This past Saturday was National Record Store Day. I woke up to a forecast of 85 degrees in Austin, so I put on my favorite green sundress and set out to buy some records.
The Chronicle had posted a full page ad with every participating record store, 12 in all, but I only ended up making it to three of them. After I stopped by the Sunset Valley Farmers Market, I made my first stop at End of an Ear. I've blogged about this store before, so I already knew they'd have a good selection of indie vinyl and small but well-curated selections of older records. It was really nice to see more than three people in the store. In fact, all the stores I went to seemed to be benefiting from increased traffic.
At End of an Ear I picked up St. Vincent's Marry Me (of course I've had the CD and mp3s since the get-go, but it's such a great album I wanted the vinyl version too) and Bob Dylan's Hard Rain which caught my eye because he looks so dreamy on the cover. I tell you, eyeliner on certain men, at certain times. Seriously.
And I bought Shirley Bassey's How About You? partly because she looks so fierce on the cover.
Whatever she was singing about, I was prepared to listen. I hope to someday have something happen to me that makes me want to strike that same pose. I've already told you about the other purchase I made at End of an Ear, which, I'll admit, came close to making me strike the Shirley Bassey pose in the middle of the store.
Next stop was Friends of Sound Records which I'd never been to before. The Chronicle's big pull out map was a little misleading, plus it was just listed as "in the alley" off South Congress. It took me a while to finally find it tucked back behind a row of buildings, around the corner and at the top of a concrete ramp. The fact that I actually spent about ten seconds wondering if I was trespassing was not a good sign.
Once I found the place, it was small and set up a bit awkwardly, with the record bins feeling just slightly too narrow for the actual records, so that I ended up shuffling through the albums at a weird angle. If ever I were to open my own record store, I would make the record bins tall so that you didn't have to bend over to look at them, and wide enough to allow for quick shuffling, and - most importantly - I wouldn't overstuff the bins so as to prevent people from actually being able to look through the records.
At Friends of Sound I picked up a copy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Blacknuss which contains his cover of Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" (read my previous posts about Withers and Kirk) and also a random jazz record by Cal Tjader called San Francisco Moods. Each song is named after a San Francisco landmark ("Sigmund Stern Groove", "Grant Avenue Suite") but having never heard of Tjader I wasn't sure if it was worth the asking price. Once I discovered it was pressed on red vinyl and released in 1958 (according to the guy at the counter) I decided to take a chance.
I was heading home after Friends of Sound, when, driving north on Lamar, I saw the sign for Emerald Press Coffee. I'd stopped by there earlier in the week to try out their drive-thru service and had gotten a pretty tasty soy latte, so I decided to park this time and try out their iced soy latte. As they were making my order, Ben behind the counter engaged me in a friendly chat and we ended up talking about records. I told him what I'd bought and we talked about turntables, although he uses his to DJ and likes house music, which isn't my cup of tea. Then he served me the second best coffee beverage I have ever tasted:
Best Coffee Beverages Of All Time
- Blue Bottle's soy latte - San Francisco, CA
- Emerald City Press' iced soy latte - Austin, TX
I've been back there almost every single day since to order the same thing. They even wrapped my drink with a silk rose one day. I love that place.
Since Cheapo Discs (not to be confused with Austin's beloved Chepo) is just across the street from Emerald City, I made it my third and final stop. There, I picked up Joni Mitchell's Mingus, Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual, Best of the Doobie Brothers, Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 1 by the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Doobie Brothers have so many good songs -- and Michael McDonald to boot:
Young Michael McDonald makes my heart stop. So handsome, and that voice! I'll leave you with this snippet, because, really, young Michael deserves his own post.