MinerWerks

The Cool Thing for 5.2.03 is…

VINYL FEVER

Vinyl Fever is a record store across the Tampa Bay from my home base of Clearwater. I hadn’t gone in there for a couple months due to my being exceedingly busy, but I had the hankerin’ to drop in Thursday night.

If you prefer to shop in an overly sanitized environment like Borders Books and Music, then by all means avoid Vinyl Fever. Posters and collectible records adorn the walls, which stretch up about twice as far as the average height of a room. The store is packed from wall to wall with DVDs, videos, CDs, t-shirts, collectibles and even RECORDS. Yes, those lovely pieces of vinyl that spin at 33 1/3 or 45 rounds per minute… In fact, they are so loaded to the gills, they are moving to a bigger location this summer.

This is the best independent shop in my local area, and certainly one of the best in Florida. Their DVD section has exploded about five times since about one year ago, and they have a great selection of odd cult and music titles. They have a very large used CD section, and a “bargain” section about half the size of the regular used section where some common or unusual discs go for $4 or less.

The first thing I picked up was a DVD I had been searching for, The Kids in the Hall: Tour of Duty, a live performance release. But by the time I was done, I had put that back for much more intriguing booty. I happned to look under Weezer to see if they had any odd stuff, and they happened to have an import single for “The Good Life,” with two unreleased tracks (one GREAT one with vocals by Rachel Haden, late of that dog.) and two live acoustic performances of songs from pinkerton. Then I was browsing a mark-down import section and I was stunned at the sight of a disc I had read about but never laid eyes on. It was a Japanese import by Jason Falkner, Everyone Says It’s On.

If the name isn’t familiar, let me elaborate. Falkner was part of the band Jellyfish, then moved on to The Grays, before going solo. Falkner is an amazing tunesmith in all incarnations, drawing out great melodies and harmonies with a rocking edge. Falkner’s first solo disc, Author Unknown is one of my favorite albums, period.

So this Japanese import is legendary because it combined one disc of demos with disc two containing Falkner’s shelved covers album. The first disc has sone great tunes, including demos of a few songs from Author Unknown. The second disc is amazing, with excellent renditions of songs by The Kinks, The Left Banke, Brian Eno and a few more obscure acts. The disc kicks off with a theoretical impossibility – a reverent yet rocking take on Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” Keep the disc running all the way to the end and you’ll get Falkner’s take on Def Leppard’s “Photograph.” Great tunes and a campy desert to boot!

The best thing? This CD was originally priced at $49.99. Now if you’ve ever looked into Japanese import CDs, you might know that $30 for a single disc isn’t too far-fetched. But this two disc set was marked down to $29.95, which I considered a bargain since this stuff isn’t easy to find here in the States…

Anyway, shopping at Vinyl Fever is often like this – you never know what you’ll find, and there’s plenty of cool things you might have to pass up if you’re on a budget.

Oh, and one last thing… all the sections of the store were marked by large blowups of album covers with the text manipulated. For instance, the Who’s Live at Leeds was manipulated for say “Used CDs” section, The Kinks’ Low Budget changed to “The Budgets” for the bargain CDs, the cover for the Hair soundtrack said just “Soundtracks”… you get the idea. Great stuff.