Vinyl Road Rage Update

by Joe Wallace

The weekend was full of interesting diversions–I took a side journey into the world of flea markets–the Texas vinyl collector’s old reliable alternative to the indie record shop. People who collect vinyl in Texas know flea markets very well and there are many bargains and rarities to be found. I’ll post a report on that soonest. I still have two excellent Austin record shops to write up and a look into the San Antonio market, too.

A good deal of Saturday was spent combing the flea markets, but the nighttime was spent watching Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, which I can’t find ANYWHERE as an LP and while Amazon was offering downloads of the soundtrack when the DVD remaster came out, a rights dispute forced the tracks offline.

You can find some of them–the reggae tracks are on an album featuring Barry “Lawnboy”Ford (good stuff, that) and it is quite interesting to note that Barry Ford also wrote the Fabulous Stains track “Waste of Time” that the trio plays in their on-stage debut in the movie.

The Looters tracks were recorded by the Steve Jones/Paul Cook/Paul Simonon outfit The Professionals. Some of that was on the re-issue of The Professionals CD a while back.

Black Randy and the Metrosquad show up in this as well, doing “I Slept in an Arcade”. Goofy fun.

Sunday had me back on the road, a fairly uneventful trip. No truck nuts or pee crystal-crazed cell phone conversations–just miles and miles of road, highway cops, and Big Youth’s Screaming Target blasting at top volume. Stay tuned for reviews of Antoine’s, Waterloo Records and the Texas Flea Market report…