I can’t believe we are finally to end of April. The days get confusing as we have now been home for at least 6 weeks thanks to Covid-19 and the basic lockdown from the governments to help save our lives. The month started out with Amazon saying they wouldn’t be delivering any albums as they aren’t “Essential”, what the hell do they know, it is essential to me. And then the local record stores started shutting their doors which meant no crate digging for a long while.
Somehow, that didn’t stop. My crate digging was done virtually. Amazon actually delivered music and some of my local record stores posted stuff on line and they would ship or you could go by their house or the store and pick it up. And that is just what happened. We learn and we adapt. Human nature.
First up for the month was an E.P. by a fairly new artist I discovered as the opening act on the Needtobreathe tour. I got to meet him, but his debut E.P and get an autograph. So when a new E.P. was announced, I was excited, but less so because I didn’t see a Vinyl option. And then on the day of release, I saw on Amazon a vinyl option. And when I got it, I was pleasantly surprised as it was the E.P. plus all the singles & B-Sides he had released the prior year so I basically got a full album of material. I love little surprises like that.
And if that wasn’t enough, the next week I bought more off Amazon. I keep a “Wish List” of albums I want to get if the price is right. Well, the price was right for these two Scorpion albums. I was missing he early 90’s albums on vinyl and thankfully the have been reissued. New albums, sealed can be expensive and these both were when I added them to the list. But on the same day, the prices dropped to below $20 for each of them and I couldn’t pass them up. One of them actually came with a bonus second LP with European bonus tracks on the album. Nice!!! I picked up ‘Crazy World’ and ‘Face the Heat’ bringing my Scorpions count now up to 9 albums now. Still a long way to go.
Then one of my local stores posted on Facebook some new Kiss albums he got in. Not new as in brand new, but newly arrived in his store. As you know if you follow this site at all, I am a little in to the band Kiss…only a little though (ha, ha). I have been collecting bootlegs lately for them as my studio album collection is almost complete. He had two bootlegs that I needed. One of them I got real excited as it had Mark St. John on the cover and he only did 3 shows with Kiss so I thought, Damn, I struck gold with that one. WRONG!! It wasn’t one of the 3 shows he played. But it was off the Animalize Tour which I was missing. Actually they both were…one from the European Tour and one from North America, both with a slightly different track listing. Both of these will be discussed in more detail in my Bootleg Series in May. Big shout out to Hardy Boys Records for these…that is 4 bootlegs I have bought from him now in the last 2 months (and I now have 12 vinyl bootlegs in the collection)
Next up is a couple albums from Repo Records, another local store. He posted on Discogs a bunch of albums and some RSD titles and in going through there were 2 I couldn’t pass up. The first was the new Collective Soul album, “Blood” and it was only $8…sealed!! Hell to the yeah for that one. The 2nd was Ace Frehley ‘Live’, a 6 song E.P. and it was sealed and only $15. I will take that, thank you very much.
And that was it for the month. Still a good haul, but not like the first three months of the year. I hope I can find a few in May as I only have one thing on order right now and I hope I get it on the release date. We will see how that turns out. Stay safe and keep practicing social distancing until things are safe again and hopefully we can get back to something close to the old normal.
See you next time!!
Cool stuff John. For some reason this post did not appear on my WordPress reader. Did u kick me out??lol
Those Scorpion records look fantastic by the way.
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Thanks. No I didn’t kick you out. I scheduled it for the noon rather than midnight so I only just pushed it through.
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Need to revisit Face The Heat again
It’s been way 2 long lol
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It is better than I remember. I like it more than Crazy World…plus it has bonus tracks!!!
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Nice are the bonus tracks done with Fairbairn?
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Yes they are I believe.
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Nice ,review it…
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Some day.
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Not a bad haul things considered. When this quarantine is over I’ll probably be stealing Face the Heat from you. You could try to stop me but I have stealth technology and you won’t even know I’ve been there until you’re craving to hear Alien Nation.
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Come and get it. Don’t forget, you have to get by Bear and he doesn’t take kindly to guys that come in to our house. (I have trained him that way so daughters’ boyfriends can’t come in the house!!!)
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Ah! Smart guy!
My favourite episode of Gene Simmons Family Jewels is the one where Gene interrogates the boyfriend.
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That would be a little intimidating!!
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Oh it was brilliant. I really pitied that kid. LOL
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It would be even cooler if he a little blood dripping from his lip.
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While holding his axe bass menacingly.
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Nice to see the Toronto airport code featured – and Collective Soul sealed for $8, score!
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That Airport Code album even has a song about Kingston. And yeah, I can’t believe I got a 2019 sealed album for only $8.
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Kingston-Con!
That’s fantastic – I just looked up the song + lyrics. It looks like he liked how the name sounded rather than the actual city (Waterloo’s a few hours down the road, actually right next door to LeBrain!).
The Good Lovelies used a similar strategy in their song ‘Kingston’ – they were actually singing about ‘Picton’ (a nice town with a provincial park) but ‘Picton’ sounded so harsh as a chorus!
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Interesting. I can see that being the case. But he is from Canada and he is definitely representing his country proudly. He seems like a good kid. I met him briefly about a year or so after a show. Really talented!! And I think he is fantastic songwriter.
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I like Scorpions in the 90s because they still made rock records. Their sounds did incorporate some of the 90s industrial, grunge and nu Metal sounds but the songs are still rock songs.
The Billy Raffoul looked interesting so I’m playing him on Spotify.
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Let me know what you think of Raffoul. On the Scorps, I forgot how good Face the Heat.
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Great album. Schenker and Meine wrote most of the songs and they are kicking. Plus Bruce Fairbairn is producing. I remember the reviews stated they were chasing a more contemporary sound, but those people failed to notice that the songs still rocked.
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Also just finished Raffoul. I like acoustic and vocals. Music in its most simplest form. Dark Four Door and Hell Or High Water stand out.
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Cool. Glad you liked it.
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