w00t w00t booyah

My copy of "Monday, Monday" was on a 45 that I bought off of a table of scrambled (unjacketed) 45s, each with a hole drilled through the label, for 29 cents. I got "Creeque Alley" from the same place.

I don't think I bought it, but I was terrifically impressed with a used LP of the Alpert album at a used-record store in Statesboro, Georgia, circa 1981, that had apparently belonged to a 14-year-old girl with religious objections to the naughtiness. She carefully razored the photo off the cardboard, leaving a thin layer of gray beneath, and wrote in the blank that it was a BAD cover.

In the 90s, I found a book of Alpert's greatest hits in a truly scary thrift shop in Newport News. It had been a bowling alley, and all the nice wood had been ripped out, leaving scary places between bits of floor. Most of what they had for sale were apparently scavenged heating units. There was one little section of books and stuff, and there I found the music. I was so creeped out by the place that I didn't chat with the owners, who were happy to see that I'd found the music. It had been their son's. He had a band. I still cringe that I didn't ask them to tell me more about it.

I still play from the book. Lots of great memories lurk between those covers. Acapulco 1922, Whipped Cream, A Taste of Honey... I love playing pieces at random and stumbling on stuff I used to hear all the time. And all but about 30% of the music seems to have been written by Italian- or Jewish-surnamed writers from America, like Julius and Cissy Wechter (Spanish Flea).