Records Under the Bins

Crate Diving in Modern America

(All photos are mine)

It’s hard getting on my knees these days, and yes, I know how that sounds. Actually, my knees are fine overall; it’s my lower back and whatever makes it difficult at this ripe time of life to stand up again (my brother-in-law keeps telling me that we aren’t built for standing anyway, but he’s even older than I am so I still think this is just his way of compensating).

In any case, though my record store owner—Joe at Cabin Floor—says those records in crates under the actual bins are “there for a reason,” I still think the reason is so that my digging feels extra conflictual, like what often happens when we break sod for our garden and discover a forgotten stone or brick buried where that tomato plant died last year. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, except that the creaks and cracks you are hearing aren’t from the records themselves, always.

I also enjoy not knowing what I’m looking for when I bend down, or kneel, or squat to look into the reason why tons of vinyl sit below eye and “see” level. Yesterday, I was hoping to find something by The Sadies, or at least a Merle or Waylon record I don’t already have—and with both, I still have wide sargasso gaps galore. Maybe, I also think, Waylon Payne might have actually had a vinyl release that I haven’t found anywhere else. Or what if I get a pristine copy of a New Riders of the Purple Sage LP (I have their debut only and somehow lost my copy of Powerglide years ago), or even The Eagles’ debut which I actually never owned back when they opened for bands like Jethro Tull (seriously)?

I found none of these yesterday, but what I did find somehow is even better, cause while I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, I have found what I Can’t Always Get [but} I Want.

Like:

Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show’s Doctor Hook (Columbia C-30898, 1972), their debut LP featuring the big hit single “Sylvia’s Mother.” I told my wife yesterday as the album played and I tried singing to it (though my voice lies between baritone and bass), that as far as I know, I was the only 16-year old in my group who loved this song, much to the ridicule of the “other guys.” I was chastened enough not to buy either the album or the single, but when the “operator said forty cents more for the next…three…minutes,” I understood the “PLE--ASEEEEE, Mrs. Avery” part for sure. I paid way too much for this one, though remembering that single 45’s used to cost from 77 cents to a dollar helps.

$5.00 got me Roy Clark’s Greatest Hits—Volume 1 (ABC DOT DOSD-2030, 1975), and I don’t have the heart to look up what Volume 2 contains. All I ever wanted was a copy of “Yesterday, When I Was Young,” a crossover Country/Pop hit back in 1968-9, penned by H.Kretzmer/C.Aznavour (making me wonder more about where the sentiment really came from). I never owned that one either, or the album of the same name it was on (maybe I need to look even lower). Not that I love the rest of the record, though I did perk up a bit at “I Never Picked Cotton” and “The Lawrence Welk—Hee Haw Counter-Revolutionary Polka (V.Horton), as who from Alabama wouldn’t? It’s still shrink-wrapped protected for reasons known only to us.

For something like $1.00 I acquired my third George Shearing LP: An Evening With The George Shearing Quintet (MGM E3122, 1954), which is labeled as both “A High Fidelity Recording” and as “Dust Proof” due to a “process” known only to MGM. I think this is an original release given that the label is yellow with black lettering. I’m also assured that it’s “unbreakable,” something I hardly ever think about. Shearing’s sound makes me think of a time when I didn’t worry about politics, and so on this one, I’ll groove on with “I’ll Remember April,” “Mambo Inn,” “Little White Lies,” and “Body and Soul.”

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And now, two from the regular bins, because bending down/over can last only so long:

First, Glen Campbell’s Gentle On My Mind (Capitol ST-2809, 1967) for $8, on which he covers Donovan’s “Catch The Wind,” Jimmie Rodgers’ “It’s Over,” Harry Nilsson’s “Without Her,” and Roy Orbison’s “Cryin’.” John Hartford wrote the title track, and now I have Glen’s first three biggies and I feel like cryin’ myself. I will definitely file under “Glen Campbell—Male Vocal.”

And finally, for $7, The Supremes’ I Hear A Symphony (Motown 643, 1966), featuring the title track and “My World Is Empty Without You.”

I hear symphonies and more now, as I sit upright and write to you this Saturday morning.

Let me know, PLE—ASEEEEE, how your diving and bending go!