VINYL VIEWS: WEEK OF 8/30/21
Vinyl Views is our weekly blog where we feature album recommendations from our store team (Shayne and Jaxon) and reveal picks from guest contributors. This week we celebrate Shayne’s BIG 4-0 & wish our buddies in Summer Drive luck in the Bitter Jester Music Festival Finals!
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Do we over-hype these cats? We sure don’t think so! We’ve watched them grow over the years and it’s been truly extraordinary! This Sunday they compete in the finals of the Bitter Jester Music Festival battle of the bands and you better believe we’re rooting for our boys! You should absolutely plan your weekend around this! Sunday Sept 5th from 3-7 at Wolters Field, 1080 Park Ave. West, Highland Park, join us in cheering them on!
Shayne is switching it up in 2021 and bringing us his custom playlists each week. Check out here or come into the store and listen to them in our Sounderator (tricked out 1940’s refrigerator that you sit in while enjoying a tasty selection of tunes).
Shayne’s playlist this week is titled Feelin’ Quack
From: Shayne:
This week marks my dreaded entry into my forties so I’m just gonna have fun with it! I’ve been told I’m a closeted “Duck Furry” because of my affinity for anthropomorphic duck animation, so I’m running with it! Thought about bringing back Nega-Shayne in a Nega-Duck capacity but instead just added it to the mix. A lot of people contributed to this one but special credit goes to Kelly for the concept, Mike for not missing a beat when asked what the opposite of a duck is (goose) and Trevor for quacking the code on goose songs!
Access the Spotify Playlist Here => 
Howard the Duck
Song: Ending Song
*Different song entirely from above. This is why we buy physical media folks!
Artist: Malcolm McLaren
Album: Duck Rock
Quack Quack! It’s Shayne’s birthday, and I’m pecking out 3 feathery gems of albums. The first 2 are both duck themed, and the third is his bird of choice for consumption, chicken!
This album is 80s genre fusion madness. It mixes hip-hop, world music, new wave, and many other things. If you aren’t familiar with Malcolm McLaren, he was an impresario turned musical artist, who was also famously the manager for The Sex Pistols, and responsible for recruiting Johnny Rotten. I have no clue how Shayne didn’t claim the song “Duck For The Oyster” for his duck playlist, but this just means I have the opportunity to talk about this spec-quack-ular album. If you haven’t heard it, I would highly recommend it.
(Note From Shayne: “I was, uh, just saving it for you buddy!”)
.Check out the track Duck For The Oyster
Artist: The Residents
Album: Duck Stab
For my second record I will be talking about another album with duck in the name. This is one of the weirdest albums from one of the weirdest bands of all time. It’s hard to believe that this album was released in 1977, it still sounds like it is from the far off future to this day. The Residents are an experimental music group/art collective. One of the most recognizable elements of The Residents is the eyeball heads they always wore. The story behind the band is still shrouded in a lot of mystery, and nobody knows the true identities of the band members. It is even believed that there are lost recordings dating back to the mid 60s that haven’t yet been uncovered. The mystery of the band beside, this album is a hard to classify avant-garde masterpiece, sounding like almost nothing else in existence.
Check out the track Constantinople
Artist: The Meters
Album: Struttin
This album pick is based off Shayne’s secondary bird, the chicken. He has even made multiple playlists themed around this feathery creature. The topic of fried chicken has come up a multitude of times while working, and this bird has rightfully claimed the spot of the secondary bird for Shayne. This album is a funky masterpiece. Bayou Funk has just a fun feel to it, and this is one of my favorites of the genre. This is probably the most obvious chicken album, so of course I had to talk about it.
(Note From Shayne: Let’s get this straight! Chicken is second to no bird.)
Check out the track Chicken Strut
How Do I Order Music (Or Other Things)?
Val’s is now open again (safely)! Bring a face mask and we will sanitize your hands on the way in. Social distancing, of course. Val’s halla has worked hard over this quarantine period to launch its Online Store which has thousands of titles for you to choose from. We will continue to add inventory everyday, but just let us know what you are looking for! We are happy to look through our off-line inventory of over 50,000 titles to see what we have for you. Also, we place orders with our distributor every Monday which means we see them in our store by Tuesday (most of the time). We sell records (as well as turntables), CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, DVDs and more. To get started, you can Click Here to access the Online Store, or fill out the form below to let us know what you are looking for.
What About Delivery?
Val’s is offering Curbside Pickup and No-Contact Delivery Service to customers who live within a 5-mile radius of the Oak Park Arts District. Orders can also be shipped to customers outside that radius for a flat fee of $5. Order as much as you want – still $5 shipping! Stay safe and be well!