“I heard you have a vinyl of every Niagra record on German import.
I heard that you have a white label of every seminal Detroit techno hit – 1985, ’86, ’87.”

So this past week I went down to see Lightning Bolt play a show at 12 Galaxies in San Francisco. The show was great, minus the various minor cuts and bruises, but their signature play-on-the-floor-and-not-on-the-stage was a bummer. Hearing a band live is only half the fun. I love being able watch how a band plays along with the interaction of its members, but it took forever to work my way to the front of the violent crowd to get to see even the slightest bit of what they were doing. This seemingly awesome proximity of fans to band ruined a lot of the experience. Oh and if anyone is ever thinking, “hm, maybe I’ll go see this band called Burmese” … Don’t. They played right before Lightning Bolt and were awful.

The following morning with blood running from my shins, nose and probably inner ear, I set off for what has always been one of my favorite parts of San Francisco—Amoeba Records. Unfortunately, this place is starting to lose its’ edge (wink wink) in terms of having all of the music I want. My friends and I are moving ever more into experimental noise music and Amoeba, though great for Rock and having used copies of CDs at least 5 dollars cheaper than what it would have been new, has little to offer the experimental fan. So, leaving the store that day I decided two things. One, that I would start to buy a lot more vinyl because the craftsmanship put into most releases is just incredible, and two, that I need to find another music store in San Francisco geared more towards experimental music. Does anyone know of such a place? Let me know if so.

Eagerly Awaiting