Paul’s and Girl Talk: Night Ripper
I did a bunch of fun stuff, today, some of which I may write about later, but, for now, it’s all about Paul’s Compact Discs in Bloomfield. Dave and I made the trek over to Bloomfield after a Primanti’s sandwhich this afternoon.
It’s a smallish record store, not giant by any means, but also not shoebox and very navigable. The way it’s laid out and the way things are organized made it easy to look through things. They had a good selection among indie music, including the classic stuff (they had 3 of the 4 Seam albums in stock). They also have a good vinyl (7″ and LPs) selection. Their used CD selection is small and flat-priced (all $8) so that’s not the greatest. The people behind seemed knowledgable (one geeky clerk informed me of a Girl Talk show tonight after I bought the album).
I’d say it’s perhaps on par with Aquarius or slightly lower on my list for small record stores, but that’s saying a lot: Aquarius is pretty amazing and I like Paul’s a lot too.
I got:
- Girl Talk Night Ripper
- Ida Will You Find Me [used]
- Sigur Ros Saeglopur
I was familiar with the Ida and the Sigur Ros sounds good from first listen. I had heard little snippets of the Girl Talk and had read the rave reviews and I figured I should buy it in Pittsburgh if I was going to buy it, given that he’s a Pittsburgh local. I listened to it in the car a few times while driving around today and, I must say, I’m impressed. He takes tiny samples of pop songs, often dozens for each song of his and mashes them together (quite different from a “mash up” in most ways) to make another song. The samples he mixes and the smothness with which he does it, for the most part, are pretty amazing. It’s good music and it’s fun to try to pick out the samples he’s using. Today I definitely heard, among others, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Pixies, Verve (itself a sample), Kanye West, Gwen Stefani, and Elton John. No one’s sacred.
I also found out today that Unwed Sailor has cancelled their tour, including tomorrow night’s stop at the Brillobox, so that’s sad. I was looking forward to that. If I’d know that it was cancelled (I just found out), I would probably have made more of an effort to catch Girl Talk tonight at Belvedere’s. Oh well.