you can play my records
What better day to dive back in than Record Store Day?
Like RSD 2010, today is cold, dreary, windy, and almost raining. Unlike last year, however, I’m not in New York (which was was actually a happy coincidence — I’d made plans to visit a friend months ago). Greenwich Village really couldn’t be beat as the place to be, but this year, it’s Record Store Day: The Local Edition. And it works. Totally works.
My local record store was hopping, mostly with middle-aged men. I had a long list of RSD special releases to look for, but all of them had either sold out or not been ordered. Browse time. Like last year, in the end, I went with something old and something new (well, new-ish, comparatively).
[caption id=”attachment_4115219528" align=”alignnone” width=”300" caption=”Donovan — Wear Your Love Like Heaven”]
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(file photo found online — not my copy)
For a a while, Donovan, to me, was just that guy who sang “Mellow Yellow” and the dude Bob Dylan hated in Don’t Look Back. In 2006, I learned that was missing out. Someone recommended the song “Wear Your Love Like Heaven,” which I immediately bought and fell in love with. I love the dreaminess, the imagery, the lushness. To this day, it’s still one of my all-time favorite songs, and although nothing else on this lovely, twinkling album quite compares to it, it was in heavy rotation for the entirety of fall 2006 and has some very specific, sorta life-changing memories associated with it.
So, in case anyone else is wondering, yes, he does more than “Mellow Yellow,” and it is entirely possible to like both him and Bob Dylan without taking sides in the feud (which was a really, really long time ago anyway). I don’t know why he never seems to get the respect he deserves. Plus, this album cover is gorgeous.
[caption id=”attachment_4115219527" align=”alignnone” width=”300" caption=”Rilo Kiley — Take Offs & Landings”]
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(also a file photo — not my copy)
And Rilo Kiley. Unlike most college radio kids of the early 2000s, I was not a fan in college. For some reason, I always got them confused with Rainer Maria (probably because I thought of them as Rainer Maria Rilke, which sounds sorta like Rilo, which…never mind). Anyway, I dutifully played their songs on my radio show, listened to other people’s copies of this album and More Adventurous via the magic of iTunes music sharing. (Remember when entire college campuses were on the same network and we could stream each others’ music?)
But I couldn’t get into it until, coincidentally, right before I got into Donovan — summer 2006. That was also the time I resolved to be just like frontwoman/goddess/girlcrush Jenny Lewis. Sadly, the closest I’ll ever come is sharing the same first and last initials, though I did get to see her live couple times, in solo form and in Jenny and Johnny form. (Don’t remind me of how, in all likelihood, I got in way too late to ever see Rilo Kiley live.)
Take Offs & Landings just came out on vinyl for the first time this week, by the way! At least, that’s what the sticker told me.
