You better get straight

On a nondescript thursday afternoon, I went with my man Tone Tank to Generation Records

Hadn't been there in ages.
I know the record stores are struggling. What with the kids. And the Downloading.

I used to love record stores. Loved the whole culture.

Maybe I got burnt out.
I can still dig in my own collection. There's tons of records I've never even listened to in there. (I used to acquire records in vast abundances. And with such regularity!) . I used to rescue crates and crates of records from dumpsters, clear out basements of elderly relatives, trade for them, barter, do whatever it took.

In truth I only walked into the store because Tone had some business with them. I was just tagging along because we were wandering around Manhattan Island.

I quit smoking cigarettes more than two years ago (you can do it too!). And by now I am so well over the hump that I no longer even think of it. I can hardly even remember what it was like. Smoking. And I can say with confidence that I'll never smoke another one of those damned things in my life. But every once in a while I'll catch a whiff of some wandering puff of R.J Reynolds' money-crop cloud floating off into a cool/crisp autumn evening and I'll remember everything.

I caught a whiff of those records.

I only allowed myself to flick through one row.
I pulled out this Eric Burdon Record

(I don't know if anybody noticed) but we took a couple chances so far with Eric Burdon on the show. And Eric Burdon has been ILL for quite some time now. But I'd never heard this one. And Eric Burdon just looks like he's not playing on that cover. The dude standing behind him has a Paul Korzan thing going on (a close personal friend of mine). And the dude in the back left looks like mad people I know with that mustache.
(anyway)
Eric Burdon is a real soulful dude.
The guy at the counter goes: "the first track on here is awesome".
The first track is "White Houses"
The guy was right. It is awesome. The whole record is awesome really.
But I've been playing "White Houses" over and over the last couple of days.
That's the real chance on this record.
There are a couple other chances on here too. But if I had to pick one, this would be THE chance.

Having recently been evicted from my situation living underneath the Impact Theatre on Underhill avenue, I feel a bit unmoored. I don't know what my next move is going to be. It's all up in the air. My life. Everything. And something about this song compliments, somehow, my contemplative mood.
Thinking about what it is that I really want out of life. How I want my life to be lived.

Download:
White Houses - Eric Burdon & The Animals


-KRAY