Two dollars was the amount of money the newspaper delivery boy was owed in “Better Off Dead.” He went to absurd extremes to get that money back, showing up on all sorts of vehicles and all sorts of random places. Even then, it seemed like the effort expended wasn’t really worth such a small amount of money, and it seems even more ludicrous and juice-ain’t-worth-the squeeze four decades later, in this Foul Year of our Lord 2026. Except for one thing – that recovered two dollars in one of our Peninsula’s fine record stores can buy a quality album, 20 or 30 or 70 years old, but new-to-you, still offering a sense of discovery, even if many folks have visited this same ground before.
And in the hundreds of two dollar offerings available at Bremerton’s Bigfoots House of Vinyl and More, we found this new-to-us, and from the looks of it, barely ever inhabited or tread-upon land where eagles, whales, and wolves cavort peacefully under a rainbow. Looks unusual, but the album’s called Common Ground, by an artist named Paul Winter.* The back-cover tells the whole story of its recording – the artist assembled 20 musician friends with extremely diverse talents and nationalities in a barn in New England, sometime not long before 1978, and they recorded this whole thing in the loft. The album quality – despite my needing a new needle – was surprisingly good, and that was helpful as there are many, many different sounds included here. Harps, chants, whale noises, howls (dogs or wolves that is, not for Carl Solomon). The wind. Really hard to compare to anything else.
Very uncommon.
Bargain crate inhabitants may just as easily be ahead of their time as behind it, and thus with Common Ground. Released at the apex of the Disco era, but Disco It Ain’t: Common Ground’s sounds predate the trend in world music, chanting, and medieval strings by a decade. At some point in every track I hear what I would swear was a Polyphonic Spree B-side, or a lesser-known cut from Paul Simon’s Graceland, and some bird call I might hear out on a quiet little woodsy island where I can’t hear anything else. The album is divided up into songs, of course, but they’re all their own little 4 minutes-or-so of magic, and I won’t break those out here. It needs to all flow together. And it did, on the first and subsequent listenings. The music would work for a baby’s nursery, the yoga mat, the massage table, the drive from Yakima to Centralia, the Kitsap backyard on a sunny, smoky day with old tequila or the backyard on a misty, dead-television-channel-sky day with smoky scotch.
I feel sorry for whoever gave this up, but I appreciate that they let it go and brought joy to others. Or to me, at least. Discovering the Ground on this particular new-to-me continent is what makes the magic of the bargain crate browse. And reminds me that sometimes two dollars can actually be very valuable.
*Along with the extensive explanation of the album’s genesis, the back cover also features a picture of who I assume is Paul playing a tenor saxophone to/at a white wolf. The wolf appears to be howling along.
