Vinyl Distractions

Talkie Talkie front cover, with artwork of the four members of Los Bitchos, showing just their heads and necks.

'20s / Catchup / Colored Vinyl / Intrumental / World

April 3, 2025

Los Bitchos – Talkie Talkie

I live near Philly, and Philly has an amazing music scene, both local and touring – but because I live near yet not in Philly, I don’t get to shows as much as I...

Let The Festivities Begin~ front cover. Featuring four women, the gand members of Los Bitchos, seated in front of white balloons and behind a table set with a cake and party drinks, they are raising glasses and wearing party hats, illustrating the title of "let the festivities begin!"

'20s / Catchup / Colored Vinyl / Intrumental / World

March 30, 2025

Los Bitchos – Let The Festivities Begin!

Well, I’m surprised to find that somehow I haven’t yet written about Los Bitchos! I mentioned them in the last entry on Los Wembler’s de Iquitos and then found that I’ve never written them...

Los Wembler's de Iquitos front cover – a rather psychedelic design of various colors, geographic shapes, eyes, leaves, fish and other elements.

'20s / Catchup / World

March 25, 2025

Los Wembler’s de Iquitos – Vision del Ayahuasca

This is one of my weirder recent acquisitions, in terms of being outside my normal tastes. I knew exactly zero about cumbia music before discovering Los Bitchos, whose infectious cumbia-based instrumentals delight me –...

Claudine Longet We've Only Just Begun front cover – The title and song titles are in type on the left. The photograph shows the head and shoulders of Claudine Longet, with her shoulder-length straight brown hair appearing rather mussy and windswept, her large eyes looking straight ahead, little evident makeup other than mascara. Her expression is pleasant but blank, not smiling.

Catchup / Pop

March 24, 2025

Claudine Longet – We’ve Only Just Begun

Okay, not every purchase is a good purchase, even if it’s from the dollar bin, even if it’s likely my dealer just tossed it in with whatever else I was buying that day. I...

'70s / '80s / Blues / Catchup

March 16, 2025

Living Chicago Blues – Vols. 1-6

Sometime in the around 1991, I picked up a CD on Alligator, “Living Chicago Blues, Vol. 4.” Most likely I got it at the old Records ‘n’ Such in Stuyvesant Plaza, which had a...

Lightnin' Strikes front cover – featuring the title stacked to the left, and then Lightnin' Hopkins stacked to the right. Below that is a picture of Hopkins, a middle-aged Black man, wearing a cocked hat, sunglasses, and smoking a cigarette, looking straight at the viewer.

'60s / Blues / Catchup

March 10, 2025

Lightnin’ Hopkins – Lightnin’ Strikes

Here’s another really heavyweight reissue by Lightnin’ Hopkins – I mean, the cardboard has a weight not seen since the early ’60s. Very sturdy gatefold. Verve was always oriented toward quality production, and seems...

Mojo Hand front cover – with the title in very large, black letters outlined in white, with white chalk highlights. a photograph of a hand breakds through the red background of the album cover, appearing to have torn through the board. Below, the artist's name, Lightnin' Hopkins, is set in Mistral.

'60s / Blues / Catchup / Colored Vinyl

March 7, 2025

Lightnin’ Hopkins – Mojo Hand (Japanese Mono)

Did I end up buying a second copy of “Mojo Hand“? Yes, yes I did. Did I know that it was virtually identical to another recently acquired copy of “Mojo Hand” when I bought...

Light in the Attic and Friends front cover – a very folk art style illustration. The entire image is bordered by dots and four-pointed stars. within, there is a house with a face, birds and flowers, plants growing into the ground with snails and mushrooms.

'10s / '20s / Alternative / Catchup / Colored Vinyl / Compilation / Pop / RecordStoreDay

March 6, 2025

Light In The Attic and Friends

Light In The Attic is a label that I was really only familiar with because of their really excellent reissues of Betty Davis’s groundbreaking funk albums, which showed a real dedication to the music...

'20s / Alternative / Catchup / Colored Vinyl / Pop

March 3, 2025

Jenny Lewis – Joy’All

I guess one good Jenny Lewis deserves another, so here’s another – 2023’s “Joy’All.” I was uncharacteristically aware that this was coming out. Sometimes the algorithm gets it right. It may also have been...

Vinyl Distractions