Easton Connell

I spent the last week down in the Bay Area, reuniting with old friends and seeing The Cure. One of my favorite parts of leaving home is getting to visit record stores. I rarely travel anywhere without at least poking my head into one and rarely, if ever, leave empty handed. I spent a good portion of my time in the Bay in various record shops and came back to Arcata with a full crate in the back of the car. I love coming back to town with a box of fresh wax and going through each one on my radio show. This time around I scored a little too heavily to fit it all into two hours on a Sunday night.

Rasputin Music (Concord CA)

I didn’t expect much from a record store in exciting, exotic Concord but was pleasantly surprised. It took me a minute to find their slim selection of records. For a store that brands itself as the largest independent record store in the Bay it looked an awful lot like a DVD store. Racks upon racks of DVDs, and tucked away in the corner past the ocean of CDs were a few shelves of LPs. Your standard fare on the shelves, but the dusty collection of used singles is where it got interesting. While flipping through Smiths reissues I heard a loud laugh and looked down to where Bridget was up to her elbows in the stacks. “Dude, the Thong Song?” She held up a radio edit advance copy of Sisqo’s Unleash the Dragon. Not just the single, the entire record in all of its unheard glory. For $1. I quickly abandoned the section I was looking in, pulled up a stool, and went at it. An hour later I carried a large stack up to the counter in my dust-grimy fingers with the sense of victory a wolverine must feel when it finally finds that old dead moose carcass it smelled through six feet of snow and ice. Not the best meal, but I found unexpected sustenance in a barren wasteland. The haul:

• Blackstreet ft. Mystikal – Wizzy Wow 12″
• Dead Prez – Hip-Hop 12″
• The Egyptian Lover – Egypt, Egypt 12″
• Femi Kuti ft. Mos Def – Do Your Best 12″
• The Hi-Lo’s – Clap Yo’ Hands
• Jurassic 5 – Concrete Schoolyard 12″ [on a compilation single also featuring a live Cut Chemist mix, Dilated Peoples, and Styles of Beyond]
• Lauryn Hill – Doo-Wop (That Thing) 12″
• Ludacris – Area Codes 12″
• Ludacris – Word of Mouf
• Mariah Carey – I Still Believe 12″
• Mellow Man Ace – Mentirosa 12″
• Psychefunkapus – s/t [I had no idea what this was, but was intrigued by the name, the angry octopus illustration on the cover, and the large CONTAINS LANGUAGE THAT MIGHT BE OFFENSIVE sticker on it.]
• Sisqo – Unleash the Dragon
• Sole Sides – Send Them b/w DJ Shadow’s Entropy

Amoeba Records (Berkeley CA)

I’ve never gone into an Amoeba and not found something great. You’d think that such a popular record store in a populous area would be constantly picked over, but I always manage to find something outstanding. One of my favorite finds on this trip was right here – Cee-Lo’s first solo record in good condition for $5.

• Bosq – Celestial Strut
• Cee-Lo – Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections
• Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On
• NxWorries – Link Up & Suede
• Peliroja – Injusticia [I picked this one up as a gamble – never heard of the group or the label, but the back listed Leon Michels on tenor sax. El Michels has yet to do me wrong and this record was no exception. Funky stuff.]

Mad Monk’s Center for Anachronistic Media (Berkeley CA)

I walked up Telegraph from Amoeba to Rasputin, handed my bag to a clerk, and headed downstairs toward the LPs. I remembered the new arrivals being to the left of the foot of the stairs, and sure enough there are a few shelves there. I spy a soundtrack for Disney’s Beauty & the Beast and get excited even as I wonder to myself whether or not that ever got released on vinyl. I look at the other records and see that they’re all soundtracks as well. And then see the sign hidden beneath the top shelf reading LASER DISCS. (Do you know anyone with a laser disc player? I see these things everywhere, and know no one who does more than collect them.) I quickly take in the rest of the basement and sure enough, no records. I return upstairs, look around the ground floor and check the signs hanging from the ceiling above the second story and see no mention of records. I go ask the clerk I handed my bag to and she tells me that they stopped selling vinyl a few months ago. All their stock was relocated to Mad Monk’s down the street. I thank her and collect my bag, and head back down the road feeling blind for missing a new(ish) record store right across the street from where I was. Past Gordo’s, back down to Amoeba, and there it is: Mad Monk’s Center for Anachronistic Media. It lived up to the name.

• Afrika Bambaataa – Planet Rock 12″
• Barry White – Greatest Hits
• The Cure – …Happily Ever After [I consider myself a somewhat serious fan of The Cure and had never heard of this record. After Three Imaginary Boys The Cure wanted to release a double album but the record label nixed it and so Seventeen Seconds and Faith were released as two separate records. …Happily Ever After pairs them back into a double album as they were originally intended.]
• Ethiopian Quintet – Afro-Latin Soul
• Jurassic 5 – Power in Numbers
• Kendrick Lamar – good kid, mAAd city
• Lux Radio Theater – The African Queen [HFRA Players veterans will remember this one.]
• Mulatu Astatke – Mulatu of Ethiopia
• Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Let Love In
• Scarface – A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die 12″ 
• Tone-Loc – Loced After Dark
• Zapp – II

Amoeba Records (The Haight, San Francisco CA)

Sabrina, Bridget, and I visited the aquarium on Pier 39, one of those touristy things you think you’re too cool to do until you finally do it and realize you’ve been missing out. The aquarium is small but showcases local marine life in exhibits that are actually beneath the bay itself. It took maybe an hour to see everything and was well worth it. After ogling the octopuses we decided to kill time before dinner with a quick stop at another Amoeba.

• Aceyalone & RJD2 – Magnificent City
• Ahmed Malek – Musique Originale de Films [This was another well-chosen gamble. I had no idea who Ahmed Malek was, but a sticker on the cover described him as “Algeria’s answer to Ennio Morricone.” Good enough for me. It turned out to be great.]
• CZARFACE – Every Hero Needs a Villain
• D’angelo – Voodoo
• The Rough Guide to Bollywood Disco

Dave’s Records (Berkeley CA)

The morning after seeing The Cure we were all in a warm, sleep-deprived haze. We got ready for the day slowly, sharing our favorite moments from the show and basking in the memory. We dropped Travis off at the train station in Oakland, Sabrina went into the city to check out a gallery she’s going to be in, and Bridget and I headed into Berkeley to meet up with a friend. After waking ourselves up with some much needed tea we walked up and down San Pablo for awhile. We wandered the grounds of a salvage shop that looked like April Ludgate ran it in her retirement. I saw that there was a record shop a few blocks away and we set off to check it out. I had never heard of Dave’s Records before but I’m very glad we went. We arrived to find a small, well-curated shop not unlike Groove Merchant but with much friendlier prices. The tape section was mostly Prince and Sade singles, which I took as a good sign. The first record I found was a Scandinavian prog rock interpretation of Lord of the Rings. Again, a good sign. As I flipped through the stacks I checked out a few cheap Lakeside records. Paul Maul from Missing Link Records told me a long time ago about his ten-second funk test. If the record is serious funky heat, you can tell within the first ten seconds. These records passed the test in flying technicolor. The other records I found weren’t half bad either.

• Bo Hansson – Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings
• Lakeside – Keep on Moving Straight Ahead
• Lakeside – Shot of Love
• LL Cool J – All World
• Naughty by Nature – OPP 12″
• Tom Tom Club – s/t

I haven’t even touched all the great records that Bridget found on these same digging expeditions. The one I’m most jealous of might be Konono Nº1’s Congotronics, although the Clueless soundtrack is a close second.