New music update

I went shopping yesterday to pick up a few essentials, and came back with this lot of not-quite-so essential music. But hey, it's tough to write a music blog without buying new music, right? That's my logic anyway.

CDs


Bob Dylan - Christmas In The Heart
Bob's Christmas album that made the news a few weeks back. If you buy the box-y version of the CD you get several blank Bob Dylan Christmas cards too, which is nice. This'll be useful for the first Fishy Fishy Christmas music update, due in a few weeks.

The two new Big Star reissues - #1 Record and Radio City
I've been needing to get familiar with these early 70s alt-rock influencers for a long time, and the reissues were the excuse I needed.

De La Soul - 3 Feet High And Rising
Only £4!!!! A no brainer. I regret selling my vinyl copy of this in 1990 to fund further purchasing of Guns N' Roses 12"s.

Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
One of the best album titles ever? Yup. I know their cover of the Stones' Satisfaction but wanted to check out some more of their stuff. Only £8 too.

All Killer - Finders Keepers Records 1-20 mixed by The Gaslamp Killer
The title says it all really, except if you've never heard of Finders Keepers. It's a great label that puts out all sorts of lost crazy shit. And the guy in the record shop was telling me how great a DJ The Gaslamp Killer is, so I'll be looking into him shortly.

Zoot Sims - Four Classic Albums
Remarkably, the 38 tracks on this double album only cost £6. He's a smooth Jazz type from the late 50s, and it's very pleasant listening indeed.

Howlin' Wolf - The Back Door Wolf / Muddy Waters - Electric Mud
My friend Will from the Young Offenders' Institute played a track off The Howlin' Wolf Album, a brilliantly quirky record from the late 60s where the record label (Chess Records) thought they'd boost Wolf's mainstream appeal by making him do a record with a load of garage rock musicians. He hated it (the sleeve famously had "This is Howlin' Wolf's new album. He doesn't like it. He didn't like his electric guitar at first either"). Anyway, that's a tough record to get hold of, and I haven't managed it yet, but I found its sister record, Muddy Waters' Electric Mud, which was done with the same rock musicians, so I snapped it up. And the Howlin' Wolf album I did buy just had a good sleeve and was cheap.

VINYL


I won't list all of the records I bought, but here are a couple of notable ones.

The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
I blogged about this a few days ago and it's not out in the UK until the new year apparently, but I found the vinyl on import. It's produced by Rick Rubin and first listen showed it to be a potentially great record. The sleeve's stunning too, and according to the sleeve notes, painted by Scott Avett, one of the brothers. Talented bloke.

Pound - Original Soundtrack EP
Odd one this. Found it in Sister Ray for under a tenner, and it grabbed my attention because the 10" sleeve stated that Pound (which presumably was a movie) was written and directed by Robert Downey Sr - of course, as there's a Robert Downey Jr, it stands to reason that there's a Robert Downey Sr, but I'd never heard of him before. It's only got four tracks on but is actually pretty good. And the first track's title caught my eye too - Lame Motherfucker.

Vince Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas
I got this on CD a while ago but was glad to bag it on vinyl. It's such a gorgeously peaceful jazz record that I listen to it throughout the year and not just at Christmas.

Professor Longhair - Crawfish Fiesta
Haven't listened to the whole record yet but I bought this off ebay for the first track on it, Big Chief, which is a belter.

Yim Yames - Tribute To George Harrison
Again, I've had this on MP3 for a while but the vinyl was only £7 and looked lovely, so in the bag it went.

Mudhoney - Superfuzzbigmuff
I was never the biggest grunge fan, except for the more rock side of it like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, so the only Mudhoney track I really know is their funky number from the Judgement Night soundtrack, Freak Momma, that they did with rapper Sir Mix-a-lot, but this was £8 on new vinyl and with an MP3 download code. Bargain.

Dinosaur Jr - Farm
Speaking of download codes coming with vinyl, my copy of the last Dinosaur Jr record finally turned up yesterday (after being ordered about three months ago) and I was gutted to find it sans MP3 download code or special edition white 7", both of which were promised on the label. Customer service emails were fired off.

Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
And my final highlighted purchase comes with another MP3 download gripe I'm afraid. I bought this on CD in the first store I went into but then found it on vinyl somewhere else so bought that too, so I'll take the CD back cos the vinyl came with a download code. Alas, All Tomorrow's Parties (the label) don't really have their download management system sussed in a massively user friendly way, because not only can you only download tracks one at a time, but when you stick them in your itunes, not only do they only contain the track title as info (not the band name or album title, let alone writers or release year), but they also don't appear in sequence order, so I've had to put a number in front of each track to get them to play in order. Should have kept the CD.

I tell you what, The Monthly is going to be fricking awesome this month.