Justice, at any cost

Today marked the first of two Record Store Day drops this year. As always, I had a list categorizing records as "must-haves," "want" and "if all else fails." At the very tippy top of the list were the two RSD releases for Maria McKee -- High Dive and Live in Hamburg. Only problem was, a mere 500 copies were pressed for each of those releases, so I figured they would be tough gets.

Off I went to Princeton Record Exchange (thanks, Mark!) to give the ol' college try -- because it is in Princeton. I got there at about 7:30 a.m. with the store scheduled to open at 10. And I'd say I was about in the spot I've previously been in with an 8 a.m. arrival. With the pandemic becoming a distant memory for almost everyone in line (very few masks), the vinyl lovers queued up.

Sometime after the storefront started taking three customers at a time, a helpful PREX staffer started coming down the line with a list of the 1,000-or-so RSD records being sold. That included the number of records they had received for each item. I asked about the McKees first and was told they got one of each release. One of the ... I'll guess 50 ... people in front of me had told him that he/she only planned to buy High Tide. So if no one browsing through the stacks wanted Live in Hamburg, I would have a shot at it. 

And that's exactly how it played out. When I got to enter the sanctum, I made a beeline for the M's, grabbed it. If I hadn't gotten anything else, I still would have been happy. Yeah, like that would happen.

The Live in Hamburg release originated from a concert recorded Oct. 5, 2003 at Kampnagel in Germany by NDR Radio. It was the first of the RSD records I spun after getting -- natch -- and upon listening, I had to wonder what the other customer (who obviously had taste enough to pick up a Maria McKee record in the first place) had been thinking. Definitely my gain.

So I'm running through the tracks -- "This Perfect Dress," "Scarlover," "High Dive," "T.V. Teens," "Be My Joy" and "I'm Awake" on the first LP of the double set and "Absolutely Barking Stars," "Breathe," "Something Similar" and "Life Is Sweet" on the second. And besides being knocked out by that voice and visualizing the images crafted by the words, something I noted was Maria saying "danke schön" after many of the tracks.

That reminded me of attending Lone Justice's concert at the long-lost Button South in Hallandale, Florida, on Oct. 13, 1985, with my bestie Cheryl. After each of the songs, McKee said "thank you" almost the same way. And that, in turn, brought back memories of two major things that happened to me in conjunction with that show.

The big one was that I was grounded as soon as I got home that night. See, I had told my mom that I was working at a baseball card store that night. And I clearly wasn't. I don't recall whether the boss had called Mom or she tried to get me through him, I just know that she found out I wasn't working and had no idea where I was at all. 

So the one time I was punished was because I just had to go to that show to see Lone Justice. Not sure this many years later why I felt I had to lie about it, maybe the other major memory had something to do with it.

Cheryl and I went to the mall to get tickets for the show -- yeah, we used to have to go in person to pick up tickets because there was no internet to hop on to get the job done. After we paid and I had them in my hands, I looked them over and it clearly stated "No one under 21 admitted." We were still underage, so that seemed like a problem, but the ticket seller assured us we wouldn't have any issue getting in.

Wrong! It was a problem. The night of the show when we tried to go in, the Button South wanted to turn us away. I wasn't satisfied with that, so I asked to speak with the manager. I explained what happened when we bought the tickets and assured him that we would not have anything to drink -- not even water -- we just wanted to see the show.

Thankfully, the manager realized we weren't there to try and score liquor. He told us to sit at the bar (probably so he could monitor us) and drink Cokes. So crisis averted. Well, initial crisis averted, as I said, when I got home later it was a completely different story.

We loved the show. A look at setlist.fm shows the rundown was largely from the self-titled Lone Justice album that we were listening to in high rotation before that night with a side order of choice  Lou Reed/Velvet Underground. Setlist: Sweet, Sweet Baby (I'm Falling); Wait 'Til We Get Home; Working Late; Sweet Jane; Walk on the Wild Side; Ways to Be Wicked; Soap, Soup and Salvation; When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder; After the Flood; East of Eden.

A few weeks later, I reviewed the show for the Palm Beach Junior College Beachcomber, and green journalistic tendencies aside, I think it holds up rather well and includes that reference to the thank-yous that sparked an afternoon of remembrances.