Jack's Music Shoppe

Jack's Music Shoppe. If you are an idiot like me you pronounce the e on the end. Shop-ee. Jack's Music Shoppe is an awesome music store in downtown Red Bank, NJ. Ever since I purchased my record player several years ago I've been going there to sift through their thousands of old vinyls.

Quaint storefront, but turns into a music compendium inside.

I made a trip to the Shop-ee today to see what kind of records they have before making my dreaded return to Virginia. I picked up five vinyls of badassery plus a CD.

1) Made in Japan by Deep Purple. This is an awesome live album by one of the metal founding fathers. A classic, which I picked up for $2.99. The cover is in rough shape, but I'm sure the vinyl will play well, the Shop-ee has never done me dirty.

2) CSNY's Deja Vu. This is another classic album. It was released in 1970, and followed up on CSN's first release, but now included Neil Young... who is one of my favorite artists. I got it for $3.99. Not bad. The cover is in pretty good condition -- I'd say good or very good.

3) Live Rust by Neil Young. This is an epic album. Released in 1979 it includes live performances of Sugar Mountain, There Comes a Time, Hey Hey My My, After the Gold Rush, The Needle and the Damage Done, Cinnamon Girl, and Like a Hurricane. The cover is in modest condition at best, but it was well worth the $3.99. Some might say it is one of the better live rock albums of all time. I'd agree.

4) Perfect Strangers by Deep Purple. There isn't much special about this record other than having a fairly memorable cover. I got it for $1.99. This album was released in 1984 when Deep Purple reformed as version II, but they never could pull off their original epic-ness. Like I said, I do like the cover though.

5) The Magician's Birthday by Uriah Heep. This was probably the coolest album I picked up because I was not expecting to see anything by Uriah Heep. It is an original 1972 Uriah Heep album. It isn't one of their best, but it does include the songs Sunrise and Sweet Lorraine -- which are amongst their best. I picked it up for $1.99, which is a good deal. The cover is pretty beat up, but that doesn't bother me much. Based on the cover art, I'd say the album was released during a time when it was still acceptable to be a hippie.

6) CD. Obsessions by UFO. I picked up this CD while at the Shop-ee. They have more obscure bands there. It has been hard to find UFO CD's other than their "best of" compilation. UFO isn't really obscure obscure, but they surely aren't an Usher. Obsessions (1978) is one of their better albums. It doesn't have Doctor Doctor on it (which is my favorite UFO song), but it has some good jams, like Only You Can Rock Me, and Cherry.

"I wish I wasn't just passing through..."

I will definitely be playing these records on my record player when I get back to Virginia this Saturday -- you should join me. Until then I'll just have to settle for jams on the new iPod that Santa brought me.

Uriah Heep: The Forgotten Band

Uriah Heep. You may have never heard of them. I hadn't until earlier this year. I was really confused, I thought I knew most of the rock bands worth knowing, and then BOOM, it hits me... I know nothing! My world hath been rocked, Maiden save me!

"The Wizard" off of 1972's Demons and Wizards

(I'm glad mustaches went out of style)

Uriah Heep was a well known progressive rock band in the 1970's. They were something like a mix of King Crimson and RUSH, but they are certainly their own beast. There was at least one tour where RUSH opened for them, in RUSH's early days.

In fact, their first album was released in 1970, entitled Very 'eavy... Very 'umble. They followed up in 1971 with Salisbury which is more solidly progressive rock. The self-titled song from that album is freggin' epic, check it out. They released Look at Yourself in 1971, which included one of my favorite songs by them -- July Morning.

Uriah Heep made 12 albums between 1970 and 1979 -- which is an awesome amount of work. They played contemporaneously with the greats: Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zep, Priest, RUSH. It's too bad they couldn't turn it to 11, for they will always be stuck on 10.

By the time 1980 rolled around their popularity waned, and children across the world wept, with their parents never knowing the true reason. However, they left a mega-epic legacy on the bands forming in the late 1970's. I could never put them in the category of heavy metal founding fathers... but they were one of those bands that you know influenced bands that influenced bands that I care about. And for me, that is enough. I thank you.

I guess everyone in the 70's was hairy as shit.

P.S. Uriah Heep still plays in Germany and Scandinavia, if you feel like a very weird vacation.