Greetings from Laurel Canyon!
Let’s drink to the hard working people / Let’s drink to the lowly of birth / Raise your glass to the good and the evil / Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier / Spare a thought for his back breaking work / Say a prayer for his wife and his children / Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
Anyone catch the first episode of the new Larry David?
It’s Grammy weekend in LA, Impeachment week in DC, and there are a shitload of koala bears and kangaroos who need our help.
I hear there are people who actually wear those red “Donald” baseball caps, but they’re as rare as “roos” around this canyon. I say let’s make planet Earth great—call it “Earth justice.”
On a LA Grammy week note, we do have pop music here. It’s kind of a “corruption” in the universe of music. Many call them artists? I guess there is an art to claiming your star on Hollywood Boulevard. In my old neighborhood in NYC, you would just get your ass kicked for listening to Peter Lemongello.
Melbourne, AU | Melbourne’s Polyester Records to close after 37 years: Polyester Records, one of Melbourne’s most beloved and longest-running record stores, has announced it will cease operations this coming March. In a statement posted to its social media accounts yesterday (January 22), the store’s management noted there were “many mixed emotions” about their time coming to a close after nearly four decades of service. “Polyester has endured in its Fitzroy home for an extraordinary period since 1983,” it reads. The store goes on to note “fond memories of the celebration of a seemingly endless amount of incredible music,” brought to them care of “[a]rtists, labels and personalities which we have surrounded ourselves with and enjoyed involvement with from not only around the world, but – particularly important for 
Washington, DC | DC Is Getting a Hotel With a Record Store, a Rotating Lineup of DJs, and Food by the Timber Pizza Co. Team: Starting in March, the Wink Hotel in the West End will become Yours Truly. There’s a new hotel concept coming to DC that’s jockeying for a spot alongside places like the Line and Eaton, which aren’t just high-end spots to stay but also spaces for locals to grab a meal or take a yoga class. Launching in March, Yours Truly is the new concept replacing the existing Wink Hotel in the West End. And it has many of the traits that have almost become de-facto in boutique hotels these days: an open-concept “living room” instead of a lobby, popular local chefs manning the dining space, yoga classes in the courtyard and, yes, Insta-friendly plants. (It’s also pet-friendly.) …The open main floor will flow into Mercy Me, the all-day, South American-inspired restaurant and bar from the Timber Pizza and Call Your Mother team. Also in the “living room:” the first DC location of Uncle Tony’s Donut Shoppe, an Orlando used-and-new vinyl store. Visitors can 
REISSUE/ARCHIVAL PICKS: Breathless, The Glass Bead Game (1972) The band name derives from Jean-Luc Godard, the album title from a novel by Hermann Hesse, and the music is amongst the more underrated post-punk of the 1980s, with this their debut from 1986. Breathless singer-keyboardist Dominic Appleton is perhaps best known for his participation in This Mortal Coil, though if you recognize him through that contribution, it’s quite likely you know his work in tandem with bassist Ari Neufeld, guitarist Gary Mundi, and Tristram Latimer Sayer. They apparently sometimes get lumped in with The Sound and Comsat Angels, but the music here ultimately owes more to the precedent of The Cure and Joy Division. Unsurprisingly, Breathless fit in with the stronger 4AD work of the period.
Go Hirano, Corridor of Daylights (Black Editions) This 2004 set is the third of three records Japanese musician Hirano cut for the P.S.F. label starting in 1993, though he was also in psych rock band White Heaven. This music is aptly described as home field recordings with piano at the fore. It also features melodica, wind chimes, the ambience of Hirano’s surroundings, even a little vocalizing, and in “Coral,” some treated guitar from Roderick Zalameda. The whole is gentle and captivating as it naturally differs quite a bit from White Heaven and is further distinguished from the too-often predictable bright buoyancy of neo-classical piano stuff. This is the only one of Hirano’s P.S.F. releases not originally on vinyl, debuting on the format here. Next month it is bundled with a cassette of unissued material. A 
Tangerine Dream, Sorcerer Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Waxwork) Director William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, released to theaters in 1977, was a commercial flop and for a long time was also considered an artistic dud. Its bad reputation endured partly because it wasn’t easy to see in the years after its initial run was over, and if one could locate a copy or a screening, it would likely not be the uncut version in the proper aspect ratio. Well, Friedkin’s cut has since been restored to considerable critical reevaluation, and this soundtrack, notably the first for a Hollywood film from the Krautrock-affiliated Tangerine Dream, is sorta the icing on the cake. It features a short liner text by the director detailing the collaboration. Where much of the Dream’s later stuff doesn’t thrill me, this one satisfies nicely. A-
Mankato, MN | Music Man: Carl Nordmeier gives customers more than music, he gives them an experience. On the corner of Rock Street and Riverfront Drive in Old Town Mankato sits the only shop in town dedicated to selling vinyl records. TuneTown’s owner, Carl Nordmeier, is a veteran of the music sales business, working in the music department at Target for years before the birth of the record store in his home town of Faribault, Minnesota, in 1993. It was his passion for music that inspired the now-26-year-old business. As many Americans do, Nordmeier saw an opportunity in the area and seized it. “What got me into the business, growing up in that area, there really wasn’t anything available for record stores,” says Nordmeier. “We had to go up to the Twin Cities if I wanted to go to 
Bronx, NY | This Bronx Restaurant Pays Tribute to Hip-Hop & the Black and Latino Kids Who Created the Genre: When you first open the door at 135 Alexander Ave., you seemingly find yourself in a vinyl record shop. Filled with posters of Bob Marley, LL Cool J and Wu Tang Clan as well as a Casio keyboard with a missing key, it’s not unlike other record stores. But when you get to the tall red velvet curtain directly across the entrance, the muffled music playing behind it invites you to cross the threshold. Four MTV Cribs-esque chandeliers shed light on the scene: A crowd forms as the DJ dances to a Migos song. Beside them, a group of friends laughs hysterically as they pour a glass of mouth-watering sangria, reminiscing about the good old days while sharing plates of crispy chicken, perfectly melted mac ‘n’ cheese,locrio and tres golpes. This is Beatstro – the 
