The Constorium of Greater Minds

A big case we were working on at the office settled last week. I had been working 9 days straight, staying in the office sometimes until past 2AM but regularly until 10PM or 12AM (hence the lack of posts). Anyway, once the case settled, we got half the day on Thursday and all of Friday off. That helps, but I can never get my soul back. Working all that time just saps the spirit.

And, so, to re-energize myself, I headed out to Clarendon, VA to Orpheus records.

Orpheus has been around in various forms and in various locales around the area since the 70s. In April, they’re going out of business. With my new found freedom I had the perfect opportunity to hit that OOB sale and make a few pickups.

Orpheus has always been a weird place. They have a ridiculous amount of records and everything is just stacked everywhere. In the back you can see what must be thousands of records on shelves that aren’t even for sale, or just haven’t been put out yet. Sounds like a lot of potential, but I hardly ever find anything too exciting and everything is a bit overpriced.

The store is run by this old hippy guy. His face is completely obscured by a huge ZZ top beard and he wears his grey hair in a pony tail. He’s cool, but some of the other guys are just weird. They never really seem to want to sell records. They won’t let you listen to anything and they won’t let you bring in portables. They just seem mad at everything. Mad that kids don’t buy records anymore, that they can’t find good records to buy, that some night club opened next door that kills the foot traffic and sends drunken, puking kids in the street. I even offered to have them come to the WMUC Record fair and the guy said that record shows are too much hassle. Whatever, man. Ring that shit up and bag it. I said paper, man you heard what I said.

Check the pics for the pick-ups.

Mostly just filling some holes in the collection. I wanted to take advantage of the sale and pick up some things that are pretty easy to find, even though I still left thinking I paid too much. The main attraction here was the Fela Kuti Box Set. It’s a repress of 6 Fela LPs. For the uninitiated, Fela Kuti was a Nigeran funk afrobeat guitarist (multi-instrumentalist according to Wikipedia). There are 4 box sets, each with six LPs, all released on the French Barclay label. These repress box sets are out of print and are themselves in high demand. It wasn’t on sale, but I thought $90 was a fair price. I’ve seen this same set go for a buck-fifty on the bay. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to open it or not.