Cat Power - You Are Free

Cat Power – You Are Free

Matador, 2003

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2007

Price: $10

I had a copy of this and then I gave it to my sister for Christmas. Then I bought another copy of it. I think Moon Pix is the better record, but I don’t have that one and this is the one I’ve listened to the most and I’m really glad I’m listening to it now even though it’s typically an album reserved for really sad times. “Good Woman” would easily find its way onto a list of the 5 saddest songs I’ve ever heard. Despite the sadness, this is one of the most beautifully designed and packaged records I own. I love the mix of heartbreaking ballads and electric rock jams (most notably, “Free” to “Good Woman and“Fool” to “He War”). Anyway, this record is too sad right now. I’m going to listen to the Chills.

Mama Cass - Mama's Big Ones

Mama Cass – Mama’s Big Ones

Dunhill, 1970

Acquired: Gift, Used, 2007

Price: $0

I’m pretty sure Annie gave me this record right before we dated or while we were dating because it has “Make Your Own Kind of Music” on it, and I openly freaked out about how much I loved that song when it was on an episode of “Lost” we were watching when we were maniacally watching “Lost” every day. Groggily rolling out of bed about ten minutes ago, I figured I should put some music on and was really gladdened to find that this was the next up, even though it’s slightly misfiled. Should it be under E for Elliott, probably. Maybe even M for Mama, but for some reason I thought it would be best, or I would be able to find it easier if I filed it under C for Cass. I also think I was drunk when I organized my records, but whatever. Anyway, morning, “Make Your Own Kind of Music” in the morning when I’m groggy reminds me of the scene where Desmond puts the record on in the hatch and goes about his morning routine before the record skips when the plane crashes. And given that Desmond is my absolute FAVORITE character on that fucking show, this song has garnered even more special meaning to me over the years. It’s one of those perfect songs, and for a kid raised on 60s pop, this is right up my alley. I always loved the Mamas and the Papas and I always thought it was strange because in the 90s when I was growing up it would be practically impossible for someone like Mama Cass to become a pop superstar despite how good her voice was just because she was fat. Which SUCKS because her voice is amazing and this record is amazing. It’s putting me in exactly the mood I want to be in, which is the mood to finish two songs I drunkenly and lucidly wrote at about three in the morning and need to hook up all the equipment and just record them. YES I WILL DO THAT I THINK. THANKS MAMA CASS. And “One Way Ticket” is an awesome song about getting the fuck out of some bullshit town. “I’d be happy anyplace but here,” she sings. Goddddd, my sentiments exactly, Mama. Exactly. LOVE YOU.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette

Castiotone for the Painfully Alone – Etiquette

Tomlab, 2006

Acquired: CFTPA show, Jackpot Saloon, 2007

Price: $12

This is the best Casiotone for the Painfully Alone album and everybody knows that. “Scattered Pearls” is the only song I can properly dance to, and on this record Owen Ashworth’s songwriting reaches new peaks. It’s just a fucking outstanding record. It really never lets up, every song here is a jam and it closes with a cover of the best Parenthetical Girls song ever, so yeah. It reminds me of the summer of 2007. It takes music that should have always been lo-fi and puts a higher production value on it and I think that something really special about this album, because it works really, really, really, really, really, really well. Anyway, I don’t know what else to write about this. Listen to it right now. Some things are best left unsaid.

The Cannanes - A Love Affair With Nature

The Cannanes – A Love Affair With Nature

Self-Released, 1989

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2008

Price: $6

Australian indie-pop band that became affiliated with K Records in the 90s. Yes! While reading about the Cannanes on Wikipedia, trying to find the release date of this record I noticed that at some point in their history one of the band members was Annabel Bleach, who I can now assume provided the inspiration for one of my favorite songs/7”s of all time, “Annabel Bleach” by the Ampersands (another Australian indie-pop group). Yes! However, she left the group before this record was released. “Take me to the Hotel Johanna (and Let’s Trash the Joint)” is an awesome little song, as are all of the songs on this record for the most part. It’s making me really happy listening to this, knowing that I own it, and realizing that there was a reason I saw it at Love Garden last year and knew I needed to buy it. And then realizing it’s on white vinyl! I’m sorry, this is how I buy records. I just buy them and sometimes don’t listen to them immediately. This is most of the time. I have this habit of wanting to create a library of things that I want, and when I want them, whenever that happens, I have them. So for this project, of listening to all of my records, this is a wonderful little find. This is something that was just waiting to be dug up, a portrait of the late 80s/early 90s indie-pop/twee-pop scene full of little innovations, minimalist jams, drum machine handclaps on “Nuisance” which are totally awesome, switching between boy vocals and girl vocals from song to song, etc. Thus begins my love affair with the Cannanes.

John Cale - Paris 1919

John Cale – Paris 1919

Reprise, 1973

Acquired: End of an Ear, Austin, TX, Used, 2008

Price: $15

Thanks to Tom K. for putting this record in the first batch of KJHK Essentials. I heard tracks from it all the time on the radio after that and got into the record. I bought it, or put it on the list of records I need to buy in my head, after hearing Will Sheff’s acoustic cover of “Antarctica Starts Here” and found a used copy when I was in Austin. I pry paid a little too much, but whatever, I wanted it, needed it. Now I have it and I’m listening to it and it’s so great! This is one of the records in my collection that I turn to more often than most. I don’t know why, it’s just nice to throw this on the record player and listen to it all the way through. There are just so many jams here. “Child’s Christmas in Wales,” “Hanky Panky Nohow,” “Paris 1919,” etc. Mmm. It sounds unlike any record I’ve ever heard.

End of B

A=$44
B= $289
A + B = $333

Something is telling me that the grand total of this whole thing is going to be incredibly depressing. I'm talking a whole semester's tuition depressing. A few inches of records are already equal to a month's rent (WITH utilities). Oof.

Built to Spill - Keep it Like a Secret

Built to Spill – Keep it Like a Secret

Up, 1999

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2009

Price: $10

Man, what a solid batch of jams. This comes really close to being my favorite Built to Spill record. It might be, although I think Perfect From Now On might be the masterpiece. I can never decide, it changes all the time. Although, “You Were Right” is on this record, so I don’t know. That song has influenced me so much, one that let me know it was ok to constantly reference the artists you love for some sort of artistic statement. That and it has “Time Trap,” “Carry the Zero,” “Sidewalk,” that awesome breakdown in “Temporarily Blind,” and, well, shit, this is a great record. I remember the first time I heard it, too. I was in high school and picked up a promo copy of Keep it Like a Secret at Goodwill for two bucks. It’s still the best album I’ve ever bought at Goodwill. I still have it, it has that golden imprint from Warner Bros saying that it’s their property and you can’t sell it (although it’s been recently proven that that is bullshit and that once they give you a record, as a critic, you can do whatever you want with it because it’s technically a gift). Anyway, this is a great record. My only real quibble is that it starts with “The Plan,” which I think is the weakest track on this record. However, it’s still a fantastic follow-up to Perfect From Now On.

The Broadways - Broken Star

The Broadways – Broken Star

Asian Man Records, 1998

Acquired: Asian Man Records Mail Order, 2003

Price: $1 (it came in a box of vinyl that cost $25)

This is Chris and Brendan’s band before they started the Lawrence Arms. In High School I was pretty obsessed with Asian Man Records and Fat Wreck Chords, and when Mike Park offered up a $25 box filled with 13 LPs and 15 7”s, well, I freaked out. I came home from school to find the box on my doorstep, filled with extra goodies too. Tons of stickers, patches, etc. I’ve since sold or given away most of the records in that box but this is one I held onto because I really love this record. I listened to it a ton, and the Broadways were one of the best socio-political punk bands of their time in my opinion. Them and Propagandhi. It’s hyper-political, really pissed off shit about fucked up cops, fucked up grocery store owners who prohibit dumpstering, corporate takeover, the fucked up school system, etc. My favorite track, “Fifteen Minutes” comes into my head every time I’m stuck in traffic and wonder what I could be doing with the time. I think it’s why I will always find an alternate route instead of waiting in a long line of cars, no matter how out of the way it is. Being stuck in traffic is one of the worst feelings to me. This was one of those records that turned me into a pseudo anarcho-punk for a year or two in high school, and of course I had a Broadways patch sewn onto my black hooded sweatshirt. Of course, I was never really an anarcho-punk. I lived in the suburbs, but my family was more legit middle class than the other kids so instead of getting into rap I got really into punk and got really pissed off at corporations and George W. Bush. Which was a good idea. “Everything I Ever Wanted to Know About Genocide I Learned in the Third Grade,” I distinctly remember listening to that song on my CD player in the halls in between classes on Columbus Day. Their arguments aren’t as fact-based or as good as Propagandhi’s, but it was good to have when I didn’t know shit other than what I was told as a kid and it really helped to open my mind, like a hundred other punk bands. It’s like there’s this secret world that you never see if you live in the suburbs where everyone has their American flags out and no one really cares about anything except their own family. I also have the “I Hear Things are Just as Bad Down in Lake Erie” 7”, which would find itself on any “punk rock I listened to obsessively in high school” compilation I made. I think it’s their most concise song, but only because it tackles pretty much every subject they sing about and put it into one jam. “And the only dream I have is for an H-bomb to come and blow us fucking up/ so you don't have to hear me bitch anymore.” I will never sell this record.

Bright Eyes - Letting Off the Happiness

Bright Eyes – Letting Off the Happiness

Saddle Creek, 1998

Acquired: Lawrence Antique Mall, Used

Price: $35

I remember the day I bought this. It was a snow day and despite the snow still coming down pretty hard I still drove to the antique mall and picked this record up. I’d seen it the day before, and wondered if I should spend almost forty bucks on it. When I got home, I looked on the internet and found that an original pressing of the first Bright Eyes with hand-screen printed cover limited to 300 copies went for upwards of $200. However, I’ve never really wanted to sell it. I like having it, like a little artifact of youth or something, given that this (and Fevers and Mirrors) were pretty huge for me when I was in high school. This summer when we weren’t listening to Dear You, Luke and I would listen to this record and sit on the sidewalk outside my backdoor drinking whisky and cokes, singing along as loud as we could to “If Winter Ends” and “June on the West Coast.” I think Chris Clark was there too. We were all really emo this summer. Listening to it now, I don’t want to sell it. It’s a really great record and I want to have it if all of my hard drives ever crash. That’s what my record collection is for. It’s constructed of records that I NEED to have in my life. Although, I say this now but I’m saying this after the Bright Eyes wave has crashed. Pre-Cassadaga, when I could have weaseled $350 from some teenager’s parents’ credit card on E-bay, I would have sold this record so hard. But for right now I like having it, and I like listening to Conor Oberst’s thin warbly voice, especially after really enjoying his most recent “solo album.” Letting Off the Happiness is amateurish in the absolute best way. It sounds like a kid screaming out his feelings into a reel-to-reel in the basement and there’s something really wonderful about that kind of expression at that age. It’s untainted, unfiltered, and it’s real. Unlike the later Bright Eyes records, I can tell he really means what he’s singing. It’s not an act. It’s interesting to see what’s happened to him in the past ten years, and more interesting realizing that his voice hasn’t changed at all. And despite the fact that this is the most valuable record in my collection, it’s also the record I’ve paid the most money for (that is, until I find an original pressing of Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand, which I have allotted myself between $100-150 to spend).

Jacques Brel - If You Go Away: Jacques Brel is Alive and Singing in Paris

Jacques Brel – If You Go Away – Jacques Brel is Alive and Singing in Paris

Philips, 1970

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2007

Price: $7

I bought this because Beirut’s The Flying Club Cup was apparently heavily influenced by Jacques Brel and I was really into that album. The first song, “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” translated as “If You Go Away” (or “Don’t Leave Me” as it reads in the liner notes), is a song I already knew, but through a cover version by Emiliana Torrini. It’s a beautiful, terribly sad song no matter how you render it. This version is particularly sad, you can hear it buried in his voice, coming to the surface. The rest of this record is less sad. Actually, reading the lyrics of “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” the song isn’t sad. It’s about being in love with someone so much that he is giving her grandiose reasons why she should stay and what will happen if she leaves. “Let me become/ the shadow of your shadow/ the shadow of your hand/ the shadow of your dog,” he signs (in French of course, I like this part of the English translation though, though I prefer the usual English version of the lyrics better for the most part). It might be one of the best songs about obsessive love that I have ever heard. I adore it. I’ve always loved French singers though. I remember when I was a kid, or right around when Saving Private Ryan came out and my dad made me download Edith Piaf songs for him and I got kind of obsessed with her. When I listen to French singers, I imagine what it must be like to listen to American singers as a Frenchman. Usually I obsess about lyrics and consider them the most important part of a song most of the time, but here I just appreciate Brel’s gorgeous voice and the beautiful tunes that swirl around off of the record. Now I want to cover “Ne Me Quitte Pas.” I either want to learn all the French, even though I can’t speak the language (I ran through it on the guitar and I think I can pronounce most of the words) or do a version from the “Don’t Leave Me” translation in the booklet (which has both the French and English lyrics! God, I love having this record).