Over the past four or five months I have visited Hard Off three or four times. Here are the records hauled.

Con Funk Shun is a great band. Get into them and you will have a lot of fun.

Kenny has some of the worst album covers. It’s great. I am told that this one was meant to evoke Indiana Jones. Sure, okay. As long as it is not messianic in the cringey way of Keep The Fire. Who’m I kidding, I love it all.

S. Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe—*Never Ending Summer*

The Summer of 2024 was one of city pop for me, and it provided a lovely lightness. This has plenty of that.

S. Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe—*River’s Island*

This too.

Music aside, look at those boots. And the pants tucked into them. And the buttons on the pant legs nearby.

Hits hits hits.

Hits hits hits. A worthy addition to any collection. I hope it sounds good—lately some of the albums purchased at Hard Off have had unadvertised scratches. Usually they’re pretty god about labeling the records if they are damaged.

I can feel my mania for yacht rock fade just a bit, but smoothness will never fail to please.

The junior high school portrait used on this album cover is incredible. Bob can do no wrong. At worst, he’s very solid.

“Smooth Operator” is the obvious reason to have this in the collection, but I look forward to hearing the whole album. One thing I was amazed to learn was that this album came out in 1984. I heard it circa high school and thought it was new. There must’ve been a revival of some kind then. It still sounds incredible, with her voice of course a major reason.

A no-brainer to have as a big fan of the Dan. I refuse to entertain any theory except that the sleeping man on the cover is Sam Kinison.

Similar to A Day In The Life, this is Wes doing his jazz treatment to cover songs. It is very nice, Also tremendous work music for me.

Not every Yuming album hits perfectly for me. We will see how this goes. I think I bought it (it’s been a few months) because of the year it came out and because I recognized a song or two.

More of that excellent city pop vibe.

Speaking of city pop, Tatsuro Yamashita is of course one of the great contributors to it and has excellent albums of his own. The albums often cost over 10,000 yen, even in Hard Off, due to the popularity of city pop in recent years. This was priced around 1,100 yen, if I remember correctly. After the transaction was over at the Hard Off, I told the person ringing up my purchase that it was vastly underpriced in my experience. He was genuinely happy for me. He revealed that they do not have as strict a database and pricing policy across Hard Off locations as I had theorized, but did say that it seemed to have come in recently and may have ended up more expensive if some employee in the know had seen it. In any case, I look forward to it. Tats is a songwriting genius.

I don’t know anything about Brass Construction, but I have a very good feeling about it.

It’s weird—I don’t get super excited to find the albums of artists I have loved since I was a teenager. Maybe I don’t expect to listen to their albums much because I can play any song in my head at anytime. But the deep cuts can hit very nicely.

I bought this solely on the strength of the many yacht personnel it features. Should be good.

Remember WWII? I am too young, but looking forward to learning all about it.

Highly unlikely to be anything but excellent.

Zack and I listened to this in its entirety. The title track, a tribute to the then-recently deceased Marvin Gaye, is touching and a solid song. The rest left us demanding to know “WHERE ARE THE CHORUSES?!” (← That is a scene with naughty words from The Sopranos.)

Kool and The Gang might be the band whose albums have been most productive to hear in full, because their deepest cuts invariably win me over to the point that I listen to the album on repeat for many days. This happened in December with the album Something Special.

I had been listening to this via streaming, and so much that I began to think I owned it. So when I saw it on one Hard Off trip, I passed it up. Later I realized my folly and found it—of course, this is Japan—at another location the next-or-so trip. The title track is especially satisfying because the tastiest hook is doled out so stingily as to make you want to hear it again many times.

The Isaac Hayes Movement—*Disco Connection*

I have tempered expectations. Isaac Hayes earned the right to be unfettered in his music, but fetters would’ve helped him in some cases. So why buy it? The first word in the album title is why.

Did Weezer steal Waylon’s logo?

This has seminal hip-hop classic The Breaks. I look forward to hearing if anything else feels iconic.

This is a purchase to slightly broaden my horizons. At the very least I feel confident it’ll be good background music for work.

The double album is so thick and heavy that I was worried it was a laserdisc. It is a bit different (and pleasantly so) to listen to on vinyl, and sounds excellent.

I might not have bought this, but the Quincy Jones production sealed it for me, and then the outlandishly sumptuous personnel got me very excited to have a listen. All the yacht gods play on this.

It was only a matter of time before I found and acquired this. Georgy Porgy is a great track, but the overall feel is also something I will enjoy in its original vinyl form.

I do not know anything about Crusaders. I have high hopes.

“Wait, did I actually buy this?”, I thought to myself as I took the stack of records out to photograph in preparation for this blog post.

“Let It Whip” is the big hit from this, but I expect that some gems lie in the deep cuts. Too strong an era and genre not to yield some up.

The song (that is not on this album) “Baby Come Back” caught my imagination with some force circa 2000. On the strength of that I shall give this album a solid listen or two and perhaps humanely release it back into its natural Hard Off-bin habitat if it is not to my liking.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this here before, but Wikipedia research revealed to me that originally, Herb Alpert overdubbed himself on trumpet, slightly out of sync, to become the “Tijuana Brass” on his early albums. This album will, like many above, be good work music even in the worst-case scenario.

I don’t believe I have heard this album anywhere, much less on vinyl. Here’s hoping it is a nice experience.

Record Haulsss

Award for Firefighting (to Our #9 Company)

All About Shobodan