make it for doors open tonight. That’s how we roll. GOD BLESS JWIII, & THE Vault!
I just turned 40 on Monday – even though it is kind of silly I’ve been reflecting a lot in the last month or so about how I have been watching the Simpsons obsessively since it started, and at that time I was younger than every Simpson except for Maggie. Now I am older than every Simpson except for Grampa. To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey, I keep getting older and they keep staying the same age. Alright, alright, alright.
Of note I tested positive for COVID on my 40th birthday – so that sucked. Symptoms are mild, on the plus side. The nurses’ union of which I am an officer had its annual House of Delegates a few days before which turned out to be a super spreader event. I don’t think it’s fair to blame COVID’s spread on individual choices when the social support for infection prevention has been so badly eroded (i.e. we are basically back at the mercy of our money-grubbing insurance companies for testing and vaccines, employer and government subsidized COVID leave banks have been taken away, etc.) but I sure wish we had all made more of an effort to wear masks.
In the lead up to my 40th birthday I also thought about the band Antiseen who had their 40th birthday the day before me. I need to bust out my Antiseen pewter belt buckle which says “Est. 1983” and “FUCK ALL Y’ALL.” It is not a belt buckle I can wear to work but I guess I can wear it while quarantined.
✉️ 🧙 MAMA-059
I’m getting my deep cleaning of my teeth on Friday morning.
I am unimportant with nothing much to say. My band did open for the circle jerks and black flag when i was 15. That was cool.
I need to post a really intellectual, hilarious, and functional comment….man, something I need to do is to engage with my family more as I seem to be spending more and more time in my local records stores, buying vinyl, then holing up in my listening room listening to said vinyl. Damn I miss my family!