Digging for Vinyl – It looks like an LP but it's really a 45...The 12" Single Years

    I told this story to someone else recently so it's still fairly fresh in my mind; it was 1983 and I was still pretty wet behind the ears as far as music was concerned, what was out there, what to buy…that kind of stuff.  A friend and I had decided to buy a new record, back then you would pool your money with someone else to buy some tunes, and if you were the one that had the turntable or tape deck it was yours…so we buy a copy of Duran Duran's "Is There Something I Should Know" and in brackets it said (Monster Mix)….did not clue in to what that was about or that it only had 2 songs on it, one on each side, so be it, we took it home to spin. We were already familiar with the sounds of DD so when the needle dropped on the vinyl for the first time and it was this very slow, noisy, almost scary sounding song, not what we had expected, but since it did say (Monster Mix) we took it to be a "Scary" version of the song…..yes we were playing that 12" single not on the speed it was meant to be played (45 RPM) but on 33…we played it like that for about a week until one day one of us put it on after playing a 45 (7" to the kids out there) and it sounded like it should sound…..that was my introduction into the world of the 12" single. 

  What got me thinking about 12" singles again was the nice variety of them that Alleycats Music & Art here in Orillia had in stock when I visited last week. They had everything from Blue Peter's "Don't Walk Past" to Laurie Anderson's "O Superman", even some Howard Jones and some Heaven 17….all of which back in tha day would have been spinning on my turntable, who am I kidding if they were at my place I'd spin them today. 

    The attraction for me to the 12" or EP was there was always something new or different on it, the record that the original song had come off of had probably already been out for a bit and if you were a fan of the band you were chomping at the bit for more from them, so when you got a new EP there was always the "Extended Dance mix" or the "Monster Mix" , or you might have tracks that were only exclusive to the 12" single…and sometimes those were the ones that I'd play the crap out of. 

    My find for this week was the Depeche Mode 12" for "Enjoy The Silence (The Quad: Final Mix)", that came out in 1990 and what makes this one so special is its Single Sided, the one side has the song and the other side has a huge DM with a rose etched into the vinyl…look at the pictures I have provided. Not only does it look very cool (always a selling point) but the 15 minute remix of "Enjoy The Silence" is killer…..I played it about 4 times in a row this morning and could not get sick of it, always a sign of a good find.

  So get yourself down to Alleycats this week here in Orillia and dig yourself up some killer tunes for yourself. 

See you next Wednesday in the Vinyl Bins

Joe Cornelisse-SMM

You can also find Alleycats Music & Art on Facebook

Alleycats Music & Art

95 Mississauga St. E, Orillia, Ontario

Hours   

Tue - Sat: 11:00 - 5:00 PM

Sun: 12:00 - 4:00 PM

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

 

You can also find Alleycats Music & Art on Facebook 

Alleycats Music & Art 

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

Digging For Vinyl – The The ~ Infected

   For all the years I've been working at and or haunting Records Stores I've come to realize that there are three types of people who dwell in these stores day after day. The first is the guy (or girl) that's on a mission, they want to be left alone, they don't want to engage in any form of small talk, don't tell them about the time you saw Dylan and you couldn't understand a word he said…they don't care, they are there to scan the bins flipping one piece of vinyl at a time and don't need their concentration broken…I get like that sometimes. 

    The second type are the casual diggers, they scan the A's then wander a bit, talk to whomever is working (or trying to get work done) or try to talk to the guy beside them about the 10CC album that they may or may not purchase, then they move onto the C's (they went through the B's yesterday), they might ask you to spin something (cut them off at 2 pieces because you'll never get them out of there)…..I'm also like that somedays. 

   Number Three, well their the customer that knows their music, they can go on and on and on about any number of subjects relating to music, they will spend hours upon hours in the store and after they leave you realize that they didn't buy anything…they never do. This is the person that will eventually work in the store….that was me.

  I made two trips to Alleycats Music & Art this week, both in the same day. A mid-morning scan of the bins to just see what was around then back in the afternoon for a full on assault. The owner Mike was there so in-between looking at records we'd chat, that's the one thing I miss about working in a small indie store is the casual chat. I was pulling out all kinds of jazzy gems this week; he has a couple of Nina Hagen albums there right now…Nina Hagen in Orillia, now that brings the stores "Cool Factor" up a bit more than where it already was….and it was already pretty high. I also came across Ringo Starr's fourth solo record 'Goodnight Vienna'; I just love the cover of Ringo in a scene from the classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still, I also found a commercial for the album on YouTube, I posted it HERE on Sonic More Music. A band I was always a fan of was INXS especially their early work, so you can imagine how cool it was to find a copy of 'Shabooh Shoobah' in the bins, the track "Don't Change" is possibly my utmost beloved INXS track.

    I could then hear a voice calling out for me from the various "T" section…it was Matt Johnson of The The and the record was 'Infected'. My first encounter with The The was through this album and like many kids at the time this album was released (1986) it was the video for the title track "Infected" that hooked me. If my memory serves me correct I bought it on cassette first then picked up the vinyl. Like many records I bought in those days I would play them from front to back, side A to B but sometimes I'd drop the stylus down on side B first and that would create a totally different vibe, I did that this week when I brought 'Infected' home and heard the track "Sweet Bird of Truth" for the first time in over 20 years…hearing Matt's voice again sounding like it's coming through the bowels of the earth slapped me back into why I first loved music. 

See you next Wednesday in the Vinyl Bins

Joe Cornelisse-SMM

Please visit Sonic More Music on Facebook HERE and please LIKE it.

You can also find Alleycats Music & Art on Facebook

Alleycats Music & Art

95 Mississauga St. E, Orillia, Ontario

Hours   

Tue - Sat: 11:00 - 5:00 PM

Sun: 12:00 - 4:00 PM

 

My son wanted to take home G N' R Lies but I talked him out of it.