The "record next door" I should have bought!

[pretzelbag]

In 1986 I first heard "National Avenue, Sunday Afternoon" by Red Guitars on WLIR. The song seemed so apt for my life at the time that I hummed or sang it to myself more times than I care to count.

So every time I went into a record shop, I'd check under "R" to see if the Red Guitars album or CD was there. It never was, even in some great Greenwich Village record shops. The fact that it was hard to find (as an import) simply made me remember the song that much more forcefully.

I did not find the album until much later, when import CDs became easier to come by (or I started going to better record shops!).

However, there was one album that I remember flipping past more than once -- since I did not know what the cover of the Red Guitars album looked like, everytime I saw "Red _______" I thought, "Oh, maybe THIS IS IT!"

Sadly, I was disappointed each time; the "Red _______" album was not the Red Guitars album. But I never forgot the cover of that album that I flipped past looking for Red Guitars.

Fast forward to 2005...when I started visiting the NW Outpost regularly to read and learn and chat and hear songs I have never heard. A lot of these songs I really like.

In fact, 3 or 4 songs from a certain group I liked so much, I looked into their discography, and what album cover do you think was staring me in the face on a web page for a 1986 album by a certain "Red" group?

The same album I had flipped past looking for Red Guitars!

The album, if you have read this far, is "The Circle and the Square" by Red Box. If I had thrown it in my cart by mistake, I would have discovered these great songs 19 years ago!

I wonder how many other albums I passed up while looking for something else? (Somehow I don't think Edgar Winter is a good substitute for Wire Train, although I have not heard much Edgar Winter!)

In hindsight, that Red Box album was simply trying to jump into my hands, n'est-ce pas? I should have listened to the fickle finger of fate...

-preztelbag.

[bpdp3]

I love this post pretzelbag - - I can really relate to this one. I can't tell you how many times I've searched for some obscure title, and always seen some oddball one near it that you pass over until somehow you read about it (usually 10 years after the fact).

Ranks up there with passing up on an album because it seems overpriced/unnecessary right then, only to realize later you HAVE to HAVE IT....and of course then it's gone, and you keep searching through the bin where it was thinking "maybe I'm missing it" - - HA!

I got the Red Box after seeing a video(!) by them on early early 120 Minutes (MTV's old alternative video show). It IS a good record. Red Guitars I'll have to keep an eye out for; never heard of it before.