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Hello there. This is Terry Denise, a Lansing Community College student and your host of Ripper in LCC Connect podcast where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in around and beyond the community of Michigan's capital city. Welcome. I am your host, Terry Denise. This is Ripper and I hope you are. Well, I actually ran into a local. I don't, I don't know what to call them. They're very, very great singer. When I was volunteering for Funkfest, I took place in Old Town. I met this wonderful other volunteer who was singing along with a lot of these songs that were being played. His name was Leonardo. I hope to get Leonardo in here sometime soon. And I even told him that at the time he just seemed like a very incredible personality. He left me with some interesting and well accepted parting words. You know, he asked me, well, how is everything going? And I was just like, you know, well, I'm here trying to get things done. And you know, he's like, you know, this is not verbatim, but just think about things. What did you do? What was the first thing you did this morning? And I was like, I woke up. And he was like, there you go. There's somebody that didn't wake up today. You know, there's somebody that lost a sister, brother, father, mother, uncle today. You know, it's a day to appreciate. So yeah, that would be a great person to have on to hear more of this person's wise words being said. And that actually really got me in a much better mood that I was already in. There's been some very interesting things going on lately. I'll just get into it. This show is called Ripper. I did not necessarily want to get into talking about the resting of piecing of people, but I am definitely a person that goes into what Leonardo said to me earlier today. Appreciating the life that you are and get to keep living for the moment and the way that you keep doing it and you get met with different obstacles and everything like that. But it is how you conquer those challenges that helps to lead to appreciating what you can do with your life and with your day and how you can react better. So with that said, I do have some, some influences that were just great, great, great people that we have just recently lost. On Monday, July 21st, Malcolm Jamal Warner passed away due to a Dr. While on vacation with his family in Costa Rica. I was heavily influenced by Malcolm Jamal Warner as well as other people from this great heralding show called the Cosby Show. Growing up people like Malcolm, Jamal Warner, along with, I mean, Raven Simone, and just so many countless other people that had come through that show that were already standalone personalities of themselves and that would get invited on as guests on the show. Like, I believe Celia Cruz was on there at some point. Just countless greats. Dizzy Gillespie, so many favorites that would come through on that show and that would get invited to partake in featuring African Americans being and living a life that a lot of people just never had the ability to, I guess, in their. Their minds appreciate that the fact that there are people that weren't just coming from, you know, like, moving up in the world, but, like, just you're seeing people who are doctors already, who have already gone through schooling, who have already gone through being a lawyer and are. They're practicing what they studied for already. And then you see the younger generation getting into where they're at in school and everything like that. And Theo was one of the characters that was played by Malcolm Jamarl Warner. He didn't have the easiest time in school sometimes. So you got to see, like, a character who had these, like, who had this already, I guess, intimidation by the family around him. You know, his sisters were going to school and everything like that. And he was having trouble in school himself. And it's just kind of like one of those things where you're like, well, everybody else is so accomplished around me, like, how am I going to be able to succeed? And, like, you know, like, it's just those moments where you're like, also have the pressure of, like, being African American, black, brown, whatever. There's an additional kind of pressure that you have to be better than. You have to equal and be better than. And if you're not, then you just. You. I mean, there's a lot of things that happen with a lot of different people that don't feel accomplished enough. And that's the thing is that is the pushing through and finding yourself and finding the fact that, like, maybe there's other things that you are supposed to be in. You're not necessarily supposed to be a doctor. Not everybody has that aptitude and that ability to assess situations in the best way in those areas. And that's why there's people that come through on different ends that you find it to be the person that is actually teaching others to conquer other parts of themselves that they never knew that they had. And I believe his character became one of those kinds of. He became a teacher, I believe, and like the other Cosby offshoots and everything like that. I Believe he went on to different worlds in the off one of the offshoots of that as well of the Cosby show called A Different World. Lisa Benet played Denise Huxtable, which is one of the sisters on there. And that show was about being in college and university and everything like that and transversing those areas. So you get another look and a view at how a person can establish themselves in a different avenue and a venue that's not necessarily following in your parents footsteps, which a lot of people do have trouble with. It's a great, great character that he played. And one of the biggest influences on my personal life was being able to see this event called spoken word and that being professed and brought to the focus in different areas. So the performance of spoken word, poetry, music, reaction, it's such a huge, huge state of performing arts. Big statement, big impact. It's a different way of reciting your poetry lyrically, bringing forth different ways of speaking, having influence and impact on certain vowels and the way that you're accessing and allowing others to hear the way that you're speaking. A lot of times there's music involved, sometimes there's percussive beats or like jazz included instrumentals that are in the background that accompanying your words. So it's, it's a whole other kind of way to express yourself within another mode of expression which is just poetry in and of itself. So like spoken word and the way that spoken word evolved, such a huge, huge way for another generation to once again evolve like beat poetry and everything like that, which is where a lot of that came from, from Ginsburg era and everything like that. A lot of the, the offbeat path, beat poetry, a different way to even write and type out how you're, you're emoting and how you're bringing forth different kinds of imagery and everything like that. Even like when I say the way that you wrote things out or the way that you could type things out and write out everything, literally the imagery that you could put on a paper was just in different kinds of ways, like different stanzas. You could have just one word on a page with a period and that could be just seen as like performative and very, very like imagery, you know, like snap, snap imagery and everything like that. It's just like I have a word on a page, that word is literally the word word. And then you know, you could write that as many times as you want and that's just seen as like, wow, that's a steep man. Just things like that. But having evolution of that, and then Malcolm Jamal Warner, like, performing that in his character as Theo in another area of performance in theater, which was on television. And being able to bring that to different audiences that never would have been able to see that ever in their life if it weren't for, I'm sure, behind the scenes, you know, like, how can we, like, you know, we've got a younger generation. That's. What are they into? And it's just like, well, you know, I went down to this local beat theater the other day, and can I express myself in this way? And people are like, yeah, do it. And there he is performing Malcolm Jamal Warner, using music and theater and entertainment and spoken word in that way. Very influential on so many different people. I actually also watched him on Malcolm and Eddie, which was with the comedian Eddie Griffin. And that was on UPN at a time in the late 90s, early 2000s. But it was just them being guys and just having comedic sitcom situations and everything like that. I was just such a. Just a great time being able to watch him in different modes, in different characters. Malcolm Jamal Warner, a full life that was amazing. And unfortunately cut short at the age of 54. But he leaves such a great, great mark for entertainment. And just being this guy that we so many of us grew up with in the 80s and 90s, especially, just to be that. That young and being able to just grow up with everybody and have such an influence, it's just remarkable. So to move on to another heavy loss, but great influence of mine as well, would be Ozzy Osbourne, who literally passed away the next day. On July 22, 2025, John Michael Osborne succumbed to complications of Parkinson's. Weeks previously, before Ozzie had just passed away, he put on and invited a lot of guests to raise money for different foundations. The foundations generated over $200 million, or pounds actually might have been. In either case, it was just a lot of funds that were raised for the Cure Parkinson's Trust, the Birmingham Children's Hospital, and Acorn Children's Hospice. That was called Back to the Beginning, hosted by Ozzy and Company. Ozzie actually was very charitable a lot of his life. If you go to the Wikipedia page, which I had to. And I just. There's so many things that that man has gone through, had gone through over the course of his life that, you know, whether, you know, it was by his own hand or other things. By early 2000s, had basically made his way into a lot of different people's households through the Osbourne show, along with some of his kids. Because he had like six kids, I believe. So the main participants in that particular show was Sharon Osbourne and Jack and Kelly Osbourne, who another grouping of people of us also grew up with later in the 2000s with that show, the Osbournes. But he went on to, you know, everybody just saw this different side of this heavy metal entertainer. And it was a great time to be able to grow up in another way with Ozzy Osbourne & Co. And a different kind of company, which would have been his family. And to see so many different players and how an entertainer at that went about their life when, you know, just got to see him backstage in performances. And I know he had a really dangerous accident that happened around that time. So you got. You saw a person in recovery from a physical accident that happened. I believe there was like a recreation vehicle. So you got to see him come back from that. And what people didn't realize was that at the time, because he didn't tell, you know, he didn't make it anybody's business because that's, you know, it was private business that happened. But he actually was diagnosed with Parkinson's, which was related to Parkinson's, but he was, you know, that diagnosis, you know, eventually rounded out to be Parkinson's, but he was diagnosed with that around that time as well. So I guess if that accident didn't happen, he really didn't. I guess they really wouldn't have known that he was going to be going through a lot of rehabilitation throughout that era up until what he succumbed to. So he was donating to a lot of different kinds of things around that time, from those points on and everything like that. That had a lot to do with Parkinson's and just different charities, a lot of different charities over the time, because the boys in Black Sabbath, you know, Oz, one of the first bands he was in, and one of the great huge influential bands, especially On Me and many, many others, they came from Birmingham, England. Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, that were his mates from that era of Sabbath. Those guys came from real, real working class backgrounds. So they give back to a lot of people because of that, because a lot of people that held the ground that they came from. You know, there's been some clips up on, put up on YouTube and everything like that that where you can watch some of the old Osbourne's show. And I was watching one of the episodes where they're getting into this big old stretch limo and Ozzy is just complaining about the limo. He's like, why am I in this Like I hate these things and everything like that. And he's just like, they're so gaudy. They remind me of like, they remind me of pimp mobiles and everything like that. Like he hated that stuff, you know, it wasn't just what he presented, it was just like what he was comfortable in. He's like, I don't want to be in these things. So anyway, just. It's just kind of a real down to earth kind of thing, you know, where you just don't forget where you're coming from. A lot of times when you're. When you grow up with next to nothing, you know, you can feel that in the soul from which he performed it. Honesty, a genuine. A lot of people across the world had these participatory feelings with the stage presence of many of these individuals. Just because that they are coming from a real place. They're not faking anything, you know, the words are coming from a real place. They're telling you. Much like with Malcolm Jamal Warner, coming from a spoken word place, you know, turning your poetry into lyrics, it's a different way of emoting, you know, with different kinds of styles of music and everything.

But.

But these guys were influenced heavily from black musicians, from those that grew up in the Delta and everything like that. So you know, once again very of the earth people, sharecroppers and came from slavery and everything like that. That's what was influencing people such as beyond the Beatles, who were also influenced by black musicians, American musicians, blues musicians, R and B and everything like that, heavily influenced and were literally just like reacting to a lot of these old records that they were listening to. A lot of the vinyl and everything, a lot of these copies that they could get or that were being played in different factions on the airwaves there over in England. They were taking what they heard and were feeling the power that came from that and then were also emulating that with their different style of music and emotions and being able to lyrically respond to that. So it was like a very kind of across the pond call and response Soriel kind of a thing. It was just like another like throwback to like old choral ways of emoting music and everything like that. Call and response. It's just a different way of doing it. And then you see the influence that that had and the impact that that had on people and just the scurrying of different kinds of metal musicians that came from that. And then lo and behold, this great song called Changes that Black Sabbath made many, many years later was covered By Charles Bradley, who took this metal song, which was really a very stripped down version that Sabbath put out. Very, very lovely, lovely song. I'm going through changes and just describing what that's like growing up or just going through anything lyrically put in such a great way that so many people can contend with. It can feel that way. This great artist, R and B musician Charles Bradley from America covered that song in such a way that beckoned back to old blues musicians and then mixed with like 60s and 70s R&B soul. Inspired, but just done in his own way. There was a version that came out nearly a decade ago of that. I would very much recommend checking that out. I believe at the back to the beginning a newer artist named Youngblood covered that song as well. And I, I still have yet to watch it because I actually was just trying to put put away time to be able to watch the whole thing in its full. And now I'm going to have to just prepare with tissues to watch it. Where we're at right now, with the loss of such a great champ, such a great influence on not only my life, but of so many different people's life. Like the fact that Ozzy wore that cross, it means so many different things to so many different people. But to poetically view as like a cross cultural experience of things like the crossroads, you know, that a lot of people talk about, you know, blues musicians going down to the crossroads and everything like that. And getting inspired from, you know, meeting themselves or meeting the poetic devil and everything like that. And getting their inspiration and drawing inspiration from like the Delta and everything like that. And just having a cross cultural influential moment and spot. It's just. It works on so many different levels. Not only that, but Ozzy with being like just this like inspiration of like so many dark things and everything like that. It's just like those guys were talking about the dark things that are going on and are still going on very much well around us. They talked about real things, they talk about real things, we talk about real things. Some the of. Of those things are very dark. You know, Ozzy got scapegoated along with so many different artists, especially during the 80s and the 90s, talking about, you know, different kinds of issues and everything like that. But man got raked over the coals during this time where so many people were like so afraid of like realistic things going on, like depression and everything like that, and people blaming him for the death of, you know, some, some others and everything like that. It's just like. It's very, very Sensitive situations. But people had to face the reality that like many people are going through what they're going through. Sometimes people need another person to tell them, I'm going through the same thing. Or there's other people that have gone through the same thing. And that's what a lot of music does for a lot of people. Many people just need to feel like there's somebody else out there that could possibly, at the same time, maybe assess similar situations, but at the same time remove them so they can process a healing and begin the stages of, you know what. We all go through changes also, like Leonardo said, like going through those things to reconcile with. To know that you can get through another day. And thankfully Ozzy made it through so many different days. With Sabbath coming back together for this final round, to be able to get to experience that, and with a lot of different other metal legends like Gianara was there, Metallica, with all these people being able to convene and emote and share another situation with just a person that went through their own things in such a very wide way. There's a particular song, Mama, I'm Coming Home, that I can't even sing that song with the radio without like shedding a tear or getting a bit of a Klimt. That song is so. It works on so many different levels. Whether you're talking about a relationship with somebody, like in an intimate relationship, or just like, even like literally like coming home from a tour or many different kinds if you're on tour with a band or just like a tour from being stationed somewhere, if you're in the military or something like that. I know that song works with a lot of different people on a lot of different levels. And for whatever reason, just the. The coming home, that even that phrase, coming home, that's a lot of. That's a way that people talk about ending this kind of particular life and going on to whatever the beyond one is. And a lot of people say coming home, like there's a coming home celebration. So to put a marker on that, where that song created by Ozzy and you know, his compatriots at the time and everything like that, for that song to emote so many emotions and for him to like culminate his own event and experience and then for him to have his own send off, essentially, I did see a clip of that one and had people in tears like that.

You can.

Could see in the audience and everything like that. For. For that to be that one song, that it's just like, mama, I'm coming home. And he sure did a very great send off not only for other people to send him off but as well for him to send himself in a way to just say a very well established goodbye and parting that just one went off with him in the most metal fantastic way ever. So Sabbath is definitely one of my favorite bands. Ozzy is just one of my favorite people in this world. I as a singer and as a doom metalist singer, I sing metal with different bands and one was emulated straight off of the styling of Black Sabbath that I was in that was called Crew who I'm talking about influence. Of course I was like putting on my best doomy vocal as possible sung, you know, out of my female diaphragm but definitely putting on as much as possible framing of the darkest of like emulations that I could do. And of course being completely influenced by Ozzy and the way that he sang and everything like that. And there's only one and there only ever be one. But with that I'm gonna. I'm gonna call this and hopefully I'll be able to get Leonardo on because with those words said, this is a person who I know has had some kind of already positive influence on my life. And as much as Ozzy Osbourne and Malcolm Jamal Warner have, it's lovely to be able to look right next to you on the sidewalk and talk to a local performer or entertainer. Just another person who can have such the same and inspire so much of the same kind of influence and emotion and reconcile with live another day. Strive to achieve, appreciate and get through whatever obstacles it is that are being put in front of you. Live to experience and react in a better way and emote in a better way and provide another way for other people to have a great experience with. We're cohabitating on this biosphere that we're flying through our universe. And so there's only one Earth. There's only one you with that rest in peace with a Ripper. I am Terry Denise. I look forward to another time with you. Thanks for tuning in to Ripper. You can find more about this and other LCC connect podcasts@lcc connect.com.

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Hello everyone and welcome to Now Spinning, the official podcast of the Lansing Community College Vinyl Record Club. We meet twice a month to listen to vinyl and talk about music. Stay tuned to learn about how you can get in touch with us and attend our meetings. All right. Hello everybody. Welcome back to Now Sping Again. Today is a very special day for us. We have with us our first ever interview guest and that is Heather Freire from Lansing's very own Record Lounge. Welcome to the show. Good to have you.

Thank you boys for having me.

Also with me I have Leo Ackerman and Tyler Rec. Welcome everybody to the show. Thank you for coming on. This is really great honor for us to have you on here. I know everybody here has definitely come to the Record Lounge quite a bit. Very often every week or so. I come in at least once just to check it out.

Back in 2022 I was coming in what, at least two days a week?

At least. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're well acquainted with everybody here that I feel like you've seen us all a couple times in there. So just to start off, I just want to know, this is going to sound a little bit of a basic question, but what inspired you to open a record store? Like, how did that come about?

Well, when I was in high school, I DJed at Everett High School and I got a job at a record shop and that's what got me into doing records. Worked there from 79 to 82, came back from 88 to 96 and that was my warehouse record stays.

Well, where was that at?

Well, mainly East Lansing is where I worked, but Lansing is where I started at. Yeah, 2008, I started my own.

How did that work? How did that come about?

Well, I became a dental assistant for a while, got in a really bad motorcycle accident with my husband and, and couldn't do a lot of things. So the only thing I knew was music and records and that's kind of how it all came about. Started selling records on the Internet. Terrible. I hated it and found like a 250 square foot space in East Lansing and that's where I started.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

If you don't mind, if I could press you on the DJ thing. What got you started doing the dj? Because that's really interesting to me.

At the time. Everett had a really cool little DJ thing. You did it during your lunch break?

Yeah.

You really didn't learn a lot about running a radio station or anything, but you just played records all the time and during your lunch break that's what you did. It was something I thought was really cool. WKRP in Cincinnati was kind of the show at the time, so I always thought that was kind of the cool thing to do and that's why I wanted to do it.

Yeah.

But that was a short lived thing.

I think it's incredibly interesting as a jumping off point. Could you name any like artists or anything that like inspired you to get into that?

Man, it would have been 19, probably 1979, kind of when I found, you know, like rock, like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, stuff like that. Then I started getting into more of the funk type deal like Parliament Funkadelic, Cameo, Lakeside. Being at Everett, we got a lot of that. So that's kind of what got me inspired to do it.

Another little bit of a throwback question. Do you remember what the first like record you ever bought yourself was?

With my own money, yeah. The first Van Halen album.

That's a good one. I love that one.

Yeah. We had never heard any. Anything like that before. Nobody played guitar like that. It costed all of $5.99 back then.

Wow.

Very. A little bit jealous of that.

Yeah.

It's a better time for record.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Kind of playing off of the. The whole like first record you bought thing.

Right.

What do you think would be like the most informative record to your like listening journey? I suppose something that inspired you the most. Something that sort of made music click for you.

Pink Floyd, Dark side of the Moon. Never heard anything like that before. And if you had a good stereo at the time, which I had a pretty good one, you could hear things going from side to side, from speaker to speaker is how they recorded. It kind of blew me away because it was just so new for that time. Ozzy Osbourne, Crazy Train. If you listen to it, the little rattle part in the beginning, it kind of goes around.

That's the best part of the song. I love that so much.

That was something you really never paid attention to before. Didn't hear that before. So it was kind of a cool thing. It kind of blew me away at the time.

I think it's incredibly interesting how like the. The evolution of like music technology has played into how people perceive music.

Oh, big time.

A mono stereo system compared to Pink Floyd in a stereo system is a completely different beast.

Oh, big time, big time. We were just talking about mono and stereo earlier today. Actually they just put out the first five Beatle albums in mono. Well, that's how they were recorded were in mono later then they put to stereo. And if you listen to the mono versions, they're better to hear.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's about the. Just like. That was the original, like artistic intent of it. I know that. At least like on streaming services, the mixes for the first few Beatles albums where they tried to turn them into stereo is not great. I think if you take one earphone off, you just can't hear anybody singing. Or like you take another off. There's no drums or guitar or anything.

Yeah, that 2009 mix, everything is panned hard left and hard right.

Yeah.

Because it was supposed to emulate a speaker system.

Exactly.

It was supposed to be listened to in a real space. But they were a bit too late on that because people had already moved on to headphones.

There you go. Exactly.

Did not work out.

Not a great. Not a great listening experience.

No, not. I would say, get that. Mono versions, if you Can.

I'll definitely look into that.

I think I have a couple in mono. I've got something new. That's the Black Beatles album, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

B. Metro's copy. He was a drummer for a Lansing band in the 60s. Yeah, yeah. He's got a few Beatles things of his. He's nice guy.

Nice, yeah.

So you spoke about your experience with Warehouse Records. How does it feel now owning a record store that has become a cornerstone in the Lansing community, much like warehouse was when you were younger?

It feels pretty amazing. You know, at the time, being young, I never thought about having a record shop of my own someday. And now having that for almost 17 years. You know, I took all that that I learned working there all those years, and I kind of put little parts of that into my own store. To me, customer service is the big thing. You need to pay attention to your customers. You don't want to just say, definitely don't say hi to anybody when they come in. Just, you know, be kind to people, you know, help them out, turn them on to things. And I really have taken it seriously and honestly, glad I've come this far. I never thought it'd last this long.

You spoke about a few things you've learned working at Warehouse Records. What is the most difficult part of working at a record store or owning a record store?

Owning a record shop. Money. Money is the big thing. Compared to when I started all those years ago, brand new records now have went so far off the charts as far as money wise, I would buy probably even two years ago, wholesale would be $20, $24. Now I'm paying what was retail, so I'm paying 34. Sometimes 50 bucks is like a chapel roan album right now.

Jeez.

Yeah, Taylor Swift, she's up there with 40, 46 bucks. It's pretty insane right now. And I don't see the reason for that. It does not cost that much to make a vinyl record, to be honest.

Right.

Do you think that physical media becoming more of, I suppose a specialty is a net negative on, I guess, music collection.

You know, I like the physical part of it. I like having that. I like the collection part of it. But it can turn into an addiction.

Yeah.

You know, I'm sure you guys know.

Yeah, definitely. I feel guilty as trouble.

Once you get started, you've got to get everything. You've got to get all those Beetle records, Beach Boys records, your Beach Boys, just all of that. And it does become an addiction. But there's ways you can do it a little Cheaper, you know, you can buy them used. You don't have to buy the brand new 180 gram, 200 RPM pressings of things, you know, which I think, like.

You were saying, you don't have to buy the newest thing. I think that a great part of the Record Lounge is finding used stuff. For example, I went into the Record Lounge and out of the blue, I found Larks, Tongues in Aspic and In Discipline by King Crimson, Great condition used. How do you go about finding records like that? How small, man? How is the scavenge? Like?

That's a great question.

You know, honestly, I've been lucky to where people have been, brought me in really good collections. There's only been a few that I've had to go actually go out there and look at because they were just too big, you know, for people to bring in. But lately, people have been really bringing in some great stuff. Especially that King Crimson. That does not come in very often at all.

I went to a King Crimson concert, and the only thing they had was their debut at the concert. So to find copies of their 70s and 80s stuff in the wild is fantastic.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

I've been searching for a while now. I haven't found discipline yet. I found Red at the Record Lounge, actually, that was a big, big surprise for me, but I still haven't found discipline yet. You found it. You found it.

Yes, I did. My favorite.

I think it. Well, there's the blue. The yellow. The red.

Yeah, those.

I've got the yellow left. The blue is gone, I think.

Oh, dang it. I thought I saw that and I thought, oh, I'll probably. I'll get that maybe later. And now it's kind of.

I know how that is. I was looking at Glen Campbell's last album, Adios, for, like, months and months and months, thinking, oh, I'm gonna buy that. I'm gonna buy that. And then the one time I was actually gonna buy it, gone. Yeah, I was heartbroken.

That's the thing. If you see it, you gotta jump at it now, because there's so many people out there looking for the same thing now.

Do you think that scarcity makes you appreciate the records you own more?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 100%.

I think that's a big draw. Is going into a record store and seeing something that you had no idea would be there. Another great part of the Record Lounge. I went on a trip with you, I think, in September or so, and we were just, like, perusing the selection, and I found an EP by the band Slint that I did not know was pressed. Did not know I could find it anywhere.

Yeah, that's a great album.

Lovely.

Speaking of, like, sort of niche things you find. What are some discoveries you've made working at the record lounge? Like, favorite records that you found that have really wowed you, that you would have only discovered, you know, owning the record lounge.

There is a artist called Klaus Nomi. I think he started maybe 78ish.

Yeah.

If you look him up, he's very bizarre, very weird. He has a white face, kind of clownish makeup on. Okay. He's got kind of a weird Flock of Seagulls hair thing going on and just strange outfit. And when he comes out, he just looks like a Pee Wee Herman type character.

Yeah.

When he starts singing, it's very operatic and weird in a New wave sort of way. He actually did the one album with David Bowie. Was it Monsters?

Scary Monsters.

Scary Monsters.

Great album. Love that album.

He was actually on that with him and he was on Saturday Night Live when he did that with him. So it's pretty cool.

Yeah. I was gonna say I've definitely heard of him before, specifically through the Bowie connection, so that's fascinating.

Yeah. It's not for everybody.

No, definitely not. But it's interesting stuff.

But I do like weird stuff like that sometimes.

What would you say is a desert island disc? Like your end all be all.

Well, Tyler knows I like Mike Nesmith, so it would be a Mike Nesmith album or. I love Harry Nielsen. Both great singer songwriters. Oh, man. It would probably have to be Harry Nielsen Schmeilson album.

A great album. I was. I was gonna bring him up actually, in a minute, but that is a. I love that album so much.

That. Or I love Zappa. Joe's Garage is a good one.

Oh, yeah.

Joe's Garage.

Shake your booty. That era.

That's around the same time it was. Apostrophe came out around the same time. Right.

Apostrophe and Overnight Sensation, I think were like 73, 75, maybe.

Yeah, that sounds right.

Because that's what got me into him. My. My two uncles listened to that stuff, and I thought it was just the coolest thing. I was like, in elementary school, so it was. It was kind of weird for an elementary school kid. You know, I. I didn't know what Dynamo hum meant until later in life.

So I can't imagine a fourth grader asking, like, put on Don't Eat the Yellow Snow, part one.

There you go. Yeah, exactly.

Great music, though. I also want to shout out the album after. Was it Neil? Is his name pronounced Nielsen or Nielsen?

I can't. Figured it. Yeah, Nielsen.

Nielsen, okay. Yeah. The album after that, Son of Smilson. I love that album so much. The vampire on the COVID Yeah.

Yep, yep.

Has a whole intro for the album where he's doing the horror movie voice. It's.

So that was the Ringo Starr.

Oh, yeah.

Movie.

Yeah, he. And. Yeah, he and Ringo were good friends. And George Harrison's on there as well. His albums. I love him because it's just like you look at the credits and you see all of these, like, Hollywood era people. Like, you know, like, they were all friends back then, so it's always interesting to see they were just hanging out with them.

The Hollywood Vampires.

Yes, that's what it was. Yeah.

And they had that lost weekend.

Yeah. I remember hearing. I remember reading about the Hollywood Vampires and all that stuff, like four years ago.

Yeah, they had some wild times.

Yeah.

He made some drinking.

Made an album with John Lennon right after that one, I believe, too.

Yeah, that one actually. John Lennon made Nielsen actually yell so much during that album.

Yeah.

He lost his voice totally.

It's too bad, though. Great album, great artist. I love that guy.

Yeah. Good songwriter, too. He wrote a couple monkey songs like Cuddly Toy. Good song.

Never had to tour, never did live shows. That was it.

That's the dream.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Harry Nelson. Yeah. You said was his. The Monkeys as well.

Yeah.

Interesting.

He wasn't a part of Don Krishner's little writing group, was he?

No, absolutely not. Yeah.

Yeah. I wasn't sure. I mean, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones was like, outside the whole Krishna thing. I mean, that was Headquarters on Was no Krishna. You know, we're all playing there.

Such a great album. Headquarters, that album.

So much.

Yeah. If you can get the. The box set with all the. The outtakes and demos that just released.

Right.

Yeah.

All of your toys and.

Oh, it's great.

I stuffed the first version of the Girl I Knew Somewhere.

Yep.

Man, I would love for them to print an actual original track listing of Headquarters. Like, with the Girl I Knew somewhere on it. With zilch going into Early Morning Blues and Greens. I heard a fan mix of it where they faded Zilch out into Early Morning Blues and Greens. And just hearing Davey breathing in between, it's like perfection. It's goosebumps.

That's very cool. Yeah, very cool.

Segueing off of the desert island record. If you could name some of the stranger, like, rarer things you've seen come through the store. What would something that stuck out to you recently, you think, oh man, I.

Bought a batch from a friend of mine. He had a lot of really weird like psych Prague type stuff from probably early to mid-70s. And they all looked. I just went by the covers. I was pulling them out and bought them from them. But they're different. I mean, each one's different. Some are better than others. But those are probably the weirdest things that I've put in there so far.

I'm looking forward to checking some of that out though. Next time I'm in the store, I have to look around for it.

Yeah, I'll have to show you a couple of them.

Okay, fantastic. That's good.

Sort of circling back to the whole community aspect of it. Are there any like local artists that have come through that you have become a fan of?

You know, when I started the shop, there was so many really good local bands. There was a lot of bands, a lot of artists and then they just kind of faded away over time. There was a band called Scary Women which was one of my favorites in town for a while. They broke up. But the singer from that band, she's in a band called Rueful Noise. Amazing. We've got the 7 inch in the album in the shop, so it's one to check out for sure.

So if you're interested, please stop by the record lounge.

Please check out. There's a band called the Stick Arounds. They're more kind of a power pop type band. But yeah, there's just not a lot of local type bands playing a lot anymore around here that I know of.

Even I do think a big part of it. And this is my take. I think some of it might be due to vinyl becoming sort of scarce and becoming more expensive for them to press.

It is absolutely. I know, like that band Ruffle Noise, they started out with a 7 inch and finally came out with a full length album. But yeah, getting a vinyl breast being a local or just a band around town, it's. It's not cheap. Seven inches are kind of the way to go in that regard. And I've seen a lot of cassette tapes coming out too.

Cassette tapes are making a real comeback.

They are making a big comeback for sure.

Well, of course, sue me. But same with VHS tapes. Sealed VHS tapes and VHS tapes of big movies like Jurassic park or Jaws or Skyrocketing.

Yeah, in the horror films as well.

Yeah, Halloween, you know, Friday the 13th.

Yeah, I've seen people charge a very pretty penny for like a VHS copy of Twin Peaks or something like that.

It's crazy.

Again, it's all about the physicality of it. People just like to be able to hold in their hands and then, you know, listen to it or view it in the way that it was like, you know, originally meant to be, you know, viewed or listened to. And it's always that gets like a great part of the experience.

Yeah, that's true.

It kind of reminds me of a quote from Brian Eno that I'm. That I know I'm gonna mess up here. He said something like the faults of previous technology will be appreciated in the next generation and used on purpose. And I think that's especially intriguing regarding vinyl because vinyl isn't a perfect format. It's not, not at all a perfect format. Can you list out some of the ways in which that you think it's a superior listening experience other than just the tactical tactile sensation of holding it and putting it down?

You know, it all depends on what you're playing it on. That's the key to vinyl listening. If you have a Crosley or Victroller, whatever those turn, newer turntables are that, they're just, they're terrible for the record. Yeah, for one. But you really do need a nice little setup to really get a good sound out of it. Make sure your needle's good. I mean you don't need a thousand dollar turntable, but you know, something pretty adequate to listen to it too. I know I say that new vinyl is expensive, but a lot of the newer jazz Blue Note stuff is really hard to come by. Original and it's very expensive. Well, now they're repressing it in a really great way. Don was, is the head of Blue Note now. So he's putting together a lot of the old jazz stuff that just was not available forever and now is. And that stuff sounds amazing.

All this stuff produced by. I'm forgetting his name, but he worked on all the Blue Note stuff.

I can't remember.

Van. There's a van in the name. Yeah, there's something like that. But yeah, I, I think the whole idea of vinyl being an imperfect format actually adding to the appeal is incredibly interesting.

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna mention also I think the whole vinyl craze again, it's like a double edged sword. On one hand things are a lot more expensive, but also a lot of stuff that was never released on vinyl before, stuff that was only ever put out back in like the 60s or the 70s is just now a lot of stuff is getting re released. It's a way to discover artists who otherwise would have been really obscure.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Goes both ways, though. It's expensive, but it's nice to hear people.

There you go. Yep.

I suppose. One other thought I have is I'm sure you are well familiar with major pop stars now getting multiple pressings of a record in different colors and different variants and with different packaging or whatever. And I just want to know your. Your general thoughts on that.

Don't get me started. Especially for Record Store Day. Oh, gosh, Record Store Day is a prime example, you know. Yes, I like it. It's great for the shops, but they need to start looking into, hey, let's find some things that people really want that wasn't available through the 80s or 90s when they weren't pressing a lot of vinyl. Now they're putting out all these records, hey, let's put a brown one out this year or a tan one. You know, Taylor Swift, obviously she's got a million different variants of the the same album, but yet people collect them because they love her. I think Chapel Roan is kind of heading in that direction too. Yeah. Sabrina Carpenter. It's like that whole group of people, they are doing the same thing.

Do you think that all of these pressings and all these variants make vinyl collecting seem like less of an appreciation for the art and more of a like, let's collect things because I can buy them.

You know, sometimes I think, yeah, that, that is it. I think people that are into one or two of those artists, they try to get every type that they can out there because they think it is going to be worth money. Or, oh, maybe they made five more of this blue one than they did the brown one. And it just, it starts getting to be like, when does that end? When do you stop? When is too much. Too much.

Right.

I don't got anything to say about the multiple variants that you haven't said already.

Right, right.

It's. It's kind of exhausting.

Very much. Yeah.

Like, I'd love to have a record store day where it's just like where I see the band Jericho on Wax, because that was on CD in the 90s.

Yeah.

And I have like, you know, earlier a few years ago, I. I didn't know that. So I've been looking for Jericho. Oh, let me see if I can find it here. And then it's like, I don't want to have to, you know, go online to Etsy or something, have a custom press of Jericho for Me, Just me. You know, I don't want to have to spend my own money doing something like that. Spending 100, $200 just for that. That's not worth it.

Yeah, it's just, it's. I wish they would kind of go back and look at, hey, this was a really great album. Why don't we press this and put it out? Put 1500, 2000 of these out for Record Store Day. Because this is what people are looking for. You know, all that 80s 90s, it's just kind of like America stopped pressing vinyl. They never did that in Europe. They kept making that. So the ones they make there just. They keep going up and up and up.

Yeah.

I'm a little bit guilty of the variant collecting thing. Just because there was two years ago, there was like a Ringo Starr album they put out on vinyl. It's a. Not a good album, but I just bought it just to be completionist called Old Wave or something. I bought it. It was brown smoke vinyl.

Oh, yeah.

And then I. I mean, like, it's an album. There is a copy of it still there two years ago. Nobody else wants Old Wave for some reason. I can't imagine why, but, yeah, I'm guilty of it.

Yeah. Ringo's probably the. The least bought of the Beatles. I think less his heart is right.

Bless his heart.

Is George the most bought? Hopefully.

I'd say it's Paul.

No offense to Paul McCartney. I wouldn't buy Paul McCartney stuff.

It is between Paul, Paul and John.

You wouldn't buy Ram.

Ram is the one. I love Ram.

I found Ram in a dollar bin and I just got it because it's. Oh, I got Ram. I'm a big George fan. The only George album I need is Brainwashed. Then I'd have all of his albums, including Wonderwall Music and Electronic Sound, both.

In the shop right now.

If you want to stop by.

There you go.

If there's one thing you take away today.

Yeah.

Go to the Record Lounge. It's a great place.

Yeah.

I do think, though, that is just about all the time we have today. Thanks again for coming on. It was really great to have you on.

Thank you.

You guys had great questions. Thank you. I usually get the same old questions asked all the time, so this was great. Thank you.

Glad we had good questions for you. That's good. If you're listening to this and you haven't been to the Record Lounge, first of all, I'm kind of shocked. Second of all, go check it out. Great place to buy records.

Go there.

A very great friendly staff, always willing to help you out. Find anything you want. Excellent selection.

Big plus you get to support your local community which is always a plus.

Thank you very much.

Support your local rec down in Rio Town.

Rio Town. Well thanks everybody for checking in and I hope to see you next time on NOW Spinning Podcast. Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye bye. Love you. Love you. Bye bye. See ya.

Goodbye.

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