Music fans turnout for Record Store Day

So, as you know by now yesterday was National Indy Record Store Day, the day when we all go out to support our indy stores by grabbing a bunch of freebies on records we'd buy anyway, and get to feel superior because we blow our budgets to hell once a month as opposed to once a year like the other plebes jamming the checkout lines.

Early on in the afternoon (hey, it's a weekend) Em and I headed down to Amoeba Records Hollywood to start the day, and try for one of the $50 gift-card raffles (unsuccessful). On the way in, a kid was out front flyering for an LP sale going on down the street at the recording studio near Santa Monica and Orange. After stimulating the economy a bit, and downing a recharging snack at the nearby In & Out we followed the promise of over 1000 records for a dollar a piece.

The vendors were set up in an unassuming tent on the sidewalk, and the records were jumbled up in battered cardboard boxes, but the promises were true. Thousands of records, most for a dollar. The only problem was there was a lot of ABBA. And Village People. Man, I had no idea how many albums those guys released.

Still, extended digging had it's rewards. I found a copy of the Boys' "Boys Only" album for $1 and Angelic Upstarts' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" for $5. These are great records by well-known bands, and if you don't have them you should check them out for sure. But they're also relatively easy to find, so if I don't tell you about them someone else will.

I'm going to tell you about another record I salvaged from the heap of bad disco (is there any other kind?) and 80's hair metal (if you need Dokken records, I know where you can go).

The band is Blotto, and the album is titled "Hello! My Name is Blotto What's Yours?". The record first caught my eye because it's a simple black and white image of a dancing woman with a drum for a head. The background has a manifesto printed, with all the words run together giving a short history of the band and telling "serious poseurs" where to buy shirts so they really fit in.

A little research later discovers that this is the band's first EP released in 1980. Another record with the same title and cover was released in 1983 with a completely different track list.

Still up in the air, I flipped the album over to check out the track listing. The first song was titled "I Wanna be a Lifeguard (a wet dream)". Sold. That's pretty much guaranteed to be hilarious, and for a dollar, you'd be hard pressed (no pun intended) to go wrong.

When I got home I threw the record on, and to my delight found something a little bit surf-rock, but reminding me heavily of some twisted bastard love-child between the AGs and the Undertones. The songs were clever, a little pop-y, but not in a terrible way. In fact, the second song on the A side is a satire of all those top-40 bands that still seem to multiply like bacteria under the moist folds of a sweaty man-bosom. Titled "(We are) The NowTones" it starts off:
"we are the now tones
we do top 40
we wear matching outfits
we look real sporty
like a living jukebox
we play the hits
appear in nightclubs
that are the pits.
We get down while the crowd gets drunk"
and goes on to further lampoon the soul-less machine of mainstream pop. Brilliant.

The B side has a cover of "Stop: In the Name of Love" which is still weird enough to be funny, and a song titled "Bud... Is After Us (call my lawyer)" which isn't as good as the first two on the first listen, but grows on you after a second or third hearing.

Overall, I'd say this is an excellent record, well worth picking up if you get the chance.
Blotto is apparently on iTunes, and their website http://www.blotto.net/ has a link to a merch page with two albums on CD available.


-Jo Problems-