Monday, December 31, 2012

I heard a story that Groucho Marx wrote an entire book solely using the morsels of time he had while waiting for his wife to get ready. While I don't think I'll get a book started tonight (White Stripes bio stop haunting me!) I will utilize the time to eke out some thoughts.

While the past year seems to have gone by faster than any other of the previous twenty nine, certain things jump out. First off...finally buying a house. There is now a hovel where I can stash all my crap, tear down a wall if I want to, let raccoons live in the basement, and fret over the length of the grass. It's been a dream for quite some time and after the fourth consecutive day of moving, I must say I had the  most complete, refreshing and immediate sleep in my life.

I think my favorite live show of the year had to have been Quintron and Miss Pussycat live at Third Man. Complete with guest appearances by King Louie AND the Oblivians, the live LP is my absolute favorite thing to hear when I walk in or out of the store at Third Man. And dare I say the quality of the recording and mix is pretty top-notch.

Also...flexi-disc balloon launch? May be my favorite art project ever. The look of joy and excitement on people's faces that day was incalculably rewarding. I can't believe we pulled it off. Where do you go from there? And who knew helium was at an all-time high price?

Having started this year but not really showing itself until 2013, a lot of my work at Third Man has been focused on reissues. The stuff coming up has been rewarding and challenging and fulfilling all at once, spanning just about every genre and era of recorded music. Folks are already awaiting the reissue partnership with Document Records, but that is barely the tip of the iceberg.

Nothing beats:
-a new pair of zipper boots from DSW
-boutique record digging exclusive Detroit/Michigan 45's
-vintage Detroit high school phys-ed t-shirts
-Boardwalk Empire, and moreso, TALKING about Boardwalk Empire
-Saturday morning breakfast at Mas Tacos (cheesy truffle grits? oh.my.gawd)
-friendly neighbors
-Nashville weather in December
-all the quirks of Mold-a-Rama machines
-issue 5 of Bagazine
-spending New Year's Eve with old friends

Looks like she's just about ready to go...my work here is done.


Friday, November 30, 2012

A Tale of Two Music Cities


This was pitched as an op/ed for the New York Times and (apparently) they considered it. So forgive the explanations of things usually assumed understood by long-time readers here.

 (painting by Jen Uman)

Having lived the first twenty-six years of my life in the same house in Detroit, I wasn't too concerned about how I would adjust when I moved to Nashville three-and-a-half years ago. I wasn't pre-occupied with making friends or finding a place to live. I wasn't even really concerned about exploring the town or discovering what particular neighborhoods had to offer.

My main concern was…where would I order my pizza?

You see, Detroit is the sleeper pizza town in America. Sure Chicago and New York get all the praise and the hyphenated "style" after their names, but Detroit, as the hometown to Little Ceasar's, Hungry Howie's, Domino's, Jet's, Buddy's, Cottage Inn and quite a few other established franchises, offers a variety and selection that cannot be contained within the confining context of something as narrow as "Detroit-style."

Without knowing any better, I was stuck for an inordinate amount of time, eating pizza from (yuck) Papa John's.

I moved to Nashville in 2009 for work. I'd been offered a job at Third Man Records to oversee their vinyl record production and distribution. While at that point in my life it felt like my entire reason for being was tied into Detroit and my residency there, it was hardly a difficult decision to leave. Being the height of the economic downturn, jobs were scarce in town. I had a handful of immediate family members who were recently unemployed. NO ONE held it against me that I was leaving…it was as if they knew only good could come from leaving Detroit for employment purposes.

Nashville's allure for decades has been the chance of "making it" in the country music business. Housing offices for all the "Big Four" record labels (Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI) not to mention the three performance rights organizations in the US (BMI, ASCAP and SESAC) and it's no secret why the town is nicknamed Music City. You can't spit in this town without hitting a singer, songwriter, soundman and a publicist…oftentimes all-in-one.

While Detroit may give off a reputation of a more "real" or "organic" music scene, Nashville gives off way more examples of careers in music.

Detroit has just as rich a musical history as Nashville, it just does not have a music industry. There are no major labels, no performance rights organizations, no significant music publishers and subsequently, up-and-coming writers or bands don't dream about moving to Detroit. They dream about moving OUT of Detroit.

Amongst my own personal acquaintances, I know of 4 people who've left southeastern Michigan in the past two years specifically for music business jobs in Nashville.

In July of 1999 a rock band called the Starlite Desperation moved from their hometown of Salinas, California to Detroit. This was, by all accounts, completely unheard of. Bands had made their way to Detroit in the past, but most of the time they were moving from Lansing, or if you want to get really exotic, Toledo.

To quote Dan Kroha (of seminal garage punk band the Gories) on Starlite's move, "I wanted to give them the key to the city."

Unfortunately, Starlite Desperation imploded and just over a year later the principles had moved back to the West Coast, tails between their legs. They'd just missed out on the press boon behind the White Stripes, Electric 6, Detroit Cobras and (my band) the Dirtbombs that would kick up in England and propel many Detroit bands on to unqualified success (the Stripes), fluke-y top ten hits (Electric 6) or sustenance touring/recording (basically everybody else). Even at the height of Detroit's center-of-the-rock-and-roll-world reputation (roughly the summer of 2003), there failed to be any noticeable bands picking up their stakes and setting up camp in town.

There are two things recently drawing folks in to relocate to Detroit. One is best exemplified by a quote from Patti Smith. When asked if it was still possible for young artists to move to NYC and find their way to fame, Smith replied, "New York has closed itself off to the young and struggling. But there are other cities." Her first suggestion? "Detroit."

One of the few (only?) upsides of the absolute hit Detroit took in the economic downturn is the fact that its extremely low cost of living became a selling point. Artists did start to show up, even if only in drips and drabs, to set up studios, reclaim empty buildings, to work on their own terms in a city where space and privacy are plentiful and oversight or bureaucratic interference is rarely a concern.

At the same time, Nashville is experiencing an unprecedented up-tick in young, creative transplants. The city claims among its residents international rock stars like Jack White (my boss/uncle), the Black Keys, Ke$ha, Kid Rock and all the Kings of Leon. For a town famously known for country music, the populace is undeniably diversifying. Hell, neighbors I've had at two different houses I've lived in here include a touring member of the B-52's and the tour manager that famously set Graham Parsons' body on fire at Joshua Tree in 1973.

The main difference I've noticed between Nashville and Detroit is an issue of birthright versus selection. Detroit is, for the most part, a locale that befalls people. Very few of its residents made a conscious effort to relocate there. What this charges the population with is a shared "we're all in this together" attitude.

In Nashville, it seems 1 in 10 people I meet are "from here" (where "here" is considered the metropolitan area) and a scant 1 in 20 are actually from the city. As a magnet, a destination, the folks I meet have all come to this town with an agenda. Whether it's to make it as a country singer, to get the hell out of Alabama, or to attend one of the city's many respectable universities.

While the idea of folks coming from all over to make this city their home is a nice idea, it also has a downside. A lot of people, myself included, don't plan on staying here. It's a stopping off point, a means to an end, a place where few have a solid connection to their neighborhood

I'm surprised when people here tell me to be careful in East Nashville…that it can be dangerous. When I inform them I'm from Detroit, their response is usually along the lines of "Oh, you'll be fine. You might get your lawn mower stolen once in ten years." And while the inherent racism in a city with a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest and a history of slave trading can seem as mere remnants of history, to have someone use the word "nigger" to me in the middle of a business transaction was absolutely dumbfounding.

To hear the phrase "I'm not racist…" immediately followed by "I love Charley Pride" is all one needs to know that things in this town can be uncomfortably white.

I've been told that at one point, in the 1990's, EVERY house in East Nashville was selling crack. To now, where it seems like every house actively donates to the local NPR station, that's a pretty impressive turnaround.

When I drive around East Nashville now, from its organic butcher, record store located inside a house, mixologist bars and plethora of food trucks, I can't help but think this is what Williamsburg in Brooklyn looked like in 2001…like a hipster bomb ready to explode at any moment. Far too many neighborhoods in Detroit look like actual bombs have exploded there and the majority of entrepreneurship I encounter there is usually limited to folks silk-screening t-shirts (almost always incorporating the idea of and/or word "Detroit") or setting up Kickstarter campaigns.

These observations of change in East Nashville stirred up thoughts of Detroit and my false sense of propriety.  "Who do these people think they are? White-washing the neighborhood, gentrifying it block-by-block. I hope they rot."

But then I realize, wait, I'm not from here. I'M the one who moved in here. I'M the one who people who were born and raised here should be pissed about. In the meantime, I welcome these new businesses and residents with open arms.

More than anything, I'm happy to have found two wonderfully warm establishments. The first, Italia, is a classic, old-style pizzeria has been around for awhile and is on a nice, sleepy stretch of Woodland Street. While the pizza is greasy and definitely unhealthy, I prefer it. Italia feels familiar and inviting. It feels like home.

Five Points Pizza is brand new and on the same street a few blocks down in the happening Five Points district, surrounded by bars, artisan eateries and other indicators of hipness. The thin crust, New York-style of Five Points is deceptively tasty, the fresh sliced (not shredded) mozzarella and basil on their Old World pie is an unexpectedly delightful treat. Five Points is an establishment that I should, by all means, abhor, but once I managed to put my preconceptions out of the way and just give the place a chance, it was clear how much I enjoyed it.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

A Sprawling Trawl Through Oddities of Detroit Vinyl...


I like the weird records in Detroit history. They are by no means the greatest…but we all know that Motown and techno and the MC5 and Stooges have all been chronicled to the absolute bottom of the barrel and it overshadows a lot of the one-off, unique and downright odd records produced by this fair city.

Records like "P.A.L. Bump" by Les Cochons Bleus. While they were later known as the Blue Pigs, this group of five active-duty Detroit Police officers were a band that would play schools, recreation centers, civic events and other various gatherings where passable live music was desired.  This record was released by the Police Athletic League (PAL) where in 1993 I was the only white kid on an all-black baseball team. (team photo available) The song itself motors on in a vaguely funky way until an otherworldly synthesizer solo blows the whole thing up into oblivion.  

My dad told me he was friends with one of the original members, one who eventually got kicked off the force for doing off-duty security at an after-hours bar. This may or may not be discerned with the two different picture sleeves this record was issued with, depicting different guitar players on the cover. (side note: the Blue Pigs played at my grade school at least twice while I was a student. I remember two cover songs they did: "I Wanna Be Rich" by Calloway and "The Best for Last" by Vanessa Williams. Also, the drummer used a tiny electronic drum pad for all his parts…not a cymbal or drum in his arsenal at all. Such was the early Nineties.)
(a more-desperate need for an upgraded picture sleeve I cannot think of...hook a honkey up if you're holding)

(notice how the mullet-ish qualities of the guitarist in the upper left-hand corner have been edited)
(both of these sleeves open on the BOTTOM. fucking dumb)



Or "Rock 'n' Roll Screamer" by Adrenaline. These guys were East Side and went to Catholic grade school...two things that could also be said of myself, and thus I feel an affinity for them. In a later incarnation they were better known as DC Drive, but this first single by Adrenaline is unlike anything else they'd ever put to tape. "Screamer" smokes in a weird way that only a non-punk rock record from 1977 can. All chugga-chugga motoring riffs with powerful vocals that border on melodic, this is a rare breed of 70's-80's Detroit rock that is almost completely overlooked outside of a handful of hardcore, borderline psychotic collectors. The original pressing seems to have been self-released on the Green Grass label, but existence of that has yet to have been proven...at least to me. It was definitely released by Fiddlers, a label headquartered out of a music instrument store that was half-a-mile from the house I grew up in and where I bought my first ever drumsticks, kick pedal and guitar. Fiddlers also and put out ignored records by the likes of Holy Smoke, Jett Black, the Happy Dragon Band and others.


"Methane Sea" was self-released by Richard Davis in 1978. Davis would later gain renown as the other half of Juan Atkins Cybotron outfit, under the moniker 3070. As the self-released showcase for a 'nam vet electronics enthusiast, this single packs loads of programmed electronics and vast swaths of synthesizer wash coupled with Davis' spacey vocals. The tracks are "Prelude" and "Aftermath" and they are genuinely bizarre. All the lit on techno history makes mention of Davis and this single, but damned if you can find it or even clips of it anywhere. I immediately jumped on the only copy I've ever seen and it was the most confusing/satisfying $300 I've spent on a record.



A recent perplexing find has been a self-released LP by Richard Ristagno. While I'd originally become aware of the guy based on a single he did under the name Canada (which I'll talk about some other time), his LP from 1980 is unwaveringly odd. He pressed 200 copies, never made any cover art and his backing band was a group called Soular. Ristagno hired Soular, a band usually at home doing covers of the Marvelettes or Temptations, out of the classified ads. What results is a pre-new wave, low-fi, fuzz guitar therapy session where the loner gets the cheese. With lyrics like "Give it to me front-door style" you know you can't go wrong. A buddy and I managed to scrounge up some copies from Ristagno himself and before that, there was absolutely NO evidence anywhere of this record ever existing. A reissue by respectable independent label is currently in the works.

(special bonus...getting an original Archer Records emblazoned cardboard box out of the deal)



Of particular interest is the LP of Tape Fed Into Garbage Disposal by Spaceman and Jake by Sweet Kelly. First off, that may be the best album title of all-time. Released in 1997 on the Zedikiah label (run by the quasi-legendary biker-folk madman Nicodemus) it remains unclear how a trio of suburban youth crossed paths with a motorcycle gang leader with a face tattoo. The record was "re-discovered" a couple of years back by Aaron Dilloway (formerly of Wolf Eyes) who went as far as buying up the remaining stock Nicodemus had of the LP and began hawking 'em at the WE merch table while on tour. While looking for a copy I managed to snag one sold by Steve Turner (of Mudhoney/Super-Electro Records) that had a complete press kit included. According to the band, their influences are Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and Monster Magnet. The list of clubs they'd played is also fairly impressive…solid East Side haunts like Java House, I-Rock, and the Palladium, not to mention a surprising appearance at the Gold Dollar.

(quite possibly the first time a picture of the band has ever shown up online. does anyone care?)

The record itself is reckless teenaged confusion that sounds like it was mastered directly from a fried cassette. I'm still fairly confident I don't "get" where this record is coming from or what it's trying to accomplish (Floyd, Sabbath and Magnet all feel like red herrings). But the manner in which it stands alone, seemingly devoid of context, contemporaries or discernible influence, is what keeps me coming back. I would not be surprised if I was told "Tape Fed…" was actually recorded ten or twenty years earlier. Interpret that as you may, but it's truly a more difficult feat than it seems.


"Love Eyes (Cast Your Spell on Me)" by Lenny Drake is wonderfully out of place. Drake had success (I guess) with his group Lenny and the Thundertones performing instrumental surf tunes. Yet in 1970 on what seems to be his own "Rated X (for Excellence)" record label, Drake unleashed a searing guitar workout that seems out of place in just about any era…especially when the home organ-esque drum machine rat-a-tats without variation as the only rhythm throughout the entire song. With Drake's slaughtering guitar work, it's safe to say that any more accompaniment would only detract from the rest of the brilliance.







Thursday, September 20, 2012

New (Old) Jams to Chew On...

Here's a pile of new things currently available for purchase on the mediocre Cass Records label.

First off, from New Zealand's Ray Woolf is a tasty slice of 1967 doom, unreleased until this year.




Next is the latest nugget from Nashville's Ranch Ghost, a collection of upstanding individuals unparalleled the world over. They make rock and roll.



And finally, of particular excitement in releasing something that's been a goal to put out for over ten years, the Vegetarian Cannibals and the poignant punk prose of "Preppie Attack" from the LP Before the Fact recorded in 1990.





Of additional excitement is some of the TV publicity Mr. Woolf is getting in regards to "Little Things That Happen" Check out the clips below...

Too Risque for the 60's a nice piece talking in-depth about the history of "Little Things That Happen"

Live Studio Performance Ray performs two songs with "Little Things" starting at the 3:25 mark


All these gems can be purchased from the delightful Cass Records website. Please do so post haste.

But these things already...

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Interview with a Teenager...

Interview with a Teenager

I had the pleasure of typing back and forth with a journalism-minded teenager from the Detroit area not too long ago. Dare I say he reminds me a lot of how I was at his age. I also must admit being jealous of hell of his being able to write for the Metro Times at a time when I wasn't even able to write my way out of a paper bag. Some would stay I still can't get out of the bag. Regardless, enjoy.

Friday, June 29, 2012

How Jack, Jack, Brendan and Patrick Became the Raconteurs


Here are my liner notes for the Raconteurs "Live at Montreux" DVD. I figure no one is crazy enough to buy the whole thing just to read what I have to say, so here it is in its entirety.        


         For a band whose every move has been overly documented since the instant their existence was known, there's still a large part of the Raconteurs story that's largely untold.

While Jack White was at the time the most well-known musician amongst the self-proclaimed "new band made up of old friends,” it is oftentimes overlooked that Benson had the earlier success.  His impressive debut album, One Mississippi, was released on Virgin Records in 1996. Benson supported the likes of the Wallflowers, saw his song "Insects Rule" covered by the Foo Fighters and even enjoyed a successful tour of Japan all before the White Stripes would play their first live show.

Benson moved back to his hometown of Detroit in 1998 after a stint living in California and soon met (and hit it off with) White. Brendan was the first artist to ever cover the White Stripes when he performed “Sugar Never Tasted So Good” at the Magic Stick in Detroit on November 27th, 1998.

At that same time, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler were barnstorming the Midwest as the rhythm section in the Cincinnati-based act the Greenhornes, quickly making a name for themselves as the nation's premier garage/soul band. It was a given then that all future Raconteurs would know each other by the release of the Greenhornes debut album Gun For You in May of 1999, but that it would take until 2004 for them all to collaborate was almost odd given the collabo-happy times they were enjoying.

There were previous pairings of the friends that would happen first. White and Benson did a one-off performance together (doing songs each had written) at the Garden Bowl in Detroit on March 14th, 1999 and recorded demos of songs like "Now Mary" and "You've Got Her in Your Pocket" in Brendan's attic later that spring. Benson would later appear in the documentary Detroit Rock Movie performing "…Pocket" while the White Stripes would begin to cover Brendan's "Good to Me" live in the fall of '99 and released their version in 2003.

Benson and White also performed together in the short-lived and posthumously-named Jack White and the Bricks along with Kevin Peyok (the Waxwings) on bass and Ben Blackwell (the Dirtbombs) on drums. While they only existed for a handful of shows in the summer/fall of '99, their first performance was actually opening for the Greenhornes on the Garden Bowl Lanes on July 9th…White's 24th birthday.

With a set comprising mainly of songs written by White that had yet to be appropriated by the White Stripes, the Bricks were never a serious concern to any of its participants. The band is only really remembered because of a decent audience recording (easily found online) made live at the Gold Dollar in Detroit on September 16, 1999.

Come September 2002, the White Stripes were personally selected by Jeff Beck to serve as backing band on songs from his Yardbirds era in a career spanning 40th anniversary concert at London's Royal Festival Hall. Needing a bass player to fill out the group, the Stripes tapped Jack Lawrence for the spot and the result was an unqualified success, as the YouTube videos will attest.

By August 2003,White had Keeler and Lawrence serve as the rhythm section for the sessions that would yield Loretta Lynn's universally acclaimed Van Lear Rose. Released in April 2004, the album would go on to win two Grammy's and found White, Lawrence and Keeler backing Lynn for performances on The Today Show and The Late Show with David Letterman. It would also seemingly be the last necessary step before all members of the Raconteurs would finally play together.

In the summer of 2004 Benson, recording in the attic of his grand Detroit home, was stuck on an uncompleted lyric of  “Find yourself a girl and settle down, live a simple life in a quiet town.” Good friend, neighbor and occasional musician White came up with the fitting conclusion and de facto song title, “Steady as she goes.” Slide in Keeler and Lawrence as the best bassist and drummer around and it all fits together like pieces to a musical puzzle…while they'd all been knocking about in the same space for years, they were finally locked-in together in the right configuration.

The sessions in Benson's attic at 419 E Grand Boulevard (a house that at most recent check was boarded-up) yielded the ten tracks that would serve as their debut album Broken Boy Soldiers. During overdubs White managed to lay down a demo of "As Ugly As I Seem" which would later make its way into the Stripes' repertoire.

 With all songs written and produced by the White/Benson pairing, the album was more-or-less finished by the beginning of 2005. The fact it wouldn't see release for over a year was understandable as '05 saw the White Stripes release Get Behind Me Satan, the Greenhornes East Grand Blues and Benson The Alternative to Love. Each album was accompanied by extensive touring.  The bulk of the Stripes' dates had the Greenhornes as openers while Benson opened a handful as well.
        
The Raconteurs' first live performance was an unplanned occurrence on October 1st, 2005. The event was a private party held in White's home at 1731 Seminole in Detroit's Indian Village and followed a Stripes concert at the Masonic Temple. While the Greenhornes served as the planned entertainment, with all four members in attendance it didn't take much urging to get the Raconteurs playing. White's house, where …Satan was recorded, was less than a mile from the attic where …Soldiers was recorded.

         White moved to Nashville in December 2005 and it wasn't long before the rest of the Raconteurs were rehearsing in his living room (footage of which is viewable on Third Man Records' Vault fan club), pulling up their stakes and moving there too.

The public wouldn't hear music from the Racs until XL Records released 1000 copies of the 7" single of "Steady, As She Goes" in January 2006. Their public live debut would come a few months later on March 20th, 2006 in Liverpool, England but from there, the rest of the story has already been told.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

I Remember that dog...

I wrote this nine years ago for a website called Swizzle Stick that seems to be long gone. Today seemed like one of those perfect limbo pre-summer days that I remember fondly in the piece.



I remember that dog’s “Totally Crushed Out” because the album came at a transitional period in my tender youth.  I had seen the band open for the Foo Fighters on March 30th, 1996 and was non-plussed.  Granted, it was the first live show I’d ever attended, but I think I was overly-anxious to see the guy who used to be in Nirvana.
Two months later and I was different.  It was an awkward time…I’d finished 8th grade and we were done with school a good two weeks before the rest of school.  Hanging around at this time was a strange, unknown pleasure of nothing to do during school-hour weekdays.  Ordering pizzas in the middle of the day, riding bikes down streets we’d never been, perpetually throwing water balloons…me and this motley group of rag-tag others lived as unchallenged kings in our own four square block stomping ground.
Be we did other shit too.  I’d dyed my hair forest green…only to have it fade that same day in a gruesome shaving cream fight.  The rest of the summer was spent with faint pea green locks atop my head.  We’d gotten unusually obsessed with the Anarchist’s Cookbook, but all being under-18 were unable to purchase said text from the local head shop.
So we improvised.  We had a general idea of what a Molotov cocktail was made of, so the Snapple bottle was filled with lighter fluid with a paper towel hanging out of the top.  We lit the paper towel and sat there, basking in the pyromania that most twelve-year-old boys go through.  I’d say the flames got a little over my waist, so at that time, about three feet tall.  We never seemed panicked or worried or scared…someone simply filled a kitchen pot with water and doused our sorry excuse for overthrowing the government.  The concrete on that spot had actually been bleached a bright white from our actions and would remain so until we tore up the backyard six years later.
But behind all this pre-pubescent machismo, that same fucking day, I rode my bike to the Harmony House and spent what felt like an eternity trying to decide between that dog and the Vaselines.  The Vaselines album had the originals of three songs that Nirvana had covered and was on Sub Pop to boot and was so terribly hip and tempting.  But I kept coming back to that dog.  Something about the cover drawn to look like a teen romance novel or the no short of brilliant use of all the song titles in a well-written, coherent paragraph on the back cover was all too much.  I was secretly scared that some suburban youth would come and buy “Totally Crushed Out”, having witnessed the same mediocre opening performance for the Foo Fighters I had, and I would never find the album again.  I bought that dog and came back a few days later for the Vaselines.
The songs on “Totally Crushed Out” are heartbreaking stories of lost love, missed chances, the “what could have been?” which is totally what leaving eighth grade is all about.   It made sense to me, but not too quickly.  As I grew, I kept finding myself coming back to the record…it never aged and always seemed to equate to that particular moment in my life that I happened to be living.
After meeting Anna Waronker, she told me that she thought of that dog as an art band…the whole thing being a kind of art project.  And I thought that a little queer.  “Totally Crushed Out”, a masterpiece that I revered as highly as any Beatles or Stones effort, was almost shrugged off by its inceptor as a one-off art thingy.  I prided myself on telling her that it meant so much more to me and she was flattered.
So what I think of when I think of “Totally Crushed Out” is the confusing time at the end of my pre-teens, my stupid ugly green hair with the stink of lighter fluid still fresh on my hands and the squeak of bicycle breaks humming in my head, partaking in some psuedo rite of passage with a bunch of other hormone-addled freaks, and later, in secret, hoping that no one would find me out, listening to this “pop” album and feeling utter bliss and confusion and ecstasy and bewilderment.  I liked the album so much that I was scared.  “Totally Crushed Out” made a difference in this poor white boy’s life.

Monday, April 30, 2012

Even More Items I Didn't Win on eBay

1. I'd never seen the Atlantic promo sleeve with the MC5 pic on it before. Strangely enough it's a photo from the band's time on Elektra records. Not crazy enough to spend any more dough on.
2. Detroit-area garage single I didn't even know existed. Somewhat happy I did not win.
3. Detroit-area girl-band single I didn't know existed. Definitely happy I did not win. Probably sucks.
4. I'm slowly trying to acquire big time Detroit rap titles for the archive. Found out late in the game this was erroneously listed as an original pressing and withdrew my bid. Glad I did not win, but not willing to spend $8500 asking price on Discogs for an OG.
5. Was able to grab the Friars' other single, but this one NEVER turns up. Probably should've bid a little more. Bummed I did not win.
6. I'm a sucker for the Correc-Tone label. And an instrumental with a title like "Monkey Whip"...how could you go wrong?
7. Another big-time Detroit rap title. I still need this one...badly. Hook a honkey up...someone.
8. I think I've lost the last 3 auctions for L.S.D. How in the hell? Do you think these guys ever even tried LSD? Probably.
9. Private press, Michigan psych-folk...I've been known to take a chance on the genre before. Anything more than that $$ is beyond my level of interest and enjoyment of the genre.

Some observations...all of these titles are Detroit/Michigan records. Yeah, shit's serious. Three rap 12"s. I was the second-highest bidder on all but three of the auctions. I like my bid amounts to repeat numbers or patterns. In the same amount of time I won auctions for nine records that cost me a combined total of $277.79.
BidsPrice
1.
Item picture
6
$113.61
Free
shipping
2.
Item picture
9
$168.50
+ $2.15
shipping
3.
Item picture
4
$45.44
+ $3.00
shipping
4.
Item picture
6
$164.09
+ $4.00
shipping
5.
Item picture
15
GBP 238.33

$386.98
See description
6.
Item picture
5
$34.33
+ $4.00
shipping
7.
Item picture
13
$260.29
+ $4.00
shipping

8.
Item picture
9
$89.88
+ $4.00
shipping

9.
Item picture
3
$76.75
Free
shipping