WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SITE?
Despite being old enough to remember dial-up modems and only rich people having cell phones, I'm not totally lost in the modern world. Though I remain baffled as to why a guy drinking cranberry juice went viral on Tik Tok, when I want to know what some weird-ass record I've come across sounds like, I know that nowadays I can just listen to it on the internet. German prog from the Sixties, experimental electronic noise with 200 copies private pressed in 1982, weird jazz, weirder classical--someone put a copy on the web. It's all there.
Except it isn't. I've had the best thrift shop luck of my life since moving to Arizona, and that includes a raft of said intriguing weird-ass records. So I give 'em a listen, all very routine: good, bad, meh, buy it, leave it. Then I found one that wasn't on YouTube. And another. And another. And. . .
At a whopping dollar a piece, I decided to roll the dice and and bring them home for a listen. Because I have to know-
What the hell is this record?
ONE OF THOSE FAQS WHERE NO ONE'S ACTUALLY ASKED ME ANY QUESTIONS BUT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW THIS STUFF
Q: Why only YouTube? Why not also try Spotify or something?
A: I'm lazy.
Q: There's another album by the same artist that is online, isn't that close enough?
A: Listen to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and Dark Magus, or Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' The First Born Is Dead and Ghosteen, or Shriekback's Go Bang and anything else they released, then get back to me.
Q: I hate you for causing me to listen to Go Bang.
A: Fair.
Q: There may not be any album tracks on YouTube, but there's live video of the artist.
A: Even if you put aside potential alterations in the sound (jamming, different band members, couldn't afford to bring that string section on tour, everyone was on different drugs that night and it shows), most of those are cell phone videos and the sound quality's really not good enough to evaluate anything.
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Q: For a dollar a piece why bother trying to find a sample at all? Just grab anything that looks interesting.
A: For one thing, the thrifting here is so good that those individual dollars add up fast. Plus, most of these albums are on CD, and used CDs are nigh worthless these days--you're lucky if a record store will buy them at all, never mind recouping your money. But the biggest reason is that every album I get takes time to listen to and space to store, and both resources are at a premium. I've already got a very large stack of discs for this blog and an enormous stash of purchases I was familiar with or that sounded promising that still need a first listen. Anything I can do to not add to that is worth it.
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Q: You seriously don't have any ringers in here?
A: OK, there are a couple of discs in the queue that were so intriguing I grabbed them without even checking to see if they're online, but they had to clear a pretty high bar. I love being surprised by art so it'd be great to grab stuff I've never heard of and not know what I'm getting until I put it on the stereo, but for the above mentioned reasons I can't. Sturgeon's Law holds; there are a lot of things out there that look interesting but most of them aren't. Most of them aren't even particularly good. So for a record to pique my curiosity enough that I don't try for a sound sample, it has to be really enticing. We're talking discs with a major hook. There are a few of those here, but only a few, and I'll tell you when that's the case.
Q: [area of site] looks like crap. Are you going to fix that?
A: I have less of an idea of how to make a website than I do of why Cranberry Man went viral. Sadly, you are already looking at my best effort.