Next stop - The San Diego Record Show

Oh fk yeah man, I FOUND IT!!!!

My favorite clip from "High Fidelity" starring Jack Black as Barry, a snarky record store clerk at Championship Vinyl...

"Buh-bye...."

DAMN, I WISH I HAD THAT JOB!!! Ha ha ha, but of course, If I actually said everything that I was really thinking in my real job, I'd be fired. Seems like many of the genteel niceties and social mores are thrown out the door when you are a record store employee...It's like a free pass to be an asshole!

After our sugary breakfast of champions at the Donut Bar, we headed out to the outer edge of Hillcrest for a once a year extravaganza of vinyl...

After seeing this advertised once a year in City Beat, it was about time to finally hit up this event. It would be both of our first time at the San Diego Record Show...

We figured we would check this place first before trekking to our list of individual record stores we wanted to visit.

The Record Show was held at the LGBT Center on Centre Street.

It was a nice open space with various vendors hawking their wares - rare vinyl (LP's, 45's, cassettes, dvd's and more)...

I noticed that we were one of the few chicks that were there. Aside from a fellow female shopper, I spotted about two other females (both were vendors). The majority of the crowd were either young white hipsters or old white dudes.

This New Edition album was seen at one of the record bins I perused...

This one had so many hits! This is from 1984 and featured "Cool it Now", "Mr. Telephone Man", "Lost in Love" (one of the first songs me and Bert ever slow danced to! Wut?) , and this minor hit, "My Secret (Didja Gitit Yet?)":

Did you spot a young Pat Riley (Lakers coach) and pre-HIV Magic Johnson? Yes, that was Magic Johnson!!! Let's not forget the fabulous Laker Girls (Where was Paula Abdul? I believe she was their choreographer at the time)!  Loved seeing those 80's fashions like shaker knit sweaters and belted camp shirts with upturned collars!

When I was playing the video above, Bert remember the song and even sang a few snippets of the lyrics! Ha ha!

Here was the view from the other end of the space...

This vendor was the owner of Third Eye Record Shop from Long Beach; he was selling records (Pricey, yikes!) and pins (Cheap! $1 each!). I pickedup a couple of Beatles pins for TC while Cy bought all of his Joy Division pins (about 4 or 5 of them, maybe more).

Although you can't see it in this photo, when Gary (the seller) held up the disc light, it was a reddish brown color. Cy ended up getting this record, which happened to be Joy Division's second album, "Closer".

I actually have this record, Ozzy Osbourne's third album, "Speak of the Devil". (a live album that Ozzy later disavowed and said he had to release because he was contractually bound by the record company),  It was released after the tragic death of former lead guitarist Randy Rhoads.The replacement guitar player for tour was Brad Gillis, the guitarist from Nightranger.

There's a series of Runic letters surrounding Ozzy's photo and I ended up decoding it way back in 9th grade. I'm such a geek because the way I decoded it was through my World Book Encyclopedia, Volume R (for "rune", which had the Runic alphabet). I can still write most of the characters. I'll have to update this post later and "reveal" the message. The main gist of it is that it's a message to Randy Rhoads, one of the best rock guitarists of all time, who died tragically in a plane crash after the release of the 2nd album, "Diary of a Madman". I remember cutting out and saving the clipping about Rhoads' death.

On another note, this particular album wasn't one of my favorites, but I really liked the shock value of Ozzy with a mouthful of strawberry jam sporting the most maniacal expression ever!  Anything to annoy my parents, I suppose!  But hey, they were pretty liberal since they let me listen to whatever I wanted.  My personal favorite from Ozzy's discography is his first one, "Blizzard of Ozz" (contains "Crazy Train", "Mr. Crowley", "Suicide Solution", and "I Don't Know") . Ha, even after all these years (30+), my taste in music is pretty much the same (rock, hard rock, classic rock, 80's metal). I'm too set in my ways! Fkn' A man!

On another vendor's table were boxes of LP's, cassettes, and yes, an ancient tape recorder. Just look at this thing. It looks like those kind they had in elementary school. The cool thing about this is that you can speed up or slow down the cassette!

The guy at the table said it really worked too, but I didn't stick around to actually give it a go.

Now this was an unexpected highlight of our day. Cy was looking at a neighboring table looking for a Timi Yuro 45 (this artist is one of her mom's favorite). She couldn't find it so she moved on to the next table and found a 45 within minutes!  The vendor at this table happened to be none other than local musician Skid Roper himself!

Yes, Skid Roper of Skid Roper & Mojo Nixon fame! For those too young to remember, they were a local duo that were active from the mid to late 80's. N and I really thought they were funny with songs like, "Winona's Big Brown Beaver" (featuring the Les Claypool, bassist of Primus!), "Girlfriend in a Coma" (their  countrified "cover" of the Smiths songs), and "Don Henley Must Die!" (that's Don Henley from the Eagles).

"Elvis is Everywhere" is one of their more well known "hits":

Skid Roper is the guy playing washboard in the video. Anyhow, he was a pretty nice guy and it was cool meeting a local music legend.

I didn't really shop much here but it was quite fun seeing what was available. I rummaged through this one guy's personal collection, which mainly had a lot of hardcore metal and thrash records. Unfortunately, he didn't have any Death Angel (pioneer Bay Area thrash metal band), but said he had sold a copy the other week (Yeah, I'm sure he says that a lot!).

It was cool seeing these inspirational quotes on the walls at the Center. They also had a wall honoring LGBT's in the military.

On our way out, I saw these cool 45 record boxes made of red tin...

A neat prelude to the rest of our morning, I'd say....

Below, a super old sidewalk (102 years old!):

For old time's sake, here's my parents' nemesis, Ozzy Osbourne performing "Over the Mountain" during his "Speak of the Devil" tour. This was the old pre-MTV "Osbourne Show" Ozzy:

I really dug how he used the outro for "Diary of a Madman" for the intro of "Over the Mountain.  Very gothic with the arpeggiated chords and Carmina Burana/Omenesque vocals. The song however, was not the same without Randy Rhoads' guitarwork.   Bang your heads man! His voice may not have been the best, but at least he didn't resort to Auto-Tune like many of today's non-talented worthless hacks.

Our next stop would be a few minutes away to a record store neither of us had been to before.