Curtis Mayfield and Mazzy Star tonight. I’m a little ashamed to say that I only have a Curtis Mayfield greatest hits disc. I really should about everything the guy did. It would be a great catalog (and in general, I think I should always have more soul and r&b). I could say that the catalog is harder to find now (which in some ways it is) or that no one really carries as much of it anymore (which is also true) but that is also giving excuses since I will search out a rare Ravel disc for years to find it. The real reason is that it is just a gap in my knowledge. And it is an expensive one to try and fill. Most of the Stax catalog is on eMusic now so I think that is a good place to start, but also I think I need to dive back into some serious vinyl buying to do it right. I know that the songs on the Curtis Mayfield greatest hits disc are great, but I also know there are going to be more gems to find. So I need to get on it. When people would come into the classical department at Tower and ask how to ‘get into’ classical, I would suggest getting a couple samplers then coming back in to find more of what they liked. Then I would pick out a couple discs with those tracks on it by a certain composer, that way there was familiarity on a couple tracks, and exploration at the same time. So what I really need to do is go out and find which Curtis Mayfield record has ‘Move On Up’ on it and go from there.

So – imagine two minutes in between this paragraph and the last… I think ‘why wait’ and go to eMusic and look up the song, and it turns out Rhino is on here, and so is the re-issue of ‘Curtis’ and I’m downloading it right now. Damn, it is crazy what we can do know.

Which leads nicely into Mazzy Star. I saw the cover for ‘So Tonight That I Might See’ (a wispy purple on black) and between the cover and the name just had to hear it. Something about it made me think about the Velvet Underground meeting Jesus and Mary Chain with waaaay too much reverb, and I really liked it. I mentioned it the next day at work to a couple friends who were surprised that I hadn’t heard it yet and everyone else was suddenly the biggest Mazzy Star fans in the world as to make an even bigger point that I was a loser and how could I have worked with them for so long and not like Mazzy Star? I of course recognized the hyperbole (having dished it out myself to feel a little superior to others when they discovered a gem that I had known about). And when the next record came out ‘Among My Swan’ it was my job to atone for my sin and buy it that day so we could play it in the store. We played it loud. It sounded great. And I think that is one of the secrets to listening to Mazzy Star – it sounds like soft music, but there is so much subtle detail in it that playing it loudly benefits the music beautifully, and envelops you in a lush world of sound.

And I may not have ever gotten around to hearing it if it wasn’t for browsing through the store and looking at record covers. Sure, I was just now able to find Curtis Mayfield and download it within minutes, but I miss browsing through racks. I miss spending an hour going through a store section by section seeing where it will lead me… In some ways, Wikipedia serves that purpose now. Maybe I’ll head over there, type in Mazzy star and start clicking links and see where it takes me.