Lost my groove there for a second, with the start of the semester, but getting back into, with this post and the one tomorrow, where I dust off “The Melting Pot Radio Hour,” to spend a little more time with vinyl I dug up in the previous year. While I didn’t buy that many 45s, the same could not be said of LPs. 2020 was on par with more recent years (though not quite as much as my all-time year of record therapy in 2015), even though I only made it to three stores all year long, and most of my buying was in spurts & batches. I’m not sure if there were any themes in what I picked up, though I feel like I focused on getting more than a few records I’d wanted to get for a long time, as well as a number of things that I hadn’t heard at all until someone put it on my radar, and then I immediately had to have it. As ever, I’m always amazed by how many records are out there still to be discovered. After a little over 25 years as a collector/DJ, the record game continues to surprise me, which gives me hope that there’ll never be a day in the future where I won’t want to share the sounds I discover. For now, here are the top 5 LPs I tracked down in 2020.
Vincent Gemignani – Ophis Le Serpentaire
This one came my way along with a small grip of records from a dealer in France. I hadn’t heard anything from Gemignani prior to checking this album out, but hearing just a few seconds of the vibe was all I needed. There’s apparently another version of this LP with suitably groovy cover art, but I’m more than happy to have this one in my collection, and you’ll definitely hear more from it in a later post.
This one has been on my want list for at least five years, when I first heard a tune from it from one of Joel of Tropicalia In Furs Ebay sales. As a big fan of Brazilian music, there’s little doubt why I’ve been fiending for it once you hear “Tio Macro,” with it’s heavy drums and slinky piano and subtle psychedelic tones. And then…and then, everything drops out in the final moments and you have nothing but clean, booming drums. The whole album is a real treat, and it’s always nice when you’ve long wanted an album that it turns out to be so much more than just the one track that hooked you to begin with. Easily one of my favorite Brazilian jazz/samba/funk albums ever.
I’ve already written a good bit about this album. Highlighting it here reminds me that I need to track down those other vocal non-jazz albums on CTI. Hard to fathom that any of them could be as good as this folk/psych/jazz/country marvel.
Even though there was only one proper Rappcats pop-up in 2020, Egon still had a sizeable influence on my tastes. The thing that I appreciate about collectors and DJs like Egon is that they rarely hold back when there are albums that they truly love and that they want people to hear. There were multiple posts about this album, which is a real contender for a “Don’t Judge A Record By It’s Cover” award, and hearing just a snippet of it, along with Egon’s effusive praise, was enough to get me to track one down. “Meaning Of Love” is my favorite track on the album and though it’s new to my ears, it’s clear it’s gonna be a long time favorite, as are many of the other songs on this wonderfully eclectic album.
There were a lot of very rare records, definitely more expensive records, that I picked up last year, but nothing gave me as much pleasure as this solitary album from David Astri. So much of that is connected to “Safe And Sound,” which about as close to perfect as an early 1980s song can be. Finally sorted out that the lovely vocalist on the tune was Karen Goldberg, who recorded an album of her own, with Astri in tow, from around the same time, but nothing on there compares to the magic they achieved on “Safe And Sound.” Without a doubt, there wasn’t a song I listened to on repeat as much as this one during the wild year that was 2020, which cements it’s place at the top of this list.