The Sound Garden was good to me on Saturday, and the creatively-named Record and Tape Traders was a little too commercial for my tastes, but I managed to walk out with four albums anyway. The real treat, however, came as I was walking up Broadway in Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and saw a sign with a hand pointing right that said “Vintage Records” underneath.

Fucking sweet.

It could have been a trap. A patch of grass could have covered a pit with spikes like something out of Rambo and I’d have fallen for it for sure, but luckily, the sign led me to El Suprimo Records, home to the label of the same name and vinyl specialists extraordinaire. Now, I have a well-documented embargo on buying vinyl, but along the right-side wall sat a couple small racks that in the span of two shelves offered as many worthy purchases (it would have been more if I didn’t already own some of them) as did the entirety of Sound Garden. Suprimo indeed.

For a mere five bucks a pop, no less, which was cheaper than either of the other stores I visited. I walked away with the 2006 reissue of High Tide‘s self-titled (that one was $7, admittedly), Kreator‘s Enemy of God, Reino Ermita?o‘s self-titled, Wormwood‘s Requiescat, Immortal‘s Sons of Northern Darkness, Electric Magma‘s self-titled, Fooz‘s II – Space is Dark… It is so Endless, Plasmic Tears and the Invisible City by Zen Guerrilla, and for a whopping dollar, the screamy Fu Manchu/Queens of the Stone Age-style stoner 101 of Under the Drone‘s Keep it Shred. Hard to argue with that. El Suprimo himself, who runs the shop, also gave me a promo of Mopar Bloody Mopar, the new CD by his band, Mopar Mountain Daredevils. Review coming soon.

I didn’t walk away from any of the stores awash in Unorthodox and Iron Man CDs as I’d hoped I might, but if you’re ever in Baltimore, I definitely suggest that aside from the crab cake sandwich and golden ale at Kooper’s, you get your wallet over to El Suprimo and have at it, whatever size plastic disc you prefer your music to emanate from. I’ll be back there for sure.

Tags: Maryland, Record Shopping

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Buried Treasure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.