Next Record Haul

After the usual Saturday staff meeting with the Boss, I took a drive to the Horinouchi Hard Off this morning to look for records. It had been a bit. There were many albums that I could not pass up. It will take a while to digest these. I bought 20 albums. You can view the entire collection as it now stands here.

The other day, Zack and I listened to his later album In Your Eyes and were most thoroughly entertained. It was phenomenal and very yachty. With this one, I already know the title track to Give Me The Night and love it, but suspect we will find some choice deep cuts as well.

No idea what I am getting here. I assume it is much more instrumental than his 1980s output. This could mean great things too. Q seems to have gotten more poppy as time went on, so we’ll see how this goes. Lord knows The Dude is still probably my favorite record bin discovery so far.

The hits on here are well worth the buy, and I think there will be even more. No doubt this album makes my collection better.

A soundtrack full of bangers that is worth an exception to my album preference. The fact that a soundtrack is songs chosen around the theme of a film makes it okay to have this in my collection, of course. But at the same time I am not looking to collect a bunch of soundtracks. Incidentally, one track from this album was in my childhood home on vinyl: The incredible song Axel F. I don’t know how my parents ended up having it amid the hellish amount of child-rearing and working they were doing, but my best theory is that my dad heard it on the radio and simply loved it enough to need to buy the single on vinyl. (He sure as hell didn’t see Beverly Hills Cop.) Next best theory is that it was a gift from my uncle Lee, who was more up on music at that moment. Lee had (maybe has?) bongoes in his basement, along with the video game Pong.

Everything I have heard of Deodato has been good. This feels likely to be superb work music.

“Midnight Train to Georgia” alone is worth it. As with many of the above, this feels promising for deep cuts.

The Doobie Brothers—*What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits*

With the year of issue being 1974, I assume this will have more of a proto-yacht than yacht sound. The smoothness was yet to be fully coaxed from the Earth. But it has “Black Water,” and I think overall a lot of potential.

One thing Zack and I settled on the other day when giving a full listen to Voulez Vous was that ABBA is weird. Not bad, and often fantastic, but weird. They were just in their own weird Swedish world. This should be great as expected.

When I was a kid, the music from the TV show Taxi meant that it was really time to go to bed, no matter how late I might want to stay up and keep the night going. This is the album that contains that theme, but also some other instrumental gems that evoke NYC, as is abundantly clear from the album cover and Japanese obi, which is the first that I have ever seen sitting horizontally atop an album. Bob James did me so right on The Official Music of The XXIIIrd Olympiad Los Angeles 1984, with the composition “Courtship” that he created for the basketball event.

Recently I watched a documentary about the music mogul Clive Davis, who brought Whitney Houston to fame. It was bittersweet to see the arc of her career through the lens of their friendship. In any case, her voice was so incredible. I did not appreciate how amazing it was at the time, although I liked it just fine. I look forward to hearing her voice on vinyl. Oh, also, you may have never seen this album cover. It is the Japan (and USSR!) issue of the album, according to the internet. The track listing is the opposite of the US one, so it starts out with the banger “How Will I Know.”

This album contains the Platonic ideal of yacht rock: “What a Fool Believes.” It will be great, and I suspect deep cuts exist on here too. I can’t wait to bask in Michael McDonald vocals in particular.

I am a late comer to the city pop genre, but the banger Plastic Love on here has gotten a lot of play in my ears in recent months. The album Variety, I am told, is actually one of Mariya Takeuchi’s less city-pop releases. It’ll be great to have on vinyl though.

One thing about The Rolling Stones is that I don’t always love their albums. For me, they have an Aerosmith-like way of having one song I like and a lot of redundant or unremarkable tracks on a given album. I am fully willing to accept that I might just need to listen more. Some Girls, though, is one with several tracks that I love. And of which many lyrics are very problematic. Rest assured that I am more of a music/atmosphere person rather than one who loves lyrics. That will be my excuse in this case.

Prince and The New Power Generation—*Purple Rain*

Nothing much needs to be said. Like many albums, I look forward to hearing how it sounds on vinyl, and having the version I hear not a remaster from later years, but the actual version (or much closer to the version) that people heard at the time the music was released. Boy do I dislike when streaming services give the remaster by default, and mark the music as from 2011 or whenever the remaster happened.

Tears for Fears—*Songs From the Big Chair*

This album is a pretty iconic part of my childhood. It will be a pleasure to hear for the first time in a while.

An unimpeachable album. On the first track when they start singing “a love supreme” at around 06:05, it makes me so happy. This will earn me a lot of money as work music too.

The main genres I look out for are disco, funk, and yacht rock. Moar disco ftw.

The Brothers Johnson—*Light Up the Night*

Hard Off erred enormously in only charging 550 yen for this. I would have paid 10 times that amount. This is one of my favorite Brothers Johnson albums. Every single track is good.

A bit of a gamble, in that I don’t know much of her catalog and the album is from 1984. But she surely had the good producers and session people and of course her incredible voice and talent, so without a doubt there is gold on here.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions—*Get Happy!*

Also kind of a gamble, for the same reasons as Ross. I don’t know Elvis Costello’s catalog well and in the past he has been hit or miss for me. But the hits have hit really nicely.

I have been listening to this gem of a double album during all the photographing and entry of today’s haul into my collection. It is soooo good. Everything I love about disco. A cursory online check indicated that it wasn’t a huge hit for her, but it may already be the best find of this haul. It will be in heavy rotation. And man she is beautiful. [returns to this paragraph] “Working the Midnight Shift” just played. How is this possibly from 1977?

The first four times I went to karaoke with people in Japan, someone sang the title track of The Stranger. It is so popular here. I see it every single time I go record hunting. Today I grabbed it because the record only cost 550 yen and had a nice obi still on it. It’ll be a fun one to listen to every so often. Shout out to Wayne Brewer, the West Valley City man I knew through Boyd who loved this song, telling us 15-year-olds, “It’s so true.” Suffice it to say he had experienced some things in life.

Frozen Food

Bullet Points