Starting Over...

INTHESTAX is gonna be what I find digging through my personal collection. The music you own is personal. Unlike radio, free streaming, downloads, brain implants, and whatever technological AI witchcraft is on the horizon, you have to not only spend the money but also make room in your living space for what you choose to buy. Money and space that might otherwise be used for, say, food or clothing, or other trivia. Then it becomes a lifestyle choice. And since that money and space is usually finite, choosing what favorites in particular to share your domicile with becomes as personal a choice as anything else in your life. It all comes down to which LPs/CDs/cassettes/8-tracks/etc. do you physically own, when the entire planet's popular music is available, free, and in your pocket.

I currently reside with between 500 and 600 LPs, a couple hundred CDs, and a large cat. Pretty much max capacity for my small house. I’m going to be rooting around INTHESTAX to write about some of the records that I want to have around - to handle, to read the liner notes, follow along with the lyrics, and dig the artwork. As I do, I’ll try to explain why each one gets to live in my house. They often won’t be the most well-known titles in the stacks, but they’re all deliberate personal choices. My aural furniture, you might say.

There's a theme to this first batch. I'm working on my life's second record collection. My first, which was about 1/3 larger, was broken up due to a combination of basement flood and selling them off to buy CDs. When I bought a used turntable for $50 several years ago and re-started the obsession, used copies of these three albums were the ones I went home with after my first record store trip in at least a decade. Not the top of my all-time favorite albums list - the ones I came across first (the second time) that had to be on the new shelf.

• Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes - I Don’t Want to Go Home: SS Johnny is one of Springsteen's buddies from the early New Jersey shore days. Played the same places, occasionally in the same band. Bruce and Steve Van Zandt lend a helping hand on the Jukes' debut. I've loved this record since the first time I dropped a needle on it. It's more raucous, more soulful, and more fun than anything they'd ever do again. The horns are a funky, hooky blast and Johnny shows off the voice that made him an Asbury Park legend. The original songs, from Bruce and Miami Steve, are excellent, the covers of Solomon Burke, Ray Charles, Buster Brown, and The Swallows are even better. A rollicking bar band on a great night of an album.

• Yellowman - King Yellowman: I can't for the life of me remember how or where I first heard King Yellowman. I certainly knew nothing about the guy behind the weird face on the cover. I've since learned he's an albino Jamaican, a group typically ostracized in island culture. He overcame by becoming the hottest club and dancehall DJ in Kingston in the 1980s. He's put out dozens of records and videos, most of them never making it off the island. But this one did, and I somehow heard it, and it stuck like superglue. His native loping, skanking delivery, rich voice, and dub influence make every song an easy-rolling memorable groove. His habit of tossing in oddball pieces of western pop songs (John Denver?!) just makes the album more superglue-ish. A perfect summer record.

• World Party - Private Revolution: I discovered Karl Wallinger post-Waterboys when MTV grabbed onto "Ship of Fools" from this amazing debut. Bought the album, loved it. Bought most of the others, loved em. Bought a couple early Waterboys records, preferred Mike Scott's more "Irish" version of the band. But World Party remains one of the most criminally overlooked pop-rock bands of all time; even lofty comparisons to the Beatles aren't typically met with resistance from the fans. Every album has several absolutely-shoulda-been-hits. Only a few were. Even more impressive that World Party was essentially a one-man band, Karl and the varying assortment of musicians he brought in to help flesh out his songs.

Just scratching the surface, I have a lot of records I want to pull off the shelf and blather about. If you know, or want to know, these; or there are albums in your stax you want to bring out into the light, the comment section awaits.

#earwormcity #vinylcollection #southsidejohnny #yellowman #worldparty