August 24 Record Haul

Give me from the early morning to noon and I will get a lot done. Afternoons are for naps and vinyl-seeking. Sometimes.

The Hard Off in the Kamikuzawa area of Sagamihara is fairly new. So new that a couple months ago, I went into it and spent an hour finding quite a few excellent records and only then read the signs all over the store cautioning that items could be viewed but not purchased just yet—they wanted to build up some inventory first.

So much labor went down the drain that rainy day. And I feared for the albums someone else would get before I got back there.

I finally got back on August 24. The labor was even more intensive than the usual Hard Off run, because the vinyl is almost all in plastic bins sitting on shelves at knee height. One must pull them partially off the shelf and support them while combing through the stack. It is not ideal.

The less-than-ideal shelving of the records may have saved my most coveted albums, though. I found most of the ones I had lamented before.

This is one of the best albums. That last sentence is complete. Finding it at Hard Off was not a surprise, but it was a great pleasure. I had listened to it a lot on streaming services, but for whatever reason it was one I really wanted to hear in its original format, the way people in the 70s would have. I brought it back to the office and had a pleasurable listen. As often happens, the clear delineation between the two sides of the record added something that we miss with streaming and basically every other format.

Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye—*Diana & Marvin*

I did not know this existed as an entire album. This year I have gotten into duets. “Tonight I Celebrate My Love,” sung by Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson, has been one object of near-obsession. I had always loved the songs “Stop, Look, Listen (to Your Heart)” and “You are Everything.” I was only vaguely aware that these two greats were the singers thereof.

I love the way the album cover opens in the middle. I love both of their voices. And it is fun to read about the making of the album.

It is fun that the song “This Masquerade” is ballyhooed on the cover, while, for my cohort, the title track is surely the most recognizable one thanks to such factors as its use in the movie Anchorman and the Yacht Rock series.

George Benson has grown on me a lot due to record listening. He is a superb singer and musician and gets the good personnel for his albums, especially when working with Quincy Jones. This one is more instrumental, but great office listening.

I remember hearing the title track as a lad and thinking about how crazy it would be to dance on the ceiling. So it holds a special place in my heart.

“Say You, Say Me” is also on here. A classic.

I look forward to hearing the deep cuts as well. And I now aspire to this outfit of Lionel’s—who wouldn’t want to be this linen.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono—*Double Fantasy*

This album has several tracks that I love, and some garbage. It’ll be great to have.

As a low-calibre music fan, I have become more interested in Ryuichi Sakamoto due to his passing. I have always loved the song “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” and wanted to know what Sakamoto was all about. Since this album of unknown renown was there, I grabbed it. I have decently high hopes.

Any day you find a Kool & The Gang album is a good one. This was no exception. Every track is great. “Get Down on It” is one of my favorites.

This was maybe the biggest treasure of the haul. Was it 2020? One recent year, Chaka Khan was my most-listened-to artist on Spotify. Her voice is so powerful and distinctive and good.

This album is under the radar compared to some of her other ones, because it didn’t have any major hit singles. As a whole it is superb, though. It will get a ton of play.

(I have no idea why an album owner or their housemate, etc. would draw on her face on the cover, but it is a shame.)

Oh, the other thing that I did on this Hard Off run was sell back 10 or so records that I didn’t want anymore. Some of the rejects were just bad and not worth having. Most, though, were greatest hits or other compilation albums that I decided to eschew in my record collection after beginning purchasing finds. So the cleansing and retrenchment of the collection to an album- or cohesive-collection-of-songs-such-as-soundtrack-only standard is essentially complete.

Unforgivable Omission

A Real Estate Matter that Illustrates a Variety of Things