Snapshot

Artist: Snapshot

LP: Souvenir

Song: "Sorry Sir"

[ listen ]

The final record store I visited on my trip to Washington, DC last week was Som Records on 14th Street NW, a few blocks from all the others clustered together on 18th Street. Just like at Red Onion, I found lots of great stuff on my first visit to Som Records several years ago, and they had plenty of neat records for sale this time too. This 1983 dance-pop record by Snapshot, who're sorta like B-52s-meets-ABBA at the ESPRIT outlet store in Denmark, is just one of the interesting things I found. These gals evidently don't like playing with toy soldiers, and this particular copy of their "Souvenir" album once belonged to a Johnnie Akim-Willimas of Tåstrup, but that's all I was able to learn about this dynamic Danish duo from the LP sleeve, and I couldn't find much English-language info about them on the web either. If anyone can fill me in, it would be appreciated. I did, however, manage to dig up this wonderful Snapshot video from 1984:

Snapshot on YouTube:

[ "A la Carte" ]
 

[ the outside of Som Records — Washington, DC ]

[ the inside of Som Records — Washington, DC ]

Double Exposure

Artist: Double Exposure

LP: Locker Room

Song: "I Got the Hots (For Ya)"

[ listen ]

Anyway, getting back to Washington, DC—after setting up the conference booth at the hotel where I was staying, I headed over to my favorite 24-hour DC diner, simply called The Diner. After enjoying a delicious omelet and plenty of coffee I dropped by Red Onion Records & Books, which was the basement record store I'd been trying to locate the evening before. (I forgot they sold books too, so that part of their name threw me off.) I'd found lots of great stuff at Red Onion the last time I was in DC, and managed to leave with plenty of neat stuff this time too—including this 1979 locker-room-themed LP by the Philadelphia-based disco group Double Exposure. James, Joseph, Leonard, and Charles have evidently been singing (and showering) together since they were in junior high school, though in the 1960s their group was called United Image instead. According to the Double Exposure Wikipedia page here, these lads released the first-ever commercially available 12" single!

[ the inside of The Diner — Washington, DC ]

[ a delicious omelet w/ grits and English muffin at The Diner — Washington, DC ]

[ the outside of Red Onion Records & Books — Washington, DC ]

[ the inside of Red Onion Records & Books — Washington, DC ]

[ the inside of Double Exposure's sports uniforms — Washington, DC ]

Dobie Gray [1940-2011]

Artist: Dobie Gray

LP: Loving Arms

Song: "I Never Had It So Good"

[ listen ]

Speaking of guys with beautiful voices, I'm interrupting my Washington, DC record store tour to pay this little tribute to singer Dobie Gray, who died three days ago. Born near Houston, Texas, Lawrence Darrow Brown (aka. Dobie Gray) moved to Los Angeles around 1960 to pursue an acting career, but instead found success with several soul hits in the early part of the decade. He handled lead vocals for the group Pollution in the late '60s and early '70s, then released several solo LPs in the 1970s with more of a country vibe, like "Loving Arms" in 1973. Dobie Grey is best remembered for his top-ten hit "Drift Away" from '73, which you can see him performing by clicking the YouTube link below. Gray hit the top-40 country singles charts as late as the mid-1980s, but mainly focused on song-writing for the last few decades of his career. You can read more about Dobie Gray on Wikipedia here, find his obituary in the L.A. Times here, and visit the official Dobie Gray website here.

Dobie Gray on YouTube:

[ "Drift Away" ]

Dobie Gray

[June 26, 1940 — December 6, 2011]

We will miss you, Dobie.

The Escorts

Artist: The Escorts

LP: All We Need Is Another Chance

Song: "Look Over Your Shoulder"

[ listen ]

Before leaving Smash Records, I inquired about other basement record stores nearby. I remembered visiting one in the Adams Morgan area three years before, but I couldn't remember its name. The guy directed me to Joint Custody across the street, which had a really narrow stone stairwell entrance leading to minty green caverns filled with vintage riches. The store had only been open for a couple of months, so it wasn't the place I'd been looking for (I found it the following day), but Joint Custody had some really great stuff—like this 1973 debut LP by The Escorts, a soul group made of guys doing hard time in New Jersey's Rahway State Prison for crimes like armed robbery and murder. I don't know about you, but if someone accosted me on the street and started singing like these guys do here, they could go ahead and murder and armed robberize me and I'd hardly make any fuss at all. Surprisingly, there's no info about The Escorts on Wikipedia, but you can read about Reginald Haynes, one of the original members of the group, on the Legendary Escorts webpage here. I've included notes and lots of neat photos from the back and inside of the album below, and the track posted above includes an interview soundbite from producer and Motown veteran George Kerr.

[ the outside of Joint Custody — Washington, DC ]

[ the Joint Custody stairwell — Washington, DC ]

[ the inside of Joint Custody — Washington, DC ]

Meadowlark Lemon

Artist: Meadowlark Lemon

LP: My Kids

Song: "Earthmen"

[ listen ]

Smash Records was the next Washington, DC record store I visited last week; it's just a few blocks up the street from Crooked Beat. The store seemed more geared toward punk, metal, indie rock, clothing, and that sort of thing, so I didn't really expect to find much for my collection. I figured I'd pop in anyhow and I'm glad I did. They had some terrific stuff tucked into the dusty corners, and then they also had this bizarre 1979 album from Meadowlark Lemon, one of the most well-known and beloved members of the famous Harlem Globetrotters basketball team. The album is mostly a celebration of the beauty and innocence of childhood (Meadowlark has 10 kids; see front cover and the dedication in the liner notes), but it also includes an odd closing track called "Earthmen," a call for planetary unity in the face of a hypothetical hostile alien takeover of the planet. If such a takeover actually took place—complete with MOONRAKER-style laser-beam sound-effects—Meadowlark wonders: would people in the world finally forget all their prejudices and come together as one? For all of us are Earthmen! (Well, except for Earthwomen, of course. But we could probably offer them up as some sort of sacrifice or donation to the hostile aliens in order for them to leave all of us newly-unified Earthmen alone.) You can read all about the life and career of Meadowlark Lemon here, visit The Meadowlark Lemon Foundation website here, and get lots of info about The Harlem Globetrotters here. Hey, guess what Whoopi Goldberg, Pope John Paul II, Henry Kissinger, and Bob Hope all have in common. Each of them is an honorary member of The Harlem Globetrotters!

[ the outside of Smash Records — Washington, DC ]

[ the flag and neon sign of Smash Records — Washington, DC ]

[ the inside of Smash Records — Washington, DC ]

Shirley and Company

Artist: Shirley and Company

LP: Shame Shame Shame

Song: "I Gotta Get Next to You"

[ listen ]

While in Washington, DC for a work conference last week, I of course found some time to visit the national capital city's terrific record stores. I'd been to most of them once before, when I was at this same conference in November of 2008, but this time I brought along a camera and a little more money. My first stop was Crooked Beat Records, in the basement of a neat old building in the Adams Morgan neighborhood (as you'll see, all the city's best record stores are located in basements). One of the neat things I found at Crooked Beat was this dancetastic album by Shirley and Company—in this particular case it seems Shirley's in the company of Richard M. Nixon, who, years ago, actually used to live in a large white house just a mile or two from where I found this record. Born in New Orleans in 1936, Shirley Goodman had several R&B hits in the 1950s with Leonard Lee in the group Shirley & Lee. The duo split in 1963 and after doing some backing vocal session work (on Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street," for example), she left the music business. Fortunately for everyone, she came back again in 1974 when her friend Sylvia Robinson talked her into providing lead vocals for "Shame Shame Shame," which became an early disco hit. Sadly, the hits didn't last long, and Shirley retired from the business again in the late 1970s, moving herself back to New Orleans. You can read more about the life and career of Shirley Goodman here, and find a link to her televised performance of "Shame Shame Shame" here:

Shirley and Company on YouTube:

[ "Shame Shame Shame" ]

 [ the outside of Crooked Beat Records — Washington, DC ]

 [ the inside of Crooked Beat Records — Washington, DC ]

 [ Shirley Goodman: June 19, 1936 — July 5, 2005 ]

 (pictured here with '50s singing partner Leonard Lee)

Eavesdroppings

Overheard when: 9:50pm on Saturday, December 3, 2011.
Overheard where: the sidewalk outside Landmark's E Street Cinema at 555 11th Street NW - Washington, DC [map]
Overheard who: a nondescript, brown-haired Caucasian woman in her early-to-mid-30s, speaking to her husband or boyfriend and another male friend as we all walked up the street after watching Steve McQueen's new film called SHAME. The film explores the sexual addiction of an insipid corporate drone who manifests his illness by having sex with prostitutes, stalking attractive married women on the subway, picking up women in swanky upscale bars and then fucking them under a nearby bridge, downloading oodles of outlandish porn on his work computer, not being able to form meaningful romantic relationships with interesting women, masturbating in the office bathroom several times a day, getting blow-jobs in a seedy all-male sex club, being emotionally unavailable to his needy, mentally-disturbed sister, who's finally driven to suicide by his indifference, etc. etc.
Overheard what: "I was thinking that the 'shame' might be that he's gay."