The Scrounger's Report

Apr. 15, 2000

Stock market got ya down? Invest in CDs!!

With the NASDAQ and DOW falling through the floor, I decided
to follow my parents' advice and invest in CDs. "You can't
go wrong with CDs," they've always said. "The stock market
is too risky, put your money in CDs. You'll never be sorry!"

Wait... you mean this *isn't* what they had in mind? Damn...:)

I took a half day off from work yesterday and trundled up
north 70 miles to the thriving (*cough* *sputter*) metropolis
of Kankakee, IL. I've always gone there for one specific
store; this time I printed out the addresses of the 3 pawn shops
in town and decided to hit those as well. I'm damned glad I did;
they turned into a veritable gold mine, but more on that later.

First, a couple of discs for the trade list (or Ebay, whichever):

Rick Springfield - Rock of Life. 1988. MCA Records.
   People claim this is rare, but I can't seem to swing a dead
   cat without hitting one of these. This is the 4th one I've
   found in 3 months. It must simply have a high demand factor.
   The first 3 all sold for $40+, I'd imagine this one will as well.

Rodger Hodgson - Hai Hai. 1987. A and M Records.
   Solo CD from Supertramp frontman. OOP in the U.S. (still available
   as an import I think).

Ok, now on to the discs I found for myself... well, some will
undoubtedly end up on the trade shelf. Unfortunately, the three
pawnshops I hit had no facility to preview CDs, so I had to
gamble based on appearance and cover art. Some worked. Some didn't.

Venom - Prime Evil. 1990. Craze Records (Canada). $9.99
   This was a mistake. Since it was approximately the same time as
   the Cronos disc, I mistakenly assumed it would be of the same
   ilk. Not. This is a disc without a vocalist. BLEAGH!

Bad News - S/T. 1988. Rhino/Rampage/ $1.67
   Can you say "Spinal Tap"? Sure, I knew you could.

Tankard - The Morning After. 1988. Noise Records. $5.00
   Fairly unimpressive thrash metal.

Midge Ure - Answers to Nothing. 1988. Chrysalis. $1.67
   The name sounded familiar (Ultravox). It looked like pop.
   I gambled. Not bad...

Aqua - Aquarius. 2000. MCA. $6.00
   Ok, get it out of your system....Yes, I like Aqua. I happen
   to like a fair amount of Techno/Eurodance stuff. The song
   "Freaky Friday" absolutely kicks!

Uriah Heep - Firefly. 1997 (1977). Castle (United Kingdom). $6.00
   I'll eventually own all their stuff. I like this series of
   reissues, complete with remastering, bonus tracks, and fairly
   decent liner notes...

AC/DC - Live. 1992. ATCO Records. $10.00
   I'd never bothered picking this up, the few times I'd seen the
   2-CD "ltd. ed." version it had always been too pricey. This
   time I just said the heck with it...

Daryl Braithwaite - Higher Than Hope. 1991. Epic. $6.00
   I've listened to some of his other material, and it always
   struck me as fairly poppy. This seems closer to AOR to me...

Vengeance Rising - Destruction Comes. 1991. Intense Records. $6.00
   Ever the completist, I want to get all their discs.
   CCM thrash metal, I think I like the earlier material better.

Last Crack - Sinister Funhouse #17. 1989. Roadracer. $6.00
   Interesting stuff. Heavy metal, looks way OOP. The cover art
   is...."different."

David Coverdale - Whitesnake/Northwinds. 1990. Connoisseur. $5.00
   I was surprised to see this in a pawnshop and jumped for it.
   Now that I've listened to it, I'm wondering why. Production?
   WHAT production?  Egads...

Ian Hunter/Mick Ronson - Yui Orta. 1989. Polygram Records. $5.00
   Looks OOP. Sounds OOP. It's not bad hard (well, medium) rock.
   Jury's still out on this one.

Bad Romance - Code of Honor. 1991. Polygram Records. $6.00
   Looks like hard rock....smells like hard rock.....guess what?
   It *IS* hard rock. Female vocals, the band thanks Tom Keifer
   (Cinderella) at several points throught the liner notes.

Anthrax - Penikufesin. 1989. Island Records. $6.00
   I'd never seen this one before. Any Krauts out there that can
   decipher the title for me (I'm assuming the term is German).
   6-track EP which includes the French Version of "Antisocial".

Now to the interesting stuff...

Paul Smith - Live and Learn. 1986. Dayspring Records. $1.67
Paul Smith - No Frills. 1987. Dayspring Records. $5.00
   Being on Dayspring, he's obviously a Christian artist.
   The obviously dated appearance of the artwork is what
   attracted me. Actually pretty good stuff. Lite "westcoast"
   AOR, he sounds like a blend of Peter Cetera and Christopher
   Cross.

Alleycat Scratch - Deadboys in Trash City. 1993. Kick Your Cat
   Records. $5.00
   I've since been informed that this is a fairly tough find.
   It's definitely glam...no doubt about it.

The following two, unfortunately, were fairly badly munged
conditionwise, which is a crying shame. The discs are passable,
but the digipaks are trashed. I've never seen either on CD,
so I bought them anyway (also the fact that they were dirt
cheap didn't hurt either):

Greg X. Volz - The River is Rising. 1986. Myrrh Records. $1.67
   Former lead singer of Petra. In good condition, this would
   cost $40+ on Ebay. I'll settle for this copy, thanks.

Matthew Ward - Armed and Dangerous. 1986. Live Oak Records. $1.67
   This and "Toward Eternity" were released by Radrockers as a
   2-on-1 last year. I didn't even know this had ever had an original
   CD release! Poppier than the later work, still good. A very
   surprising find.

Till my next "investment" outing,

-Dan