Kagny & the Dirty Rats

Artist: Kagny & the Dirty Rats

LP: Kagny & the Dirty Rats

Song: "Pocket Rocker"
[ listen ]

After leaving Troy, NY, I drove up into the Adirondacks and went camping by a lake. I enjoyed looking at all of the beautiful autumn leaves, had a delicious breakfast at Nancy's Village Cafe in Malone, stopped off at a castle on an island in Alexandria Bay, and then finally made my way over to Watertown, where I grabbed a sandwich and a beer at The Paddock Club, a local watering hole.

[ Camp ]

[ Leaves ]

[ Nancy ]

[ Castle ]

[ Club ]

The handsome bartender at The Paddock heard me whining about his town not having a record store, so he pointed out that there was actually a little thrift shop called Thrifted across the street that had some records for sale. I hustled over to check it out and found some vinyl in a small alcove behind a beaded curtain. This 1983 Motown LP by Kagny & the Dirty Rats was the only thing I bought. My online sleuthing didn't turn up much, but I did discover that Kagny's bass player is the very one and the same Cliff Liles who was in Apollo, a group that had released their only record just four years earlier. I was hoping "Pocket Rocker" would be a song about discreet public masturbation, like on a bus. No such luck.

[ Thrifted — Watertown, NY ]

Lionel Richie

Artist: Lionel Richie

LP: 7" single

Song: "My Love" 
[ listen ]

"You've been my friend and you've been my lover, oh lawd. Honey, you're everything I need. You've made my love so strong, now I know where I belong. Oh girl, you'll never have to worry. Oh baby, any more, any more." Oh, lawd—I should have been an early '80s pop ballad lyricist! This shit is easy, as long as your public isn't too discerning. And as we can see here, they were not. I could have been famous. Just thinking about it blows my mind. All the time. Did you know that Lionel Richie scored 13 consecutive top ten hits between 1981 and 1987? "My Love" was the 4th one, peaking at #5 in 1983. I found this single at River Street Beat Shop in downtown Troy, NY.

Downtown Troy is a wonderful, exciting place. It's basically a large grid of mid-sized 19th century structures on lovely tree-lined streets. It doesn't seem to have had its charm slit open and gutted to make way for huge crappy cement things the way so many other downtowns in upstate New York did in the 1960s, '70s and '80s—before people finally stepped back to take at look at what they were destroying and said, "Hey, this is actually kinda' neat. Let's make it a landmark." I even had a French dip dinner with au jus in a bar that used to be frequented by gangster Legs Diamond—or, as I like to call him, ole' Diamond Legs. The man was notoriously hard to kill.

[ River Street Beat Shop — Troy, NY ]

"D" Train

Artist: "D" Train

LP: You're the One For Me

Song: "'D' Train Theme" 
[ listen ]

Since I ended up on the freeway north of Seattle yesterday after breakfast, I decided to see if the record store I'd stumbled upon in Everett about ten years ago was still around. The place has moved to a bigger spot, but Bargain CDs, Records & Tapes is still going strong! I spent the entire afternoon rummaging through their bins as a windstorm raged outside. I remembered their prices as being a little on the higher side, but fortunately yesterday they were having a store-wide half-price sale (which has been going on for years, according to Yelp reviews), which made the prices pretty reasonable. I ended up taking home a nice stack of treasures, one of which was this dancetastic 1982 LP from James "D Train" Williams. Read about "D" Train the man here, and look here for "D" Train the group.

[ Bargain CDs, Records & Tapes — Everett, WA ]

Griffin

Artist: Griffin

LP: Hot Fingers

Song: "Lock It Up & Rock It (The Wild Thing)" 
[ listen ]

Song: "No Humans Allowed" 
[ listen ]

Reggie "Rej" Griffin was in the group Manchild during the second half of the '70s (he's front/left on the LP cover here) before going on to work with fellow bandmate Kenneth Brian "Babyface" Edmonds throughout his solo career. Speaking of solo careers, Rej Griffin produced this solo LP of his own in 1984, on which he handles all lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, bass guitar, Voyetra, Prophet, Korg, Oberheim and Yamaha DX7 synthesizers, piano, electric piano, alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, turntable scratching, percussion, drumulator programming and loud, obnoxious noises...so basically, just about everything. Someone named Rayford Griffin helps out with percussion, as you can see in the slightly blurry notes below. I wonder if he's Rej's brother! It's too bad Griffin isn't better known today. I like that on the back of his record he encourages fans to register to vote. In my many years of dating, it's been virtually impossible to find a man who dresses this well and has good hair, who's also civic-minded, has hot fingers, knows how to program a drumulator, and who can play three types of saxophones and a korg! This gives me hope.