Olympia has a few stores left, and Rainy Day Records will have no less than four live performers Saturday: Morgan & the Organ Donors (who needs a B3 anymore, anyway?), The Maxines, Jacket Pocket and November Witch, which is the only band I've heard of.
My fabulous friend of something like 35 years, Charles Parnell, not only gave me the "new" Jimi Hendrix on vinyl (Valleys of Neptune) but also the single, which has a
non-LP B-side, "Cat Talking to Me." I will probably air that one on my Saturday radio show as well as other records I still treasure.
Of course you can save money by buying stuff online, but I like to do it locally, because your local music store is your community, and it's way more fun to actually pick up an album/CD cover, as opposed to viewing it on a computer screen. It's often said that if you buy something from a chain store, 80 percent of the money you've spent immediately leaves your home town. Make that 100 percent if you purchase it online.
There are so many great "finds" I've come up with at record stores, but I'll mention just a few: three disc sets of Woody Guthrie (on Rounder) and Dinah Washington (on Mercury [Japan]) when I lived in Michigan for just 16 bucks. When I lived in Texas,
I found the Rationals' only LP at a San Antonio store. Here in Washington, I scored a used copy of The Complete Sun Singles, Vol. 1 (various artists, four CDs) on Bear Family, which has the earliest 45s issued on Sun right through Elvis' first ten sides (five singles) for that remarkable label. Yeah, everybody's already got Presley's Sun material, or should. But it's the chase that's the exciting thing.
Naw, that's not quite right. It's still the sound of music, no matter what package it comes in--or even if it lacks a physical package--that gives us our pulse.