The thrill of the record hunt

To get my hands on interesting music, I’ve always kept my ear to the ground.  I’ve had to use a lot of q-tips, but it’s paid off in my record collection.  There’ve been a lot of songs I’ve heard just once and remembered enough information to go on a quest to find the record.  Now if it becomes a big hit, that’s cool.  But once in a while, I hear something obscure and if I didn’t seek it out I probably would never have heard it again.

One of those records is a cover of Neil Young’s “After the Goldrush” done by a band called Prelude.  It was actually a single, but I literally have only ever heard it once on the radio and that was when I was a teenager.  I must confess that at that point I had never heard Neil Young’s original version.  But once I heard Prelude’s version, I knew I wanted it.  They do it acapella with super-rich harmonies!  Luckily, the DJ said the title and artist.

I figured I probably never would find it since I certainly couldn’t find it in a record store.  But the “dime store” near my house always had a bin of 45’s for 39¢ each.  I think they were records that were cleaned out of juke boxes and rather than throw them away, they sold them in bulk to stores.  I always browsed through those.  You never knew what you were going to find.  And as luck would have it one day, I found Prelude’s “After the Goldrush”!

Now you can just go to iTunes or something and find that and lots of other obscure songs.  That’s cool, but not quite as exciting as the rush of stumbling on something you never thought you’d find.