Bad Buddy Holly

During the two-hour break between the two focus groups, I looked around Stones Corner -- the neighborhood where the venue was located. Walked down about two blocks to the semi-new pawn shop that I've been wanting to stop by for the last two(?) months (we drive right by it on the way home from work), but haven't had time. Not a bad selection of used guitars, although it was weighted much more towards acoustic guitars compared to most pawn shops -- a 2:1 ratio, rather than 1:1 (or less). Saw an acoustic for about $150 with a nice tone -- and a 12-string acoustic with no strings and missing one tuning machine, also for around $150 -- a really good price. But, both can wait: a good price, but didn't ''call'' to me.

Stones Corner is known for it's ''designer clothing'' outlet shops -- not of interest to me. There also used to be two pawn shops there, but no more: one moved a few blocks down the road (the one I had just visited, but now in a larger shop). The other one was called Bayer's Trading Post. I'd bought a tube amp head there about a year ago -- and back in June 2000, when I was here on vacation I bought a blue single-coil fake Strat -- blue because someone painted the body and headstock with wall paint -- for AU$159 (at the time, US$97). And which was lost last year in the [stinkin'] burglary. But the owner of Bayer's Trading Post retired, and one of the employees bought out the shop and turned it into an ebay-only shop. So, IMO there's no good shops to browse through.

Anyhow, I did stumble across a very small used and surplus bookstore. Or rather, there was a moderate amount of floor space, but it was thinly stocked. They had a rack of off-brand CDs in the front, so partly out of sympathy, I bought a ''Very Best of Buddy Holly (and The Picks), Volume 2'' CD for ten bucks. Took it home, and -- blargh!!! -- ''The Picks'' decided they needed to overdub corny backing vocals on all the songs! Clutters up the mix: There's a reason the originals left ''spaces'' there!

I could take it back -- but nothing's wrong with the function of the CD.


The back says ''Made in CR'' -- is that Croatia?


The back also says ''Recordings made 1957-1959. Overdubs by The Picks made subsequently.'' Not sure what the point of the corny overdubs would be -- except perhaps for royalties purposes? Maybe it makes it a ''new'' recording, and thus makes it a ''cover'' of the original, not a re-packaging of the original songs -- and thus, cheaper royalties. Dunno.


Anyhow, kinda weird -- or rather, pointless.

But now, on my second listen-thru, I'm pretty used to it. So, not so bad. And it has a lot of his ''non-hits'', so I've been exposed to some Buddy Holly songs I wasn't aware of.

But the added vocals: still pointless.


--GG