https://www.high-endrolex.com/18

Buried Treasure Down I-91 to Brattleboro

I bought three CDs from Turn it Up! in Brattleboro, Vermont, after taking the hour trip south from where The Patient Mrs. and I are staying in Belmont. They were as follows: Goatwhore‘s Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun (which I’ll never listen to), Eric Idle‘s solo comedy effort, The Rutland Isles (which I’ll listen to but not laugh at), and the self-titled disc by August Born, which features Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance (which I’ll probably listen to but am not 100 percent sure I don’t already own). It was kind of a bummer trip.

Turn it Up! is a pretty hip shop. There’s a picture of local resident/Tee Pee Records mainstay Dave Sweetapple (of Witch and Sweet Apple) up on the wall — and the numerous used Tee Pee promos for sale make me think maybe he’s been to the store once or twice — and they seem to cater mostly to the town’s abundance of hippie/jam rockers, though there was a small metal section. My major disappointment (aside from how visibly creeped out the girl stocking the bins was by me) came in a lack of Black Sabbath bootlegs. They had Metallica, they had Beatles out the ass, Neil Young and even Led Zeppelin, but not one Sabbath boot. Nothing. Come on, man. Give me one. Anything!

No dice. Don’t mean to harsh your mellow, trust fund hippies willingly living in poverty, but you’re a long way away from Coachella. I took my time looking around the store, partially because I seemed to be imposing on the staff by doing so (they were open until 10PM and I was in there around 5:30), then clumsily bought my three discs and left, feeling like a sucker for having made the trip. I didn’t expect a fucking haven of desert rock overflowing with Man’s Ruin discs, where I’d walk in, be handed a beer and get instantly pointed to the Kyuss, Etc. section, but give me a break. The attitude, the selection, the hyper-indie mindset: blech. Keep it. If I wanted to deal with that kind of bullshit, there are any number of stores in New York I could go to, and they’d probably have the new Woven Hand in stock, which no one on the planet seems to, myself included.

Using the Record Store Day website as my guide, there are a couple stores up in Burlington I might want to visit, but after Turn it Up!, I’m not going to imagine either much success or a particularly friendly reception. Seriously, it made the passive apathy with which I’m generally greeted at Generation Records, or Vintage Vinyl, or even Resurrection Records in CT seem like a warm hug. Was a long way to go for Eric Idle, I’ll tell you that much.

Tags: , ,

2 Responses to “Buried Treasure Down I-91 to Brattleboro”

  1. Mike says:

    It would be a nearly 4-hour drive, but I bet you would get a lot out of a trip to Bullmoose in Scarborough, ME. You’d need a couple of hours to look thoroughly and maybe come up with a few hidden treasures. There are several locations in NH, and ME but that is the largest with and enormous selection of used stuff in ALL genres.

    P.S. I have that Goatwhore. I love them live. I think I have listened to the album once in the two or three years I have owned it.

    Why do we do such things?

  2. terabyte23 says:

    A month at a cabin in VT, buying CDs you won’t listen to; starting to wonder who’s the trustafarian here…

Leave a Reply