As mentioned previously, while a bargain crate is a lovable container, those crates not segregated by price – or barely even by category – open up more possibilities for the digger to be spoken to based on cover art, album title, or artist name.
Two out of three of those communications happened as I – while listening to either Workingman’s Dead or American Beauty (I tend forget which tracks are on which) on the store’s nice and loud sound system – flipped through Port Orchard’s Vinyl Injection selection. If the album’s jacket had been slightly less worn, from the artist’s name, title, and photograph, I’d have assumed it was something far more recent than 1981. Lime = Debbie Harry with Sprockets hair in a Lada Gaga ensemble striking a Madonna pose.* But seeing this record was now 45 years old, and that the odd and unreasonable make-up, hair, and pantaloons (or are those jodhpurs?), somehow maintained a timelessness. And that it was $4 (and thus well within our $10 and under arbitrarily-set limit for bargain vinyl) I decided to take it home.
The album has only six songs, three per side, each between seven and eight danceable minutes, explained in part by the artist’s thanks to the many D.J.s who believed in what they did. If you already knew the time period of this release, the songs might be Eurovision reminiscent, with extra techno and disco. But if heard without context, I believe they could plausibly have been released any time between 1979 and yesterday. “You’re My Magician,” the album’s first song, is my favorite, and I’m guessing the most danceable single from this album. Other songs, with minimal lyrics, alternating English and French (music not sung in English, but marketed to “Americans”… the horror, the horror!) are somewhat explained when I see in the small print the French-Canadian base for artist and recording. Other songs, some without lyrics, (all with a decent beat and probably easy to dance to) include “Agent 406,” and the less-original titles of “I’ll Be Yours,” “Your Love” (original and re-mix) and “It’s You.”
It’s been argued – probably by people besides just me – that music reached peak innovation and diversity in a 1980 suburban American roller rink, and that all else has been improvements and mashups of those sweet sounds. Punk, Disco, Rap, all forms of Country, New Wave, and sub-genres of Yacht Rock, Glam Rock, and Countrypolitan all made for easy skating on those four dented, rented orange wheels. “Rock with You” could follow “Rapture” and precede “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” “Pop Music,” “Another Brick in the Wall” [whatever part is the one we all know], or one of Joan Jett’s Gary Glitter covers. And we all rolled on without the clutching of pearls later endemic to genre ambiguity.
The same could be said of any bargain crate of significant heft. Our featured artist here, Lime, would’ve been a good addition to that free skate (maybe she was at your rink). But alas, it took me 45 years to find and squeeze this particular citrus. Don’t let that happen to you – start or continue picking for bright, joyful, overlooked but not out-of-date sonic fruit at your local record store, ideally for something priced similarly to that of an early-Reagan era extra large pizza, with all the toppings.
*The back cover credits “Fashions by: Toots & Atomic Age.” If only all of our closets and cosmetics collections could be curated by the same, what a wonderful world this would be. // J. OVERTON
