I’m double dipping @ Time Traveler this year…

You may have noticed re-runs of old posts recently. We decided that a trip to my wife’s old stomping grounds of Akron were in order over the Labor Day weekend. Her parents aren’t getting any younger, and most of her family there were out of town when we visited in April to see the great Mott The Hoople. But there was a radically different component to our visit this time. I had posted some tales of David Werner on the blog over the years. So it was not a shock when a Werner fan named Dean used the contact form on the blog to ask me some Werner-oriented questions directly. Which I responded to in a reasonably quick manner. It’s true. If public comments aren’t your thing, one can ask me anything by the email form. The PPM mailbox is shared on the home computer with the mailbox my wife and I have used for ages. If you select the global inbox in the mail program instead of the specific mailbox, one sees all incoming mail.

My wife did that by accident and noticed Dean’s email to me. She knew a Dean with the exact same name in Akron in college. Could it be? So she emailed him directly and yes, he was a gent that she had worked with during her college years at the local K-Mart. So she caught up the years and when we were going to Akron, he still lived there so we just had to meet up and have lunch. Believe it or not, it was my wife who mooted the idea of Time Traveler afterwards. We met at The Lockview; a downtown Akron gastropub with a line in artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches that were quite tasty indeed. We swapped histories with Dean and he was still an enthusiastic music fan in his Church tee while that day I had to wear that shirt at right. We were definitely cut from similar cloth. My wife had spoken of how Dean was the first guy who said she had to hear DEVO. Say no more.

Massive Bill Nelson goodness… that I already had

After lunch, we drove to Time Traveler, which was only a minute or two away. I had actually called Scott Shepard, the owner, a few days before we left asking if I could send him my want list of 7″ goodness, since his store has the best 7″ single stock I run across by far these days of all but eliminated vintage 7″ single stock. His stuff was so good and obscure, that I reasoned he must be thinning out his personal stash of the 45s. Alas, I only had given him a day’s notice and he had not had time to find any pulls. I get that. I went through the holy import 7″ bin first. Lots of goodies turned up. Bill Nelson was thick there but nothing I didn’t already have.

Have I ever seen so many Skids singles?

Then there was a run of Skids singles, but all of the recent Skids DLX RMs I had bought had any and all B-sides. Still, “Goodbye Civilian,” “Charade,” and the single disc version of “Working For The Yankee Dollar” were all there. Speaking of the latter, I recently relistened to “Days In Europa” and was floored by the obvious chorus quote out from that song that Stump had obviously worked into “Roll The Bodies Over.”

Why did I not buy the Trio single here?

In the “T” section I ran across a Trio single, “My Sweet Angel,” that not only had I never seen, I had never heard of it. Then, gloryoski – Toyah’s “Bird In Flight” non-LP 7″ that I had bought the other time I had seen it, 37 years ago. And then I saw something that I was stupid for not buying another copy of.

Good lord! Only $4.99 for the Ralph 7″ of Yello’s classic “Bimbo!”

Gott im himmel! The Ralph 7″ of “Bimbo!” The record that alerted me to the godlike genius of Yello® all those years ago! And not much more than I paid for my copy! If I was not economizing, I really should have sprung for that one! I’m sure I would find the right person to give it to. But there were no import seven inch singles calling my name this time. So we hit used CD bins, which Shepard had crowed about his recent hauls of new stock for. Undoubtedly so! This was a store where the used CD space had actually doubled in size since my last visit in April of this year!!

Sure enough, the recent used CD adds had some nuggets of gold. Holy moly! Three Prince CDs I wanted [I want them all…] and a Rush CD that I had once owned but now re-needed since it would give me a contiguous run of their albums from ’79-’89; what I consider the golden period of the band. The one time I saw Rush was the “Presto” tour. I was very interested to hear “HitnRun Phase One,” one of the very latest Prince albums before his shocking demise. The latest of his that I had gotten thus far was “Chaos + Disorder” from nearly 20 years earlier!

Of course, we spent a lot of time chatting up things we ran across with Dean; and vice versa. I wish I could record shop with everyone who reads this blog. There’s little else that’s so enjoyable a pastime, but Dean was in the right place at the right time, so we were making the most of it. With some CDs in hand, it was time to check the large, black communion wafers. The last time I found a scarce Floy Joy album. This time a Was (Not Was) US 12″ that I thought I needed… and at $2.99 you just buy it!

My wife had moved back to the huge swath of US 7″ stock in the back room; most of the 80s material of interest with M- pic sleeves. She had pulled quite a handful of the “right artists” she recognized from the Record Cell. Alas, I had everything that she had found already. I think she eventually found the Kid Creole USP 7″ of “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy,” and that one was interesting because the 1982 single was probably among the last USP 7″ers that sported a stereo/mono mix of the A-side on both sides of the record! The 7″ was a remix/edit and having it also in mono was too unique to pass up. She also found me a new 15-CD carry case as mine is pretty trashed with the daily workout it gets. I can’t remember the last time I saw one for sale!

In the end, Dean didn’t buy anything and I had wanted to keep my outlay down to a budget of $30 and went only 88 cents over that boundary. Here’s the modest take:

Time Traveler Records/CDs | Akron, Ohio | 8/31/19

1. The Artist [Formerly Known As Prince]: The Most Beautiful Girl In The World – NPG Records ‎– BR 72514-2 – US – CD5 – Time Traveler/$4.99
2. Prince + The Revolution: 1999 The New Master – NPG Records  – US – CD5 – Time Traveler/$3.99
3. Prince: HITnRUN Phase One – NPG Records – US – CD – Time Traveler/$5.99
4. Rush: Presto – Atlantic ‎– 7 82040-2 – US – CD – Time Traveler/$4.99
5. Was [Not Was]: Boy’s Gone Crazy – Chrysalis ‎– V 23411 – US – 12″ – Time Traveler/$2.99
6. Kid Creole + The Coconuts: Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy – USP – 7″ – Time Traveler/$1.00

We had an enjoyable afternoon with Dean and look forward to catching up with him on future Akron visits. Definitely next June when our nephew gets married, so watch this space.

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