A Trip To Josey's Records New Tulsa Store

Last Saturday a rare window of time and opportunity emerged for me. To take advantage of it, meaning to do something that would satisfy my personal needs, I targeted the newly opened branch of Josey's Records here in Tulsa. It's extremely rare that I have any kind of time to go crate digging these days what with family, work and other personal projects and understandably I leapt at the chance. Plus I finally had some expendable cash so I didn't have to worry about spending it on something that might be considered frivolous.

My favorite place to buy vinyl and zines here in Tulsa was Holy Mountain but unfortunately it had closed down very recently and I had been unable to even go visit the store one last time. The good news is that Jay, the owner of Holy Mountain, now works for Josey's and Jay is the type of guy who remembers regular customers and what they like. That's a rarity these days. There was no other place in Tulsa that offered what Holy Mountain had, nothing even came close and I worried about that.

When I arrived to Josey's the first order of business was to walk around the aisles to get a feel for the place. Even though the space is renovated and has a clean, crisp look to it, still, there was the smell that I immediately noticed. The smell of old records I mean and I breathed that smell in for several minutes as I just walked around and taking in what selection they had. That smell is a good thing by the way. It's an odor that conveys comfort to me.

Having taken the atmosphere in I chose a random section of the rock alphabet and got to work. Time slipped away and lost all meaning as I flipped through the bins with my head down. Slowly but surely I began to gather a few albums at a time and would periodically journey over to the listening station (comprised of three record players with headphones) and see what I had found. Not all of them made the cut but I was beginning to find some gems.

After several trips to the listening station what emerged was a pattern of music from 1978 to 1985. That appeared to be what I was focusing on even though when I had arrived I had no clear idea of what I would be looking for. When I had begun my search I had a thought of just buying a few things but by now I realized that I had almost enough music for a podcast episode of Ten For Tuesday so I dug in and continued to search. I mean why stop short right? Better to make it happen at this point. Go big or go home or insert your own overused cliche as needed.

Eventually I realized that I had been there for close to three hours and knew that I needed to pay up and run some errands before my wife started calling asking where I was. What I ended up with was two albums I had owned on cassette back in the day, two from artists whose music I had listened to and liked, a German compilation of Australian bands and three from bands I had never heard of before. Check out the complete list at the end of the column and wait for the podcast episode in about a month or so. Hey, it takes time to digitize music and it's not like I don't already have enough music already prepared for seven episodes waiting to go. This one will probably leapfrog most of them though. Probably.

Red Rockers - Schizophrenic Circus 1984
Scandal - Self Titled EP 1982
Raging Fire - A Family Thing 1985
Rock Paket - Australien 1982
Tuff Darts - Self Titled 1978
Any Trouble - Where Are All The Nice Girls 1980
The Police - Reggatta de Blanc 1979
Jason & The Scorchers - Lost & Found 1985

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.