Hi Rick,
Good to finally put a face to a name.
This years crawl was another success if for no other reason, the shops made lots of money. Got a bit of a late start this year, we didn't get going until about 10:00. Blackmore showed up for about 10 minutes but then got a phone call from Lisa saying here car wouldn't start. Thinking she was driving the Bug, immediately I thought it was some of the electrical issues VW had when they reintroduced it domestically. Needless to say after mark got the call he bolted to get back out to the boonies. I looked out the UCity Diner to see Mark pull away and low and behold he was in the Bug. Mark, I bet you'll catch crap for weeks about leaving Lisa your car.
Anyway, the group this year was Sturg, Mark (for a millisecond or two), Bryan, Rick, Sturgs other friend (who I can never remember his name), MerRev, Rick (rsquires), and me. Oh yea, Tim showed up for a minute or two while dodging INS. He was in full regalia and riding his souped up Vespa.
Roaming across the street to Vintage Vinyl Sturg and I found lots of great stuff. Me, I picked up a bunch of obscure R&R that I'd been looking for on vinyl for a while. Most of it was really reasonably priced and in really good condition. Sturg....well, as Sturg was wandering around trying to find something other than the few we found in the $3 bins, I pointed him to the Hendrix Box Set. This one was all of Jimi's greastest songs on eight pieces of 180 gram vinyl except....the cuts were all alternate studio and live takes. Needless to say, after Sturg picked it up, it didn't leave his clutch. Then his found a great 10" 33rpm collection of the History of Jazz (on RCA?). It was the entire series, all in good condition. That was a great find, especially at $3 each.
After Vintage we went down to Euclid and met up with RSquires. After spending as much as I did at Vintage on classic rock, I was trying to take it easy. I found a Van Morrison CD I'd been looking for. As we were standing back by the Jazz section I noticed a new Eric Clapton collection on vinyl. I tried to resist picking it up but I couldn't. After looking at the song list it really was a 'best of' with a lot of the songs that I would have picked from his collection. As I went to put it back on the shelf I flipped it over to looks at teh front I saw the sticker saying that Stan Ricker mastered it. Knowing Stan and the cutting head he uses, well...lets just say I instantly became about 50 bucks poorer.
After Euclid we wandered over to Webster Records. It should really be renamed Webster CD's since that place hasn't seen vinyl since the early 90's. Speaking for myself, I only had two CD's on my list to pick up at Webster, one was Slatkin doing Barber's Adagio for Strings, that and a little something for Laura, one of the Celtic Women CD's. When we started flipping through the used CD bins we found out that they just picked up and elderly gentlemens jazz CD collection. Needless to say, Sturg, Rick and myself checked out with and armload of really tasty jazz CD's. Then I see Bryan sneaking around hiding the pile of CD's he found. I won't tell you what the four of us spent but lets just say Webster had a good day.
After Webster we changed our lunch stop to CJ Mugs. Granted the food wasn't quite as tasty as the little Italian joint we usually frequent but the scenery was loads better.
After some brews and fuel we went down to Music For Pleasure to see what new gear they had in. After watching Rambo annihilate an entire platoon (or two) of solders with a 50 caliber machine gun single handed (complete with exploding bodies, holes through torso's they you could reach through, about 55 gallon drum of fake blood, and never having to stop and reload) we checked out some of the new toys. As you would expect they were loaded with Dyn and T+A gear. I brought in my EC record set and cracked the seal. We listened to a couple of sides on a Rega P7 and a T+A integrated driving same Dyn monitors (I forget which ones). Even with the cheap NAD phono stage, it sounded pretty decent. The big Dyns in the front room were kind of interesting but I didn't spend enough time to really check them out. Since we hit there just before 5pm, we didn't get to ply with much. I would have liked to hear the Focal Chorus line but that will have to wait for the next trip.
After MFP, we decided to head back to the Loop and have a beer or two at Cicero's and call it a day. We never made it down to Record Exchange. Just as well, I'm not sure my pocket book could have handled it.
Noticeably absent was Steve but he and his family was in all of our thoughts.
So Sturg, did you crack the seal on that Hendrix box set?
