I found another Flora! You'll never guess where I dug up this little treasure. In my own record collection. Yes, folks, that's right. It's been under my nose this whole time! Mr. Sweetheart unearthed it and was so excited he woke me from a nap yesterday to show me. I remember giving a sleepy thumbs up, and then forgot about the whole thing until this morning, when I had to ask if it had all been a dream. You see, after my last Jim Flora post, a certain Benny Goodman record looked awfully familiar. I became certain that I had had my hands on that wonderful record sleeve before.I went through a phase where I collected old records simply for the vintage cover art. I had an idea that I would frame and hang them, or craft something with the sleeves after I had melted the vinyl into bowls. Well, a few record bowls later, and after a brief experiment involving covering a dining room wall with record sleeves hung with thumb tacks that I promptly deemed too "college", we had amassed far too many albums that weren't being played and had to clean house. Now Mr. Sweetheart is a very talented musician and songwriter, and, having a great love for any and every kind of music, has become the chief archivist of our large music collection. Twice he has edited our vinyl collection by giving those albums we no longer need to a good home (hello, Nick!), each time with an admonishment from me to please let me look through the rejects first. Well, I never get around to it, and he goes ahead and gives them away, and I never miss them, because, well, I really don't need them. But this time...Well, let's just say I was not happy that I could not find a certain Benny Goodman album.
He argued that I didn't like Benny Goodman, and I didn't even know who Jim Flora was five years ago when I bought that record, and I argued that maybe not, but I know fabulous design when I see it, and would never have parted with such a masterpiece of mid century artistic expression by "a post-nuclear Miro", one which "juxtaposes playfulness, absurdity and violence". Okay, so maybe it didn't go down exactly that way, but you get the idea. You can see why he deemed it an important enough find to wake me from my slumber. Neither of us ever thought to check the 45's (it's a double). We both remembered it as an LP. All's well that ends well, and I love my growing little Flora collection. But not as much as I love that man of mine.
3 comments:
aw shucks.
From Brandon McF: You found it in your collection? I have a similar story that is even related to you guys. Jeremy wrote a blog about a guy named R. Stevie Moore, who(whom, if I'm sounding like a butthole)I had never heard of. I checked him out and ordered a couple of CDs. I've been rabidly reading and listening to everything that I can by the man, because as it turns out, he is The Man, and everything I read mentions that his dad is "Bob Moore, premiere Nashville session bassist of the 50s and 60s." I read this fact over and over without making a connection. Then one day, I read that Bob had recorded a single album of his own compositions called "Mexico", some which went on to be covered by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and The Ventures, among others. I have that record! I've had it for years and years. I found it for a quarter at a Salvation Army in Salina, and I was so happy to have another version of some of these songs. But the record didn't come with anything but a masking-taped-up cardboard sleeve, and over the course of a thousand moves, it got too scratched up to play and I forgot about it. How's that for weird? Anyway, I followed the link from your myspace and thought I'd share this music nerd story with youse.
Wow. That is cool. I think maybe it's a sign that we both own too many records, no?
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