The oppressive heat shook hands with the violent rain, and I couldn't summon the drive to do much of anything at all. Rather than wilt, I decided to visit Tunes and dirty my fingertips with some old vinyl. Outside, the day danced furiously back and forth, the rain so hard at times that drops fell from cracks in the ceiling to land among the album stacks. I waited it out.
I bought only five albums. One was PJ Harvey's
White Chalk which I've owned on CD for some time, but have desperately wanted on vinyl ever since. The other four albums were completely foreign to me, but each held some hint of greatness:
Pa Kontrarie'm by Claudette et Ti Pierre,
Down the Road by Stephen Stills and Manassas,
Show Time by Ry Cooder, and a Lord Melody 12" 45rpm single from the Straker's label, especially odd for its complete lack of album art and unlabeled B-side.
I've become pretty good at judging albums by their covers, or lack thereof. And
Pa Kontrarie'm just looks awesome. With an album cover like that—two sweet-looking faces set together within a cut-out heart and floating above a pair of red lips, all set against a field of cobalt blue—how can it not be great? I haven't been able to find much information on the album, but the music, based on clavinet, is jovial and comforting—kind of like the seventh inning stretch at Shea Stadium. If Shea was in Haiti, rather than Queens. Manassas'
Down the Road combines folk, blues, and Latin music with lyrics in both Spanish and English, while Cooder's
Show Time is a live album drenched in his excellent slide-guitar work and backed by the gorgeous, soulful voices of Bobby King, Eldridge King, and Terry Evans, and Flaco Jimenez on accordion.
The Straker's Records single is a mystery, but an exciting one. The Brooklyn label, specializing in soca (a dance music originating in Trinidad and Tobago and taking its name from a combination of
soul and
calypso), was started in the early '70s by a fellow named Granville Straker who is said to have been a great influence on today's calypso sound. Perhaps most interesting for vinyl lovers, Straker also runs a record shop. Straker's Record World is located at 242 Utica Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn—not at all far from the 4 train. I think a trip is in order.
The PJ Harvey album, new and sealed, was fifteen bucks. The other four, combined, cost me the same.
I was thinking about this later that evening, when I bumped into Jersey City sax man,
Bryan Beninghove.
"Hey man!" he said.
"Hey Bryan. It's good to see you. And good to see you're keeping busy—I've noticed your name all over town."
"Yeah, this summer has been really good for me. Lots of shows popping up. How about you? You still playing music?"
"Nah. I haven't been playing much at all, other than just picking up my guitar every now and then. I recently got into vinyl, though, so I've been
listening to a ton of music—all sorts of music, music that I never imagined."
"That's the thing about vinyl," Bryan said. "Because it's so cheap, you can take a chance."
I found it interesting that his words were nearly identical to those spoken by
Henry Fiol. Henry was talking about older record stores and the prices of certain vinyl releases. He said:
When something only costs a couple of bucks, you can take a chance. You can listen to it and you can learn from it, and, if there are only a couple of tunes that are good, well, you're still learning. But now, CDs are expensive.
I turned to Bryan and said, "That's exactly it. Exactly."
