$20 Record Challenge

Well, I did that $20 at the record store deal, digging through the 7-inch crates in the stupid basement of Plan 9 this week one early evening, and I came up with what I thought was some good stuff that turned out to be shit, and some shit I wasn't sure about that turned out awesome. That's the nature of digging though, and when you leave yourself the cheap limitations, you tend to find better shit nobody's heard of, because the eastern european hipsters overprice all the crap everybody already knows about.

Being this is a $20 limit, it's a lot like playing salary cap on stupid Madden football, so I'll start with the most expensive this time, since those are my big free agent acquisitions that conceivably should be awesomer than fuck for me to have gone over my dollar-per-single rule.

SLIM HARPO - Baby Scratch My Back / I'm Gonna Miss You (Like The Devil) - $3

Thought this might be one of those damn "itchin'" songs Cut Chemist and Shadow cut up on their Brain Freeze sets, and I don't think this is one of the actual ones, but it ought to be. "Baby Scratch My Back" is ridiculously awesome, and you know if someone mentions scratching on a late '60/early '70s soul single, there's gonna be some funky chicken pickin' going down. I could listen to shit like that continuously, but oddly enough, it does sound better on vinyl. If this shit was all ipodinated and shit, it would lack the grimy beauty of it. Plus, if it was ipodinated, it'd be part of some stupid ass Best of Soul Train Dance Line Tracks Vol. 7 instead of just some random ass single I found in a box with some weird bubble letter record company name on it. Technology is for punk asses, which is why I'm on a computer right now. B-side song is pretty damn loungin' as well.

Likelihood of making jukebox rotation: 100%

THE RIMSHOTS - Soultrain Part 1 / Soultrain Part 2 - $2

Even though I remember reading somewhere recently about who wrote the Soul Train theme - might've even been Don Cornelius himself, but I can't remember - but I was kinda hoping against hope this was that song, even if only in cover version. I mean, it's a fucked-up looking label called A-1, and the credited producer's name is "The Gator". This is not the infamous Soul Train theme song, though it is a nifty little pre-P-funk funk jam along the lines of King Curtis' "Memphis Soul Stew". If I can ever get one of my bootleg bullshit computerized sampling programs to crack correctly, I'm totally gonna sample a chunk of this, slow it down, and tell stories about squirrel hunting while on acid. Still, I'm slightly bummed I paid two bucks for this.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 97%

NINA SIMONE - I Like The Sunrise / You Better Know It - $1

Nina Simone is supposed to be awesome singstress or some shit, so I bought this piece of crap, and felt a disgust similar to what happened after somebody drunkenly over-explained to me how awesome Sarah Vaughn was one time, and I got like three of her records at a Goodwill. This is some crappy gay dude movie soundtrack type nonsense, and it made me feel like a creepy "bear" being secretly cellphone picturized for a filfhunter site just by listening to it once.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 0%

BLUE MITCHELL - Graffiti Blues - Part 1 / Graffiti Blue - Part 2 - $1

I knew I had heard of Blue Mitchell before, but couldn't remember where. After listening, I think my guess is he was on this fucked-up triple record Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz collection I got of them early funk overlords of the jazz scene - most of whom got sampled to death by the Dust Brothers along the time of Paul's Boutique. I had been thinking I needed more jazzy selections for the jukebox, and almost shelled out $3 for a Miles Davis single and $3 for some other dude I can't remember now, but neither made me feel imperative to break the $1 rule I had going in my head. This Blue Mitchell single sounds like the feeling of waking up to oral sex late on a Sunday morning, right when you're first waking up to it, feeling good about everything like the sax and harmonica solos, and you can even smell potatoes and bacon already cooking downstairs, which means breakfast ain't far away either, and without much work on your end. This was actually in my pile of Maybes, and it got in simply because it had "graffiti" in the title, even though it was done in like '71 or '72. Sad to think of the singles I simply stuffed back into boxes who didn't make the cut, and how awesome they might have been. That is the eternal curse of the crate digger. There always be some golden gem for like a quarter nobody has ever found before, and it's always just about to be found by you. It causes you to look through four more boxes of records than you promised yourself you would, and it fills you with dreadful pride when you're in some joint and ask for 45s and the guy's like, "I don't keep 'em out, but I've got a ton of them in the back. Let me put the dog in the bathroom, and you can go back there and look through them."

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 100%

ROBERT PARKER - Barefootin' / Let's Go Baby (Where The Action Is) - $1

Bought this for two reasons... Number one, it was on something called Nola Records, meaning New Orleans, which means horns in all likelihood. Secondly, motherfuckers taking the time to call attention to how folks ain't even wearing no shoes is usually good stuff. "Barefootin'" is that, supposedly about dancing, but there's that pretty obvious sexual euphemism about not wearing no shoes meaning not wearing no clothes. Chicks wearing open sandals or no shoes always kinda trips me out, because when you look at crap like Leg Show, there's dudes who obsess over sexy feet, so those women are pretty much running around naked for a small demographic of perverts. One time, while thinking about this, and I might've been high, I stared at my wife's feet for like twenty minutes trying to give myself a foot fetish. It didn't work. They still just looked like feet to me. I have more of a vagina fetish myself, to be honest. B-side is serviceable enough to not take away from the greatness of the "Barefootin'" track.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 92%

JOHN EDWARDS - Careful Man / Claim Jumpin' - $1

Chose this one because the label - Aware - sub-billed itself as the "Hotlanta Sound", which made me think that must mean great. Obviously, my mind was ignoring all the crappy trap snap blink bloop blip THUMP music made in the ATL today. (I don't really say "ATL" in real life, because I'm not from Atlanta, and I've never flown on an airplane either, which might've required my luggage to be labelled with an "ATL".) Just to be sure, this is not the John Edwards dude who's doing that gimmick to try to be President where he says in a fake almost gay-sounding southern accent, "I can relate to having shitty jobs, because my parents had shitty jobs, and I understand what it's like to not be heard, because I talk like a faggot running the night shift at the Fas-Mart on the east end of Kingsport, Tennessee," and not telling you he's a scummy lawyer who made millions being all scummy and taking up lawsuits against people who may or may not have been scummier than him, which allows him to feel like he was actually doing something good for society, so much so that his dumb ass thinks he should be President. Nonetheless, "Careful Man" is a good song, but I think with such a normal name and that song title, I was expecting Jim Croce level brilliance. I looked this dude up online and he became one of like 17,000 guys who sang for The Spinners, but he also was a regional star on something that got referred to by the internet machine as "the chitlin circuit". I have a cousin in college now who, when he comes home, it's like some weird tradition for his little part of the family to have chitlins, which I guess correctly spelled are chitterlings, but who the fuck can spell who eats that shit regularly? I am a man who is known to eat some fucked-up shit (country stores that have fried gizzards and hearts will probably show up on my eventual autopsy when I drop dead from the blood getting stuck in one half of my body), but I don't think I've ever even eaten chitlins, mostly because, well, it doesn't seem like a great thing to eat. Yeah, yeah, I know, put them in water and boil the shit out of them, but come on. I think the greatest thing about my cousin who loves to eat chitlins is the name he's known by, and most everybody who knows him back home calls him by to this day, at whatever college age he's at now, is Punkin'. Oh yeah, "Claim Jumpin'" was almost better than the A-side song, but neither was stand out awesome, even though neither sucked either.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 68%

CLEAN LIVING - In Heaven There Is No Beer / Backwoods Girl - $1

With this being on Vanguard Records, which I think the Vanguard Awards today are some sort of dork gospel christian country awards of some sort, and the band called Clean Living, I assumed this would be old-fashioned deep water Baptist "I don't handle snakes but I've got a crazy uncle in the mountains who does" type bluegrassish gospel. Except it's not. It's hokey country, but all about how beer is meant to be drunk and with piano solos and dudes hooting and hollering in the background, all with a steady clap track holding the time for everybody involved. "In Heaven there is no beer / that's why we drink it here / when we're gone from here / well our friends will be drinking all the beer" is basically the entire lyrical database to this song, repeated over and over. In other words, it's one of the greater songs I've heard tonight. "Backwoods Girl" is just a hokey country band, which they were on the other side too, but this song lacks the goofy schtick of being so stoked about drinking beer you made a stupid song of it. Actually, "Backwoods Girl" is a song that makes John Sebastian sound hard (he's that dude who welcomed back Kotter theme song-wise, and also painted rainbows all over your blues at Woodstock). And this single is the perfect example of how tough it is to put singles in the jukebox rotation, because even with a strong song on one side, it can really get dragged down by the other side. There's some songs I motherfuckin' love I have on 45, but I'd never put it in the jukebox for fear of somebody by chance deciding to play the other side and some crap-ass song coming out and then dudes just looking at me like I do Risky Business dancing around the house when nobody else is around.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 42%

MIAMI - Kill That Roach / Mr. Notorious - $1

I was kinda hoping that "Kill That Roach" had something to do with smoking the left-handed cigarettes. I'm not sure if it is or not, kind of an early disco song, meaning it still had enough funk to not make you feel stupid for hearing it, and there's basically chant singing with another dude doing "oww" and "yeah" sounds in the exact same voice of that guy who was in Cameo who's glasses got broke when that hot chick walked by in the beginning of Born In East L.A. Mostly instrumental funky jams like this, complete with Wes Montgomery-lite guitar solos, are perfect for the jukebox, because I always imagine if I eventually do have my stupid jukebox in working order, I'll sit around a lot drinking homemade wine and playing Spades at the kitchen table. Spades is a good married couples who like to use party as a verb activity, because all the kids can go play upstairs and you can sit around getting fucked up while attempting to win a game with your partner against another couple. Or you can do the battle of the sexes thing, which usually isn't too much fun because dudes always win, because we're almost as smart but like a thousand times more competitive. You can't do that teaming with the other couple's opposite sex counterpart thing because it creates too much sexual tension, and that wife-swapping shit never ends well. Somebody always ends up feeling gypped, and then someone else might be a little too eager to make the trade again next weekend and it just creates tension. Plus, I always have a hard time paying attention to whether or not somebody already played the ace of diamonds when my boy's wife is rubbing the inside of my shinbone with her naked foot, even though I don't have a foot fetish, and you try to look like nothing is happening. Then double plus, you get all pissed because what if that shit is happening the other way too? I guess all your feet would get tangled up under the table, and then you'd all just have sex together on the lambskin in the living room, but even then, too many feelings to get caught. Plus, for me, being a happily married man, the excitement of being with women before being married was the penis-tingling excitement of a naked woman. If every time I was gonna look at a naked woman there had to be a naked man there too, I probably would've just masturbated my whole life. I ain't really trying to get down like that. "Mr. Notorious" is an instrumental jam with a lot of flute action, which I guess if I was into swinging and shit like that, I might at some point desribe to a swinging buddy about a new swinging couple we hooked up with as our night at the Comfort Inn jacuzzi room being "an instrumental jam with a lot of flute action," and then I'd nudge him and laugh and we'd all have sex with each other's spouses and everybody would die from AIDS.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 69%

KURTIS BLOW - Starlife / Way Out West - $1

One time I lived in a trailer with a dude and we had a fish tank and it had three fancy fishes and two scrubs. The fancy fish were named Kurtis Blow, Curtis Mayfield, and Curtis Lowe, and the scrubs were Scrub One and Scrub Two. Then my roommate went away for the summer and I bought a channel cat and he ate everybody there so I caught him in a coffee can and flushed him down the toilet. I can only assume, from growing up on '70s TV movies, that now, somewhere in southside Virginia, there's like a 200 pound albino channel catfish feasting on unattended baby strollers. "Starlife" is like a Lisa Lisa & the Cult Jam song, meaning it sucks. The thing I've found about old Kurtis Blow singles on 45 is if both sides have an actual song, you are going to lose, because Kurtis Blow is not actually good, unless you reduce his entire discography down to those two lines "Now basketball is my favorite sport, I love the way they dribble up and down the court," and not even the rest of that song, just those two lines. But if you can find a 45 that has an instrumental version on the B-side, the beat will sound kind of like a Chuck Brown go-go beat for a good chunk of the song, making it at least partially worthwhile. "Way Out West" is pretty fuckin' bad, too, though slightly not as terrible as "Starlife". Still, it's old school rappin', which is ironic in whatever way people today liking shit from the past that sounds stupid gets defined as ironic.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 21%

THE STAPLE SINGERS - Samson And Delilah / Hammer And Nails - $1

Two things led to this purchase... First off, "Samson And Delilah" is a song the stupid Grateful Dead always played, and they were basically the most famous cover band ever, and I bought at a yard sale a few years ago a version of "Staggalee" by the Pacific Gas Company or some shit which is like three billion times better than any version I ever heard the Dead come close to doing. So I figured this might be the same deal as The Staple Singers are those folks who did that "I'll Take You There" jam from AM soul's heyday. Secondly, for about two weeks, my dad got some religion in his life, before my sisters were even born, and he was gonna read to me from the Bible, and since I had no sisters, it meant I was under six, and the only story he ever read from the Bible was the one about Samson and Delilah. My dad also always had a ponytail my whole life except for one period during my teen years where I think he had to go to court or something. This has brainwashed me to this day to be afraid to cut my hair off, even at 33 years old, because I don't want to fall in with the devil. When I say devil, I don't mean killer coolin' devil like Reign in Blood and Blizzard of Ozz devil, but more like child molestation tobacco lawyer town council devil. "Samson And Delilah" is great, though not as great as that "Staggalee" song ended up being, and "Hammer And Nails" is good, and I guess I can be down with a gospel single in the jukebox. There's a ton of that shit in the bins, but it's such a giant leap to buy one, because I don't know shit about black gospel music to know what might even be good or not, so for me, it'd just be, "Haha, this song is about cars and the devil," or something. I guess that's one of the final fields of expertise an expert whiteboy music dork has to make - to dabble into black gospel music to know what's great and what ain't and be so much smarter than everybody else. God, I hope I never get like that.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 53%

Z.Z. HILL - It Ain't No Use / Ha Ha (Laughing Song) - $1

There is no better stage name in the annals of American music than "Z.Z. Hill", and "It Ain't No Use" more than lives up to a name like that. This is one of those rare songs that make you tell yourself, "Hey, I really need to have crazy wild animal sex in a junkie-looking room with nothing but a red light on" to it. There's no real singing involved here, just Hill drinking with a woman, then a knock on the door and another woman, slurring her speech and trying to explain some shit to Hill, and then he kicks in to a quick verse about how shitty the slurring woman on the other side of the knock was, and you can imagine he's gonna get back to putting the work into that new woman. I'd say if there's one major fault with rap music it's that there's not nearly enough of it perfectly designed for fucking to, I guess because it's so alpha male. But that doesn't make logic, because alpha males love having sex, too. Whoa, the B-side song actually relates to the A-side, because the new girl is crying at the beginning of "Ha Ha (Laughing Song)" and Z.Z. explains how she shouldn't cry, he'll get all that noise worked out with Esther. And he does, because everybody's laughing at him, so he's all like, "Fuck you, Esther." I like how the fact a woman cheats on you is not as bad a slight as the fact that other people know she's been cheating on you, and that actually makes sense to me. It makes me hate Esther, too, especially since this is an old song so there's no way she's still hot enough for me to want to help her cheat on Z.Z. Hill some more.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 94%

THE ROLLING STONES - Tumbling Dice / Sweet Black Angel - $1

I'm gonna have to be careful the jukebox doesn't turn into a bunch of hipster doofus soul nonsense, so I try to keep an extra watch for some actual good rock-n-roll on 7-inch with the big hole (stupid punks) in the middle. This meant I was pretty goddamned excited to find a 45 single from off maybe the greatest rock-n-roll record ever - Exile On Main Street. And "Tumbling Dice" no less. The Stones in their reckless prime of the '70s was the most perfect rock-n-roll you could make, because it made you want to drunkenly drive other people's car as fast and as far as you could just to see where you ended up at. I dig some of the stoner rock bullshit that's been coming about in the recent years, but it's kind of retro nostalgia and you dig it and think, "Man, that's awesome, I wish rock was rock again and not all pussy-fied!" but you don't want to actively drunkenly drive other people's cars like primetime Stones made you want to. The pure essence of rock, just like rap, is something that can't be revisited, with some bullshit Hip Hop is Dead label. It reinvents itself as so motherfuckin' awesome somebody just has to suck your dick. Most bands on Earth would sell their soul to the Jewish label owner to have a B-side song like "Sweet Black Angel" be the only A-side they had their entire lives.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 100%

JAMES BROWN & THE FAMOUS FLAMES - I Got The Feelin' / If I Ruled The World - $1

I had thunk "If I Ruled The World" would be awesome, but the "I Got The Feelin'" song was better, but more famous, and the world-ruling song was actually pretty crappy. Far too slow and string-ridden to properly allow for James Brown's drug-addled wife-beating mic-crushing best.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 9%

JAMES BROWN & THE FAMOUS FLAMES - Don't Be A Dropout / Tell Me That You Love Me - $1

I guess the concept of not being a dropout as a James Brown song is a great one, but the actual version lacks the barely coherent rambling intros and outros I had been hoping for. Still, it's James Brown, which means I can buy like three thousand other singles by him for a dollar. Seriously, that dude was the hardest working because he must've released a new 45 every Tuesday. B-side is a song. By James Brown.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 19%

JOHN & ERNEST - Super Fly Meets Shaft / Problems - $1

Ahh, a collage song where there's some stupid story about Superfly and Shaft and the President and they have snippets of actual songs you would know. It's briefly interesting, in a purely novelty song type of way, which means after hearing it two times, it's stupider than fuck and you want to punch anybody who accidentally plays it. "Problems" is generic studio musician funk, so in all likelihood, this single was born from a couple of record producer dudes doing a goofy montage thing for one side, and then giving a bunch of black dudes a pack of cigarettes and two pork chops apiece to do a jam for the other side.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 32%

RUFUS THOMAS - Do The Funky Chicken / Turn Your Damper Down - $1

I always get my shit all mixed up, like on all those old records that say Rufus featuring Chaka Khan and then Rufus and Chaka Khan, I thought Rufus and Chaka were an Ike and Tina type couple, so there was a dude named Rufus Khan. And I guess since I actually had heard of Chaka Khan from the '80s, I figured Rufus Thomas was that dude's original name before he and Chaka got hooked up in whatever weird form of pop music Islam they were into back in those days. This is about that funky chicken dance, but also a song heavily sampled by Eazy-E (more likely Dre) on his debut album, which we used to call LP back in the day, because it was a long-playing record. Both sides are good enough, but I'm feeling slightly stifled by flipping stupid 45s over every three minutes, and plus I've been drinking, so I'd like to get this bullshit done and put on something that'll play for longer than me walking across the room and sitting down.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 38%

LITTLE JOHNNY TAYLOR - Open House At My House (Part 1) / Open House At My House (Part 2) - $1

I assumed this was the same Johnny Taylor who eventually became Stax Records' "Soul Philosopher" when I boughted it. Did you ever see, anonymous internet fucker, that old movie called Straight Outta Brooklyn that Matty Rich did by borrowing the money for a camera for his uncle? Very low budget coming of age in the ghetto tale that was so hyped as gritty and realistic that I even remember them playing it on PBS one Friday night? Well, if you did, then you remember the main character's drunken wife-abusing father who had the go-nowhere job at the gas station, who was nothing but shithead, until you saw him get talked down to by white customers and he came home one evening, but rather than beating his wife like you thought he would, they put on some old records and danced around the kitchen... this was the song they would've played, that would've made the abused wife remember why she loved her man and they had a family in the go-nowhere ghetto together, trying to make a dollar out of a stack of past due bills. That means this song is the motherfuckin' greats if you haven't seen that flick, and it's what you should listen to right before you end up getting shot over some stupid shit your stupid kid did that leaves you laying there looking like a misunderstood Jesus with head sideways for a camera to take a picture of you for everybody else to pretend they understand your Jesus nature better through, even though you're still just as misunderstood, because no one gives a fuck still. I guess that's the wonderful lie about Jesus being awesome is he made people give a fuck, according to the popular legend as spread by people who think he's awesome. Seems to me people don't really give a fuck about much still though, except having faster internet and lower credit card finance charges. I didn't really talk much about the specifics of this totally the best song ever song, but that's sort of the point of getting drunk and listening to music, isn't it? It's like religion, and digging through shitty old boxes full of records nobody's thumbed in four months... it's so mysterious and full of promise and flashes of joy, but mostly you get left with not a hole lot of anything.

Likelihood of making the jukebox rotation: 100%