Tag: Crate Digger’s Week

WXNA Crate Digger’s Week – March 22, 2025

WXNA FM

In honor of the first WXNA Record Fair on Sunday, March 23 at Eastside Bowl, March 17-23, 2025 is Crate Digger’s Week on WXNA! Today we have a trio of tales about life changing records!

 

The Who – Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy
Doyle Davis – Groovy Potential

I’ve been into vinyl records as long as I can remember. I asked Santa for albums from very early daze. I had a generous grandmother we called Mimi who indulged my passion/obsession. Every time she would visit us from Leland, Mississippi (home of Kermit the Frog!) she would take me shopping and say, “Go pick out a record, Doyle” while she shopped for her things. Back in the early ‘70s every department store had a record department, often with a cut-out bin. I was fascinated flipping through the bins. I remember staring at albums by Funkadelic and Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa and wondering what in the world those things sounded like. There was no way to hear them without buying them because I never heard that stuff on the radio and they sure looked too weird to ask Mimi to buy for me out of curiosity. So I kept flipping and picked albums I already knew I wanted by bands like The Beatles and Pink Floyd and Alice Cooper (still pretty weird but I could defend it because I already knew a song on it.)

I listened to the radio as much as possible and knew I liked The Who. I remember one day seeing an interesting album by them I hadn’t seen before, called Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy. I’m not sure I knew any of the songs on it other than “Pinball Wizard” but I knew I loved that one. And the cover looked really fun. Is that them as little kids? (It’s not). I think it was 75¢ in the cut-out bin so I figured I could get it and probably another one too. That record blew my tender young eggshell mind and began a lifelong obsession with The Who. I’ve seen them live multiple times but was too young to have seen a show with Keith Moon. I do remember exactly when he died though. Already being a huge fan, I bought Who Are You as soon as it was released (with my paper route money or allowance by then) and had just watched Pete Townshend and Keith Moon on Good Morning America about a week before Keith passed away. When I got my first job at age 16, at McDonald’s, my first purchase with my first paycheck was a copy of Tommy. My favorite Who show was at Philips Arena in Atlanta in 2000, with John Entwistle still on bass and Zak Starkey on drums. It was amazing, and we had fantastic seats thanks to a friend’s work hookup with the arena. You can still see the entire show on YouTube.

My first music obsession with a rock band began with that record my grandmother kindly bought for me. There was a record store called Soundza Music in Jackson, Tennessee, where I grew up, about a mile from my house. I rode my bicycle there almost weekly to look at the new releases and browse the racks for new things to obsess over and to buy the rock mags to find out about it. When I dropped out of college and had a few aimless years back home here in Nashville, I got a part-time job in a record store called The Great Escape that eventually led to a co-management position. When I topped out there, Mike Grimes invited me in to buy half of Grimey’s and take over operations and the rest is history. My entire life’s trajectory was molded by what we now call “Crate Digging.”

 

Various Artists – New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival 1976
Eric Babcock – Gilded Splinters

My music nerd-dom was fully developed well before I ever found crates to dig in. The rural Michigan town where I grew up had no record store, just a few rack-jobbed bins at the downtown five-and-dime — mostly Top 40 hits of the day, plus the occasional left-field oddity (Lenny and the Squigtones, anyone?).

I must now here sing the praises of that distant cousin of the crate dive: the mail order catalog. The family mailbox got flooded with catalogs and fliers from across the country — Moby Music, Down Home, et al., plus label catalogs from Rhino, Rounder, and the rest. All the major-label cut-outs at ridiculously low prices encouraged eclectic buying — scads of it. (“Your son sure buys a lot of records,” said Kevin the UPS man to my mother. Damn straight.) After a while I found Goldmine magazine — crate digging amongst six-point newsprint pages.

My true digging skills ratcheted up several levels when I moved to Chicago. I learned to get off the El at Belmont and walk one mile down a section of Clark Street, hitting four or five good used record stores along the way. I would get back on the El at Fullerton with a sackful of new treasures almost every time. One such trip yielded an all-time favorite, the compilation of live recordings — New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival 1976 — a gateway drug if ever there was one.

At that time, I had no direct knowledge of many of the artists included, and I’d never been to JazzFest… but now I was on my way. It really marked the beginning of a true, mad, deep love affair with the music and culture of New Orleans. It pays to dig; might even change your life.

 

De La Soul – 3 Feet High & Rising
Jason Pfiffier – All Skate

De La Soul’s 3 Feet High & Rising feels like a fever dream for an introverted extrovert like myself. This LP came to me later in life, but it feels like I grew up with it all along. Admittedly, De La Soul Is Dead has become my personal favorite of the group, but 3 Feet High… is unquestionably an artistic triumph.

So, when the news broke that the group had settled their long-standing feud with their past label, Tommy Boy, it brought back all the joy I had when I first discovered this album. This feud ending meant all their albums from the first decade of their legendary career were to FINALLY be reissued on wax — as they were initially intended. I could not wait to get my hands on them. I had owned most of their catalog on CD, but this was a chance to get all their stuff on pretty new shiny anniversary LP packaging.

It had been 35 years since they debuted this classic. Full of man-child-like playfulness produced by another absolute legend — Prince Paul. His sample-heavy production style is honestly the secret sauce that made De La’s first three albums so perfect, in my humble opinion.

I really could go on and on about this record, but maybe part of it’s magic is the layers upon layers the listener finds on their own without someone screaming in their ear about all the samples used. I cherish this record in so many different ways. I’m just grateful I was there when they finally reissued this masterpiece.

More stories this weekend and we’ll see you at the WXNA Record Fair on Sunday at Eastside Bowl!

WXNA Crate Digger’s Week – March 21, 2025

WXNA FM

In honor of the first WXNA Record Fair on Sunday, March 23 at Eastside Bowl, March 17-23, 2025 is Crate Digger’s Week on WXNA! Today we hear from WXNA’s Cher Fan #1 with an epic of a quest for a Holy Grail that brought multiple results, and from DJ Lauren Bufferd with a tragic tale of a once and (hopefully) future find!

 

Cher – Stars
Laura Pochodylo – Runout Numbers

I am celebrating Crate Digger’s Week by remembering the time I realized there is no better rush than finding what you were looking for in a dusty crate.

Over twenty years ago when I first started collecting records as a childhood Cher fan, I wanted to complete my collection of her solo LPs. 1975’s Stars loomed large in my mind. Not available on CD, and this was pre-streaming, pre-Discogs, and I was not savvy enough to navigate eBay. I had to find it, and the middle-aged Cher fans who populated the fan forums I frequented (love them, but should not have been taking vinyl collecting advice from them) recommended rare and international vinyl marketplace EIL.

Seemed reasonable, due to having no reference point. Saved some dough. Paid something like $65 for a Colombian bootleg version of the album. To me, this was the rarest album in the world and that’s simply what the market demanded for it. No big deal that the audio quality was questionable and the sleeve was hand typed in Spanish. These seemed like normal hurdles to clear on the way to my White Whale.

Two weeks after anxiously awaiting its international shipment, I went to my local store on 9 Mile in Ferndale, Michigan and found a virtually unplayed promo copy of the same album in the 99 cent bin.

And that’s how I learned to love the thrill of the hunt! It isn’t about instant gratification until it is— a long hunt until that moment when the perfect record finds you out in the wild and it feels like it was waiting for you. See you at the big dig at WXNA’s Record Fair!

 

Jan Steele / John Cage – Voices and Instruments
Lauren Bufferd- Different Every Time

Lauren, circa 1983, and the one that got away

I am not a record collector. I’ve known plenty of them and I know the difference between them and me. I’ve always liked music and enjoyed owning the physical media — 45s, LPs, cassettes, and then CDs. I never was much a streamer, just like I never could use a Kindle. I like the physical, but I try not to be too attached. But I will always remember the one that got away.

I went to college in the late 1970s and was interested in the same music everyone else was — Joni Mitchell, the Band, Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Fairport Convention. I’d seen Patti Smith on SNL and was entranced, and I was just beginning to get into jazz. I had moved on from the swing bands that my parents liked to John Coltrane and Miles Davis, but new friends at college opened a whole new world of music to me — Ornette Coleman,
Ivor Cutler, Art Ensemble of Chicago, and progressive bands like Soft Machine, Henry Cow, and Hatfield and the North.

I’m not sure how the Jan Steele/ John Cage – Voices and Instruments album came my way. It was on Brian Eno’s Obscure label and had been issued in 1976. I don’t remember much about the A side — Jan Steele was a British composer and pianist. I’m sure I listened but nothing really stuck. But the B side — the Cage side — that stuck. Two piano solos and three spoken word pieces with lyrics adapted from James Joyce and e.e. cummings. I still remember every song and I could sing every word to you now. Carla Bley sang “Forever and Sunsmell” adapted from cummings’ poem, “No. 26” (from the collection, 50 Poems). Cage had written the piece for the dancer Jean Erdman. Robert Wyatt sang “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” (adapted from James Joyce’s novel,  Finnigan’s Wake) and “Experience No. 2” which was an adaptation of cummings’ “it is at moments after i have dreamed.” I was obsessed with those pieces and with Richard Bernas’ percussion accompaniment. I can hear them in my head as I write.

I think I must have bought the record in New York in one of our trips down to the city or maybe the Harvard Coop in Cambridge when home for the summer. I don’t remember, but I sure remember when I lost it.

A friend of a friend asked to borrow it during our senior year. My college was small — there couldn’t have been more than 90 people in my graduating class. I figured it would be easy to get it back, and even though I didn’t know the guy well, (Yeah, it was a guy, and his name is written in infamy in my heart.) we knew enough people in common, so I’d have some leverage if he didn’t return it right away. But I think I sensed when I gave it to him, I’d never get it back — I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, and I can see that record leaving in my hands. I know exactly where on campus we were standing and what the weather was like. And sure enough, despite my increasingly panicked reminders, I never did get that album back. We were seniors, suddenly, we were graduating and leaving school. Our paths never crossed again.

Over 40 years later I still think about that album. “Experiences No. 2” was included on Robert Wyatt’s Different Every Time, the 2-CD greatest hits compilation that came out on Domino (another great label and a super introduction to Wyatt’s work). In 1994, Joey Ramone covered “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” for the Caged/Uncaged – A Rock/Experimental Homage To John Cage album on Cramps Records.

I don’t have a turntable anymore but there are still some records I buy when I see them — I can’t resist a Caedmon spoken word album or a Folkways LP. I love the covers so much. If I see a Black Saint or a Delmar CD that I don’t have, I buy it because I know it’s going to be good — those are GREAT jazz labels. Voices and Instruments is available streaming in all the usual places, and I could download it from Bandcamp. I know I can buy the LP on Discogs or eBay, it’s easy. But I still look for the physical record when I’m in a record store digging through crates. Let me know if you see it.

Watch this space for more Crate Digger’s stories this weekend, and see you at the WXNA Record Fair on Sunday at Eastside Bowl!

WXNA Crate Digger’s Week – March 20, 2025

WXNA FM

In honor of the first WXNA Record Fair on Sunday, March 23 at Eastside Bowl, March 17-23, 2025 is Crate Digger’s Week on WXNA! Today’s installment is a three-sided serving of great memories and great records!

Brian Eno – Another Green World
Anne McCue – Songs On The Wire

When I was about 15 years old, I would catch the train into Sydney with a great friend and go to all the secondhand book and record shops in the city. We’d also go to the several indie record stores and check out all the imports from England by bands like The Jam and XTC. It was an exciting time! I discovered a lot of poetry books and found a lot of cheap secondhand records, too. Our hearts and ears were open to new discoveries.

One of these was a 10-inch Benny Goodman Sextet record from the late 40s which featured the song, “He’s Funny That Way.” In those days I bought books and records based on the way they made me feel when I held them in my hands. The guy at the checkout couldn’t believe I’d want this record because I was wearing my semi-punk-new-wave gear and was so young. But I knew it was going to be great, and it was!

Later, when I moved to Melbourne I shared a house with a record nerd and he introduced me to Another Green World by Brian Eno. When I heard the guitar solo on “St. Elmo’s Fire” I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I didn’t even know it was a guitar. I had already been playing guitar for a few years by then and had even dabbled in experimentalism – banging my loose strings on the pick-up and recording from one cassette player to another cassette player. (Eventually, I got a 4 track cassette recorder!) When he told me it was Robert Fripp and it was indeed a guitar, I was committed to playing electric lead guitar forever.

Through a series of unfortunate incidents, I had to leave my entire record collection in Australia and don’t have access to it anymore. I’ll always have a strong and heartbreaking yearning for those records! So when I find a record like Another Green World in a secondhand shop over here, I am beyond
thrilled. This is one of my favorite records of all time! Eno is from another world as was his friend, David Bowie.

Music has got me through all the worst times. Hearing this record takes me back to those many nights sitting by the fire and just listening to albums with kindred spirits – it’s a lost art of communication. Just sitting and listening to records with friends. xo

 

The Clash – The Clash (U.S. Version)
Tommy Womack – Tommy Womack’s Happiness Hour

This copy of the American version of the first Clash album has been in my collection since 1979. It was a revelation to put it mildly. I was an angry disaffected 16-year-old senior in high school, and one of the squarest of pegs. When that album fired up on my turntable and “Clash City Rockers” roared out, I heard for the first time a fellow who was as angry as me. If Elvis Presley had contracted rabies, he would have been Joe Strummer.

As a professional musician of more than forty years, there are few notes I’ve ever played that can’t be traced back to this album. It’s still a major part of my life. I even front a Clash cover band called Tommy Gun and let me tell you, it’s a strenuous assignment to try and be Joe Strummer for fifty or sixty minutes. The least you say is that this record is that it’s a rock and roll classic. The most you could say? The words haven’t been invented yet.

 

The Who – It’s Hard
popGeezer – The Morning Show

My last semester in College — Fall of 1982 — was the time of The Who. I saw them twice in one weekend, and their then current album, It’s Hard, was my closest friend during that lonely Fall.

Watch this space for more Crate Digger’s stories all week long!