Good Media Hunting, February 15, 2025: Vintage Stock

My beautiful wife got me a Vintage Stock gift card for $40 worth of media, and she told me Vintage Stock was having some sort of sale, so we rushed right up to Vintage Stock late Saturday morning after I finished my martial arts class. Which is always how it seems to work out. Vintage Stock has its used records in crates beneath its display of new records (which range from $25 to $50 each, so, yeah, no, I’m not looking at them, and the new records tend to be things I’m looking for anyway). So: Leg workout plus squatting whilst flipping through records = a real test to see how much I really want to maximize the buy 2, get 1 free sale. Ah, I did.

Well, I flipped through most of them anyway. It’s odd: Some things must have been priced at different times, so you get Moody Blues records for $4 or for $9, only one of which tempts me. Then I got through to the back of the last crate, and used records were over $10, so I skipped that section. I also went into the organized DVD section (buy 1 get 1 free), so I picked up a number of things. What’s funny is I often think, after seeing mention of a movie on a blog or remembering it, “I ought to pick that up.” But get me to a used video store with a gift card in my hand, and I can’t remember a thing. I did think of a film, Major League, which was filmed at Milwaukee County Stadium (PBUI), after I saw a copy of Bull Durham facing out, but no Major League movies were available.

Nevertheless, I persisted in spending the gift card and $10 beyond.

But I managed to buy four records (well, five, as one of the Moody Blues pickups is a live double album) and get two free:

• Another Taste by Taste of Honey. I’m not sure when I picked up the first album by this group (I see its name listed in this Good Album Hunting Post, but has it been eight years already?), but I told my wife that I’m probably their biggest fan. Later, I said they’ve probably been recording for fifty years continuously, which is not quite the case. They released four albums between 1978 and 1984 (according to Wikipedia), and according to their Web site, they have some show dates in 2025. Although the “they” now is a little different from the “they” in 1979.
• Joy by Apollo 100, a band that took classics and electronicacised them. Which was a big thing around 1972. I guess it’s similar to making Muzak or lofi now, so it’s never really left us.
• The Virtuoso Trumpet which is trumpet classics. I think I have something with a similar name, so I hope it’s a series and not the same thing with two different covers. Although I’ve been known to pick up the same record a time or two with variant covers.
• Yakity Revisited by Boots Randolph. I wasn’t sure if I had it, but it turns out I do: I bought it the same time I bought A Taste of Honey, but I didn’t mention it in the blog post. But reviewing the photo while researching this post, I see it’s there. What a coincidence!
• Octave by the Moody Blues
• Caught Live +5 by The Moody Blues. A one-and-a-half live album with a fourth side which is new material. We have a number of Moody Blues albums, but I don’t spin them often. I think they’re best listened to, not just played in the background.

I also picked up a few films:

• Against All Odds. I heard the Phil Collins song on the radio the other day, and I mentioned to my youngest that I had never seen the film. So I guess I was kind of looking for this one by name.
• A boxed set of Bruce Lee films, real Bruce Lee films unlike some things I have recently watched. Includes The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Game of Death, and Game of Death II.
• Commando with Arnold Schwarzenneggar. It was on Showtime back in the day, but I haven’t seen it in a long time.
• Deadpool. Because my youngest has not been struggling with swearing in inappropriate contexts enough recently as it is.
• The Man with Two Brains with Steve Martin. The old Steve Martin. Which is really about the same as the current(ish) Steve Martin who mines old IPs for comedy.
• There Will Be Blood with Daniel Day Lewis. I guess I’ve seen this mentioned a time or two on a blog, so there it is.
• This Is The End, the relatively recent ensemble comedy about the end of the world. I remember thinking it looked interesting when it came out. Now I can watch it over and over again for just a few bucks.

Well, given how fast I’m watching films these days, that should hold me for eight or twelve months.