Vinyl Distractions

The Blues Is Alive and Well cover 2

Buddy Guy – The Blues Is Alive and Well

I first started becoming aware of Buddy Guy around 1990. The gamble I had taken on going to grad school was paying off, and things were looking good. We had just moved to Albany,...

Album cover of Buddy Guy's "First Time I Met The Blues" 5

Buddy Guy – First Time I Met The Blues

I’ve already gushed about how amazing Buddy Guy was, and what my discovery of his music meant to me. There was the first time I saw Buddy Guy, playing a major blues festival headlined...

The Guess Who Road Food front cover 0

The Guess Who – Road Food

Growing up when I grew up, of course I was exposed to The Guess Who. You didn’t get through the ’70s without knowing Guess Who songs, and probably even liking them. The Canadian band...

Design Moderne front cover 0

Gruppo Sportivo – Design Moderne

When you’re on a record jaunt with some friends at a store that you won’t get to often and you run across an album by an old favorite band that you have never heard...

Copy Copy front cover 0

Gruppo Sportivo — Copy Copy

This release from 1980 features the most perfectly ’80s graphics of any album I own — this is precisely what the ’80s looked like, kids. Retro-futuristic and stylin’. It’s also a return to the...

Buddy Odor is a Gas front cover 0

The Buddy Odor Stop — Buddy Odor Is A Gas!

I have no idea how I found this or knew that the kinda distasteful name of “Buddy Odor” was in fact Hans Vandenburg, aka Jan Van De Fruits, the guy behind Gruppo Sportivo. This...

Mistakes front cover 2

Gruppo Sportivo — Mistakes

I have some duplicates in my collection, usually either because my wife also had a copy pre-marriage, or because I found another copy of something in better shape than my original. But in this...

Gruppo Sportivo Rare Tracks front cover 0

Gruppo Sportivo — Rare Tracks

Gruppo Sportivo released a pair of singles in 1976 and ’77, prior to the album “10 Mistakes” being released. After that and their second album came out, those singles and a bonus track were...