Try and Love Again

Crate Diving in Modern America

I can find plenty of valued gems in my American record stores, but I’m not exactly sure where to find the America of these stores. With National Record Store Day approaching—usually a cause for celebration—will it be worth getting surprises from the artists we love knowing that even if other countries get bullied by our smug and authoritarian leaders, the records of these days will be scratched and warped and rendered somewhere below the crates usually crowding each other under the tables of our favorite stores?

I want to write and I still plan to write about what I’ve found lately, but I’m doing so today as a true distraction from reading more about how we’re winning. I’m glad the shrimpers feel good about tariffs helping them, and while I do love gulf coast shrimp, I hope they understand that while their world might be better soon, the cost might go up in other ways. I don’t know who all is on their boat, but I imagine there will be more room soon given the choices of staying or going today.

I’m listening to Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee as I write and I can feel my cloudy mood lifting. This will be the record of the year for many, including me, though don’t expect the mainstream to embrace it or its maker, Patrick Flegel. Here’s a really good interview if you’re interested in what goes on in Flegel/Lee’s world:

https://www.lebronjames.co/interviews/patrick-flegel-cindy-lee

Also, about the title this week. I don’t always love or reference Hotel California, but when I do, it’s the penultimate song, “Try and Love Again” that I go to. Sung by bassist Randy Meisner, I find it so hopeful. I don’t have to try to love the people close to me because that’s easy to do. But it is hard to love a society that wants what we’re getting right now.

I’m also reading Cynthia Carr’s portrait of an American, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (FSG 2024) right now. America can deny and suppress the rights of Transgender people all it wants to (clearly, I wish it wouldn’t) but like higher-priced coffee beans, we’re not gonna stop wanting or being who we are just because some white guy in thin glasses doesn’t like us. I know it’s not that simple, because I know figuring out who you are and who you want to be isn’t simple either. If you’re unsure what this means, then I urge you to look at photos of Candy when she was a boy and tell me this person would have been happier continuing the facade of a male-gendered being.

Ok.

On to some musical finds, and I’ll start with a new one, just released last week but that has been streaming and downloading for at least 18 months now. Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter (2022 Daughters of Cain Records, and selling while you can get them for roughly $35.00) runs tightly alongside Diamond Jubilee, but is way so much darker. It’s not something you want to play all the time, but that we have it and that it is fictional but real makes me happy and blue. I keep wondering if there is anything/anyone more fucked up than the "American Teenager? Ethel has a point, and if you’ve seen the video for that song of the same name, then maybe you’ll understand and love her anyway. Listen, our dreams are our own, and it’s funny how we both do and don’t want our laws to apply.

Thanks to Matt Berenson, I’ve just put on Roxy Music’s first, eponymous, record. Matt’s right: we forget how great they were, how instrumental to Glam they were. Here’s to remembering, and to Ferry/Eno.

If you look carefully through the stacks in the $5.00 and under section of Horizon Records in Greenville, you just might find something along these lines:

Just Plain Charley: Charley Pride (RCA LSP-4290, 1970). Produced by Jack Clement and Felton Jarvis, the record sees soulful Pride covering “Me and Bobby McGee” and “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.” Remember when it was a rare idea that a Black person could be embraced by Nashville? Oh wait…

For a meagre $12.00 over in the Blues bin, I found Bobby “Blue” Bland’s Woke Up Screaming!” (Ace records CH41, issued in 1981). A compilation of Bland’s recordings from his early years, the LP features the title track, “You’ve Got Bad Intentions,” and “Further Up the Road.” Why we would ever forget about such a master of the genre, I don’t know. But then, we are so busy making things great again.

I also went for another “new” record. New in that it hasn’t been used already, but in chronological time it’s from 2002: Tommy Guerrero’s Soul Food Taqueria (Be With Records 026LP). It cost $40, and yeah, I know I should be careful because my retirement funds might be heading to the taqueria, too. But this is killer stuff, especially if you love guitar and are okay with being taken away into another kind of soul.

I’m working, or will be soon, on a story for Prism and Pen over on Medium about the gold rush of performers these days crossing the battle lines of being themselves. So back to Cindy Lee a moment. If you’ve not heard Panda Bear’s latest, Sinister Grift (a title for these days for sure), then give it a listen, though currently the first pressing of the LP is gone. The album’s last cut, “Defense,” features Lee on guitar. Here’s the video:

I don’t think you’ll have to try very hard to love it. My copy is coming via the American male…er…mail.

Dig It.