Tag Archives: vinyl records

Bargain Bin(ge): Basement Records (Knoxville, TN)

December 6, 2016 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Knoxville, Tennessee is a lovely city in East Tennessee, famous for being the home of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Tennessee. It is also only a few miles from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Recently, I took a trip to the area, and my route took me right through the heart of Knoxville. As always, I decided to take some time to check out a record store in town. In this case, I spent a little portion of my trip digging around in a shop called Basement Records.

Basement Records is, to start off with, a cool little shop. The folks working the front also seemed like pretty cool people, which is a boon for a little shop like this if you ask me. It is adorned with all sorts of posters and playbills that cover seemingly every inch of wall space, and boxes of records sit everywhere you look. An entire row of boxes are dedicated to soundtracks, which is always cool to see. There were also a handful of DVDs and VHSs in the shop, but they were primarily concerts, performances, and music documentaries. For those that weren’t, the price just wasn’t right for me. As I recall, DVDs were $4 a pop, which is pretty far from a steal for older, used stuff. Still, it made for some fun sifting, even if I didn’t ultimately walk away with any movies.

However, digging through the soundtrack selection yielded some interesting and off-the-wall stuff, as you can see below.

Cobra

I have a full feature written and queued up about this cult classic Sylvester Stallone flick, so I won’t go into too much detail here. However, I will say that I recommend checking it out. Also, it has an interesting soundtrack that varies in style, and hybridizes pop music of the 1970s and 1980s. It features artists like Miami Sound Machine, Gary Wright, and Gladys Knight, just to name a few. The score was composed by Sylvester Levay, who wrote the 1975 hit single “Fly Robin Fly,” and also composed music for Mannequin and Hot Shots.

1941

1941 is regarded as one of the few career missteps of Steven Spielberg, and has a place etched in cinema history because of it. In spite of an all-star ensemble cast, the movie is incredibly uneven, and lacks the comedic core necessary to hold it together. I did a whole write-up on it some time ago that goes into a lot of detail on it if you are curious. However, it notably features a score by the legendary film composer John Williams, and it is a damn good one. I remember playing the memorable march from the movie with my high school symphonic band, and the whole score is really worth a listen for people who like wind ensemble and marching band style music. If that is your bag, you have to check it out.

They Call It An Accident

They Call It An Accident is apparently a French movie from 1982 that was written, directed, and prominently stars French actress Nathalie Delon, but good luck finding out anything else about it. At this time, it has a whopping 7 total user reviews on IMDb. Despite that, the movie’s soundtrack boasts the likes of U2, Steve Winwood, and Wally Badarou, which is really something for a movie that apparently no one has ever seen. My girlfriend is the one who pointed this one out to me from the stacks, mostly because of the strange album art. Despite my best efforts at this point, I still have no idea what this movie is about, or how someone could get a hold of it.

Every Which Way But Loose

Every Which Way But Loose is a Clint Eastwood action/comedy movie that co-stars an orangutan. It is kind of like a combination of Over The Top and Road House, but with an orangutan thrown comedically into the mix. 1978 was a weird time for the world.

The primary reason that this particular soundtrack stood out to me is because I have heard the film’s theme song, which is way catchier than it should be.

The music for the movie was conducted and mostly composed by Steve Dorff, whose mixture of pop country music and television score writing has earned him a handful of Grammy and Emmy nominations. He has also done a fair bit of film scoring, such as for Dudley Do-Right, Pink Cadillac, and Pure Country. He is also interestingly the father of actor Stephen Dorff.

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Bargain Bin(ge): A Separate Reality Records (Cleveland, OH)

October 25, 2016 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Recently, I took a quick drive up to Cleveland, OH, which was my first time in the prominent Great Lakes city. Admittedly, I only knew as much as the internet had told me of it.

As I usually do when exploring a new city, I set aside some time to hunt for film-related used media: soundtrack records, DVDs, VHS, laserdiscs, etc.

One of my stops in the city was a trippy little record store called A Separate Reality, which initially stuck out to me due to its prominent eyeball logo.

While A Separate Reality doesn’t have any movies among its considerable inventory, this is the kind of record store I always hope to find. The selection of vintage soundtracks was as massive as it was eccentric, featuring everything from science-fiction classics to italian horror flicks to blaxploitation legends to children’s films. The selection included so many notables that I’m only going to spotlight only a handful of them here, and recommend that people check this place out on their own.

The Exorcist II: The Heretic

The Exorcist II is one of the most infamous Hollywood failures of all time, and a movie I have covered on the blog before. However, it also features a score from famed composer Ennio Morricone, who recently (finally) won an Academy Award for The Hateful Eight. However, if you are a fan of his work on movies like The Thing, Once Upon A Time In The West, or Once Upon A Time In America, you might be in for a shock with his score here. It’s…well…distinct.

City of the Living Dead

City of the Living Dead is a 1980 film by Lucio Fulci. The score was composed by Fabio Frizzi, a frequent Fulci collaborator who also provided music for his films A Cat In The Brain, The Beyond, and Zombie, as well as the bizarre 1977 Italian version of Godzilla by Luigi Cozzi.

Hercules

Hercules is a 1983 movie directed by Luigi Cozzi for Cannon films, and stars Lou Ferrigno as the legendary demi-god. Even if you haven’t seen this movie, you may have been exposed to the infamous clip of Ferrigno throwing a bear into outer space. I did a full write-up on this bizarre movie a while back, and I highly recommend it.

The score for Hercules was provided by Pino Donaggio, who is probably best known for his work with Brian De Palma (Carrie, Blow Out, Raising Cain, Body Double, Dressed To Kill) and Joe Dante (Piranha, The Howling).

Americathon

Americathon is a strange relic of a movie, that could only possibly come from 1979. It is a satiric future vision of a United States dominated by Jimmy Carter and liberals, with a focus on environmentalism to the detriment of private business and the national debt. It is a weird window into an America before the Reagan presidency, and looking at it now is kind of bizarre. There is a whole lot of xenophobia and racism baked into this feature, and it doesn’t seem to have much of a point to it, but from a socio-political lens, it is an interesting movie to observe.

I first caught this movie at the 2016 B-fest in Chicago, and it is one of the features that has most stuck with me. However, that is admittedly mostly because Meat Loaf fights a car in it. The politics are kind of interesting too, though. The soundtrack includes tracks from The Beach Boys, Eddie Money, and Elvis Costello, among a handful of others, which makes it somewhat notable.

Bargain Bin(ge)

Bargain (Bin)ge: Finders Records (Bowling Green, OH)

July 25, 2016 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Recently, I took a trip up to Detroit, MI to attend a John Carpenter retrospective concert (which was, for the record, awesome). While I was up that way, I decided to take a couple of days to explore the area. This included, of course, going on the hunt for physical media.

As with many other areas I’ve visited, I wasn’t able to find any accessible specific movie shops in the city limits of Detroit, so I decided to hit up a handful of local record stores and book shops in the city instead. What I found didn’t include a whole lot of VHS or DVD selection, but I wound up with a handful of soundtracks at least.

On the way up to Detroit, I took a quick detour based on my girlfriend’s recommendation. Bowling Green, OH, known for being the home of Bowling Green State University, has quite the local record shop: Finders Records.

Finders Records is almost the perfect platonic ideal of a record store. It has a massive selection of both used and new vinyl, and the atmosphere and decor are easily unparalleled. It consists of three large rooms, each roughly the size of your typical record store, and they are all absolutely packed with media. The vibe of the place had me wondering if Liv Tyler or John Cusack would wander in the front door with some sort of angsty life problem.

Unfortunately, as with many record stores, the DVDs were limited to concerts and music documentaries. However, the soundtrack selection was pretty stellar. Plus, there was a small buy/sell/trade down the block with a decent enough selection of movies and video games, though it wasn’t terribly much to write home about.

If you happen to find yourself around Toledo/Bowling Green in Northwest Ohio, you need to do yourself a favor and check out the impressive Finders Records.