June 2, 2009

No Play / eBay

Been a few weeks since I last spun some records, been busy with other things like spending a lot of time at the hospital with my almost-father-in-law from 25 yrs ago. Dad has been to hell and back lately involving a botched lung surgery, heart attack due to a drug reaction (damn rural Ohio hospitals), and today a corrective lung surgery to fix the botch and clear up an abscess. Doc says it looks like a bomb went off inside his chest. Tonight he rests in the ICU on a ventilator with holes in his lungs while they try to get his blood pressure up to normal, and his blood count back to normal. He has a long recovery ahead of him.

So instead of reporting recent spins, here's some fun stuff scored on eBay the past few weeks:

Here it is- a sealed copy to replace my very worn original copy of my ALL-TIME FAVORITE SONG: BLONDIE'S RAPTURE! $3.99 + $3 shipping. This song has it ALL: great bass, funky rhythm guitar, disco beat, sax AND guitar solos, two different sets of sync-dizzy hand-claps, silky smooth vocals, and a good-time rap about an alien that pays tribute to the pioneers of hip hop. Heavily influenced by Chic's Good Times, whom of course produced/played Deb's Koo Koo album a year later.

The original extended version comes in with a drum intro, whereas the album version intros with bells. The promo version (featured on The Best Of Blondie is an edit of the 12"- with drum intro, extra verse, guitar solo split into 2 sections, and sax solo on the fade- but cuts out the instrumental breakdown that was badly edited into the middle of the song for the 12". I believe this part was recorded later, or taken from an alternate mix of the track since the sonics of the instruments sound different, especially the bass. It really is poorly spliced together.

I have spliced together what I feel is a more complete version of the song taking parts from the album and extended versions- putting back together the opening instrumental coda that seems split between the two official versions, fixing the poor splice of the 12" breakdown by reverse-constructing the instrumental build-up, and blending the splice-in of the original 2nd part. I prefer the guitar solo split into two parts bracketing a 3rd verse (as on the 12" but missing from the album version). The 12" does not contain the long instrumental between the rap verses (featuring a sax lead), that is only on the original album mix. The 12" also has more prominent drums and slightly deeper bass (adjusted for my HiRize Mix which runs 12 minutes plus).

ZAPP II: I plan to also nab sealed copies of Zapp (I), Zapp III, as well as Roger's Many Facets. To date NONE of the CD compilations have been complete enough, so I plan to make my own from original vinyls. Only the full-length cuts of More Bounce, Dance Floor, I Heard It Through The Grapevine, I Can Make You Dance, Heartbreaker, So Ruff So Tuff, Do It Roger, etc. can truly do Zapp & Roger justice... radio edits just aren't enough of a funky good thang!


LOVE AND ROCKETS: Heard this over the speakers while browsing the Dog so many years ago- Mirror People was my theme song. Almost every track is the standout- add a few songs from the surrounding albums and this makes up most of Love And Rockets' Best Of. This album arriving finally proves to me that RCA/BMG music club issues did occasionally contain the hype stickers. Until now I thought the lack of a sticker was the dead-giveaway.



STEVIE WONDER: Lacking the cover sticker, I assumed this WOULD be a record club issue, but it lacks the manufacturing notation on the back like others I've seen on eBay. My early 80's original was from Columbia House or RCA. This has every Stevie Wonder song I love: Superstition, Boogie On Reggae Woman, Sir Duke, I Wish, You Haven't Done Nothin', Higher Ground, Living For The City, Master Blaster, That Girl, Front Line, and of course Do I Do is my fave.


Here it is: finally!
I started looking for a sealed copy of this in Oct.'08- and found a copy sitting on ebay with a Buy-It-Now price of $149.  It has the round "Nice Price!" sticker on it instead of the original feature sticker- the Nice Price! pressing swapped out the printed sleeves for plain white sleeves. Several times I've made $40-$50 offers that the seller has declined. I stole this sealed copy- only the second sealed copy I've seen since October, for $11.50!!!!!   $11.50!!!!!

AND the seller is local so I was able to pick it up in person to save not only shipping but more importantly the postal service bang-a-bout! THANKS ADAM! I told him I felt guilty about the price, his reply: "you won it fair and square". This and Donna Summer's Love Is In Control album were mixed in with a ton of classical albums, Adam plays for the Columbus Symphony- nice guy! 






















The cover & back are flawless once the wrap is off, the inside cover didn't fare as well- pulling the sides apart tore them from each other, pulling some of the photo up where the record labels pressed the covers tightly all these years. Sleeves (and records) also perfect.







One last incredible eBay score:..
a self-released Glass Eye album from 1985 that I've only ever heard of and never seen before- only recently have I even seen the artwork for it! A member of the band couldn't even get me a USED copy (she was kind enough to send me a few mp3's ripped from her own vinyl copy- THANKS STELLA!). I've been hoping to someday find this for 20 YEARS! I once saw a VG- copy on Gemm.com for $35 - might even still be there!

To my amazement- A SEALED COPY popped up on the Bay- with a starting bid of $9.99!!!!! It sold with me being the only bidder, I couldn't believe it! It arrived in near factory condition (this seller OfTimesPast has a kabillion factory sealed 80's records all listed for $9.99!! Love And Rockets above came from the same seller). Being one of my favorite 80's bands- their Bent By Nature cover is on my living room wall, as well as their green vinyl 45 Satellite of Love being 1 of 4 non-picture discs (with MJ's Billie Jean, Pretenders' Break Up The Concrete, and Origin of Species' Mutual Affinities) in a line of 23 7" picture discs also on the wall.  I plan to write a separate posting about Glass Eye in the near future. I've one more single track to track down- the band being featured in the flick Slackers, the soundtrack features an exclusive Glass Eye tune. Til then, here is Glass Eye on the Wiki.

1 comment:

Bishop said...

this is so awesome! someone who loves vinyl! very cool!