You know when the first song on an R&B and Soul record starts out with “They call me Big Mama ‘cuz I weigh three hundred pounds,” its gonna be good.

I was a bit nervous to buy this record because it cost just enough to make me hesitate and I had never heard any of the songs on it. It just looked cool- and it was called “Lost and Found”, which makes it sound exclusive. I held on to it for a little while, marking my audio territory, then put it back down. Rejected.

I kept walking to find a Sufjan Stevens vinyl section so I decided to flip through and take a peek at the selection. I’ve been a Sufjan fan ever since I jumped on board the indie music train in college (while many of my friends were way too cool for me and listened to him in high school, I was always a late bloomer when it came to music trends). Anyways, while rifling through, I noticed a really amazing looking out of place album called Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, with super kitschy religious imagery all over it. I ran to show David because I was so enraptured by the design, and I told him where I found it. His response was that he thought maybe Sufjan did have something to do with it, because apparently he is “unapologetically Christian,” as he put it. So I did some fine print reading and sure enough, he not only produced it, but recorded, engineered, mixed it and graces us with banjo, bass, drums, electric and acoustic guitars, percussion, piano, ukulele, and vocals. AND he did the package design I flipped for (with respect to the illustrations “stolen from funeral cards and vacation bible school paraphernalia.”). I love it when someone insanely talented at something else does what I do really well, and probably was just “fooling around on his Mac.” Anyways, after reading a mini-review of the sound in Sufjan’s prelude to the album (which reads…”One of their first songs…best sums up their musical preoccupation: self-taught, clumsy, uninformed, and slightly inhibited.” Sounds like a winner, eh?), I knew I had to buy it. So I decided to take a chance, and then decided it wouldn’t be fair to take a chance on one without taking one on the other. I bought both, spent a good bit of money on a whim, and am SO GLAD I DID.

Welcome to the joys of owning music. Not owning music like I logged in to my torrent account and downloaded someone elses stolen music (yeah, you!)…owning music like I am holding the very thing that will turn around and around on a little table in my room, produce sound waves, and require me to get up and pay loving attention to it when it starts to make that adorable sound that it makes when its run out of songs to play on one side. Owning music like I am reading everything on the package and loving it, and learning about design. David made a great point recently, that the canvas for cover artwork has gone from a foot by a foot, to 4 inches by 4 inches, to 10 px by 10 px. There is absolutely no opportunity for discovery in a design that small.

Both albums are phenomenal. Check them out here:

Welcome to the Welcome Wagon by The Rev. Vito Aiuto and Mrs. Monique Aiuto (hubby and wife team)
Download my favorite song off the album for free on their website! Its on the right sidebar and its called “Sold! To the Nice Rich Man”

Keb Darge & Paul Weller present Lost & Found: Real R’N'B & Soul by Various Artists
Listen on the site!

One, a collection of Christian hymns and praises (heavily influenced by producer Sufjan Steven’s own music) by a Reverend and his wife from the trendy neighborhoods of Williamsburg, New York, New York, and the other a collection of “underground dance music from black artists in the fifties and sixties.” I definitely hit the jackpot.

Thanks Park Ave CD’s, we love you! Visit their sweet local shop here and at 2916 Corrine Drive in Orlando (they have GREAT live in-store performances, and they record and sell them, too). Support physical music!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 7:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.