Tiger B. Smith

 Artist: Tiger B. Smith

LP: We're the Tiger Bunch

Song: "Inside My Head"

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The second place I went digging for vinyl on my Minnesota road trip last week was Roadrunner Records in Minneapolis. It's a cute little shop packed with lots of vinyl goodies at good prices. This 1974 Tiger B. Smith LP, however, was a little on the spendy side. But after taking into account their hair, makeup, wardrobe and abundance of glitter (they're also German, which helped!) I decided to take a chance...and I'm glad I did! Tiger B. Smith doesn't have a huge discography, so I've already got just about everything they released, with the exception of a few singles and a million dollar EP. I also left Roadrunner Records with a handful of old French singles, but those I haven't listened to yet.

[ Roadrunner Records — Minneapolis, Minnesota ]

B. J. Thomas [1942-2021]

Artist: B. J. Thomas

LP: Most Of All

Song: "Rainy Day Man"

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Song: "Most Of All"

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I was sad to hear today that raindrops will never again keep falling on this guy's head for the rest of time. I posted tracks from this 1970 LP back in October of 2015...but I don't have any other B. J. Thomas records, so here it is again. In "Most Of All," B. J. sings that he's at the railway station in St. Paul. I was just there! You can read the New York Times obituary for this handsome crooner here. 

B. J. Thomas

[ August 7, 1942 — May 29, 2021 ]

We will miss you, Billy Joe.

Valeri Leontiev

Artist: Valeri Leontiev

LP: I'm Only a Singer

Song: "I'm Only a Singer"

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Song: "I Don't Love"

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I've just come back from a week-long road trip all around The Land of 10,000 Lakes! In case you're not familiar, that's another name for Minnesota. Most of the state's record stores are concentrated in the Twin Cities, and that's where I visited seven of them. The first five were all in Minneapolis...

 [ Minneapolis ]

...and my very first Minnesota record store was Cheapo Records, the big store on Nicollet Avenue. There was no listening station there (and none currently available at any of the stores I visited) so on this trip I basically had to judge a book by its cover. But what a cover! I had a strong hunch Valeri wouldn't disappoint with this 1988 LP, and I was right. Valeri (sometimes "Valery") Leontiev is a very big star in Russia, but of course I am not Russian, so I had never heard of him. I wonder: Do they have a lot of leopards over in Russia?

[ Cheapo Records — Minneapolis, Minnesota ]

John Martyn

Artist: John Martyn

LP: Inside Out

Song: "Fine Lines"

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Song: "Ways To Cry"

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One of my favorite things is visiting the record store to go digging through the LP bins in hopes of discovering something amazing that I never knew about before. But recently I realized that I can now do that at home for free! This morning I dug out this lovely and amazing 1973 LP by John Martyn. I had no idea what it sounded like, so I put it on and was thrilled—again—to have discovered it! Ahh, the joys of getting older, with the memory slipping slowly away. 

 

Martyn died in January of 2009 at age 60. You can find his New York Times obituary here, in which it's stated that Martyn, "inspired in part by the slow-burning, mystical jazz of the American saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, ...devolved a keen sense of texture and atmospherics, transforming ballads into sensuous rhapsodies."

 

[ John Martyn: September 11, 1948 — January 29, 2009 ]

Debbie Cameron & Tommy Seebach

Artist: Debbie Cameron & Tommy Seebach

LP: 7" single

Song: "I See the Moon"

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Here's a happy little ditty from 1980 that I picked up on my trip to Norway with my sister back in 2017. "I See the Moon" has Eurovision Song Contest written all over it...which makes sense, because that's where Debbie and Tommy worked together to create pop music magic in 1979, representing Denmark on the show. Incidentally, Tommy and Debbie both had the same birthday, September 14th, though he was born nine years before she was. 

 

[ Debbie Cameron: born September 14, 1958 ]

[ Tommy Seebach: September 14, 1949 — March 31, 2003 ]

Eddie Lund and His Tahitian Orchestra

Artist: Eddie Lund and His Tahitian Orchestra

LP: Eddie Lund Presents Tahiti Dances

Song: "Vahine Anamite"

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Song: "Ute"

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Song: "Tangi Tika"

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I love finding old recordings of music from Tahiti! I mean, where else are you going to hear the eerie obligato of the nose flute? This one (and perhaps all recorded music coming out of Tahiti in the early 1960s) was produced by Eddie Lund of Vancouver, Washington (why, that's just down the street!) and features actual Tahitian singers and musicians performing in their natural habitat. 

You see, Lund went to Tahiti in 1936, learned the local spoken and musical languages, showed everybody what a microphone was for, and the rest, as they say, is history. My guess is that Eddie probably also introduced the Tahitians to Elvis Presley, and then the beautiful music of the islands was gone forever.

[ Eddie Lund: October 12, 1909 — December 4, 1973 ]

Big Hair

Artist: Big Hair

LP: 7" single

Song: "Puppet On a String"

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Last weekend Jan and I decided to go for a Sunday drive to West Seattle for breakfast (the big West Seattle Bridge is out of commission since it's evidently cracked, so we had to go the long way around). We ate at Easy Street Café, then I suggested we browse in the record store to practice for our upcoming trip together to Minnesota. I've got quite a few record stores on my list in Minneapolis and St. Paul, so I wanted to be sure we'd manage.

I'm happy to report that things went well! Also, I found some pretty amazing records. Someone had brought in a nice bunch of early '80s (1980 to 1982) British goth/new wave 45s, similar to the earliest releases on 4AD, but on other labels that were also around at the time. One of them is this incredible version of "Puppet On a String" by Big Hair, released on Fresh Records in 1980. Discogs doesn't list any other records by Big Hair, which is unfortunate for my collection...but I suppose it's good news for my pocketbook.

[ Easy Street Records and Café in West Seattle ]