Saturday, September 1, 2012

RPM's 1st Birthday - 01/09/2012

Today was the first day of a weeks holiday for me, so I felt in fairly ebulient mood from the outset.

Even better than the realisation that I've not got to go to work on Monday was that today was RPM Records (140 Vivian Street, Wellington) 1st Birthday sale.

RPM rose phoenix like from the rubble of post-quake Christchurch and has filled a void left by the sadly defunct Real Groovy Records. (I believe that RPM's owner was actually the owner of Real Groovy Christchurch, which sadly still sits in the red zone). 

Anyways, they had a 20% off sale and despite penury (I spent $2k on shipping my record collection from the UK this week - they dock on Tuesday!) I managed to pick up a few interesting gems, including:

10th Anniversary Tribute: N.W.A Album Sampler 12" EP (Promo)
Cover versions of "Straight Out Of Compton","Dopeman", "Quiet On The Set" and "Express Yourself" with Big Pun, Fat Joe and Silkk The Shocker plus others. Worth $10 (actually $8 thanks to the 20% sale) of anyone's money. It's on neon yellow vinyl as well, so a dorky treat.

Bell Biv DeVoe 'Something In Your Eyes' 12" (Promo)
Produced by LA Reid & Babyface. The radio edit and album versions repeat on both sides. A nice bit of darker R&B. Mine for 80c, which is always a winner.

2 Inda Bush 'The Lick' bw. 'Nutty Drumstick'
A very early example (1998) of what later became known as nu-skool breaks by the men also known as Soul of Man on their Finger Lickin' imprint. To be honest, I might already own this but for 80c, who cares. It's a bit uncool to admit it now (the fact that several of breaks' lynchpin DJ/Producers worked in PR didn't really help with how over-hyped it became) but I liked breaks and have a lot of breaks records. Dubstep made it okay to like Garage again, so I reckon it might be due a bit of re-evaluation. Yes, lots of terrible records were around at the tail end, but there were some great records made for a while. 

Next up, I wandered down to The Salvation Army shop to have a look at the furniture. I didn't even realise that there was an upstairs. Anyways, it was the usual NZ op-shop story (lots of classical LP's, not a lot of anything else) but I did find Yazoo's 'Situation' 7" for a dollar (sadly, no 20% sale at the Sally Army).
I'm not actually familiar with the A-side but the B-side really sealed the deal for me. 
Yes, that classic single - the one that caused Vince Clarke's departure from Depeche Mode (they turned their nose up at recording it, so he left the band citing 'artistic differences') and then had a massive hit with it re-vocalled by a very young Alison Moyet. One of my top-ten tunes of the eighties. 

No comments:

Post a Comment