Monday, May 11, 2020

Record Store Tour: Argy's Collectibles



Location: 9-1604 St. Mary's Road, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Rating: 5/10

Today, a whole bunch of stuff opened back up after being shut down by the plague for two months. The only requirement was that provisions needed to be made for social distancing. All the thrift stores are still closed, but it appeared that Argy's Collectibles was open and I haven't covered them yet on the record store tour. So I figured I'd pop in, do my review and see what kind of goodies I could find.

Upon entering, I was greeted by a Minnie Riperton album playing. Personally, I didn't think any of her crap would have been worth listening to, but it could have been worse. It could have been Mariah Carey.



Also, I was in here a couple of months before the plague forced everyone to shut down, and it was a mess. You'd figure that the two month shutdown would have given Argy the time to do a good cleaning and organizing of the store, but apparently cleaning is for sissies. There are piles of shit everywhere.



I would have had a good look at the sun-bleach-spined CDs, but there was other shit covering about 75% of what he had. I had no desire to move all the shit around to look at his inventory.

Argy sells band shirts, posters, hockey cards, and probably some other stuff that I could care less about. He also seemingly had some decent turntables for sale, but I don't need any more of them. I saw a couple of Elvis 8-tracks underneath a pile of crap, but I already owned them.



Records are everywhere, especially on the floor where I had trouble avoiding kicking them while looking at the ones on the racks. I wanted to look at the "D" section, but I couldn't get to it because there was too much crap in the way on the floor. Records are also piled on top of other bins of records, and personally I would prefer to look at my records in bins instead of flipping through piles. If I wanted to do that, I would go record shopping at garage sales. Hell, there's a guy I buy from who sells records out of his garage, and even he's more organized with his bins.

Prices are all over the place. The cheapest records I saw were $3.99 each, but the average price seemed to range between $9.99 and $29.99. On the plus side, Argy seems to have some really good titles that I haven't seen at any of the other record stores, but you're not going to get any sweet deals on them.



There were quite a few piles of records on the floor that didn't have any prices on them. I would have considered buying this Alan Parsons album, but there's no price. No price = no sale. There really isn't any excuse for this. If you haven't priced it, it shouldn't be out for sale, let alone on the floor.

There seems to be one redeeming factor in the price and the apparent lack of time to organize the store. The record vacuum was going every few minutes. It would appear that Argy might be cleaning every single record he sells. I'm split on cleaning my records. If they really need it, then I'll give them a good bath or a wash with some record cleaner and a brush. Otherwise, just playing them seems to help dig a lot of the crap out of the grooves. In my opinion, records should only be cleaned if they really need it, and I generally won't buy a record that's filthy to the point of it being unplayable.



Hey look! I think I found the bargain bin! It's underneath Argy's coffee, a bottle of spray vodka, and a shitty Duke Ellington record. I carefully moved Argy's coffee to sit on the bin of records next over, hoping that it wouldn't spill. After digging through the bargain bin, I came out with absolutely nothing remotely interesting. Sorry everyone, it looks like Argy mainly deals in records that people actually want instead of trying to sell the garbage that makes this blog thrive. I can understand that, but it makes my trip a bit less interesting.


The Good Record: Streetheart - Live After Dark



I've been searching for this one for a few years now to complete my Streetheart collection. It's not common, and this one is in near mint shape, so I didn't feel too bad dropping $30 on it. It's also a double album. For those outside of Canada, Streetheart is a Canadian band from the 1980s. Their frontman Kenny Shields (who lived in Winnipeg) is in my opinion the greatest Canadian vocalist to ever grace us. The guy has an incredible octave range, a unique voice, and he put out some damn good songs too.

I had the privilege of seeing Streetheart live once. I also had a unique privilege to see Kenny Shields, George Belanger (singer of the band Harlequin), and The Headpins all do a blues number as an encore for a Headpins concert that I attended. After the show, me and my friend Noah were able to hang out with Kenny for a bit. It was a magnificent experience to see all these highly talented Canadians do a one-off song together. What I wouldn't give to have a recording of the song they performed!

Sadly, Kenny Shields passed away a few years ago. The last thing he ever put out was a solo album, and it was absolutely top-notch.

The Bad Record: None

Sorry, no sound clip or even a stupid record cover to look at. Everything was too expensive for me to frivolously buy some lame pieces of crap for your listening displeasure, and even then I wouldn't have any guarantee that it would be awful.

The bottom line is, if you're looking for a specific album, you might very well be able to find it here after a bit of literal digging, but you're not going to get it at a bargain price. If you just enjoy the experience of record shopping, you won't enjoy this place with all the crap everywhere. Sorry Argy, you had two months of being closed to clean up the customer's shopping space. There shouldn't be any excuse for the store to look like this. This could be a really great store, but the piles of crap really ruin the experience.

On the plus side, Argy complied with the social distancing requirements by putting some X's on the floor with tape. Putting some crappy Duke Ellington records on the floor with double sided tape would have been more fun.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

A Record for Mom!



Since mother's day is right around the corner, I figured it would be nice to do something for the old bag. So I dug through my blog crap and found this record I picked up at the thrift store a while back. They had multiple copies of this thing, and the description on the back convinced me to buy it...

"The vocals in all songs come from an unknown cassette found with computer parts bought at a garage sale in Canada. So far, it has not been possible to locate the originator of this material. Any information would be welcome."

This sounds exaclty like something I would do, although the smooth techno music is pretty mundane. From what I can tell, this tape is essentially a letter from a dad to his grown up kids, giving them shit for not doing anything for their mother on Mother's Day. I'm guessing "AFS" is the initials of the guy who put this together.

On this record, you get two different mixes of "Mothers' Day" a song called "Nest Flight", and "Mothers' Day Part II" You're getting three out of four of the songs since I think the radio edit is pointless, and I doubt this thing was ever played on the radio.

Listen to Mothers' Day Part I
Listen to Nest Flight
Listen to Mothers' Day Part II

One thing I've realized while digging for Mother's Day albums is that I need to put all my "holiday specials" besides Christmas into a separate location. I have all kinds of crap for Easter, St. Patrick's day, Valentine's day, and all your other favourite holidays, but I can never find them because they're buried amongst all the other crap. So there's a project for my future.

Anyway, enjoy your Mother's Day, and I'm sure this record will make it even better. Hell, burn it onto a CD and give it to your mom. I'm sure she'll love it more than flowers.