I immediately clicked the link and found that, indeed, someone was selling the 1999 Freedoom Records tribute to Chicago doomers Trouble; a CD I first encountered a few years back in an epic and drunken excursion to Lansing, Michigan, at the home of Midwestern heavy rock luminary Postman Dan. All of a sudden, there was Church of Misery covering “Come Touch the Sky,” Orange Goblin doing “Black Shapes of Doom.” Life was good.

In light of vocalist Kory Clarke‘s somewhat prickish exit from Trouble yesterday and the announcement that he’d be replaced by Kyle Thomas — who’d filled in when Eric Wagner left previously — I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a look at Bastards Will Pay and see if there might be any vocalist candidates among the 13 bands involved. Sure, most of them would have to be imported from Sweden to to it, but I know if Bruce Franklin called, I’d seriously consider relocation as an option for the immediate future. Would get me off my ass, in other words.

There are some killer singers here. It was 1999, so Christian “Spice” Sjöstrand was still fronting Spiritual Beggars for their organ-heavy cover of “Mr. White,” and Eric Wagner himself takes the helm with This Tortured Soul for opener “The Tempter.” He’s left Trouble and come back before, so it could happen again — although that Blackfinger record should probably materialize first. Uwe Groebel, then of Naevus and currently of Voodooshock, makes “R.I.P.” a highlight, and The Quill‘s “A Sinner’s Fame” rests largely on the shoulders of singer Magnus Ekwall, so he’d be in the running too. If you’re feeling fancy, you might ask Joakim Nilsson — then of Norrsken, who close with an excellent take on “Psalm 9″ — but he’d probably be too busy these days with Graveyard to actually do it.

Of those and the rest, Groebel might be the best match to Wagner‘s original vocals in terms of style and what he brings to the track, but neither Orange Goblin, nor Church of Misery, nor Rise and Shine‘s Sunlight Studio-tastic version of “‘Scuse Me” is lacking for personality, and if Trouble brought in Kory Clarke in the first place, sticking to the Wagner (recent interview here) blueprint clearly isn’t high on their list of priorities. Thomas killed it on Alabama Thunderpussy‘s fully-metalized Open Fire swansong, so it should be interesting to see what he does on the album if, in fact, things go that way.

And in the meantime, Bastards Will Pay: A Tribute to Trouble was well worth the anticipation I felt for it and whatever it was I finally shelled out when that eBay auction was done. It’s another on a long list of comps that only appeals to me years after the fact, but despite some pretty wide production gaps and volume changes, a cool look at Trouble‘s still-enduring legacy. Thanks again to Dave, wherever he might be.

Of course, it helps that Unida — John Garcia‘s ill-fated post-Slo Burn, post-Kyuss, semi-concurrent-to-Hermano outfit with Scott Reeder, guitarist Arthur Seay and drummer Mike Cancino, who’d later develop the project (sans Reeder) into House of Broken Promises — absolutely killed in Vienna that night, and that the 12-song set was captured with beautiful clarity and thickness. Garcia himself announces that they’re recording, and I don’t know if the plan was to use it as a live album or what, but they play all of that year’s Coping with the Urban Coyote except for “If Only Two” and three out of the four tracks from the 1998 EP, The Best of Wayne-Gro, so if that was the intent, it’s a solid showcase of what they did in their time, which was cut short by label politics surrounding their second, Rick Rubin-produced full-length, For the Working Man (2003).

That album remains without official issue to this day, though it was eventually self-bootlegged by the band and some of the material showed up on their self-released El Coyote compilation. Cuts like “Wet Pussycat” (with which they opened in Vienna), “Human Tornado” and the heady “Vince Fontaine” were re-recorded for that album, which was to be their commercial breakthrough, but also appeared on Unida‘s earlier offerings, and listening to this set, it’s clear their live dynamic was coming into its own in 1999 — they were developing their own character within desert rock. Seay‘s tone and riffs lead the charge, Reeder‘s warmth vibrates the speakers, and Cancino and Garcia seem to be in lockstep even as the latter veers into his trademarked boozy jam invocations, yeahs, whoas, and so on. Unida‘s is a story of potential left unfulfilled, and that’s no less true here than anywhere else.

But even so, had this disc shown up with some shitty label, or with two-second spaces between these tracks, I’d be pissed. As it is, I’m not. And really, it’s that simple. I know my days of buying a $25 professionally-printed silver-CD bootleg are by and large over, and roughly half that cost is, I think, a fair price to pay for a product like Live in Vienna, which sounds stellar and shows that at least a bare minimum of effort was put into the presentation. $13 for that and I get to put it on my shelf? Well, shit, why didn’t you say so? That’s all I ever wanted.

In a lot of ways, the first chorus lines to opener “I’ll Cut You Down” sum up a lot of what’s happening on Blood Lust, the second full-length from Cambridge trio Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. And I do mean “happening.” As much as it can be in this genre, the hype behind this band and Blood Lust in particular has been stifling. So much so that at the end of 2011, they topped my “Top 5 Albums I Didn’t Hear” list. Suddenly I felt as if I’d neglected some great duty. I was out of touch. My life was about to change and all the hyperbole about best this-and-that was only a scale on the back of this Godzilla-sized monster of malevolent stoner doom.

Whatever. I gave in to the peer pressure and bought the record. The appeal was immediate when I first put it on. Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats sounds like Electric Wizard‘s blown-out cousin getting off on oldie cult horror. Blood Lust practically draws a pentagram on its own notebook. The riffs are distorted in extrema and the vocals, cooed with a malevolent melodicism, follow catchy structures so simple they can’t help but get stuck in your head. That’s especially true of songs like “I’ll Cut You Down,” “Death’s Door” and “13 Candles,” but the swing of “Over and Over Again,” though it’s not as instantly memorable, has a hook all its own.

From what I’ve been able to tell from listening, though, a big part of the appeal with Blood Lust is the familiarity of it. Riffs are recognizable without being easy to directly place, and the whole record brims with an occult ’70s vibe that’s mirrored in the artwork. If you took a survey of doomers and stoner heads and you asked them what they wanted to hear, you might come out of it with the mournful plod of “Curse in the Trees” or the mid-paced organ-laden stonerly chug of “Withered Hand of Evil.” That said, one of the most engaging aspects of Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats on these tracks is that they’re not immediately accessible to outsiders. Play this stuff for someone unfamiliar with the genre, and you’re going to get stared at — and that’s clearly on purpose. The band are preaching solely to the already-converted, and clearly it’s working. I paid $25 for this record.

Reportedly, that’s better than some have done on eBay. And simple though it is, Blood Lust shows several directions Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats‘ progression could take. The progressive shuffle of “I’m Here to Kill You” is not only the best performance from drummer Red (Kat rounds out the lineup on bass), but also a bold stylistic departure from the rest of the album (maybe less so from “Ritual Knife,” but still). The same applies to the acoustic bonus track on the Killer Candy Records CD version, “Down to the Fire,” which takes Uncle Acid‘s psychedelic snarl and recontextualizes it over sweet Zeppelin melodies and percussion. That Blood Lust follows a lyrical narrative — about a murder — could also foretell development to come. They could just as easily “go prog” as so many did in the early and mid ’70s as they could stick to the formula of soot-covered distortion that works so well for them here.

Whatever the case, I don’t regret the purchase, which is a rarity for me when it comes to albums I’m buying because someone else (in this case multiple people) thinks I need to hear them, and for what it’s worth, if I was going to do my top 20 today, Blood Lust would probably be on it. Should be interesting to see where Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats go from here, and wherever that might be, I’ll try my best not to let it slip through the cracks.

For a while now I’ve been trying to chase down a copy of Bastards Will Pay: A Tribute to Trouble to absolutely no avail. Amazon, eBay, Gemm, physical stores, stoner and doom distros — nobody’s got this friggin’ thing. And yeah, I know I can just type it into Google and download it. I don’t wanna do that. I want to own it. I like my little plastic discs, thanks. You keep the cloud.

To quell my tributary jones and in the meantime hear a couple badass bands, I recently placed an order on the cheap for a copy of Blue Explosion: A Tribute to Blue Cheer on Black Widow Records out of Italy. Released in 1999 and featuring the likes of Drag Pack and Norrsken, among others who don’t exist anymore, it fits my law of comp appreciation perfectly. I don’t even know Garybaldi, but their version of “Fresh Fruit and Iceburgs” is killer and doomed and gives me something to look up tonight while I’m sitting on my ass, so that’s an immediate plus.

Perhaps best of all, though, is that Blue Explosion is bookended by Pentagram. And not just any Pentagram — it’s Joe Hasselvander on all the instruments and Bobby Liebling on vocals, and that’s it. They were working with Black Widow at that point (released Review Your Choices in ’99 and Sub-Basement in 2001 with the duo lineup), and so the disc opens with a nine-minute version of “Doctor Please” on which Hasselvander pretty much just jams with himself. It’s amazing, and his tones are unbelievably heavy. Internal Void follows with “Parchment Farm” and it’s like a one-two punch out of the Doom Capitol.

And Norrsken (the Swedish band from which both Witchcraft and Graveyard were born) are indeed a highlight — they present “Pilot” with expectedly killer vintage sounds — but Natas doing “Ride with Me” and Rise and Shine‘s take on “Sun Cycle” are also standouts, and “Peace of Mind” might be the most purely psychedelic I’ve ever heard Ufomammut sound. Whether it’s the boozy Euro-rock of Space Probe Taurus or the loose organ jamming of Standarte, I’m into it, and the fact that it’s all Blue Cheer material makes it even better.

So yeah, if it was coming across my desk for review now, I’d probably be all huffy-puffy about it and bitch about how compilation reviews are basically just plugs for the bands involved and there’s never any flow or basis for any overall analysis of the release, but in buying something like Blue Explosion: A Tribute to Blue Cheer, I don’t give a shit. It rocks and the rest is secondary to that. For something that was a consolation prize, I definitely feel like I won out.

Still gotta find that Trouble tribute, though.

Black Friday takes its name not from the shadow that consumerism at large casts on American culture, but from the simple fact that it’s the day that moves most stores from the red into the black for the year. It’s when they start turning a profit. Seeing an opportunity to continue their mission of promoting independent music culture, the fine folks behind Record Store Day got involved this year, bolstering the event with special releases and other initiatives. I’d expect more of that kind of thing next year.

Late last month, when I was at Redscroll Records in Wallingford, Connecticut, on my apparently annual autumn pilgrimage, I was given a flyer for their Black Friday specials, and knowing that I was going to be in the state for the Thanksgiving holiday, kindly suggested to The Patient Mrs. that I might like to wake up early and hit up the sale, which was 25 percent off everything in stock except for turntables.

So it was. My alarm went off yesterday at 5:35AM, and when I walked into Redscroll at 6:02 or thereabouts, the place was already full. Outside, the sun was just starting to think about rising. As I suspected I might, I had the CD racks mostly to myself (at least as compares to vinyl — LPs are by far the priority for the shop), but it was easily the most crowded I’d ever seen it. People were friendly, though, making way for each other and handing off releases to other potential buyers. I used the 25 percent discount as an excuse to pick up a few odds and ends, most of which I’d already heard, but hadn’t gotten full copies of, and other discs I’d wanted to grab this year that I hadn’t gotten the chance.

For example, I long since own Sovereign by Neurosis, but a quarter off the price was enough for me to grab the 2011 reissue, and stuff like Candlemass‘ Ashes to Ashes live record and Place of Skulls‘ As a Dog Returns had just kind of slipped through the cracks in terms of getting a physical copy. I bought The Body & Braveyoung‘s Nothing Passes to include in the next podcast (no big surprise: it sounds totally fucked), and was hoping to nab The Atlas Moth‘s An Ache for the End for the same reason, but they were out of it, and I drowned my sorrows in some cheap George Carlin, Goblin and Free instead.

Now that I’ve heard the low-end centric mega-grooves of Saturnalia Temple‘s Aion of Drakon, I’m officially stoked to check them out at Roadburn next year. And because I haven’t been able to leave there without doing so the last couple times I’ve been, I picked up a Cable CD, this time the 2008 reissue of their first album, Variable Speed Drive, the original version of which I’ve been hunting on eBay for a bit with no real success.

It was just over $100 for 10 discs, which wasn’t bad and was enough to earn me a free Redscroll t-shirt that I’ll wear proudly. I went back to the motel and crashed out for a couple more hours before getting up and heading south back to Jersey to go to work, and after that, on the way further south to Maryland, I requested yet another stop from The Patient Mrs., this one to Vintage Vinyl, to pick up that Atlas Moth record and settle the matter once and for all. I also got a full copy of Invisible White by Ancestors. Both at full price, and neither with any regret.

Vintage Vinyl in the evening was empty compared to Redscroll in the morning, which was troubling, since that’s pretty much the only shop in New Jersey where I can do something like stop in and pick up an Atlas Moth or an Ancestors CD and be confident that they’ll actually have such a thing. I know they had stocked some of the Record Store Day Black Friday special releases, but hopefully they come around to the sale stuff too, because god damn, I’d hate to lose that place as a resource.

In the meantime, a package showed up in the mail yesterday from All That is Heavy with a copy of Master Sleeps by Hills, which is jammier than I thought it would be, and the Rise Above reissue of Necromandus‘ Orexis of Death, which Tony “I Have Excellent Fucking Taste and Stone Axe is My Band to Prove It” Reed recommended a while back I make mine. Altogether, this probably represents the bulk of the music I’ll buy through the end of 2011, so it was good to send the year out with a bang. I should have plenty to keep me busy until January comes.

And I was taking it as a given about two weeks ago that when I put in my purchase through Amazon for the self-titled Fuzzy Duck album, which Repertoire released on CD in 2007, I’d be getting their usual digipak-type release. I prefer jewel cases to digipaks for the sturdiness, but with the acknowledgment that Fuzzy Duck isn’t exactly selling a million copies and that these things cost money to press, I’ll take what I can get. Certainly Repertoire reissues by Warhorse, Black Widow and others have been gorgeous in digipak form, and with cover art as classic as Fuzzy Duck‘s Fuzzy Duck, I decided I could do worse.

My order placed, I went about my business, and a couple nights ago, when I got in from work and found the package waiting for me, there was Fuzzy Duck — in a sleeve! Seriously? A sleeve? How can you claim to have any reverence for the product you’re selling and put it in a sleeve? I paid $15 bucks for that fucking thing, and looking back at the product page, it’s clearly marked as “Dig,” which I took to mean a legitimate digipak.

It’s not until I opened the package that I read further down the product info, where it says, “Original vinyl artwork in square CD digi-sleeve format (card wallet – no plastic) plus inserted fold-out poster.” Come on, man. “Digi-sleeve format?” “Card wallet?” You know you’re selling a sleeve, why not just come out and say it? If it’s that god damn embarrassing to you, make it a gatefold. I’ll pay for that. But $15 for a sleeve, man. That’s just sad.

These are dark enough times for those of us loyal to the CD format. I was out at that Premonition 13 show last night, and I asked the Mount Olympus drummer if they had any CDs for sale in addition to the vinyl, and he looked at me like I was from another planet. What could I ever want with such a thing? Every time someone tells me how outdated CDs are and how it’s a “dead format,” I want to laugh in their face for the same amount of times I heard people say that shit about LPs. Dead format? People are still making tapes! 78s are a dead format. Edison cylinders. I don’t care how convenient your download card is, I want a physical product I can play in my car, and that’s either a tape (which I buy, gladly, because they’re cheap as hell) or a CD.

I’m getting off track. The point is that with people maligning and proclaiming the death of the CD as a format anyway, it feels that much worse to buy Fuzzy Duck‘s Fuzzy Duck and essentially get screwed out of what I thought I was going to get with it. Of course the record rules — even the bonus tracks; “Double Dealing Woman” is super-Deep Purple — but after a while that’s not even the point. The point is I have a separate space on my shelf for sleeves, because they suck, and now I have to put this album there.

Because even with an eight-panel foldout liner and a sleeve within the sleeve (as you can see in the picture above), a sleeve is still a sleeve, and a sleeve is most definitely NOT a digipak.

Any other suckers out there who still buy physical media want to back me up on this, or should I just give up and go digital?

It had been or at least felt like a while since I did a good round of caution-and-common-sense-to-the-wind record shopping, which I find is good for the soul, and especially since my prior visit to the store had come up empty, I was stoked to make out pretty good this time. You can probably see the stack in the picture above, but in case you don’t feel like clicking to enlarge it, here’s the rundown:

Aldebaran, Buried Beneath Aeons
Cable, Cable
Desert Sessions, Vol. I/Vol. II
Desert Sessions, Vol. III/Vol. IV
Dove, Dove
Grayceon, All We Destroy
Orange Goblin, Time Travelling Blues
Patton Oswalt, Finest Hour
Reverend Bizarre, Death is Glory… Now!
Sunride, Magnetizer
VA, Judge Not…
Wooden Shjips, Dos
Wolves in the Throne Room, Celestial Lineage

Of those, I already own the Desert Sessions, Dove and Orange Goblin records — but I still have my reasons for buying each. The Orange Goblin was used, and as I looked at it on the shelf, I discovered it was the Japanese version of the record, with their cover of Trouble‘s “Black Shapes of Doom” for a bonus track. That cover originally appeared on the Bastards Will Pay tribute, and since I’ve never had any luck tracking down a copy of that (it’s in my canon of daily eBay searches), I figured all the more excuse to get the import on the cheap.

The Dove, on the other hand, is probably the least reasonable of the repeat offenses. Where the Desert Sessions stuff was priced new, it was also like $12 a pop, and screw it, if I’m already spending money, I’ll hit that up. I looked so hard for those CDs the first time around, I don’t mind having doubles. For the Dove disc, though, there really is no argument. It was there, it was used, and I bought it. It’s out of print, and I might use it in a trade or something at some point — hey, if anyone wants to switch it for that Trouble tribute, drop a line — but beyond that, it was an impulse and an excuse to revisit the album from the Floor offshoot, which I hadn’t heard in years.

Grayceon was one of two discs I knew I wanted to pick up going into the trip — the other was Rwake, which Redscroll was out of — and since I’ve had those songs stuck in my head for the last month, I was glad to have the full version of the album to sate that. That wasn’t used, but it is now. The Wolves in the Throne Room is also their latest record, which I had every intent of reviewing but never got around to, but only had a disc and top liner for. There’s always one or two tracks on their albums that justifies a purchase, and now I can take my time finding out which ones those are on Celestial Lineage. I don’t feel as bad for not reviewing it if I go out and buy the record.

I bought Sunride‘s Magnetizer (1998, Boundless Records) because of a discussion on the forum of the worst stoner rock albums ever. Not that it’s mentioned in there, but Sea of Green is, and I got the names mixed up in my head. I had wanted to buy it just to hear what the worst stoner rock ever sounded like. As Magnetizer isn’t even close to the worst stoner rock I’ve ever heard, I can’t help but feel like I inadvertently won out.

The Wooden Shjips I got because I need to review their new album, West, for work and wanted something to compare it to. It was used, as was the Underdogma Records compilation, Judge Not…, which proved yet again that I don’t like comps until they’re out of print and desirable for their obscurity. I don’t remember the last time I heard Ironboss (guns don’t kill people, they do), so I’ll take it, and with Gammera, Pale Divine, early The Quill and Puny Human on there, all the better. Two discs of heavy rock I didn’t own prior. Six bucks.

Buying Cable in Connecticut had some oddball novelty to me, and the 1997 comp of their early tracks was used and is raw as hell, so that was a yes, and I didn’t even know Patton Oswalt had a new record, but there it was. Since on his last special, he was talking all about his wife being pregnant, I figured this would be his “I have a kid now” material (every comic has it), and sure enough, it is. Still good. The Reverend Bizarre and Aldebaran discs were impulse buys — I grabbed the Aldebaran with all the forethought of snatching a pack of Reese’s on the way out of the grocery store — but reckless abandon is no fun if it’s not actually reckless, so there you go.

The Patient Mrs. — bless her heart — had come in a few moments prior to collect me so we could make our way back south to Jersey, but as we were leaving, the dudes behind the counter informed that they’ll be doing a special Black Friday sale post-Thanksgiving, opening at 6AM with markdowns on new and used CDs and vinyl — which, at this point, takes up a good deal of the room they have. Turns out I’ll be up that way for the holiday, so if I’m not all drowned out in vino and tryptophan, I may just make that happen for myself. Seems like it could be fun, anyway.

More info on that and the store is here, if you’re interested. I’ll spare you the lecture on preserving independent record-buying culture, because I think you probably know it by now, but anyway, they do good work.

I’ve chronicled my Man’s Ruin buying adventures here pretty extensively, but Constellation has always had a soft spot in my heart, for being the first and for its fearless blend of sentimentality and burly heavy Southern rock. It’s not just any band that would put “Six Shooter” and “15 Minute Drive” on the same record. Still, I probably hadn’t listened to it in a few years even before ATP broke up after releasing the more metallic Open Fire in 2007 with Kyle Thomas from Exhorder on vocals, and as has happened a couple times by now (see here, here, here and here, for starters), finding the promo for sale on the relative cheap provided a good chance to reintroduce myself to the album.

The first thing that sticks out about it — especially in the context of what’s come since from Virginia and the surrounding area — is how forward thinking it is. A lot of the distinct guitar crunch from Erik Larson and Asechaih Bogdan and the sans-reverb vocals of Johnny Throckmorton you can hear in the sludge coming out of that area now from the likes of Lord and a few like-minded acts also not shy about bringing melody into the mix.

As much as cuts like “Ambition,” “Burden” and the organ-infused “Foul Play” rock as straightforwardly as possible, the acoustics of “Obsari” and the more airy feel of “1271-3106″ do more than just change things up. There’s a direct effect on mood and the overall tone of the album that lasts right into the intro of “Keepsake” and the extended weird-out jam of “Country Song.” I guess it’s not necessarily that I didn’t realize these things were happening on the record before, although I’d believe that too, but with the additional time since its release — it’ll be 12 years come March — there’s been a real chance for the record to ferment. Constellation goes down like fine aged moonshine, and proves no less blinding.

If you’re interested, click the picture on the left above to enlarge it and read the bio. Believe it.

Not only was High on Fire‘s High on Fire the first output from the band, it was also the first 12th Records release. The label, which was and remains the imprint arm of the Electric Amp company, put out High on Fire prior to the band’s signing with Man’s Ruin for their first full-length, 2000′s The Art of Self-Defense.

Of course, High on Fire would go on over the course of subsequent releases on Relapse – 2002′s Surrounded by Thieves, 2005′s Blessed Black Wings and 2007′s Death is this Communion — to come to the forefront of modern metal consciousness, eventually signing with E1 for the release of last year’s Snakes for the Divine, but in 1999, they were still pretty much just Matt Pike‘s new band post-Sleep.

The High on Fire EP isn’t nearly as thrash-laden as the trio’s sound would eventually become, but those elements are there, particularly in Kensel‘s pulsating kick and the way he and Pike interact. George Rice, who would stick around until being replaced by Joe Preston (the Melvins, Thrones) for Blessed Black Wings, offered a stonerly thickness under the guitar solo in “10,000 Years,” and Pike‘s vocals actually find him trying some cleaner singing, which is something he wouldn’t attempt again for some time, instead relying on the rasp that came to typify the band’s first several LPs.

If you can find it, the EP is definitely worth a listen for fans of the band who may have joined up later. There are copies of the CD out there, and I’m told of this new phenomenon called “down-loading” (I may have that wrong) in which computers can be used like record players, but whatever futuristic means you use to acquire it — I was fortunate enough to find it at a semi-reasonable price in physical form — consider it recommended.

All three of these songs — “Blood From Zion,” “10,000 Years” and “Master of Fists” — showed up again on The Art of Self-Defense, but there’s nothing quite like hearing how it was the first time for the first time. If I was Frank Kozik (and I’m not, much to my ongoing disappointment), I’d have signed them too.

York is more than three hours from where I live in New Jersey, so going during the week was out because of work. And I wouldn’t want to go on Sunday, because six hours in a car is no way to lead into a Monday morning, so I called the guy and said I was interested in taking a look at what he had for sale and asked him if Saturday was cool. He said it was.

Only hitch in that plan was that Hurricane Irene was expected to rail the Northeast on Saturday, making its way up the coast, bringing floods, high winds, downed trees, lightning and other things not conducive to driving at all, let alone 170 miles. You know, now that I put the number to it, the whole proposition seems unreasonable.

Not unreasonable enough, it turns out. Relatively early Saturday morning, The Patient Mrs. and I loaded into the car and made our way south and west to Red Lion, a small-ish town outside of York. I had heard and read and looked at all the maps and the progression of the storm and everything seemed to point to our being able to get to Pennsylvania and back before the worst hit. I’ve already driven in some pretty atrocious weather this year. What was the worst this hurricane could do?

It was raining when I got out there, and hard. The picture above of dark clouds and rolling hillsides I took after dropping The Patient Mrs. at a local Panera so she could continue the work on her laptop she’d been doing the whole drive and headed to the guy’s apartment to spend some time perusing his collection. Not too much time, though, because the wind was picking up.

When he met me outside, Frank, the man in his late-50s/early-60s whose collection I was there to see, asked if I had any weapons on me. I did not, and I judged by the awesomeness of his moustache that he didn’t either, so we made our way inside so I could see his wares. His chihuahua growling at me the entire time, I made my way slowly and, at first, haphazardly through the rows and stacks of alphabetized discs, periodically looking outside to check the conditions, which seemed to ebb and flow as different arms of the storm passed through.

The collection itself was as advertised in both quality and quantity. There had to be 5,000-plus discs spread across the racks. They were stacked two rows deep on bookshelves and piled — organized; nothing was without purpose — in corners. I’d been hoping to find a copy of Keg Full of Dynamite by Pentagram, or some old Sabbath bootlegs, but no such luck. Nonetheless, our man Frank was clearly someone who had just been collecting CDs since the inception of the format, and I was able to find (literally) a stack of releases that saved me months of eBaying.

He charged $10 a piece for each of the three Pagan Altar full-lengths, for Speed, Glue & Shinki‘s 1971 outing, Eve, for the long out of print first edition of Spiritual Beggars‘ debut, for records by Dust, Abramis Brama, Elonkorjuu, Terra Firma, Desert Saints, Privilege, Generous Maria, Toad and Riff Cannon, for the first issue of Josiah‘s self-titled, and, in a departure from the others that even Frank noted, The Arcanum by German folk metallers Suidakra.

A word about that record: I first heard it via downloaded mp3s in 2000, when it was released. The whole folk metal thing was still at least half a decade off, and I was into it because it was a more extreme version of melodeath. But I had little interest in owning physical media at the time (I burned discs and kept them in a binder), and it later turned out that the label screwed over the band, kept the rights, and the album went out of print. It’s something I’ll probably listen to once — haven’t yet — and stick on my shelf to gather dust, because it’s just not where my tastes lie at this point, but it’s something I genuinely never thought I’d find. I never thought I’d find that record. And then, $10 to Frank and it was mine.

The only thing he didn’t charge me $10 for, in fact, was the digipak special edition of Hammer of the North, by Grand Magus. It was $20, but the album has yet to have a CD release in the US, and I figured he had probably paid even more for the import than I was, so it was worth the price nonetheless.

As he totaled up my selections from the sundry shelves and stacks of his library, I began to put myself in his place, and wonder what it would take for me to allow someone into my home to peruse, pick out, scrutinize and ultimately walk away with pieces of my collection. I had more selections than I took home with me. Albums by Fuzzy Duck, Bloodrock (it was Bloodrock 2), Lucifer’s Friend and the recently-burned-for-me Tin House he said I simply couldn’t have, as they were too dear to him to part with. He explained that all the metal stuff, all the more modern rock stuff, that could all go, but the ’70s heavy bands were what he grew up with, and he was sorry.

His failing health turned out to be the reason he was selling. He needed the money more than he needed the discs, so out they were going. I expressed my sympathies, forked over $190 of the total $200 I’d brought with me, and left knowing I could have spent hours more finding treasure among those racks, of which I’ve dreamed of not once, but twice in the now-four nights since.

Using my manliest navigational sensibilities, I suggested cutting north early before heading east to get ahead of the storm, and The Patient Mrs., now retrieved from the aforementioned Panera, was in agreement. It rained most of our way back, heavy at times, but we still got in well under the wire for the most damaging winds, floods, etc. Still funny to see how few people were on the road by the time we landed back in Jersey, though. Cracked open a couple beers, admired the stack of recent acquisitions (at least I did), and waited for the world to end — which, despite the local highway collapse, flooding, downed power lines and the rest, it did not do.

I’ll admit it wasn’t the safest idea I’ve ever had to drive for such a long time with the threat of a hurricane looming. All the same, I regret nothing for what I was able to pick up in Red Lion, and I know I’ll always look at those albums in the picture above and remember the day I went and found them with the wind howling outside and the torrents of rain blocking visibility on the ride home. It was stupid, yeah, but it was also precisely my favorite kind of adventure.