It was strange walking down the steps into Burlington, Vermont‘s Pure Pop Records this past Saturday, because I’d been there before. Six years ago, when The Patient Mrs. and I were first married, we took off headed north on the Thruway, just as a kind of mini-getaway post-wedding. Our actual honeymoon was still a few months off, and we ended up in Burlington by happenstance, just because it was there, and we must have hit Pure Pop on that trip — don’t ask me what I bought — so being back there was a dreamy deja vu. No, it didn’t affect the shopping experience.

I’d already been in and out of Burlington Records and Downtown Records (?) with no finds. I almost bought a jewel case copy of Scissorfight‘s Mantrapping for Sport and Profit from the latter, because I only own the digipak and because we’re situated right next to New Hampshire and I consider everything north of Massachusetts to be Scissorfight country, but changed my mind last minute. A choice I lived to regret. I didn’t have high hopes for Pure Pop, because it’s one of those super-indie stores that so loves being indie, but I did alright in the end.

They have an experimental/post-metal/doom/stuff-snobs-like section that runs a gamut from Acid Mothers Temple to Sleep to John Zorn, and Slayer was filed under rock, not metal, but most of what I found was in the comedy section anyway. I grabbed Mitch Hedberg‘s Do You Believe in Gosh?, Patton Oswalt‘s Feelin’ Kinda Patton and 222, which is the same show, just unedited, and from the regular old metal section on in the far corner of the store, Ereb Altor‘s second album, The End, which I haven’t listened to yet, but can only imagine from what I remember of 2008′s By Honour sounds like Bathory-style Viking metal played at half speed. Translation: awesome.

I don’t suppose it was the best haul ever — I was at least momentarily more psyched by the shaved ice flavor “Tiger Blood” that was available at the nearby outdoor market — but screw it, comedy records are good for long drives, and I’ve been doing plenty of that lately. And honestly, I’d have grabbed some stuff out of that avant/pretentious section if I didn’t already own everything I wanted from it, so no slight on Pure Pop, which had a reasonably well-organized layout and broad range of available goods.

The dude behind the counter, who seemed to have some kind of animal tooth inserted in his septum (an instant reminder of the unintentionally hilarious Walking with Cavemen; Alec Baldwin‘s finest moment of voice-over) was polite and friendly enough, not condescending to my less than stellar finds, and all in all I felt positive about the experience. Cap the day off with a trip to the Ben and Jerry’s factory off the I-89 in Waterbury and mark it a win.

Begin 1:21AM: After completing the last item on my “Jersey to-do” list, which had me in Bayonne until 8:15PM, I got in the car and split back up to Vermont, taking the New York Thruway and any number of smaller numbered highways. I had been looking forward to making the trip at night because I figured the roads would be empty, and I was right. At one point I went a solid 25 minutes without seeing another moving car. Fantastic.

I kept track of the evening’s playlist for anyone interested…

Deep Purple, Made in Japan (second disc started the trip)
Arc of Ascent, Circle of the Sun
Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf
Colour Haze, Tempel
Neurosis, A Sun that Never Sets

There you go, just in case you want to recreate my driving to VT experience later. Amazing that it’s only really five albums. Felt much longer than that at the time.

I should take a moment to explain the blurry-ass image above. Firstly, when I got back here I was going to take a picture of the sky, the stars, the very-visible Milky Way, etc., but it’s cloudy (rained off and on the whole way up), so that’s out. Instead, I took a picture of what’s probably the biggest non-captive spider I’ve ever seen, currently residing outside — thankfully — the bathroom window of the cabin in which I and The Patient Mrs. are staying. We’ve named him Richard Nixon, because no other name would do.

You can’t really see in the photo here, it being night and all, but his web is actually a complex three-dimensional series of webs, and it’s pretty impressive. The Patient Mrs. looked it up and apparently he’s what’s known in the arachnid-centric community as an “Orb Weaver,” which is about the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. If I don’t get a demo mailed to me in the next six months by a band called Orb Weaver, I’m going to be seriously let down.

Richard Nixon the Orb Weaver. Awesome.

I’ll be back in Jersey next week either Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday, but until then, it’s back to school-type work up here. I have a lot of reviews I want to get to though, and interviews that need posting, so stick around. More to come. End 1:49AM

I bought three CDs from Turn it Up! in Brattleboro, Vermont, after taking the hour trip south from where The Patient Mrs. and I are staying in Belmont. They were as follows: Goatwhore‘s Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun (which I’ll never listen to), Eric Idle‘s solo comedy effort, The Rutland Isles (which I’ll listen to but not laugh at), and the self-titled disc by August Born, which features Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance (which I’ll probably listen to but am not 100 percent sure I don’t already own). It was kind of a bummer trip.

Turn it Up! is a pretty hip shop. There’s a picture of local resident/Tee Pee Records mainstay Dave Sweetapple (of Witch and Sweet Apple) up on the wall — and the numerous used Tee Pee promos for sale make me think maybe he’s been to the store once or twice — and they seem to cater mostly to the town’s abundance of hippie/jam rockers, though there was a small metal section. My major disappointment (aside from how visibly creeped out the girl stocking the bins was by me) came in a lack of Black Sabbath bootlegs. They had Metallica, they had Beatles out the ass, Neil Young and even Led Zeppelin, but not one Sabbath boot. Nothing. Come on, man. Give me one. Anything!

No dice. Don’t mean to harsh your mellow, trust fund hippies willingly living in poverty, but you’re a long way away from Coachella. I took my time looking around the store, partially because I seemed to be imposing on the staff by doing so (they were open until 10PM and I was in there around 5:30), then clumsily bought my three discs and left, feeling like a sucker for having made the trip. I didn’t expect a fucking haven of desert rock overflowing with Man’s Ruin discs, where I’d walk in, be handed a beer and get instantly pointed to the Kyuss, Etc. section, but give me a break. The attitude, the selection, the hyper-indie mindset: blech. Keep it. If I wanted to deal with that kind of bullshit, there are any number of stores in New York I could go to, and they’d probably have the new Woven Hand in stock, which no one on the planet seems to, myself included.

Using the Record Store Day website as my guide, there are a couple stores up in Burlington I might want to visit, but after Turn it Up!, I’m not going to imagine either much success or a particularly friendly reception. Seriously, it made the passive apathy with which I’m generally greeted at Generation Records, or Vintage Vinyl, or even Resurrection Records in CT seem like a warm hug. Was a long way to go for Eric Idle, I’ll tell you that much.

Got here yesterday in the evening and it was still light enough for me to appreciate the view. The sun sets across the lake that’s maybe a half-mile straight line from where I’m sitting on the deck as I type this. It’s beautiful here, and though that’s not necessarily a change from the usual (it’s beautiful where I live as well), its novelty acts as an exaggerating agent. I hope it lasts the full month.

The cabin is two rooms: part kitchen, part work area, part bedroom, two rocking chairs, a separate bathroom and a walk-in closet obviously intended for more than one person’s stuff. We brought our clothes in laundry baskets. The town of Belmont, Vermont, which is where I am, is basically an intersection of two roads and a small area surrounding. As I said to The Patient Mrs. when I got out of the car last night, when she gets away, she really gets away.

It’s a ski resort area, so of course it’s empty now, the heatwave engulfing the Eastern Seaboard having made its way too up here in the mountains, and the cabin is on a piece of property belonging to an elderly couple the masculine half of which I believe built both dwellings. I could never do that. I do this instead, and I don’t at all doubt that’s my loss. We can’t all be useful.

But I’m here and shortly to get breakfast at this or that local whathaveyou. Last night for dinner The Patient Mrs. and I successfully tested out the local Irish pub, which I’m glad to say had Boddingtons on draft and a burger brushed in pure maple syrup. This is, as I said, a beautiful place. More when I have it.