Though it seemed to have been fairly well-scavenged by the time we arrived on Saturday afternoon, the ARChive of Contemporary Music's
Winter Record and CD Sale held many great treasures.
Many records were in the $2-$5 range, with hundreds and hundreds of others for just a buck. Classic rock, new wave, punk, country, blues, jazz, Latin, and African genres were all represented. Multiple copies of most titles were available, so if you happened to be shopping with a couple of buddies, there'd be no need to arm wrestle for that last copy of
Born To Run. Classical music lovers may have been especially pleased: Entire multi-volume sets were available for $1/volume, and the folks at the ARC were willing to make special package deals. If I had had a car or mule with me, I might have left with a few full crates.
In the end, I dropped $35 and walked out with an I Heart NY bag full of sweet sides including RCA's sherbet-colored
Elvis, Dolly Parton's
New Harvest…First Gathering (Dolly was
so beautiful!), a couple of nice Van Cliburn discs (Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff), a pristine 3-LP set of Mozart's
The Magic Flute, a Glenn Gould disc, a Quadrophonic pressing of Holst's Planets, and a few others.
Tammy Wynette's
D-I-V-O-R-C-E was the first I cued up. The second of two albums recorded by Wynette in 1968,
D-I-V-O-R-C-E reached number 1 on the US country charts. Most, if not all, of the tracks are under three minutes long (the entire album plays out in just 28 minutes), and feature stellar guitar and banjo work along with Wynette's voice, which rings out with a special blend of sadness and beauty.
