Play It Again Records, Spritualized, Simple Minds, The Verve

I spent a LOT of time in record stores growing up. It's something I truly miss about the "good ol' days" of the music world. The record store was a safe haven away from the "pressures" of middle school, high school, and college where nothing mattered but discovering new sounds and talking music. When I was little Record Outlet used to be THE place to buy records on Orchard Lake Rd. in Farmington Hills. Everyone who grew up in the late 70's and 80's in the area remembers big Les behind the counter and people used to line up there outside to buy tickets for every big concert. In high school though the place I used to hang out at the most was Play It Again Records in Southfield on Northwestern Hwy. I spent hours browsing and flipping through used records and I discovered a lot of stuff there. Alan Kovan was the proprietor of Play It Again - his family and mine go way back. Alan is a good dude and even though Play It Again is long gone (along with so many others since record, cassette, and CD sales have steadily dropped with the advent of the Internet), there is now a Play It Again Records tribute page on facebook and Alan is hosting "Play It Again Records Nite" at the Berkley Front on Friday April 3rd. A band which he is really high on is going to play - they are called Speck Mountain, and while I've never heard of them I am excited to see them. I've always trusted Alan's musical recommendations. I actually went through my records today to try to determine how many in my collection came from Play It Again, and today I counted about 50, and that's only what I could verify by the Play It Again Records sticker still on the album (or cassette). Some great stuff from all over the musical map - mostly what they now like to call "1st Wave alternative" stuff like Simple Minds, New Order, Joy Division, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Gene Loves Jezebel, The The , Jesus and Mary Chain etc., but there was some Black Sabbath, Rick James, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Shalamar, Beatles and Zeppelin in the mix as well. Ahh the good ol' days...

So I pulled out an oldie but goodie which has never been far from my frequent play list anyway and that's New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) from 1982 by Simple Minds. Simple Minds is in that category of "my bands" - an automatic buy of every thing they ever have or will release. They've never done anything I flat out didn't like, but their catalogue definitely looks a little like a bell curve to me for quality which peaked from about 1982 to 1985 with New Gold Dream, Sparkle In The Rain, and Once Upon A Time. The 5 albums before those 3 and the 7 since all have plenty of amazing moments, but those three represent their creative peak to me. New Gold Dream might be the best one of them all - a perfect moment captured right as the arty experimentalism started to give way to the grandiose dramatics they are so well known for. Gloriously spacey and very much synth driven but with plenty of great Charlie Burchill guitar work, this album is still one of my all time favorites and contains the best instrumental they ever laid down in my opinion in Somebody Up There Likes You (the earlier Theme For Great Cities from Sister Feelings Call is close).

Alan has also been hyping Spiritualized and The Verve on his facebook page, and he's right about them too. The only Spiritualized CD I own is the double live Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 and I've had it shelved way too long. Epic, trippy and majestic like few recordings ever made (seriously), I think I'll be listening to that one for a good part of this year...

As for The Verve I am a huge fan which I mentioned before, but the one Verve album I haven't spent as much time with even though I've had it for a while is A Storm In Heaven. Alan has this disc listed as one of his top of all time so I took another run through it yesterday. I find it to be somewhat impenetrable at first but yesterday may be the first time I focused on it all the way through and there is plenty there that I am going to stick with and digest a little. Also very spacey and dense with Richard Ashcroft's vocals a little bit buried, but I was digging the vibe yesterday...