Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Digging for Vinyl – Prince –PRINCE



     Entering the record shop last week I was hoping to dig up some rare grooves in the country mood, or the alt-country styling's that I was introduced to almost 20 years ago…the mag No Depression was my bible when it came to what I would listen to and buy in those days. As I starting pursuing the bins and saying my hellos to ACM&A Clerk extraordinaire Kevin (he showed me this very cool piece of vinyl that I can't remember the name so when I'm in tomorrow I have to dig it out) some new stuff started creeping into my view, and when I say "new" I mean new to me in the vinyl realm of things. There was Strange Advance, a Canadian new wave group that back in the day I really dug, with tracks like "She Controls Me" and the title track off of the record I came upon "Worlds Away"…then I noticed some Nash The Slash on vinyl, it was his 1978 12" Bedside Companion…if you've never herd Nash or his band FM check it out, defiantly worth a spin. I love coming across pieces of rare vinyl, this week it was the Audiophile Vinyl LP for The Police's Zenyatta Mondatta. The regular version is an easy score but the Audiophile version is a bit trickery to dig up, so if you are into The Police and collect vinyl I'd be getting yourself down to Alleycats Music & Art and picking this up.

    My find for this week while digging through the bins was hiding between 'Dirty Mind' and 'Around the World in a Day'; it was Prince's 1978 self-titled album PRINCE. I you are into music like I have been since such an early age you have a few artists/bands that you stick by through the good and the bad, they might release something that's so off the wall, so out to left field that you just wonder what they were thinking..well Prince is that artist for me. I first saw Prince live back when I was only 13 years old, it was the Purple Rain tour and I never looked back. PRINCE was Prince's second studio album and WB said this record needed to have "hits" to try and recoup on the overblown budget from his first album For You, they didn't have to worry. The record is not only seriously sexy and funky from the start with "I Wanna Be Your Lover" & "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?" but was also tender to the touch as heard in "With You & "Still Waiting". Prince over the years has made some rather "different" choices when it came to his career or his character but one thing you can't take away is he has never stopped workin' it, I'll put PRINCE up against anything he releases today and you can't tell me his funky self has faded.

  One thing I want to mention I saw they had this week is this very cool record cleaning system, it's called the Spin-Clean®. If you're like me you have the big brush and bottle of solution and that almost does the trick…almost, but this Spin-Clean® washer enables you to clean both sides of your record at once, it's pretty cool and from what I've read online people are saying that it's the best vinyl record cleaner on the market. So when you're in Alleycats check it out, it's worth it.

  Well that's all friends; see you next Wednesday in the Vinyl Bins

Joe Cornelisse-SMM

 















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Alleycats Music & Art 

95 Mississauga St. E, Orillia, Ontario
Hours Tue - Sat: 11:00 - 5:00 PM
Sun: 12:00 - 4:00 PM

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