As a consumer, three of my favorite things are…

1. The fresh smell of opening a new pair of Nike’s.

2. Poppin’ a tag off of a ‘Lo shirt.

3. Picking up vinyl in all of it’s oversized, colorful glory.

Don’t get it twisted. I still like buying some CDs but vinyl is a different experience, especially the purchasing of it. I try to stay away from buying online, preferring the to go into the store, quiet as libraries & full of like minded music lovers engaging in the elbow-to-elbow art of digging. “Spelunkers of sound” as I like to call my fellow diggers.

My love affair with vinyl has been off and on but always life long. It started as a kid, always diggin’ thru my dad’s sparse collection as well as all of the crates my uncle had as a DJ. In the mid 90′s when my grandad closed his nightclub, JM & I put together a few dollars, bought my uncle’s Technics…and a garage half-full of records, spanning genres, sizes and decades. Love affair reborn. Until I left those motherfuckers in JM’s care while I was away for a while & the collection seemingly grew legs. Love lost.

Until the past year or so.

Currently, I don’t even have a turntable to play my records on. But by my logic, I consider all of these purchases as if I were courting Alicia Keys. I save up so that once or so a month, I can take an excursion to one of the few vinyl haunts in town, our “date” of sorts. I wine & dine with her, splurging lovely. She hasn’t given me any yet, as in I haven’t bought a turntable. But soon I will and with all of these records sitting here with me, it will be a heavenly experience. I will unwrap & play record after record…and then play another record.

Yesterday, I made one of those dates by killing some time before an appointment. It was planned. I had set aside allotted spending money for whatever I might find & let my fingers do the rest. Below you will find pics of my bounty. No real rhyme or reason to what I bought. I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur; my pics are indiscriminate & instinctive. I saw it, I checked the price first, then the condition. If I wanted it, I grabbed it. Done deal.

Juan had ALL of these on vinyl when we were kids.

I have no intentions of deejaying a party so I rarely by 12″ singles. But this, this was a small piece of history. At .99¢, I’ll take it. Read the rest of this entry »