Day Of Discoveries

[Zed Simon]

I''m not talking about that religious show on TV...although there sort of is a religious connection to this...bear with me.

I checked out a neat new (to me) church today - very cool, it''s in a movie theater. Anyway, there''s a flea market near it, so afterwards I decided to pay it a visit. What I didn''t realize is that a thrift store had just relocated there. I was taken off guard for a minute, because the sign out front said, "A Yard Sale In A Thrift Store." And it kinda did look like a yard sale inside. There wasn''t a whole lot of rhyme or reason to the layout of things since they were just getting settled in. But as I took a closer look at things, I discovered a couple of really cool finds. Of course, I got a couple of records: The Salsoul Orchestra, Ferrante & Teicher''s In The Heat Of The Night, and Todd Rundgren''s Something/Anything?. I''d been looking for Runt''s album for a while and was glad I found it. But the REAL find was in the book section. It was issue #4 of Avant Garde, the extremely progressive magazine published by Ralph Ginzburg in the late ''60s. Among the articles is the story of a man who dropped out of college to fight in Vietnam, and poetry written by an IBM computer. Good readin''.

[wabi-sabi]

Wow! Avant Garde...I remember seeing ads for that when I was a teenager and drooling at how cool it sounded. All I ever see in my local thrifts, magazinewise are housewife things. I made some great scores at a Rehoboth Beach DE thrift this weekend myself-TV Guides Top TV Themes, Sid & Marty Kroft Bugaboos, The Good ,The Bad & The Ugly, AND From Russia With Love soundtracks, Tony Perkins!, and Kate Smith Sings Songs For The NOW Generation, also a tasty bit of vocal cheese from the Anita Kerr Singers. It''s funny how idiosyncratic your taste gets when you open your self up to serendipity...
PS while it always makes me sad when old movie theaters go out of business, I think it''s swell that you get to thrift shop there now.

[Zed Simon]

The theater''s still in business. The church has an arrangement that lets them take it over for the morning since they don''t have their own building yet.

That Kate Smith album sound like one to seek out. I wonder how it compares with the Ethel Merman Disco Album, which is a Holy Grail of mine.

Oh - forgot to mention - I went back to the new thrift last afternoon to get myself a nice little microwave cart. I repurposed it for my audio gear. Now, $15 later,  everything''s all neat and tidy. For now, anyway.