Westwood Avenue (featuring Erin Rae)
Bachelorette Screams b/w Tennessee
scum stats: two versions, 25 copies on Wax Mage variant, the rest on pink (mine is pink)
HAPPY SEVEN YEARS OF RECORD OF THE WEEK WRITE-UPS!!!!!
Each anniversary here, I choose a record from the local Nashville label Soul Step. As a local vinyl focused label that is (essentially) a one-man operation.
I am disappointed in the missed opportunity to rhyme "bachelorette screams" with "Jason Aldean's" but otherwise, the a-side is a charming country ode to the "change" that has gone down in downtown Nashville, specifically the neon jungle of Broadway. Even more in the spirit is that Melvin, main man behind Soul Step, oversees a large corporate operation in the heart of Broadway and he described to me his release of this song as some quasi-payment of karmic debt to the situation.
Melvin explicitly said to me "I might only ever sell a handful of copies, but I just felt like I needed to put it out."
Having been in the game for nearly 25 years, shit, just this morning digging through decades old boxes of Cass Records backstock looking for a single copy of a record long-since declared unimportant by the masses of record buying public...I know the exact feeling. It's real. It motivates. It is arguably the reason I'm even here.
So while it seems like once a year is too infrequent to relay such a message, I will continue to relay it...SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDENT VINYL RECORD LABELS. They are not forever. They are not lucrative. They are not easy. They NEED it. They are imperative to the success of the overall vinyl (and music) ecosystem. Without small labels doing the leg work, taking chances, discovering the unknown...you don't ever get huge successes of the "next big things."
As a celebration of seven years of you folks continuing to read what I put here...I'm doing a giveaway. Post a comment here before Friday October 6th. Just make it good. Maybe it's about something YOU JUST HAVE TO DO. Maybe good equals funny. Maybe good equals emotionally heartbreaking. Maybe good is clever. You be the judge...until I be the judge.
Prize is...since I don't have anything specific sitting in my hands that makes me think that the winner will be all "oh boy oh boy oh boy!" I'm gonna call the winner, we're going to have a conversation about records and music and we'll decide, together, what record from the depths of my closet is commensurate with their award-winning commenting abilities.
Nashville is for sure my next place to visit when in USA. I wish it will surround you of music as I always imagined. thanks as always for your music suggestion, all those kind of music do not arrive on the other side of the ocean very easily.
I have a tormented soul which steps into the unknown and its only consolation is records. I keep walking wounded leaving a series of footsteps on thin air.
I need to learn to play the riffs from Cure’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and White Stripes ‘Seven Nation Army’. Then I’ll play them both together, just for the hell of it – because that’s just the way I am! And my 12 year old son has requested it.
Was thinking one of these days about the independent side of business and being an artist. It is hard and we are always looking for a next big thing, or we fantasize about that one recognition that will bring you everything you ever wanted in terms of your career. I moved countries about three years ago, and that was hard. Before I had a relatively solid carrer in what I used to do until I moved countries and basically had to press a huge reset button.
Doing so, I went to the bottoms of “what the hell have I done” until I build enough resilience that I started writing my own things, projects and so one. I finally realized I have to keep bringing myself to create my won work, my next big thing. The one responsible for the next big thing will no other than myself.
I don’t know why I’m talking about this now, but yeah, that’s what I was thinking about.
Long live our local record shops.
Wanna come back to Nashville and shoot the shit and see some karaoke at Santas and avoid Broadway at all costs
Went to see The National in Leeds last week. My, thats a band on the top of the top of their game. Reckless magic. Laugh Track is a haunting work. Please do something TMR with them