CURRENT VINYL PLAYLIST 7/12/2022 - 80'S COMPILATION ALBUMS PART 2

 Current Vinyl Playlist VOL 8

This is installment #8 of my new regular entry on my neglected blog...

Compilations - the precursor to the mixtape.

Time to show off some more  I have recently ran across.  

Currently, my vinyl collecting addiction is focusing on these awesome gems.  You get a bit of everything - a mix of artists and interesting art / concept.  And many were a limited release of current hits, so it's a little flat time capsule.

Here goes

1) Some Bizzare - 1981

I just had to start off with what can be argued as one of the most influential albums of the early 80's.   Some Bizzare gave the world an introduction to future stars Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Blancmange, and The The.  This is a must have for fans of the New Romantic movement and am confident this is the most groundbreaking compilation I have.  It was just sitting in a store for my taking a few weeks ago.  I had been on the look for this since the late 80's

Here's DM doing "Photgraphic"

2) Sharp (16 Sharp New Rock Acts) - 1979

A fine example of the punk/post punk/new wave scene in the late 70's.  This has been on my heavy rotation in my office lately.  Fun stuff showcasing Undertones, Elvis Costello, The Cars, Ramones, and Television.  

Here's the Undertones doing "Jimmy Jimmy".

Now for more strange Ronco comps....

3) Overload - 1982

Some strange attempt at making a gothy/new wave/Ziggy Stardust Frankenstein using headphones.   

Here's Fun Boy Three doing "The Telephone Always Rings" from this.

4) Raiders of the Pop Charts Part 2 - 1982

What in the actual hell.  Another can't avoid the cover purchase.  

Not bad of a mix.  Poppy new wave

Here's Toto Coelo...  I remember this on the new wave station when I was 13.

5) Chart Encounters of the Hit Kind part 1 - 1983

Another one I could not pass up.  The mix is very pop wave of the time.  

This is I-Level.  I was today years old when I first saw this video.  

6) Chart Trek 2: To Boldly Pick the stars of '84  - 1984

This one is an ok listen.  I really dig Fad Gadget's stuff and "Love Is A Stranger" is a classic.

But I HAVE to post this video or I would feel I have failed everyone...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you....Roland Rat Superstar.

Thanks for letting me entertain you!

See ya soon

JUNE 2022 DIVIDENDS

The stock market just sank and sank and sank all throughout the month of June.   My portfolio dropped 7.39%, and now 9.85% since Jan 1st. 

So what!  My kid's fastpitch softball team won their league this year.  Go Comets!

Am so happy for her.

And even though the prices are sinking for my stocks,  the dividends remain unchanged.   I see them as on sale, as a lower price increases the dividend yield percentage.  So I am not freaking out.

If a stock is $2 a share and earns a 10 cent dividend, I have a 5% yield.  If it drops to $1 a share, my 10 cent dividend is now a 10% yield.    So I like buying shares when the market tanks.  Everything is on sale.

In fact, quite a bit of them handed out giant dividend increases over the past month, like Lowe's 31% increase.  

In June, I hit another home run for dividend income.  I received 59 dividends totalling $2,661.14.  In June of 2021, I received $1,275.   That's a 108.72% increase from last year.  Wow.  

It's a combination of ever increasing dividends, reinvesting my earnings, and adding some of my paycheck in chunks when I can. Sometimes I can't, but I try.  Once you have a chunk of different holdings, it really compounds.

Here are the details.

 

The surprise is LYB and the gigantic special dividend they handed out.  

The companies I own little tiny bits of are for the most part on real solid footing.  Road bumps happen.  We see major corrections every few years.   Yes, we may be heading into a recession.  We'll see how bad it is.  It does not mean we should freak out and leave.  That only locks in losses.  Insead, get a share or two more at a huge discount.

See you next month.

CURRENT VINYL PLAYLIST 6/23/22 - 2 NEW RELEASES AND AN AMAZING SOUNDTRACK

 Current Vinyl Playlist VOL 7

This is installment # 7 of my new regular entry on this mess of a blog.

I'm catching up.  Jumping to the latest finds

1) Hollie Cook - Happy Hour

The 4th release from the ultra smooth and sweet voiced Hollie Cook and her self titled "Tropical pop".  Just got this in the mail, and is not even out digitally until tomorrow at the time of writing.

It's kind of like the "lover's rock" type of reggae made famous back in the mid 1970's.  Every track is a cocktail on a tropical beach in paradise.

And the cover art is in the style of her first three LPs.  

Great pressing.  A surprisingly loud and deep bass but crisp high ends.   And you can't beat the limited edition orchid & tangerine vinyl with great labels.

Here is the clip for one of the new tracks.

2) The Clash & Ranking Roger - "Rock The Casbah" b/w "Red Angel Dragnet"

The single to promote the most recent remastered reissue of "Combat Rock" features Ranking Roger of English Beat (and soon to be in General Public).  

His toasting style completely changes both songs.  Loved Rock the Casbah sine I was 13 years old, but RR really gives it a new life.    The B-side, "Red angel Dragnet" allows Ranking Roger to really turn this into a dub classic.   

It's available on The Clash's UK website.

While Rock the Casbah is kind of a remix with a replaced lead vocal, Red Angel Dragnet is more of a dub version of dub song.   It's perfect.  I just wanted it to keep going.

3) Manfred Hubler & Siegfried Schwab - Vampiros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party

Acid jazz pop from 1969.   This is a 2005 reissue of an ultra scarce soundtrack for "Vampiros Lesbos", a late 60's sex-horror take on Bram Stoker's Dracula.  That sums up the music....

Here's a track of this music....

I'll be back with more in a week or two!

MAY 2022 DIVIDEND INCREASES

 As the current inflation nightmare is the biggest factor in our current economy, dividend growth investors get somewhat of a break by owning stock in companies that continually raise their dividend payout to match growth/current price.    

For the month of May, I had six increases announced that resulted in an increase of 6.13% for the six companies involved.   Not quite beating inflation, but gets close.  

Much thanks to Lowe's (LOW) that announced a 31.3% increase.

Overall, my annual income increased by $72.40.   It look like a tiny meaningless drop, but over the course of a year, I have over 120 companies that will be raising their dividend,   IT adds up.  And, of course, it all gets put back into the market where it compounds.   

Here's are the details.

CURRENT VINYL PLAYLIST 6/10/22 - GETTING JAZZY

 Current Vinyl Playlist VOL 6

This is the sixth installment on my new regular entry on this mess of a blog.

I'm still working hard on catching up...

Pulled out some jazz records and wanted to showcase a few of them.  

From upper left:

   

1) John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

IMO, this is where you start if you do not know jazz.  This is the best example of modal jazz and one of the most important and highly regarded jazz recordings ever.  

All recorded in one session in December 9th, 1964.   

Here's "Part II - Resolution"

2) Earl "Father" Hines - Blue Note #5 12" 78

Recorded and released in 1939, this is a fine example of early Blue Note recordings before WW2.  Here's side B - "Reminiscing At Blue Note".  My records sounds MUCH cleaner than this video.

3) Duke Ellington - Ellington Uptown

Found this gem in a thrift store in Coos Bay, OR.  Great stuff at the end of big band era.  The creation of the Long Playing record gave Duke Ellington a palette to compose wonderful extended pieces like The Harlem Suite without the constraint of the short length of a 78rpm side - about 5 minutes max.   

4) Dirty Art Club - Gardens

Not jazz, but has the same kind of mentality.  Psych-Hop that expresses a bunch of cool moods in one record.  

Here's a YouTube of the whole thing.

5) Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd - Jazz Samba

The titles speaks for itself.  This kicked off America's Bossa Nova craze in the early 1960's.  Here's Desafinado.

6) Hugh Masekela - Masekela

This was recorded in late 1968 by the great South African jazz trumpeter.  One of my personal favorite albums.

"Gold" was released as a single, did not feature his trumpet, but you can really feel the African vibe to his music.

I have MANY more to review.   

See you next time!

MAY 2022 DIVIDENDS

 May ended and we still have not gotten any warm weather here in the Pacific NW.   It's just been really showery and cool.   Rain and 55 degrees does not go well with my kid's softball season.

So we travelled and saw shows.  It was an epic and unforgettable month

So we got away. We figured that if it is going to be cold and wet, might as well get real cold.   So we took a road trip over to Yellowstone National Park for a week.   There's nothing better than going there in the off-season window before the big rush of tourists in mid May.   And it was cool, and got some snowfall.

We met a baby moose on one side of the highway...

And across the street was this.....   The Grand Tetons.    

Stunning.

Then we met a fox that was very interested in us right after eating some sort of animal.

The colorful hot pools of Yellowstone are AMAZING.   I had to show my daughter what it looks like in person.

  Once we got home, we got to meet Sir Paul McCartney.  In person, you watch in awe as a Beatle plays Beatle songs that sound just like the record n the same room you are in. 

This is when he did "Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite" (a John song, but really cool to hear)  

Looking great for someone a couple weeks from 80 years old!   And did a 3 hour show.  Wonderful experience.

And to top it off, I got paid for being alive.  Whoot!   

April 2022 brought in an epic $1,525.99 in dividend income from 36 companies.   That's a 45.6% increase over 2021's $1,047.99.

I'll take that.  Here's the nitty gritty.

What I really love is how steady and uniform these payments are.  Lots of solid payments.   

And what did I do with this payout?   That's right, BUY MORE INCOME!   Make the snowball even bigger and compound this thing.  

Remember, if I can do this, so can you.  It takes patience.  10 years later, you get something like this.

CURRENT VINYL PLAYLIST 5/30/22 - CATCHING UP

 Current Vinyl Playlist VOL 5

This is the fifth installment on my new regular entry on this mess of a blog...

I'm working hard on catching up.   

Here's four that were waiting for a blog post about:

1) Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92

IMO, this is where you start if you are interested in getting into ambient techno.  A good starting point since this is the album that kicked off this whole genre.  

 2) Idles - Ultra Mono

One of my favorite releases of 2020, this British post-punk outfit will remind you of Sleaford Mods and the Fall at the same time.    Here's the promo clip of "Mr Motivator",the first single from the LP.   I guess one can call it aggressively fun.

3) Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia: The Moonlight Edition

A few months ago, once I saw this on the shelf, I had to pick up this double album.  One of the best dance-pop albums ever made, this is the bonus version with an extra album full of bonus tracks and a remix of "Levitating".  This is just hard to not like, even though I'm really not into this genre.

4) The Damned - The Rockfield Files

Forty-five years and still going strong, The Damned returned to the studio of their early 80's LPs The Black Album and Strawberries and pumped out this 4 song EP in late 2020.  OVer the past 20 years, they've honed their own unique sound - a version of psychedelic tinged goth punk that works great on this.  Can't wait for more.

Be back in a week of so with more.  I'm getting more records faster than I can post about.

Toodle-oo.

CURRENT VINYL PLAYLIST 5/19/22 - MAINLY INDIE STUFF

 Current Vinyl Playlist VOL 4

This is the fourth installment on my new regular entry on this mess of a blog.

I have so many records, I can do this every day and have new material for 2 solid years with 7 per day.  I ran out of room in my "office"

Here's what I pulled off the shelf this week:

Here's what I pulled off the shelf. Starting at the upper left

1) In The Pines - Slow Blink

I did not know Cincinnati  Neo-Pych was a thing.  Pretty cool stuff.  I do not know how or why I got this, but it's good in a indie shoegaze kind of thing

Here's the only video from this:

2) Meat Puppets - Dusty Notes

Got that inde/americana sound and has that twang in the vocals that scream "Meat Puppets"

3) Elvis Depressedly - Holo Pleasures / California Dreamin' 

This is SUPER Lo-Fi.  This may be one of the worst sounding records I have.  Not the quality of the music, but the sheer lo-fi / awful recording. And I like lo-fi...

4) Monks - Hamburg Recordings 1967

This is the garage rock that is proto-proto-proto punk  .

Here's a clip of track 1

5) Big Audio Dynamite - Tighten Up Vol. 88

One of my 80's records that definitely improved over time.  I was honestly really disappointed when this came out since BADs first LP was so amazing and the second one was a mere shadow of the first.  I was hoping for a rebound.  

34 years later, it's dramatically more interesting and a great time capsule.  And the more BAD, the better.

Here's a clip of my favorite track on this album, "Applecart"

6) Of Montreal - Innocence Reaches.

A psychedelic band with its beginning foray journey into EDM pop. A fantastically fun listen.  I would not want to miss this band live.  Such strange fun.  Every song is its own perfection that only they can do.  

7) Gloss - Between Themselves

Dreamy indie-pop.   Reminds me of The Ocean Blue and the happy high sound they pulled off.  

Go LOTS more to show off.  Until then!  Happy listening and