I may look like I do, but I don’t smoke pot often.
OK, so maybe I partake a couple times a year just to keep myself irregular. I usually take a journey inside my mind, regret it, then six months will pass until I forget the mistake and say “Sure, I’ll hit that.”
One of those times was two weeks ago. I was backstage at my brother’s concert for his new band Knife Knights who were opening for Black Star at the Fox Theater in Oakland. My brother is considerably cooler than me so when he offered a hit, I had to say yes.
So there I was—stoned and suddenly hungry when I spotted a basket of apples and some almond butter. I took an insufficient plastic knife and started sloppily slicing and dipping. I walked out of the room and there was Dave Chappelle, just standing there like a regular human being. Now, I’m not one to get starstruck. I’ve used the finest porta potties at music festivals after rock stars and I can assure you, their shit stinks just as much as anyone. The vegan ones are probably worse.
But this was Dave Chappelle. I got nervous, swallowed a whole apple slice and started choking. Full-blown choking. If everyone else around me hadn’t been lit, someone probably would have given me the Heimlich and I’d have fired out a bullet of apple toward some celebrity. I was crying, coughing uncontrollably, waiting for Chappelle to say “lemme hit whatever shit that guy had” as a circle of unfamiliar people laughed. But he didn’t notice I existed.
I wiped my tears and went to the hotel. It was just past 10 p.m. and Black Star, one of my favorite hip-hop acts, had yet to go on. But I had to wake up for the Oakland swap meet at 5 a.m. because, well, I had created a problem.
When I first pitched this column to CityBeat, I said “every couple of weeks, I’ll find an extremely rare record and write a story about it.” But shortly thereafter I was quickly reminded that rare records are, well, rare. This isn’t the ’90s when you could just walk into a thrift store and trade pocket change for holy grails. This is 2019. Records are in vogue. Swap meet vendors have smart phones and the diligent ones do their research. Every weekend there’s a flock of people like me patrolling the pre-dawn parking lots for miracles of sound. So every two weeks, I have to find an obscure album and hope that a story worth telling coincides with the quest.
The Oakland swap meet didn’t have any answers. I’ve never really been to any swap meets outside of San Diego. I’m used to the way they run down here, and I was a tourist in Oakland. I arrived at the stadium when they opened at 6 a.m. And I was the first person there. Not a single vendor. Not another shopper. It was just me, an overcast sky and a line of vans slowly entering the purgatory of commerce. I waited for the swap meet to form around me. There were great deals on piñatas and stolen bikes, but the only records were swing music box sets. I couldn’t wait for the late blooming flea market to potentially peak because I had to rush back to the hotel, sneak in before my mom woke up (she thinks I have a problem, because she’s smart) and then run to play the Bottlerock Music Festival. The story wasn’t here.
Soon enough, I was back in San Diego, searching for a story. I stopped at the Stadium Swap Meet to walk in aimless circles of slowly depleting hope. There was a couple selling records. The guy spoke with the motor-mouthed clarity of the Micro Machines pitchman (this antique reference may necessitate a quick Google search). He and his partner sweated and shook on a cool day with the frenetic pace of amphetamine. They invited me back to their house to check out an extensive record collection (or to possibly shiv me and take my wallet). This was it. This was my story. I took the number down and called the following day to make an appointment with my destiny but (surprise!), their number had been disconnected.
So I was back to the drawing board, deadline looming.
One day, I woke up like I have everyday thus far and I took a shower. I opened up my top drawer and the pair of boxers I picked out had a second hole in them; a hole that could only complicate things. So I reached a little deeper into the drawer and I felt something. It was a 45. Who knows how many years it’s been sitting there, or how it landed there in the first place? It looked interesting. Not a familiar record label. “Evil Ways” by The Lido.
I threw it on the turntable and discovered a hidden gem. It’s a cover of the Sonny Henry song, which was made popular by Santana. It was pretty standard until the instrumental break where the percussion and piano lift off with frenetic energy. The drums and piano dance in a call-and-response, but it has a distinctly Latin feel and when they reach their peak, it falls back into the familiar groove. I could have saved myself a lot of hassle, but I guess the adventure is the best part.