It has been a while since I've had a good used CD score, mostly because I become increasingly post-object as far as music goes with each passing day, but truthfully this trip to the eXchange and the curious bounty I exacted is exactly why I love a used record store. Victor chewed the fat for a while and then pulled out a few thing on which to whittle away my store credit, and they, except for the Kinks which I went in there for, are glorious finds that I would never in a million years have bought outright or even dialed up in Rhapsody, partially because they aren't on there, and partially because, well, I just wouldn't have.
The Kinks - Well-Respected Kinks - a semi-legit compilation of the Kinks' early years on Marble Arch. Withe the wave of neo-Beatlemania crashing all around me (though things are eerily quiet about he whole Rock Band thing; perhaps it is actually as boring as it looks) has had me thinking about the Kinks who rolled up a lot of the same sweet stuff the Beatles were dealing but always laced it with a bitterness that made you wince and see the world for how it really is.
The Velvert Turner Group - There are two interesting stories about this: 1) Turner was a hip teenager that befriended Jimi Hendrix, who in turn taught him to play guitar, and Velvert, in turn, taught Richard Lloyd of Television to play guitar, and through that, taught every post-punk guitarist how to play guitar. 2) there are two versions of this most Jimi-influenced record, one that has more of soul/r&b vibe and then this one with layers of wailing psyche guitar laid over it. The songs really cannot bear the weight of all this excess; the real beauty of a Hendrix song is the no matter far out he went, he always sounded centered, present in it. Velvert is hanging on for dear life.
Terry Manning - Home Sweet Home - This lost classic by Stax and Ardent producer/songwriter Terry manning has the distinction of being the recording debut of Chris Bell of Big Star. Manning went on to produce or engineer recordings for everybody from Led Zeppelin to Shakira. The word is that this album came about after manning recorded an over-the-top version of the Box Tops' "Choo Choo Train" as a lark and some of his bosses at Stax saw potential in this and asked for a whole record. The whole record is one over-driven monster after another, starting with a Moog saturates "Savoy Truffle" to "One after 909" that sounds like the drugs wearing off in purgatory.
Daevid Allen's University of Errors - Money Doesn't Make It - Haven't even listened to this one yet. Here is the band on this album doing Gong's "Stoned Innocent Frankenstein"
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