Disco Arab 2 (cassette)

Scum stats: ungoogleable (right?)

A vacation with 5 year old, 2 year old and 5 month old daughters does not exist. It is a lie. It is all work and bare minimum play. It is an exercise in having to make do in unfavorable conditions, one thousand times a day.

I didn’t think that a 19th floor condo overlooking Clearwater Beach would be where I’d find myself de facto “digging” but I am always on the lookout.

Place is owned by a family friend originally from the Middle East. The spot primarily serves as a guest house for for folks rolling into town. The unobstructed views of the Gulf of Mexico are awe-inspiring, the twelve seconds you’re actually able to take it in before one of your kids runs out onto the balcony and you freak out in nervousness.

So I dig into a cabinet that looks like it has not been opened in twenty years. Inside, VHS and cassette tapes. A handful of Arabic titles grab my attention. Luckily, this place has TWO cassette players. Shit, I don’t even think my house has two cassette players.

The design and title on this one is so whip smart and the title so spot on. Songs are mediocre ABBA approximations with broken English lyrics. There was another cassette that my mother-in-law translated as being from Kuwaiti radio broadcasts which was way more bonkers in terms of music, but the cover was boring. Disco Arab seems more like a comp you’d buy in a truckstop with apreggiated scales in a more “Eastern” manner while Kuwaiti radio seems like it could be reissued by Sublime Frequencies.

So now I gotta ask this guy if I can borrow these tapes and transfer them and send him back CDs and younger me would’ve just taken them because he’d never know or even care that they are missing but now I’ve got a wife and kids I’ve got to be an example for, so wish me luck on this one and maybe someday the four people reading here will actually get to hear.

I wonder at what point in human history did beaches become desirable? Was it with the onset of air conditioning? We’re the Romans all about getting tan? I am oddly fascinated with this beach bum, Ron Jon surf shop, air-brushed t-shirt, ice cream shop every two blocks, shitty pizza, tourist overflow kinda town. How do people live here? Like, literally. Do they enjoy it? Or do they just enjoy the money from the bottomless margaritas and selling dimebags of dirt weed? Or is it meth now? Am I a sucker for wanting to parasail or ride a jet ski? Will I be able to anytime before my youngest turns ten years old? Or am I still in the land where Louis CK’s joke about vacations applies to me for even longer? Ugh.

PS. I thought I’d find something at the record shop in Tarpon Springs, and besides copies of the first two Black Lips singles (of which I already have multiple copies) it was pretty touristy fare. But the mere fact that there’s a shop in Tarpon fucking Springs with a decent new and used vinyl selection, it just kinda blew my mind. Apparently there’s a few record shops here in Clearwater, but baby girls are begging to go swimming for the millionth time, so my “vacation” continues.