brainsplotch

I recently hit up the local St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop down the street from work to look at their CDs (because more CDs is just what I need--like a hole in my head). I can at least rationalize it by telling myself that I'm donating money to charity. Anyway, I found some decent stuff, or at least stuff I believe to be decent. Certainly decent for $1 apiece. So here is what I bought: Franz Ferdinand-- Franz Ferdinand , Gorillaz-- Gorillaz , Live-- Secret Samadhi , Madonna-- The Immaculate Collection, Paul McCartney --Run Devil Run, and   10,000 Maniacs --Our Time in Eden.  So here is the rundown: I remember Franz Ferdinand from the early aughts and the era of angular punky garage-y bands like The Strokes, The Hives, etc. I suppose Franz Ferdinand belong in that category, or are at least adjacent. Outside of their hit "Take Me Out," I didn't pay them much attention then, but in 2021 at the thrift shop I thought: why not? I spun the album a few days ago and enjoyed i...

Way back on November 29, 2009, I published the first installment of "Bargain Bin Finds".  It was intended to be the first in a long series of record reviews in which I philosophized and pontificated about whatever cool record or CD I found somewhere on the cheap.  Though I've periodically intended on finally publishing #2 in the series, it never actually came to pass.  Well, you need not wait anymore, because at long last I bring to you a brand new "Bargain Bin Finds". Several weeks ago, my 10-year-old and I were at Schuler Books & Music (a place with which, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I have a long and close association--and absolutely adore).  Of course, the second we walk past the bargain CDs, I was like a moth to flame.  I spied The Edgar Winter Group's They Only Come Out at Night and my son saw it and immediately exclaimed with horror, "That's creepy!"--which I found funny because it's...

I've been a Byrds fan since at least high school, and always a big lover of that heavenly 12-string Rickenbacker sound. The first Byrds album I owned was Original Singles 1965-1967 that I bought on cassette at the now defunct, but fondly remembered, Woolworth in Caro, Michigan, for something like $3.99. This was probably in about 1985, when a 17 year old into the Byrds was not exactly the most common occurrence. (But don't let me paint myself as some sort of self-aware iconoclast. I listened to plenty of popular mid-eighties dreck like Thompson Twins, etc. In fact, by and large, my musical taste at this point was so unrefined as to be somewhat embarrassing. That could be fodder for a future post). By the early nineties, I'd graduated to the Byrds' box set and picked up most of their studio albums along the way, Mr. Tambourine Man (I still have my parents' old vinyl copy in addition to the first Columbia CD pressing--never bothered to pick up the 1996 reis...