Greetings from Laurel Canyon!
It’s rare when I lack inspiration to go digging through record crates to find Idelic Hour inspiration—AKA: a playlist. This week’s source came from a Facebook post. My old Boston punk rock pal Johnny Angel reached out with the question:
What are your three favorite “cut out” albums?
My god, I hadn’t thought about “cut out bins” in a long time. In my mind they pre-dated used records, which I associate with California swap meet culture of the ’80s and ’90s. The cut out bin brings me back to NYC in the ’70s and the magic of record stores. There were five in the 2 block radius of my parents’ apartment on East 85th street.
The truth is most of the records I bought from those bins were fakes. Fake Jeff Beck & The Yardbirds, fake Page and Clapton, and of course fake Hendrix vinyl. Once in a blue moon the bins would be flooded with a genuine flop. I bought at least two copies of the Flaming Groovies’ Flamingo LP. But no real vinyl scores came to mind.
Seeing Johnny’s angelic post, what did come to mind was the magic of the record stores of my youth. So I’m just gonna play some records and boogie!
What a week! What a life! Enjoy it all!
Idelic Single of the Week: DOPE LEMON – Give Me Honey
