Look what I found in a used record store

I seem to be spending a lot of time in New York lately...

Albany, New York this time and an evening trip to Last Vestige Music Shop in the hood.  Sseriously, I don't recommend going there at night.  I found this place using my iPhone's map app, but apparently Microsoft is working on a way to make sure that doesn't happen in the future.

This may be the first record store I've ever visited with a 'prog' section, although the most interesting thing I found there was a stack of Byrds records (for anyone who may have thought otherwise).

This store is jammed into a pretty small storefront so the stacks are more vertical than horizontal.  You'll have to spend some time on your knees and on a stool if you want to check everything out.  There's a wall of CDs and a few racks of 45s, but most of the stuff here is long-play vinyl ranging from the 50s to the 80s.  

These guys know what they're doing and have a mail-order business as well (no surprise there), but I did manage to find a few bargains.  There's a bargain bin BTW with $3 albums but they aren't in plastic sleeves and most are either no-name rock bands or are scratched up.  I'd recommend skipping that bin since there are enough good albums in the $3-$5 range anyway.

Picked up six albums for a total of $31 USD, including tax.  Not bad.  No real treasures here but I did get a few interesting pieces:

If - Waterfall.  I believe this is mostly If's '4' album repackaged for the U.S. market, although there are a few new tracks.  The most interesting thing about this album is that this is the first one with the late Cliff Davies on drums.  Davies would go on to play for and produce Ted Nugent during Nugent's heyday as a solo act.

Sandy Denny - Like an Old-Fashioned Waltz.  I'm a big sucker for the late Ms. Denny's vocals.  This is an interesting album as it was recorded during the period of time she had left Fairport Convention and after Fotheringay folded.  She was trying to establish herself as sort of a pop artist.  Didn't work out that well and she returned to record a couple more Fairport albums before she passed away.

Flairck - Circus.  I don't know a whole lot about this Dutch band even though I'm the one who added most of their records to the Archives.  This was an original pressing though and for just $3 USD I couldn't resist.

Also got an unopened copy of Blackgirl's first album 'Procedure' for only $3.  Maybe these are the chicks the Violent Femmes dug...

And the British country-rock band Unicorn's 'Blue Pine Trees'.  They remind me a little bit of the Byrds.  I tried to add them here to the Archives once but if the Byrds couldn't get in it doesn't surprise me these guys didn't either.

All in all not a bad haul.  

This weekend included a trip to check out the Northeast Pennsylvania Record & CD Show in Scranton.  100,000 or so albums, CDs, cassettes, 45s and DVDs.  The clientele included a mix of old hippies, stoners, college kids and Guidos who seemed to know nothing about music that I assume were looking for bargains to seed their own store inventories.

There were a lot of great albums in the bins, but I found most of them to be overpriced, of poor quality, or both.  After about three hours of digging through stacks I did manage to come away with six decent vinyl records.  The best of those include -

Fairport Convention – “Babbacombe” Lee (1971). 

This was the band’s seventh studio album, and along with ‘Angel Delight’ issued just a few months’ prior marked a pretty significant for the band away from progressive folk and toward a more tepid and less adventurous folk rock sound.  A lot of the reason of course was the two-phased schism within the group that led to the departures of the iconic characters of Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, as well as bassist Ashley Hutchings.  This left Simon Nicol as the only original member in the group, although string player Dave Swarbrick and drummer Dave Mattacks had been around for a couple years and appeared on the band’s three best-known albums ‘What We Did on our  Holidays’, ‘Unhalfbricking’ and ‘Liege & Lief’, all released in 1969. 

‘Angel’ and ‘Babbacombe’ were also the first Fairport records not produced by the inimitable American Joe Boyd, who had returned to the United States after spending most of the 60s in London discovering and producing some of the biggest names in British post-Beat and folk rock from that period.  The band turned instead to Boyd’s longtime engineer John Wood, best known to that point as the guy who managed to get Nick Drake focused long enough to record three studio albums of his own.

‘Babbacombe Lee’ is often pointed to as being the first folk-rock ‘opera’ and indeed it is a concept album that recounts the true story of the late 19^th century Brit John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee, a drifter who was convicted in controversial fashion in 1885 of murdering a woman he had done odd jobs for off and on since childhood.  Lee was sentenced to hang but infamously survived three consecutive malfunctions of the scaffolding’s trap door and ultimately had his sentence commuted to life in prison.  The story begins with a reading of the trial verdict and then works its way back from there as the narrator and Fairport players recount Lee’s life and the events which led up to him sitting in the cell awaiting his fate.

Musically this is a pretty decent album although a bit uneven at times.  Nicols’ guitar work and Mattacks’ piano range from very good to inspired, and the story’s continuity is solid.  Unfortunately for the band musical tastes were changing and the album, despite modest critical acclaim, did not garner the same level of attention as their prior work.  Some of this was also probably due to the absence of both Thompson and Denny, both of whom would resurface with the band sporadically on some of their future albums.  There was also a BBC broadcast of the Babbacombe Lee story a few years later that featured several songs from this album as the soundtrack, but with a different lineup since Nicol left following this release and Denny had by then abandoned her attempt at pop stardom and had returned to the band.

As is stated on the back cover, Lee was released from prison in December, 1907 after serving nearly twenty-three years of his life sentence.  His whereabouts after his release are sketchy, although there is some evidence he made a living for at least a few years traveling and making appearances recounting his life story.  There’s also some controversy surrounding his death, which depending on who is telling the story either occurred as a result of a heart condition while at a work camp in 1941, or around 1945 after he relocated to the U.S.  Either way the man appears to have managed to live a long and full life after escaping the gallows in spectacular fashion as a young man.

The copy I picked up is in pristine condition and doesn’t appear to have even been played.  It is the U.S. promo version (A&M SP 4333) with a gatefold cover and an insert booklet with a lengthy version of the Babbacombe story apparently told by Lee himself.  The most interesting thing about this promo is that the banding reflects the released version with three tracks on side A and two on side B.  I’ve seen other promos of this album where the timing strips are cut for radio play and are closer to the 15-track version on the Island CD remaster.  This was the most expensive album I bought this weekend but considering its condition I figure the $21 USD price was a pretty good deal.

Tony Banks – A Curious Feeling (1979).

I’ve never been much of a Genesis fan, as for the most part I find their earlier Gabriel albums to be too British for me to really connect with, and the Phil Collins pop-era stuff to be too bland and commercial to be in any way appealing.  In fact ‘Wind and Wuthering’ remains to this day the most appealing for me, and one of only four Genesis albums in my collection.  That said, I couldn’t pass up an excellent copy of Banks’ solo debut on vinyl. 

This is also a concept album of sorts, the story of an ordinary guy who is apparently going nuts and realizes it.  Originally the album was supposed to be based on the Keyes’ sci-fi story ‘Flowers for Algernon’, but Banks decided to alter the theme after learning the musical ‘Charlie and Algernon’, also based on Keyes’ story, was already in the works.  The musical’s score would eventually be nominated for a Tony Award so perhaps Banks made the right choice.

In Banks'  version the rather overt sexual tension in the Keyes tale are much more subdued, and the emphasis seems to be more on the internalized struggle of the man whose mental state is deteriorating.  Musically this sounds like just what it is – a late 70s album written and performed by an artist whose musical roots are firmly planted in the late 60s and early 70s.  There is a lot of synthesizer, crisp and tightly engineered vocal tracks, and a studio sheen that characterizes so much of the music that released around this time period.

I can’t say as I found this to be an exceptional or noteworthy album based solely on its artistic qualities, but for the $8 USD price I figure it makes an economic addition to the collection.

John Lodge – Natural Avenue (1977).

Lodge is of course best known for his work as bassist and occasional lyricist/vocalist for the Moody Blues.  This is his only solo album as far as I know, and I didn’t even know it existed until I saw it in a bin at the record fair.  Apparently this was recorded sometime in 1976 (the liner notes don’t say exactly when) during the Moody’s long hiatus between ‘Seventh Sojourn’ and ‘Octave’.  The music here doesn’t sound like either of those albums, having instead a much more up-tempo vibe than anything the Moodys did except maybe ‘Long Distance Voyager’.  Any symphonic sounds come from a combination of a small orchestra conducted by Brian Rogers, a few synthesizers and some piano. 

Overall the presence of Lodge’s voice and the orchestra, though comparatively understated, at least musically connect these songs somewhat to the classic Moody Blues period.  As with the Banks album though, this is an album released by a member of a legendary and established (though waning) 70s progressive rock band, at a time when what once seemed immutable musical constants in popular music were changing rapidly and many old-guard rockers were trying anything and everything to reinvent themselves in the burgeoning punk/new-Wave/disco/MTV era.  It’s an okay album, but certainly not particularly innovative.

Even the cover seems rather perfunctory, instantly recognizable as a Roger Dean original but not anywhere near as memorable or spectacular as his best work for Yes, Badger or even Osibisa. 

I got a near-mint copy of the U.S. gatefold release (London PS 683) for just $7 USD, which seems like a good price, so in all I can’t complain.

I also got a copy of Clannad's second album but I haven't had a chance to check that one out yet so maybe I'll post more later...

rushfan4 wrote:   I was also quite happy to find Kate Bush's Hounds of Love on CD for $3.50 too.

Love that album!  Bought it on vinyl when it first came out.  I'd never heard of here before then but after listening to that one I bought 'The Dreaming' (also on vinyl) which blew me away and I've picked up almost everything she's done since!