Easy Street

At work today I discovered the coolest name for a newspaper in the history of the world: the Malayala Manorama.

Several hours after that I wandered around the Seattle Center (Key Arena, Space Needle, etc.) and Easy Street Records in Queen Anne. I like Sonic Boom up the street pretty well, but Easy Street overwhelmed me. Before going I kind of thought I wouldn't like it because I tend to prefer smaller scale stores, but it wasn't as big as I thought. It did have an amazing amount of great stuff. I spent 10 minutes just looking at the titles in the magazine rack without even browsing. It's definitely the best annotated record store I've been to, with tons of staff reviews and Pitchfork clippings and whatnot. I liked the setup of the store, which included mostly L-shaped display racks, so there weren't any annoying long lines to file down. They had an in-store performance by Earth who play slow, low, and I think pretty loud when they're not doing an in-store.

I picked up Mouse on Mars' Vulvaland because of the 30% off used sale. I wasn't sure about some other things, and I stuck with Mouse on Mars because I didn't know if other things were on the list. Charles has seen the list. I might post it at the old Tripod site someday, but don't feel like it at the moment. It includes just over 500 albums that I want, but I can't carry it around. Unless, that is, I can convert it to a "notes" file for the iPod, which would be pretty awesome. I'll let you know how that goes.

Oh, and I heard the Snoop Dogg vs. The Cure ("Drop It Like It's Hot" and "Close to Me") mashup from the new Hollertronix 12". If I remembered which MP3 blog was hosting, I'd link you up, but you'll just have to imagine or try to do it yourself. In fact, both tracks are so spare that you could probably play them at the same time and not notice that anything was wrong. Anyway, the contrast between the ultra-bouncy Cure rhythm and Snoop/Pharrell's sly declarations made me actually smile like a fool for several blocks (walking speed!).