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Greetings friends. Thanks for checking in with us here at Sorry State Towers. Hopefully your summer is going well. We had a brief reprieve from the oven like temperatures over the weekend here in Raleigh but are back in the 90s again this week. Each year I say this will be the summer I get to the beach or take a vacation, but that hasn’t been the case for several years sadly. My last trip abroad was eight years ago when I returned home for my father’s funeral. For various reasons I have not been able to get back since then, but this year I am going to make it happen. It seems like everyone I am close to is over in Europe this year or has been or will be. Not least, of course, are our own fellow Sorry State heroes who have either just and/or will be blowing minds from European stages. Hopefully some of you over there will get a chance to see them play. Anyway, I am both happy and anxious about my visit and can’t wait to see my family and the ol’ homestead.
As I write this, I am literally surrounded by boxes of records from collections that we have recently bought and are processing. There is so much good music that I could close my eyes and randomly pull any record, and it would be worth checking out. There’s something here for everyone. New, old, rare, common, you name it. As much as I get excited about seeing rare and expensive records, I get just as much pleasure from the cheap and common stuff too. Perhaps more so. Often, it’s in the bargain bins that I find records that give me the most pleasure. Either because they are proven winners or because they introduced me to something new. It’s easier to take chances on the unknown when it only costs a few bucks. We do our best here at Sorry State to put good records in our bargain bins and folks aways come away rewarded from taking a dig. When you work in a record store, the perks are to get access and first dibs on stuff that comes in. That is obviously very cool, but can be expensive. I have chosen between eating well and having a record many a time I can assure you. There is also a part of me that doesn’t want to be taking too many good records even if I could afford to. We sure as hell snag a lot of cool shit here, but we are not the kind of store where the cool stuff never hits the bins. If you follow our social media and see the Friday New Used Arrival drops or come in and shop, I think you can attest to the fact that there are indeed good records to come in and see, touch, smell, listen to and take home.
As I have been collecting records for several decades now, I have plenty to pick from for these staff picks or to post on social media. I tend not to want to brag about things that I have found or own. I don’t like to show off or to make someone else feel bad because they don’t have it. I’m also embarrassed by the percentage of my income that goes towards these records and feel that I should keep that to myself. I can’t help it though. I’ll always be digging and will be probably cueing up a record the day I keel over. That or I’ll be buried under a falling shelf of records. Hopefully not. All I know is that I have loved music and records all my life, and they are a huge part of my existence. The biggest joy is being able to share my passion with fellow music lovers. Whether that’s amongst friends spinning tunes at home, out at an event DJing or here at the store. You can’t beat selling records right off the turntable.
Last Saturday was Record Store Day 2 for this season and although a smaller drop, we still had a good crowd of folks come through. The day began sweetly for me as one of the first customers was a little girl making her first vinyl purchase. She bought the Paul McCartney single. Coincidently, it was Sir Paul’s birthday, and I had a copy of Ram playing on the turntable. I thought it was an adorable moment. I loved that another generation of music fans were still being touched by Paul’s magic and getting into buying a record at the local store. There is hope for the future. Regardless of what she bought, she was beginning her relationship with records, and that was a beautiful thing. It was a bright moment in a world that can often seem quite rotten and made me feel that I was doing a job worthwhile.
Talking of jobs, I need to get on with that. My staff “pick” this week is just to encourage all of you to continue your love for music and records and, whenever possible, to share that love with those around you. Personally, this week I have been having fun in the soundtrack section. I pulled a couple of children’s records that I will quickly mention. The first one is the soundtrack to the Disney film The Rescuers released on their Disneyland Records label in 1977. This one is quite dear to me. My sister and I had this record back when it first came out and we played it over and over. Listening to it was like being in a time machine. I was instantly transported back over forty years to our family home where up in our converted attic bedroom we used to play the album on our old record player. It was a weird feeling, but a good one. I remembered almost every word. In fact, I sent a photo to my sister, and she answered back quoting parts of the adventure. She hadn’t forgotten either. As Disney cartoons go, it’s not a bad one to be honest and a lot of fun. The characters were voiced by Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor and Geraldine Page, among others, and there are songs sung by Shelby Flint. It was great having a copy of this back in my collection after all these years. I treasure it as much as anything else I own that is cooler, rarer, and way more expensive. It’s the memories that are attached to it that could never be activated or feel the same from a digital download or internet stream. God bless records.
The other nifty thing I pulled and have been having fun with is one called Space Songs by Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans. The record was part of a series called Singing Science Records released on the Motivational Records label in 1959. It’s great. The songs were taken from Ballads For The Age Of Science by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer and are about the stars, planets and moon and the future of mankind in space. Striking a balance of entertaining and educating is not easy and hard not to sound condescending. Kids might be kids, but they are not suckers and can still tell a good record from a bad one. This is a good one. There’s music and clever songs with the scientific information. Back in the late 1950s it was the Space Age, and we were rightfully thinking about what was beyond our planet earth and knowledge of science was cool. Despite the recent step backwards in accepting science here in this country and asshat millionaires building rocket ships, science is still the future for mankind. Hopefully soon our teachers can get back to teaching kids and kids can get back to learning stuff like science instead of how best to avoid being shot or having some angry parent screaming at them for wanting to learn history or for having two dads. But that’s a rant for another occasion and place. On the back of the album jacket, they show other records in the series, and I shall be keeping an eye out for them. They all seem interesting and worth picking up.
Okay, I have blathered on enough and barely said anything. Thank you for your indulgence if you read this far. Enjoy your week ahead and listening to your records. Whatever they may be, if they make you feel something, then they are special to you and worth having.
Cheers - Dom