"I'd buy that for a dollar!" Great purchases for a buck or less

$1 each, Breakaway today:

DB Cooper Buy American (Warner Bros. 1980)
Eruption Featuring Precious Wilson (Ariola 1978)
Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly Golden Time Of Day (Capitol 1978)
Plastic Ono Band Live Peace In Toronto 1969 (Apple 1969 -- guess I just missed owning this.)
Private Lines Trouble In School (Passport 1980)

Just picked up the Sex Pistols DVD, "There's Always Be an England" for a dollar. It's not very good. But for a buck, it's a good deal.

Eruption Featuring Precious Wilson (Ariola 1978)

funny, i just bought this when i was down in Austin at Half-Price Books and had half a notion that you had sold it, Chuck. think when i play it out i'll screw down their "Can't Stand The Rain" cover.

$1 each

mouthus - follow this house
neon neon - stainless style
phantomsmasher - s/t
spiritualized - the abbey road ep
oval - ovalcommers
polvo - exploded drawing
loretta lynn - van lear rose

$2 each

deftones - s/t
nirvana - hormoaning ep
melvins - houdini (strangely enough, i've bought 20+ melvins albums and am just now getting around to houdini...)
r. kelly - untitled
loren mazzacane connors + david gray - this past spring
godflesh - hymns
black sabbath - we sold our soul for rock 'n' roll
the birthday party - drunk on the pope's blood

$3 each

ellen allien - fabric 34
swans - die tur ist zu
saint vitus - born too late

$2 for Godflesh, Melvins and $3 for Saint Vitus?? I want to shop there!

almost didnt post it here b/c it's not $1 each but hey, good deal's a good deal

also, i hear it's the worst godflesh album? who knows. i like all the others, this is my completist purchase, the last one....

50 cents each ($13 total), End Of An Ear, South Austin today. (Thought they were $1 each when I took them up to the counter, so the sale was a good surprise; probably would've also picked up assorted Gentle Giant/Focus/Scorpions/Lizzy Borden/Dire Straits/Cat Mother LPs if I'd known while browsing, but it's probably just as well I didn't):

American Breed American Breed (Acta 1967) -- bi-racial Chicago frat-rockers, before their big hit "Bend Me Shape Me," but apparently "Step Out Of Your Mind" was a smaller one. Plus they cover lots of wild fast r&b and soul dancefloor classics, looks like, and surround themselves with friends dressed racistly as Native Americans on the cover.
Adrian Belew "Big Electric Cat"/"The Lone Rhinoceros" (Island 10-inch single 1982) 10-inch fetish purchase; maybe I'll even like one of the songs a little, who knows.
Bittersweet Alley Some Like It Hot (Track EP 1985, sealed.) Suburban Detroit cheeseball hockey-hair wannabee rock. These guys used to get local AOR play there; no idea if they were any good.
Gary U.S. Bonds The Best Of: From The Original Session Tapes (MCA 1984) 10 songs; bet the Bruce connection caused the reissue.
Book Of Lies Cryptic Memo (Fever EP 1984) Never heard of this before, but it looks cool. Co-ed trio. Pretty sure Fever put out some other good punky/new-wavey local Chicago stuff back then.
Capital City Rockets Capital City Rockets (Elekra 1973) Allegedly proto-punky Midwesterners. Look like smartass tough guys in sports uniforms, a good sign. Pretty sure Rick Johnson liked them and Martin Popoff didn't.
Crabby Appleton Rotten To The Core (Elektra 1971) Lacks their '70s "Go Back" hit.
Fireballet Two, Too... (Passport 1976) Either Scott recommended this on ILX once or he just made fun of the five pirouetting guys wearing tutus on the cover, I'm not sure which.
The Frost Frost Music (Vanguard 1969) Hard-rocking Detroit also-rans w/ Dick Wagner guitaring and yelling.
Hello People Bricks (ABC 1975) Fully expect to hate this, but I never owned an actual mime-rock album before.
Human Sexual Response Fig. 14 (Eat 1980) Boston geek-wavers, w/ "What Does Sex Mean To Me," "Jackie Onassis," other college radio classics you're probably too young to remember.
Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society Barbecue Dog (Antilles 1983) One of his louder ones, iirc, w/ Vernon Reid on guitar.
Original Mirrors Original Mirrors (Arista 1980) Super new wavey instant-cutout cover art; used to see this in stores all the time, and had no idea what it was. Just looked it up - Deaf School spinoff apparently, with one song produced by Bill Nelson.
The Kids Anvil Chorus (Atco 1975) Never heard of, but back cover photos look sufficiently guttersnipe for 1975, plus they do songs called "On The Street," "The Cops Are Coming," and "The Turk (An'Wot'E Smokes)," cool. Not in Popoff or Jasper/Oliver, though.
Pet Hate Bad Publicity (Heavy Metal Records 1984) Cover looks more punk than metal, despite (Wolverhampton UK-based) label, though LPs on their disheveled hotel room floor by Angel, Kiss, and Japan could swing either way. Again, never heard of 'em. Popoff gives it just 4 out of 10, but calls them NWOBHM and compares them to Hanoi Rocks, which makes sense.
Lloyd Price The Rock'n'Roll Magic Of (Candlelight Music double-LP 1978) Just four songs per side, but lots of hits.
The Romantics In Heat (Nemperor 1983) w/ "Talking In Your Sleep," "One In A Million," "Shake A Tail Feather"
Romeo Void Never Say Never (415/Columbia EP 1981) w/ famous title cut
Bob Seger System Mongrel (Capitol 1970) Was just kicking myself on a different thread a few months ago for getting rid of my copy; now I can stop kicking. Condition looks good, too!
Skin Yard Skin Yard (C/Z 1986) Seattle art-grunge, half-decade pre-teen-spirit. On greyish-white vinyl! I actually reviewed this when it came out, too.
Spliff 8555 International Version (CBS Schallplatten 1985) Used to see their records in Mainz/Frankfurt/Bad Kreuznach record stores all the time in the early '80s. Otherwise, I am clueless.
Rick Springfield Comic Book Heroes (Columbia 1973) Lacks his 1972 "Speak To The Sky" hit.
Thunderclaop Newman Hollywood Dream (Track 1970) With "Something In The Air." Somebody said once in Trouser Press that they were the best one-album band ever except maybe X-Ray Spex, but I don't know. Definitely look like beatniks though.
Uzi Sleep Asylum (Homestead 1986 EP) Already have the 1993 CD reissue on Matador, but I'd rather have the original.
Vanderberg Vandenberg (Atco 1982) A Popoff 10-out-of-10 that I will always probably confuse with Vanderhoof.
(Various) W4 Homegrown (W4 c. 1978) Total Holy Grail, and I didn't even know it, because I hadn't thought about it for over three decades. W4 is Detroit AOR station WWWW; this has legendary local wannabees and never-weres Buzztones, Toby Redd, Wolfticket, etc, plus the Rockets doing "Lookin For Love," the Romantics in one of their first on-record appearances doing "Tell It To Carrie" (their first local hit), plus a bunch of other bands I don't recall but might remember their songs, which WWWW probably all played.

Uh, Spliff LP is actually 1982 (the year I got to Germany), not 1985 (and not that anybody cares.)

I love Bricks! It's great.

the kids is the heavy metal kids. their second album.

Cool! I had no idea.

hope you like the thunderclap newman album. i've always really liked it a lot.

i never really liked the 60's hello people stuff. but bricks, i dunno, i just dig it a lot. i don't think a lot of people do. todd rundgren produced it. they brought out his weirdness. in a good way.

That Rick Springfield album is amazing, btw, and for the most part far, far better than Speak To The Sky. Last 3 tracks are nearly perfect. Best thing he ever did, as far as I know.

FWIW, weird Comic Book Heroes related rarity on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy6JUWZmK8s

The Frost Frost Music (Vanguard 1969) Hard-rocking Detroit also-rans w/ Dick Wagner guitaring and yelling.

Dang, never even seen a copy of this in the flesh. Lucky man.

Labradford - Mi Media Naranja
Global Communications - 76:14
Vladislav Delay - Multila
Ice - Bad Blood

guess i should check out global communications, considering how much i love the other stuff you've listed

"Either Scott recommended this on ILX once or he just made fun of the five pirouetting guys wearing tutus on the cover, I'm not sure which."

i like it! i played it a lot this year. i like it a lot more than their more famous night on bald mountain album or whatever.

there are a couple of cool guitar tracks i like on that rick springfield album, but the whole album doesn't do much for me. i wanted to love it cuzza the cover and the theme and all that.

i really really like that romeo void EP too. they are too underrated/underplayed as far as i'm concerned. people know the two big songs, but they had lots of great stuff. they should be bigger in neo-post-punk circles.

and everything by human sexual response is worth owning!

and as far as crabby appleton go i actually prefer the two post-crabby albums that singer michael fennelly put out after crabby bit the dust. lane changer and stranger's bed. if you see those for a buck get them. really good hard rock/rock/pop stuff. fennelly worked with curt boettcher and was a part of Millennium. (the fennelly albums are kinda slept on. they are medium-hard to find. they didn't sell at all. ebay probably has cheap copies.)

capitol put out latter-day (late-70's and maybe even early 80's) vinyl reissues of mongrel and ramblin' gamblin' after bob hit it big, so you can find really clean copies if you are lucky. i'm sure there were night moves fans who bought them in a seger-loving frenzy and then didn't play them much. even the later pressings ended up going in the cut-out bins.

Just played Human Sexual Response -- They strike me as pretty awful, as a hint of pale and emaciated indie nerd-dom that's about one-tenth as clever as it thinks it is to come, but I kind of enjoyed it despite itself. A few songs definitely sounded familiar, 30 years later. Four different singers, apparently. There's one guy whose voice reminds me of...Tom Verlaine? Peter Hammil? Peter Gabriel? Somebody. Liked the Hello People album, which was more rock than I expected, way more than HSR, though. Adrian Belew 10-inch was just an excuse to make guitar noises. He makes better noises in his cat song, but I like that his rhino song is about an endangered species.

And oh yeah, turns out that Kids LP (which I haven't played yet) is in both Popoff's and Jasper/Oliver's books, filed under H instead of K. They both like it a lot, seem to consider it the Heavy Metal Kids' peak. Popoff calls it the most ferocious glam rock record ever, or something like that. So I guess I got a good deal.

Playing the Romeo Void EP next. Christgau said when it came out that nobody would ever remember the other three cuts besides the hit. Betting he was right.

Catalog # on the copy of Mongrel I got is ST-499, which oddly isn't listed among the five vinyl versions on discogs. But they do list a 1977 reissue as SM-499. So I was thinking that maybe that's a typo. But if you google ST-499, you get a few sites claiming that's the original 1970 pressing; not sure what's right.

i prefer in a roman mood by human sexual response cuz its got land of the glass pinecones on it which i love, but i like fig. 14 as well. they were nerds but i always thought they were charming nerds. as far as boston nerds go scruffy the cat were a more dire harbinger of things to come.

2 of th original humansexresponserrs live in hudson..a few yrs back they did a full on reunion show in town and i was jizzazzled at th sight of a nontet of 55-60 yr olders makin like coked up teens..they pulled it off w sweat and groin pulls,,but altogether incredible..brought th lesser stuff to a boil and th boily stuff to a volcano...seek out th yutoob videos of th yoredom..so fukkin ahead they were...and they r nice doods tooo...

Guess I just wish (on their debut anyway) they had Romeo Void's rhythm section. (Honestly, that is one embarrassingly stiff-butted "Cool Jerk" cover!) But I haven't given up on the album yet -- and yeah, it's kind of charming, and if I ever see the second LP for a buck, I'll probably pick that up, too. (Btw, was going to also say that I wish Romeo Void had Human Sexual Responses's melodies, but turns out Xgau was wrong. The fourth/last song on their EP, "Not Safe," sounds totally familiar. And it's good, too.)

i always thought i should embrace th anti lead singer look iyall had..im a fan of th fashion underdog..she showed me though..abortion pop is cute too

and...th humans stuff is stiff compared to th live stuff...if u could see where all of it sprang from..early to mid 70s acid gobbling long haired puppeteers in th woods having rave ups w generators outskirting crap boston..ehh,...

chuck were you a fan of Christmas? speaking of boston nerds.

always thought that human sexual response were in the same ballpark as stuff like suburban lawns. or maybe the waitresses. art school nerds? people inspired by the B-52s? always wondered what bands like that were listening to at the end of the 70's. what was pylon listening to?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7NCP2lhKPw

the drummer was later in sugar. so maybe you are right about members of the band helping to create future blandness. but i really think you should just blame bob mould for that:

Malcolm Travis (born 15 Feb 1953) is an American drummer from Boston, Massachusetts, best known for his work with Human Sexual Response,[1] The Zulus, Sugar (with Bob Mould and David Barbe),[2] No Man (with Roger Miller), and Kustomized (with Peter Prescott).

Waitresses and B-52s were a whole lot funkier/dancier than HSR though (at least on this LP, but will definitely check that live clip.)

I never really gave Christmas the time they might've deserved, to be honest. What I heard never did much for me.

Liking this Book Of Lies EP. Same general boy/girl post-punk category as fellow '80s indie Chicago-ans Bohemia and Da! Exclamation Point, more or less (which isn't far from Romeo Void's category.) Plus it's cool they start with a song about writing the book of lies not too long after I just heard Hello People cover "Book Of Love."

the drummer was later in sugar.

Bleh.

don't think i ever heard zulus or no man or kustomized. i'm not a big mission of burma guy. i did buy one volcano suns record in the 80's. and i've actually heard very little sugar. kind of avoided mould all together since candy apple grey.

I would say HSR strike me as more arch/arty/angular than Sugar, though. Also funnier. (Not that I've listened to Sugar for years, to be fair.)

Mission Of Burma peaked with their first single and first EP. The rest I never cared much about.

Oddly enough, there's an obscure-ish Christmas song called "My Little Book of Lies."

i had the first christmas album on tape. i liked it back then okay. don't know about now. they were definitely quirky nerds.

I've always really liked their first one, not quite as fond of what followed. Sad to see Comic Book Heroes not getting love. Got way, way into it this year, as my son became a big fan of Rick's Saturday morning cartoon from around the same time, Mission Magic.

It's probably more for Paul McCartney fans, or maybe earlier Bowie. The lyrics are mostly terrible, but really great songwriting and surprisingly great guitar and production. Wouldn't have expected it based on his earlier and later stuff.

...that ended up as Combustible Edison. (xpost)

still wonder about why the PTV-parody of the 'Ultraprophets of the Psychick Revolution' cover? (which PTV3 itself parodied/sampled in the 'Hell Is Invisible... Heaven Is Her/e' band photos). always struck me as a weird/obscure thing to goof on, maybe Boston was overrun with Psychic Youth or Sleep Chamber pissed them off or somethin

great songwriting and surprisingly great guitar and production. Wouldn't have expected it based on his earlier and later stuff.

Actually, lots of Springfield's later stuff had all these things -- especially the two albums he put out in the '00s, which are probably the two best I've ever heard by him. And I can't think of a single other veteran artist I'd say that about.

I should have been more clear: I like his earlier and later stuff too, but wouldn't have expected CBH to sound the way it does based on most of his other albums.

Maybe it's out there, but there ought to be a book/feature on the longevity of the 60's Aussies: Bee Gees, but also Springfield and Steve Kipner (and probably others I'm not thinking of). They kind of kept on going and adapting much longer than a lot of the UK folk.

S1 each, Breakaway today (good day for 1984 EPs by wacky ladies)

Black Uhuru Darkness (Island UK 10-inch EP 1982)
Julie Brown Goddess In Progress (Rhino EP 1984)
Andrae Crouch and the Disciples Keep On Singin' (Light Records out of Waco TX, early '70s I guess?)
John Hiatt Two Bit Monsters (MCA 1980)
Slave Stone Jam (Cotillion 1980)
Pat Wilson Bop Girl (Warner Bros. EP 1984)

found some good stuff in NYC bargain bins last week -- nurse with wound, madlib, mars, heavy winged, black devil, emeralds euro tour CD

Got Kate Bush's "The Dreaming" on vinyl, battered to hell but so psyched

but it was actually $4 :|

head in bristol (virgin > zavvi > head) are having a clearout.

so far its been rather good

99p each :

fluke - six wheels on my wagon
the grid - 4,5,6

sergio mendes & brazil 66 - the very best
ray charles - the great ray charles
the presets - apocalypso
van she - v
nicole atkins - neptune city
cazals - what of our future

& some excellent fania reissues :

louie ramirez - ali baba
the joe cuba sextet - wanted dead of alive
justo betancourt - leguleya no
various - our latin thing (vol. 3)