Nekkid Rekkids

There's a game we play, and used to play regularly, before we started paddling in the shallows of the big boys' pool, called Record Shop Chicken. How it differs from common-or-garden record collecting is unclear, and all we remember is that when we lived on more scant monetary resources it scared the bejeesus out of us. These days there is less of a thrill, although it can occasionally be tricky, and tends to involve a lot of shoe-leather scraping off on the pavements of the east vilage. The trick is quite simply to have a list of relatively accessible, but somewhat old or rare records, and buy as many of them as an establishment has in stock.

We ambled into the Virgin the other day, with a single-store mission - a decent-ish list, but only time for one location. We were after:

• Be Your Own Pet's first single. Saw them at Siren and liked their moxie. Singer can be annoying.


• The Milkshakes - Nothing Can Stop These Men. Some kind of ur-Headcoats fiasco. Attracts Link Wray-being-sodomized metaphors like flies.


• Blood On The Wall - Awesomer. Much pumped by mp3 celebrities, and their disciples. Seen at DUMBO on Sunday.


• The Rogers Sisters - Three Fingers. Also seen on Sunday in Dumbo. sing a lot better than Blood On The Wall, and thus inches nearer perfection.

Only Blood On The Wall were chosen. But since we're a grown-up, and reasonably well off and all, we bought a bunch of other stuff:

• Eels - Electro-Shock Blues. Not the one with the enormous eyes on the cover, which is the one we're aware of. Rumoured to be harrowing.


• John Coltrane - Blue Train. Remastered more than Dark Side Of The Moon. Part of our jazzzzzzz outreach programme.


• Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See. According to Cutesome, this was the number one seduction record at the University of Michigan in 1994.

So, it's probably safe to say that Record Shop Chicken is a sport with no losers. Unless as a student you walk in to the HMV in Leeds with 25 quid in one's pocket, and walk out with an import copy of New Kingdom's Paradise Don't Come Cheap and NO MONEY AT ALL. Spacey stoner rock-rap should never be that pricey

F***ers.

New Kingdom - "Mexico Or Bust"
Buy Paradise Don't Come Cheap after comparing these reputable merchants. Don't get burned like Gringcorp was.