Orpheus Mon Amor

I'm a bit late in posting this, but for all the vinyl addicts in the area, there's still time if you hustle down to Arlington THIS WEEK...

The news of Orpheus Records' closing was made public a while ago, and The Faithful have been flocking to the Wilson Boulevard shop ever since, to pick the bones of that poor, dying beast.

When I got there, Carl (longtime Intangible Comrade and, conveniently, part-time employee of the shop) informed me that, to paraphrase:

It's a good thing you made it this weekend: We've had no word from the landlord (re: extended lease arrangements) which means by default, the store is dead next weekend, and Rick will be packing up the store on Saturday...

So, pardon the Old English expression (or is it Germanic?) but holy shit!

So this is it, then? I asked if the remaining stock was all going to some kind of graveyard auction. Nope, he said, anything not sold is going into storage. And THAT would likely be a whole shop's worth of records right there, no matter how much he sells before next weekend.

I had already assumed this would be my last trip to the store before it finally closed, since it isn't THAT easy to get from my place in DC to the shop in Arlington... but I also assumed that we still had another couple of weeks with the old place.

Anyway.

I've been reading Nick Hornby's excellent memoir Fever Pitch, which marks the significant events in the author's life against Arsenal matches. Thus, it's a life viewed through the eyes of a hopeless obsessive. In Hornby's case, it's an addiction to English football culture. And there are loads of incisive, perfectly worded bits in that book that describe the obsessive personality, from the inside.

In my case, it isn't soccer (although that could happen as well, as soon as DCU starts kicking this season), it's a record-collecting fixation. So Hornby's other book (High Fidelity) might be more appropriate.

So. Last chance at an Orpheus run. Fine. Pick the bones like a ruthless buzzard. Start at A, and work down to Z...

The bins were pretty well picked through, so it became an exercise in collecting "filler" material. That would be albums I have on CD, which I previously had on vinyl, but sold years ago when CDs came out, BUT now will re-purchase on vinyl and sell the CDs. This is because I've finally come to my senses and realized that VINYL is the ultimate form of musical permanence. And CDs are just temporal fluff. That's right, bloody "technology"... you heard me.

So the "filler" consisted mostly of 80s semi-underground pop that I'm too nerdish to resist: Nina Hagen, XTC, Oingo Boingo, that kind of thing. And some headier stuff: Nektar, Jane, and a still-sealed copy of The Muffins' Open City...And, after passing it by for years, I finally bought the lone copy of "Jehova" My Black Ass by Peach of Immortality (infamous local '80s noise band, one member of which went on to form Jackhammer Orchestra, Furnace, and the more successful Chemlab)...

Fifteen albums for $53 is a good day.

I was going to take a last-chance photo of the Orpheus storefront, but it didn't feel right. It was like taking a portrait of a dying friend in a hospital bed. Weird vibes. And with a heavy sigh, I hauled my goodies down to the Clarendon Metro. And home.

Crap: As I waited for the train, I remembered I already had a freaking vinyl copy of Open City. So call me the ultimate Muffins fan. Or an imbecile. Call it the fog of war. Other collectors would understand.

Orpheus and the death rattle

Ah, screw it.

I was going to write a very long-winded and tear-jerking elegy to Orpheus Records, one of the last great vinyl record stores in the greater DC area. I was going to sing the death-song of a musical mecca. I was going to provide an amazing amount of insider reporting and weepy, record-collector saliva.

But ehh, screw it.

Marc Fisher did a great piece in the Post about it here, and blogger brethren Vinyl District mirrored it here. I could pursue my sources and try to provide something new, but........eh, screw it. It's all been done. We've been to this funeral already, for other shops.

In fact, the store is uniquely valuable for that reason: Orpheus owner Rick Carlisle ended up with the bulk of the remaining stock from legendary Silver Spring record store Vinyl Ink, after George Gelastino died several years ago. George had closed his store on Bonifant Street to go exclusively online, and even THAT was a local tragedy for us old farts who love the classic vinyl-flipping ritual. Record-shopping in person. In the flesh.


Sure, we can still get our fix by purchasing records online, but it's the thrill of the hunt, dammit, we love the dusty fingers, the shock of the unexpected discovery:

(Oh SHIT, I was here in the miscellaneous 'G' section, hoping to find some old Brain-label Grobschnitt records, but here they have some early Guru Guru! Jesus!)

If you don't have the disease, you wouldn't understand. But shops like Vinyl Ink and Orpheus were really good for that.

Anyway, the bottom line is, the lease is up on the site where Orpheus now resides and, years after Rick moved the shop from Georgetown, he doesn't have another move in him. The neighborhood is gentrifying beyond recognition. And besides, Rick has been in this business for a king's age. So the shop will die slowly, over the next few weeks. Sale prices, etc.


So get down there while you can. Orpheus has been one of the only things that can get me to cross the river, for crissakes. So once the store is shuttered for good, I may never set foot on Virginian soil anymore. Unless of course Ben Chasny plays Iota again.

So, while the patient still lives:
Orpheus Records
3173 Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA
...mere shouting distance from the Clarendon Metro.

Git You SOM Records

After about a year of being an anonymous hole in the ground, SOM Records finally gets some signage on the window. Hail SOM.

As I understand it, this place split from the rib of Crooked Beat Records in Adams Morgan, and thank god for that. The more, the merrier.

Indie record shops seem to be on the rebound in DC, after a long and dark time without many options. The last time I lived here (before my ambling adventure of DC/Syracuse/Tucson/Bangor), it was something like a golden age for DC vinyl hunters. George Gelastino had not yet killed the Vinyl Ink store in Silver Spring to go strictly web-based, and he was putting together some fantastic record shows (the "Vinyl Solution") at the Silver Spring armory. George is no longer with us, and ironically, the armory is gone as well.

Where the armory stood is now a sterile concrete parking garage; a fitting symbol for the newly "revitalized" Silver Spring. The echo of fussing families and slamming minivan doors reverberates throughout the structure. The whole town wears a different face these days. Now, the site of George's store is...what is it, a wig store, or balloon/party place, or a psychic/palm-reader, or something. I don't get up to SS much these days. Without the record store or the Tastee Diner (in its original spot), I don't have much use for the place.

All beside the point.

Things are looking up, on the local music-store front. In the extended DC neighborhood stretching from the southern end of Adams Morgan to Logan/14th Street, there's Crooked Beat, the newly-relocated Smash Records, the brand new Red Onion shop, and the small-yet-mighty SOM.

There's not much space in SOM, no A/C, but a monster selection. I've found several rare items in there, satisfying my thirst for krautrock, space-rock, psychedelia, exotica, noise, dub reggae, bollywood, and hell, even a totally obscure Indian import bhangra record of old A.S. Kang tunes. .... and THEN you look at what they've got on the friggin' WALL, and forget it.

That's why the baby Jesus gave us credit cards, innit?

And SOM is a nasty temptation for me, being just a few blocks north of work, and several blocks south of home. So needless to say, this spot comes highly recommended. May all who heed the call of vinyl please keep these bastards alive and in business, and maybe we'll have a new Golden Age.

1843 14th Street NW, Washington DC. Aug'07.

A Manhattan Saga

It was about time for another trip to NYC, but this time we had a compelling reason. Marian's niece was performing with her high-school choir at Carnegie Hall, and we figured she could use a little extended-family support. Who wouldn't want a couple of cheering lunatics up in the nosebleed seats at Carnegie, shouting WHOOOO! and making colossal asses of themselves?

We booked Gomez for two days at a local cageless dog-boarding place, and we booked ourselves for two nights at a hotel within shouting distance to Carnegie, Times Square, etc. All set.

The train ride was deliciously, magnificently eventless. I got more reading done in those four hours than in the previous four months. Seriously.

We climbed to the surface at Penn Station and heaved a lungful of that familiar brine of human sweat, automotive exhaust, and roasted peanuts. Oh yeh...I remember this. Drag the suitcase a few blocks north to the hotel, check in, and INSTANTLY leave town for Brooklyn.

I had a little Bagel Education to inflict upon poor Marian.



When I used to visit my friend Egg in Brooklyn, the ritual was always the same: Get off at the Kings Highway station (B or Q lines), and march into a little, humid hole in the wall called HOT BAGELS near the corner at Ocean Avenue. It didn't matter what your favorite bagel was, just get whatever's hot. It seemed like a local joke: walk in, bark out to the guy behind the plexiglass:

What's hot?

And he'd invariably sweep his arms around, encompassing the whole place, as if to say Buddy, you couldn't swing a dead bishop in here without crashing him into something hot. Now whaddahell do youse want?

It was like a cave in there. Claustrophobic, filled with steam, and glorious. We'd get a couple of bagels and truck 'em back to Egg's apartment, where we'd listen to records and stuff face like starving people, laughing at the gluttony of it all.

I hadn't been back to Brooklyn in.... I added it up..... twenty years(!). Some preliminary web-surfing I did back home suggested there JUST MIGHT still be a bagel-shop on Kings Highway near Ocean Avenue. And it was, for crissakes, it was right there. Like stepping into a dream.

Except, wait... in the last twenty years, someone had enlarged and sanitized the dream!

It seemed like the place had taken over the next-door space and expanded. I asked the guy behind the counter if I was suffering from False Memory Disorder, but he'd just started there, and didn't know about the history of the shop. So the gritty poetry of the place was gone, but the bagels were still awesome. Maybe not rip-your-head-off awesome, but infinitely better than anything we can get in DC.

After inhaling the bagels and paying homage to Egg's old apartment building, we returned to Manhattan and got back to the serious business of shopping-until-dropping. Marian scored a number of great items at the various bead stores in the garment district, and I went completely insane in the East Village, as usual, with the music shopping.



Bleecker Bob's is still there of course, although the two adorable dobermans that used to sleep behind the counter are beyond long gone by now.

Other Music, on West 4th, was my nemesis this time. For such a small collection of vinyl, the pickings were insane. But of course, I had to keep my wits about me. We're new homeowners, what in God's name am I DOING?!?!? Must...keep...the money...under control.

So after all the internal drama, it was a moderate haul. The scores were as follows.

on CD:
Six Organs of Admittance: s/t
OM/Current 93: Inerrant Rays of Infallible Sun (Blackship Shrinebuilder)
Coil: Black Antlers
The Spacious Mind: Tonen (CD-R, outtakes from Rotvalta)
on LP:
Throbbing Gristle: The Endless Not (the new one, post-reforming)
Cluster: Cluster II (reissue of the 1971 album, one of the greatest ever)
Comets On Fire: Field Recordings From the Sun
Hawklords: s/t (mid-period, Calvert-era Hawkwind)
Seldiy Bate & Nigel Bourne: Pagan Easter, Ritual Music for the Spring Equinox (rarity on Psychic TV's Temple Records label)
Six Organs of Admittance: School of the Flower
Gary Numan/Tubeway Army: Replicas (used)

The sad thing is, much of that is stuff I used to have on vinyl, then sold, then re-purchased when such things became available on CD. Now that my romance is long gone for CDs, I find myself selling THOSE and re-purchasing the albums again....which is doubly hard now that everything is that much older, and impossible to find.

Afterwards, we got in a visit to our favorite Indian restaurant before starvation claimed our lives, and all was well.

The Carnegie Hall performance was fabulous, and during the show, I was reminded of what a gutless weenie Vivaldi was, musically speaking. Particularly when his material was followed by more punchy German stuff. I remember making a hushed comment to Marian about "that baroque Italian tripe" and getting flashed a rather unkind look from one of the other patrons... The truth apparently hurts.

But no matter! We were there in support of Marian's Niece, who from what I could tell, performed honorably (as it was a choir, we can assume...) But where were the bloody parents?!?! This was a huge gig for the young one, and yet we were the only family who could get up here?

ehhh. Pooty raspberries to all but us marvelous people.

We returned to old familiar DC, satisfied with the trip and, like always, feeling glad that we didn't end up moving to NYC, as we had discussed when trying to escape Maine. My god, that was ages ago. Now to play some of those albums...