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!
