Sunday, May 14, 2006

Fearnots report, estate sale report, listening to Rahsaan

Last night was the Fearnots show at Gooski's. It was our first show since late October, and since David moved to NY. We had 2 practices last weekend and things were pretty together. There were a few moments when tempos got a little slippery. Sometimes it was hard for me to hear Hille's guitar. But then again, all of those tempo and time signature shifts aren't the easiest thing to master and something that pretty much requires regular practices to keep it up to snuff. So considering we only had 3 practices since January, it went really well. In fact I almost felt like our set was too short. I didn't look at my watch at the beginning of the set and I wondered if we only played for half an hour. It was probably more, but it seemed to whiz by.

We're Wolves played after us and they were great. Clinton is a great guy. He interned at Pulp in the paper's last few months. I saw the band at Gooski's sometime last summer or fall and it was a gig from hell for them. Both guitarists broke strings and nobody would lend them guitars or give them new strings, so they only played about 4 songs. I thought those songs were great, but Clinton was really embarassed by the whole ordeal.

------------
Got up early and did some estate sale trips before work. Total booty:
Nancy Sinatra - How Does that Grab You, orig mono on Reprise
Johnny Cash at San Quentin - orig 360 Columbia, which still has the shrink wrap and K-Mart sticker. Did they have KMarts when this came out? And they sold records there too? Wow.
Flatt & Scruggs - Songs to Cherish
Hungary, Music of a Nation. This one was mainly for the wife, who has strong Hungarian roots. It has this great green cover with the words written in silver on it. "Csardas & Folksong favorites" is also on the front.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Does your House Have Lions
Hole - Celebrity Skin

Those last 2 were CDs I got for a dollar each at a yard sale. I thought for sure the Rahsaan one would be $2 since it's a double, but he only asked for one. If I sell it I can still turn a profit. And I always wanted to hear Celebrity Skin. I also picked up videos of Bound and Love Story, in a two-for-a-dollar deal. I wasn't going to get Love Story at first, but then I didn't have fifty cents and figured, it's worth another fifty to see this classic movie that I've always been curious to see.

Roland is playing now. "Old Rugged Cross." I have that on the Blacknuss album. When I worked at WPTS, I used to play that on my jazz show, especially during the Persian Gulf war. It wasn't exactly related to it, but his little oratory about getting across the cross in the beginning was a good thing for inspiration during that time. That and David Murray's version of "Amazing Grace." One time, or maybe a couple times, I played that right after the opening of MC5's Kick Out the Jams, stopping it right after "I give you a testimonial......." and it lead right into Murray's bass clarinet blowing that hymn.

This morning there was an estate sale in Wexford that mentioned records in the ad. I was thinking about going to it, even though it started at 7:30. But I went to bed close to 3. I set the clock for 7 to see if I could still do it, but I shut the alarm off and crawled back into bed. Had I gone, I would've needed to go on Mapquest, stopped to get gas....it wasn't worth it for what might have been any battered stack of Jerry Vale, Mitch Miller and Bobby Vinton albums in hopes of one treasure.

Having said that, the collection was probably a bunch of old Prestige and Riverside albums....

-----------------
Must talk about the one estate I wandered into yesterday. The booty from above came from the first and third sales I went to.
But the second sale was something. There were signs all over Beacon Street. Big honkin' signs all over the place: ESTATE SALE TODAY!!!! It was in an apartment on a very exclusive cul de sac off of Beacon. One of the streets that leads to it has signs every few feet about how it's a private road. Geez. I walked up there and figured, well if I'm going to get yelled out for going up here, they shouldn't've put signs at the bottom of it.

Anyhow, when I realized the sale was in this fancy apartment building, I walked up and was told by a nice 20-something guy that we had to sign in and wait for someone to come down and escort us to the apartment. When we finally got up there, it looked like some space age swingers pad fromt he '60s, complete with wild silver furniture, white marble floors (tile?) and mirrors all over the place. And hardly anything for sale, it seemed.

I asked about records and the lady said she wasn't sure but they might have thrown them out. IEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! With an affluent place like this -- her parents lived there, who, judging by her age were probably at least in their 80s -- they probably had a nice stash of jazz, I betcha.

Well, she found out and told me that her niece took the records and the turntable. Oh well. At least I knew there wasn't some nice stash of vinyl sitting in a trash bin somewhere.

Our victrola is fixed so I might pick it up today. Ha-cha.

No comments: