Used CD Store Score - Sentimental Journey Edition

I turned a bag half-ful of CD's I didn't want into a quarter bag of ones I did, and got to go deep music nerd with the proprietor so it was a successful outing. I love used Cd store economics - I had $70 in trade racked up and was selecting my way up to that when I spied "The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions" in its shiny metallic box up on the wall for the same amount, and I told the guy I was tempted to put all of this shit back and just get that, and he gave me the singular look of er, that is worth 70 in cash, not 70 in trade so I let it be. We moved on to talk about Bill Laswell and he threw in a Material CD and some dub side project by him on the house, so all is good in the world.

My choices are brimming with sentimentality for old and new friends. Here's the breakdown -

The Flaming Lips - UFO's at the Zoo live DVD - I am tentatively working on a big thing on The Flaming Lips, so this will be relatively essential. Plus I love the Flaming Lips like they are glorious drunken cousins.

Sleepy John Estes - Working Man Blues - I started reading this guy's refreshingly spartan music blog, and ever since he mentioned Sleepy John Estes a week or so ago, I've had a need to hear it ever since.

Lightnin Hopkins - Coffee House Blues - It has 15 songs and was $4.

Lee Morgan - The Rumproller - Lee is kinda corny but I love his records in that lounge lizard kinda way. I used to do a radio show of lounge music on the high school station here in town, and it made me think of that.

Fred McDowell - Mississippi Blues - Fred is some lethal stuff. When I first did a white-boy blues safari at the library in Kansas City a couple years back, a Fred McDowell collection was fortunately one of my first selections. When you are sitting in a cubicle not writing computer programs but instead are listening to scratchy recordings of old men singing about death and drinking, it is simultaneously the the loneliest and warmest feeling one can garner in corporate life.

Robert Wyatt - Compilation - the CD of the cassette that Philip sent me that I mentioned the other day, and the omnipresence of Robert Wyatt in my life right now cannot be understated. I expect him to skydive onto my lawn at any moment now.

Robyn Hitchcock - Storefront Hitchcock - I've seen him twice, and both times I walked away with an overwhelming desire to be Robyn Hitchcock, and this live recording is one of my favorites. His rants, his stage presence are exquisitely captured here. Also I remember this as being the only CD my friend Hope had in her studio.

Julian Cope - Jehovahkill - his finest hour, I think, with "Upwards at 45 Degrees" and "Soul Desert." English "Iron Man" meets "The Wicker Man" Druid stud folk at its mightiest. I discovered Julian Cope back in Kansas City on my friend and co-worker Scott's mp3 share and have been hooked ever since.

Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos - s/t - the kind of impulse buy one does with credit. I always love Marc Ribot's guitar work even when I don't care for the band or artist he's working with, and I suspect I will get wafts of when Buena Vista Social Club ruled the Earth and we would pile into Bob's car all high and shit and go drivin'

Material - Secret Life and Automaton - Dub Terror Exhaust - These are the two freebies he threw in because he had extra copies (somehow... it's not like Bill Laswell and his peculiar downtown NYC jazz-reggae fusion was ever an over-marketed oeuvre) and he figured I would like them. It's good to be a regular.