Thriftin'

The VVers made a quick pit stop a weekend past at local Georgia Avenue Thrift.  This seemed like a nice change of pace since as of late we've been busy with record fairs, traveling to record stores in other cities, and being gifted records.  It's a good idea to get back to thrift stores for a little treasure hunt.  Buying dollar records that might be great, might be awful is a roll of the dice, but few experiences compare.  Expectations for this particular endeavor were pretty low.  Georgia Avenue Thrift always has vinyl, but the condition and shelving for their goods is usually pretty weak.  This visit was no different.  Records were in a very low shelving unit and all stacked on top of one another.  Bad form.

While VVer #2 attempted to tackle a pile turning out to be all Christmas, classical, and country (separate categories here, but let's take a minute to imagine a merged classical country Christmas album section... YIKES! ), VVer #1 had more luck with his makeshift section.  Discs were hard to get at on the side-shelf.  Halfway through combing through a pile of records, a fellow customer came over to VVer #1 and handed over a pile of records he had already picked out.  He asked "look and see if these records are good" in an eastern European accent.  Ha, VVer #1 must have looked like he knew his stuff!  He had mostly classical; pretty standard stuff.  Hope he likes what he got.

A few take-aways for our efforts:

Walter Carlos Sonic Seasons
VVer #2 made VVer #1 buy this because it was on the Moog synthesizer and it has a beautiful woodblock-esque print for the cover.

Mistake?  Ummmm.  Well ... we now know that you can make seagull, wave, wind, and thunderstorm noises on the Moog.  This is not really what we expected here.  This does not sound like any Moog we are used to.  Maybe if we owned a spa and wanted to play really shitty music to faux-relax people we would pop this on.   Sheer curiosity leads us later on into a Wiki-hole.  The trouble is figuring out why the search for info on this album pulls up versions by Wendy Carlos, not Walter.  Apparently a sex-change explains that.  Upon further investigation, turns out he (pre-transition) is responsible for Switched-On Bach, the famous album introducing the world to the Moog synthesizer, as well as the soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange.  Props.  Alas, this ambient-sounds record doesn't make the cut to stay in the collection.  We're actually upset we wasted the record cleaner to play this one.

Also picked out of the pile to come home with us was Suzanne Vega Solitude Standing which includes her well-known "Tom's Diner" in a cappella.  Meh, probably going to pass this one along after one more listen.  Speaking of one-listens, we also picked up Sesame Street The Frog Prince, a recording of a theater style TV broadcast from 1971.  This "muppetized" version of the story is pretty adorable.  It has a few solid laughs and the story is done with aplomb.  Kermit constantly throws in silly banter the way only he can, which is a nice twist for this classic yarn.  A fun listen for an LP that will probably be gifted to one of our friends with kids (and a turntable).  VVer #1 might want to keep it though...

So all in all, not so much treasure had, but an experience nonetheless.