Vinyl or Die: Oklahoma City’s Record Store Day Picks

Flaming Lips/Stardeath and White Dwarfs & Black Keys Split (7″)

Lips & SDWD covering Madonna, BK doing Captain Beefheart. Awesome mint green vinyl.

Fucked Up – Daytrotter Sessions

Ten different covers from various Record Stores around the world. Great tracks too!

Jay Reatard/Sonic Youth split (7″)

RIP Jay. Awesome release!

Pavement – Quarantine the Past RSD version LP

Fan picked best-of, different track listing than the regular version!

Grizzly Bear – KCRW (7″)

Beautiful, different versions of tracks from Veckatimest and Yellow House.

Fucked Up – David’s Town (12″)

Fake Compilation spanning 1978-1983, all performed by FU as different bands!

Ty Segall – Ty Rex (12″)

Ty Segall covers 6 T. Rex tracks!

V/A – Pressed at Boddie (2xLP)

Numero Group’s first step into RSD. 18-ish tracks of stuff pressed at a Cleveland pressing plant with no standards.

Thee Oh Sees – Singles Comp Vol. 1 + 2

Flaming Lips – Heady Nuggets

Five Album box Warner Bros album collection, spanning Hit To Death in the Future Head, Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, Clouds Taste Metallic, Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. 1st time vinyl reissues for the first 3!

Midlake/Will Self – Am I Going Insane (12″)

The split confused me at first, because Will Self is one of my favorite authors (The Quantity Theory of Insanity), and I thought he’d given up the written word to become a musician. Thankfully, I was dead wrong. Instead, he’s participating in this collaboration with Midlake (dreamy, shoegazer type: see Grandaddy), by contributing a spoken word portion to Side B. Will Self reading one of his short stories (The Happy Detective) on one side, Midlake’s dreamy goodness on the other. Sold.

Roy Orbison – Only The Lonely (mono)/Oh, Pretty Woman (live from Holland) (7″)

Why are women always leaving Roy? I would never leave him. It’s just that I was born in the wrong era. If you’re a fan of heartbreak, gorgeous crooning and emotive lyrics, you’ll want to pick up this record. Only the lonely know the way Roy feels tonight. There goes my baby, there goes my heart.

Holland has great taste in music (case in point: local musician John Fullbright is touring Amsterdamn now. Bet they went wild when he covered Crying). The recording of Orbison’s best known song, Oh, Pretty Woman, takes place at a live concert in Holland. You can hear Orbison having fun during this show. There’s more “whoa” to the way he sings “WO-man” and he really goes for the growl on that bridge. I like the contrast of these two songs on an album together. One so sad, the other so hopeful. That’s Roy for ya: a tender-hearted maestro.

Syd Barrett – An Introduction To (12″)

This is a new release, but more than a sufficient introduction to Syd Barrett. Barrett, most famous for his work as an original member of Pink Floyd in the 60s, was later ousted by the band in favor of David Gilmour (double blow to Barrett: Gilmour was Barrett’s childhood friend).

Madcap Laughs is his first solo work, in which he weaves the kind of druggy imagery that the Beatles tried on Sgt. Pepper with experimental instrumentation, fuzzy-jangly guitars and sharp vocals. His second release, Barrett, was softer and dreamier than Madcap – more accessible. Funny that it was more structured, because the way producers tell it, Barrett was really unhinged during the recording. He went into seclusion for 30 years after finishing this album.

An Introduction To features digital remasters of Barrett’s best songs from both Madcap Laughs and Barrett. If you want a comprehensive overview of the solo works of a real legend, check out this record.

Gorillaz – The Fall (12″)

Gorillaz are one of my favorite active bands right now. I have been waiting for this album to come out on vinyl, and luckily, this RSD it finally is. Albarn produced this album with an iPad, so it will be interesting to see where he took it.

Big Star – Third (12″)

One of my favorite albums of all time, finally re-released on vinyl. With the passing of two Big Star members last year, this makes the release a little bittersweet. Also, as an added bonus, 1 in every 300 of these albums will contain an actual test pressing from the 70s. How cool is that!?

Deftones – Covers (12″)

This will mark the second release of a covers album by the Deftones. It contains some older covers we’ve already heard (Sade, Jawbox, The Smiths), and some additional new covers (The Cars, The Cardigans, Japan). I have always enjoyed listening to the Deftones take on others’ music; they seem to make it their own while keeping the mood of the originals. Check out their version of Sade’s “No Ordinary Love.”

Foo Fighters – Medium Rare (12″)

Another covers album by a band that puts out really good covers. This is basically a collection of all the Foo covers we’ve heard before: “Down In The Park,” “Baker Street,” “Have a Cigar…”

Of Montreal: The Past is A Grotesque Animal (7″)

An excellent song by an excellent band. 45 single with a B-side version featuring Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Pink Floyd – London 66/67 (“12)

Do I really need to explain this one? A classic and rare performance by Syd Barrett era Floyd. Features a 17-minute rendition of “Interstellar Overdrive”. Grab the headphones.

Television – Live at the Old Waldorf (12″)

A double live album recorded in 1978. Television was way before their time, and to this day, are the most underrated band from the 70’s.

Adele- Rolling In The Deep (10″)

This is described by Adele as a “dark bluesy gospel disco tune,” and her words are easily relatable regarding the unrealized potential of a relationship. This is one of those defiant but sad break-up songs that can only be helped by the crackle and pop of vinyl.

Fleet Foxes- Helplessness Blues/Grown Ocean (7″) – 3,000 copies printed

This is the first new Fleet Foxes record since 2008, unfailingly folksy and pretty fun to listen to.

Mississippi John Hurt – The Immortal Vanguard (12″) – 1000 copies

This is a classic album from 1967, re-mastered from the original tapes. This is the sort of country-blues album I never would have found without the help of fellow fans in record stores helping me sort through the stacks. I might never have known the treasure of the notes he can play if I didn’t have other fans to give me a map.

Mumford & Sons /Laura Marling (10″) – 3500 copies

First time physical release for this EP featuring collaborative recordings from the artists and a collective of Rajastgani folk musicians recorded during a 2009 India tour. With re-workings of Laura Marling’s “Devil Spoke” and Mumford & Sons’ “To Darkness.” This is something I haven’t heard and would love to listen to at home.

Ray Lamontagne – Live Fall 2010 – RED Vinyl (12″)

Five live songs recorded from Ray Lamontagne & The Pariah Dogs’ Fall 2010 tour. I hear that it includes three songs from “God Willin’ & The Creek Don’t Rise” which is both a favorite album and a non-sequitur heard more often than not in the Murphy home growing up.

Derek & the Dominos – Got to Get Better in a Little While & Layla (7″)

Since getting dumped by a Leila in the 6th grade, the scurrying yearning of this song has never failed to move me. Rare are stories behind songs as enduring as this one. Will be interested to see how this sounds.

Television – Live at the Old Waldorf (12″ Double Vinyl)

Tom Verlaine is artsy and precise, his pointilistic guitar style does the rare thing and becomes a signature that sticks in the very music crowded head–whether he is going soft (“Days”) or epic (“I Remembuuuh, when the dahrkness doubled”). Plus, look at this title. Feels fancy.

Green Day/Husker Du – I Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely (7″)

This seems to confirm that no matter how cool you are, Green Day is still out there kicking ass, and listening to a lot of records.

International Submarine Band w/ Gram Parsons – Safe at Home (12″)

Parsons was the bridge between George Jones and the Rolling Stones. He discovered Emmy Lou Harris. He died ridiculously, but memorably. His voice is golden amber.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez – TELESTERION (CD)

So I can light it on fire and fling it at Flea for encouraging this guy.

Wild Flag – Future Crimes b/w Glass Tambourine (7″)

Holy crap! This is the first thing released from Carrie Brownstein’s (of Sleater Kinney and Portlandia fame) new band of hot chicks! This is punk rock like the good ole days, angry, fast, and hard. Just like God intended. If you hear Future Crimes and don’t feel like smashing glass with your fists, you’re probably a robot with the personality of Keanu Reeves: Keanu-bot.

Duran Duran – Girl Panic (7″)

In anticipation of the upcoming Duran Duran “Unstaged” concert, which will be directed by David Lynch, this single features a B-side remix of Girl Panic by the creator of Eraserhead himself. If you’ve heard his album Dark Night of the Soul, you’re already excited.

Daft Punk – Tron Soundtrack (12″)

A disc made to look like an identity ring? That may be the nerdiest, most awesome thing ever in the history of mankind. Consider my pants crapped.

Not to mention, if you’ve never heard Daft Punk played on vinyl, you have not yet lived. There are things captured in the lossless vinyl format that are beyond the capabilities of CD or MP3. Even flac doesn’t come close to the richness of vinyl, particularly for something as intelligently musical as Daft Punk.

The Doors – Riders on the Storm (7″)

When I hear The Doors, I get flashbacks of that scene from Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen goes nuts and kills Marlon Brando to the manic, ethereal strains of “The End.” “Riders on the Storm” has the similar feel of a spiritual, mental journey into madness, and that gritty scratch of the vinyl pairs with Morrison’s dark vocals in a way that shouldn’t make sense in the real world.

Sonic Youth – Whore’s Moaning (12″)

Remember the early-to-mid 90s days of grungy alternative rock, with Nirvana and Blur and Stabbing Westward and Third Eye Blind? Sonic Youth has been making that music since 1981. And they’re still going strong. This tour album features Sugar Kane, a great single from 2004 that will remind some of us of the days when we’d to listen to Collective Soul on cassette tape.

Dio – Killing The Dragon (12″)

If you’re going to have any vinyl at all, you would be remiss to not include a Dio, Maiden, or Priest album just for the cover art alone. Killing the Dragon’s cover shows villagers attacking a dragon breathing a stream of fire into the air. The fire here is a metaphor for Dio’s high pitched hair metal scream, and that metaphor does Dio righteous justice throughout the album.