Used Vinyl: Ohio and Indiana Edition

MITHRIDATES
Count among the many joys of vinyl its ability to make a roundtrip drive from Chitown to Columbus, OH remotely bearable. I didn't have time to stop at every independent record store on the way, but did manage to stop by two gems.
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First stop: Luna Records, Indianapolis
Luna feels more like one of those soul-destroying Virgin "Records" stores than your average vinyl shop, but only because it's clean and well-lit. I suppose a "good-for-them" is in order for not feeling the need to dingy up the place just to look authentic, but then again, let's face it, some of us like record stores because we can at least pretend the faux-authenticity is genuine.

But that's the only strike against the place. Used records are rotated in to the shelves and the rest are in egg crates below the CD racks (we forgive you). They don't have a grading system, but they let me play a few seemingly underpriced Dylan and Stones gems to make sure they played through OK (they did!). Vintage Hot Rocks; John Wesley Harding; Blue Hawaii; Last of the Mohicans; Meaty, Beaty, Big, and Bouncy. All in good enough condition. All relatively cheap.

And OK, it's not the most original, but Frank Horrigan likes it (and he saved the President!) so I had to pick up a re-released Miles Davis' (my high school jazz instructor thinks Bill Evans actually wrote most of it) Kind of Blue. Miles, what would you do if you had an hour to live? If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow. Oh, uh, that's nice Miles. Uh, how about you just play something for us . . .

Oh, and unlike what some used record store hipsters are wont to do, the cashier actually told me "those are all great records." I'm pretty sure it's against German speech laws to call The Sound of Musik by Falco a great record. Craptastic maybe. But great? Please.

Second stop: Used Kids, Columbus

Situated near the home of the universally acknowledged "most obnoxious fans in the midwest", Used Kids is what you'd expect from an establishment specializing in "previously enjoyed" LPs. Up the dingy staircase, plastered with postings, dimly lit. Perfect. The nephews came along for the trip and were given instructions to go out and find anything good.

The younger one came back with Deep Purple, Meet the Beatles ($1), and Appetite for Destruction. All keepers. Well done, young Jedi. "This kind of place makes me want to get a record player."

The elder came back with the orignial Run DMC ($3). At least the rapophile knows who started it all. "I can see why people spend lots of time in record stores," he said. There's hope for the next generation, after all . . .

Fifty bucks for Layla, Rubber Soul and Rock n' Roll Music Vols. I and II; Thirty-three bucks for the other twenty-one records. That's right. This place has the best dollar record section on the planet.

There's still apparently a little bit of originality left out there among the manufactured villages and chain stores . . .

Rock Me, Amadeus!

MITHRIDATES
I went back to Dave's Records yesterday for the third time this month. OK, I may have a slight addiction. Fair enough. But yesterday I raided the Classical/Opera section and am now listening to an almost scratch-free seven-dollar double record of The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Tutto è gioia, no? Well, no. You see, this Eastern Despot didn't read the fine print — or actually the big, bold print right on the cover. What I'm listening to right now is a bunch of fat sopranos, accompanied by the music and singing to the tune of Die Zauberflöte — but IN ENGLISH!

With all due respect to the geniuses at The Metropolitan Opera Club, there are reasons we want to listen to this exquisite music in its original Deutsch. And it's not just snobbishness. Snobbishness is why I don't like the supertitles at the Met. I like being slightly less in the dark than the bridge-and-tunnel crowd (welcome again, Whitecollar Redneck).

And it's certainly not the inherent beauty of the German language. It's simply that we don't want the sheer stupidity of the plot and inanity of the dialogue made so plain and obvious. If it's in some foreign language we can only partially understand then we can pretend that the libretto is as sophisticated as we (think we) are. Instead we know that one of the great musical triumphs of all time is as mind-numbing as a Bollywood blockbuster and as pointless as Terrance and Phillip's Asses of Fire (and for the time, probably as tasteful).

Red said it best after Andy got sent to the hole for blaring Mozart over the Shawshank loudspeakers:

I have no idea to this day what them two Italian ladies were singin' about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singin' about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.

But it's over and done with sooner than I could finish this post. And so blaring over the speakers in my living room — much to the dismay perhaps of my rock 'n' roll neighbors — is the overture to Le Nozze di Figaro. And for those of you who might not be classical music fans, anything that opened up Trading Places can't be all bad, right?

Some of us do love classical music, though. Do you remember intermission at the Chicago Symphony on our second date, a mere 48 hours after we first met, and you said, "I am perfectly happy right now"?

But let's not get carried away with ourselves here. This is a rock 'n' roll country and this is a rock 'n' roll blog. And so I contend that it really doesn't get much better than this . . .

Vinyl Soundtracks

MITHRIDATES
So, yeah — I went vinyl six months ago and bought a turntable for the first time since, well, ever. And yes, of course the first record played was Thriller. My collection's growing pretty quickly with used record stores still going strong in the Windy City. And I tell you, after all those years in overly bright and sterile Virgin and Tower "Record" stores, a genuine used record store is a thing of beauty.

Last night I walked into Reckless Records and stopped briefly at the Soundtracks section, just for kicks. Forty five minutes and $72 (including tax) later I walked out with:

• A Clockwork Orange, condition: very good, $12 — Alex et al beat up Billy Boy's crew to "The Thieving Magpie"
  
• Music from the Man with no Name trilogy, very good, $4 — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly — best soundtrack ever?
• Thirteen James Bond Themes, very good, $6
• Blues Brothers, very good, $3 — The Cook County Assessor's Office is on the 3rd floor
• Television's Greatest Hits, near mint, $7 — includes Captain Kangaroo, Magilla Gorilla, Get Smart, Superman, and even a test of the emergency broadcast system
• This is Spinal Tap, very good, $8 — This record could be none more black. See right.

• Miami Vice, very good, $2
• Pretty in Pink, very good, $5 — Don't laugh, it's got OMD, INXS, Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, Joe Jackson, New Order, and yes, Phutatorius, it's got the Smiths
• Life of Brian, near mint, $3 — Not so bad once you're up
• Amadeus, near mint, $5
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service, very good, $5
• Saturday Night Fever, very good, $3
• The Big Chill, very good, $1
• An Officer and a Gentlemen, near mint, $1 — Toe the line, you slimy worms!
  
• Smokey and the Bandit, good, $1
  

OK, so I overpaid for Smokey and the Bandit, but watching the checkout dude try to suppress his laughter was worth at least 75 cents, so I figure I'm only out about fifteen cents or so.

PHUTATORIUS
"I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper and keep him company . . ."

I loved that Pretty in Pink soundtrack. Had it on cassette: "Do Wot You Do," "Shell Shock," "Please Please Please" by THE SMITHS (contrast Ferris Bueller's Day Off, with the Dream Academy cover), "Wouldn't It Be Good" — this was great stuff. The Psych Furs re-recorded "Pretty in Pink" for the movie: the original is better. Still, though . . .