Buried Treasure: Yanking on the Spine of God
Over the hill to the south and down 287 and then Rt. 23 some is the town of Wayne, and just around the corner from that town’s porn shack is the Wayne Firehouse, which has been playing host to the Second Saturday Record Show for longer than I can remember. I used to go as a young kid and buy Beatles singles, my mother haggling with this or that balding peddler for a better deal under the drop-ceiling flourescent lights, and I stopped for a long time, but picked up the habit again a couple years ago, only to give it up again owing to lack of funds. With vendors from all over the state and beyond, you can be down $80 before you even realize it, staring at a Boris import and wondering where you can find the nearest ATM (the deli before you get the traffic light if you’re coming from the Montville side).
Owing no doubt to this past weekend’s romantic spirit of the Valentimes, my wife offered a trip to the record show as we drove around with relative aimlessness looking for a way to spend the afternoon. I was unshowered and in my blue plaid pajamas, a smelly Iota t-shirt recently arrived from Small Stone and a black hoodie so large it’s practically a cloak — so I was dressed for the occasion. She even said she’d come in with me, which was a shock that sealed the deal. She brought a book with her, as she often does when indulging me with a record store stop, but I’m amenable to that compromise.
It is a special breed that inhabits the record show, and going is like staring into a horrible but inevitable vision of the future; sad sacks of overweight men hustling and bustling to beat each other to that one perfect find in the room — be it LP, CD, 45, DVD, VHS, or cassette. The sellers’ contempt is palpable as you look through each cardboard box on their table, their eyes burn sulfuric holes through you as they ask if you need a bag for your measly three purchases. No, you don’t. Ever. Need a bag.
I was shuffling my way along a table at the back wall I’ve known in the past to have the occasional decent find — I got Desert Sessions Vol. 5 & 6 there and have gone back religiously since — when my bride tapped me on the shoulder.
“There’s a Monster Magnet CD over there,” she said.
“Which one?” I asked, wondering not only that, but if she’d know one from the other or care to start with. It being Jersey, you regularly run into used copies of God Says No and Powertrip as the patience of the home-state fanbase began to wane on the band and loyalty gave way to fickleness just as the band’s brillance gave way to mediocrity.
“Spine something.”
“Take me to it.” And off we went.
It was the original Primo Scree issue of Spine of God (reissued by SPV in 2006 along with follow-up 25…Tab), which I grabbed for a paltry $5. It wound up being the find of the day, alongside a Queens of the Stone Age show from Paris in 2007, two more Monster Magnet radio promos (from the God Says No era, as it happens), a Monty Python disc, a Tenacious D show from 2001, Brian Eno, Uriah Heep, a Floodgate promo for Penalty, and the Snapper reissue of Porcupine Tree‘s Signify, which was half-price at $12. Figured I couldn’t lose.
It’s hard to tell if the acclaim heaped on Spine of God in New Jersey is because the band is local or just a universal fact of life, but been long familiar with it both through the reissue and before that through simple osmosis, it’s still one of the best stoner rock records I’ve ever heard — fully realized at a time when Kyuss were still figuring out who they were and what they wanted to be. The title track alone is worth what I paid for it.
The Primo Scree version is out there, on Amazon, eBay, etc. at prices varying in reasonability, but it was the simple fact that I — or rather my wife — happened upon it without any expectation. That’s what makes the best finds; when you don’t even know they’re coming. I suppose that’s why those guys keep coming back month after month, why I keep going back too. They are passionate people engaging in their passion. Maybe my 50s won’t be so bad if that’s the way it goes.
Or maybe I’ll just keep telling myself that while I listen to the cover of Grand Funk‘s “Sin’s a Good Man’s Brother” and think how much better it sounds than it does on the reissue. Either way.
