I guess is that in the end I dropped less that $20.00 there, but ended up going home with a couple of cool records, so all in all it turned out to be a satisfying little safari. This time out a look around the stall, with its framed Elvis-abilia and such did not bode well.įortunately I didn’t give up, because in the next row I dug out a couple of cool R&B sides, a psych 45 (nothing too rare but a cool song) and joy of joys, a nice clean copy of the Isley Brothers ‘Nobody But Me’. Most of the time I wouldn’t necessarily be depressed about such a selection, mainly because the general time period of these discs suggested to me that there might also be some prime early soul and or cool rock (I’m always game for a Del Shannon or Freddie Cannon disc) in the bins. I dove in with gusto but my spirits were almost immediately dampened after the first 100 or so discs which contained an inordinately large proportion of Connie Francis, Fabian and 4 Seasons 45s. row upon row of sleeved 45s, with no one else around to get in the way. The record stash that day just happened to be my favorite kind, i.e. My wife continued to wander, and I started to dig. Situations like this generally worked like this: we both wandered around looking at stuff for “the house”, until one of us located a stash of records, at which time all bets (as they say) were off. The day was sunny and we had all the time in the world to waste so we pulled over, hopped out of the car and started checking out the scene. So, one day a few years ago my wife and I are out motoring in the countryside, pretty much just wandering (something we used to do a lot before the kiddies rolled along) and we happened upon a roadside flea market. Just another example of how nobody (even me, heh, heh…) bats 1000 all the time. This was of course a rube move on my part, and considering my curiosity about all things musical – especially the original versions of songs – entirely uncharacteristic. However – and this is a big however – I think I loved the Human Beinz version so much (I can often be seen driving around singing the 100 or so NO-NO’s in the song at the top of my lungs) I never felt the need to track down the original. Sure, I knew the song via the extremely cool garage/soul cover by the Human Beinz (a hit in its day and one of the few staples of oldies radio that I never tire of hearing), and I knew that it was originally created by the Isley Brothers. I should preface this by hepping you to the wholly embarrassing fact that I hadn’t even heard today’s selection until a few years ago. In the spirit of warming things up a bit, I bring you one of the heaters that I keep stored in my crates to keep the other 45s from shivering. Last Friday the weather jockeys on the local news were all atwitter about how this was the coldest day in two years, which served only to put into perspective how warm it’s really been. It’s all ugly and salty out but the cold – as long as it doesn’t stray into strange, previously unseen, wholly absurd Arctic levels – is bracing and clears the head nicely. This is all meant to give you some idea of my general state of mind, which at this moment seems to be on the upswing.Įither way, winter seems to have finally decided to unpack and stick around for a while, which is not entirely a bad thing. Very recent developments on the work scene are moving ever so slightly in a direction that signals improvement, but I’m reserving judgment until I get a better idea of where this is all leading. On a sliding scale that begins with banal and tops out at soul-destroying, I find myself running at an uncomfortable (but bearable) “consistently unpleasant”. This is not to say that things aren’t bad. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (the unbroken kind being the only variety that we customarily feature in this space), I generally reach this point some time in the middle of Monday morning, just around the time the magical powers of my coffee start to wear off. Here we gather once again in the middle end of the work week, and if you’re anything like me you’ve already had just about enough of this ‘working for a living’ jive.