
Even though it was on the opposite coast and about 3000 miles from the nearest Amoeba store, there were numerous Amoeba logo sightings (on bags and t-shirts mostly) over the weekend at the big WFMU Record Fair at Manhattan's Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street.
Understandably the giant annual music collectors convention, which boasts 10,000 square feet of vinyl (lots of rarities), CDs, DVDs, and magazines & artworks, etc., draws many of the same folks that Amoeba Music attracts-- diehard music fanatics. "Let's face it, music collecting is an addiction," laughed DJ Babu, who visited the fair on the opening day, Friday, when he also did a live set on WFMU from the Chelsea location.
LA native Babu, who coined the term turntablist and who is known for both his solo DJ/production work (his Super Duck Breaks on Stones Throw is a classic) and his membership in Dilated Peoples, Beat Junkies, & Likwit Junkies, said that over the years that he has spent way more time and money at the Hollywood Amoeba than he cares to even think about. Today (Oct 28) is the release date of Babu's latest album, Duck Season Vol. 3 on Nature Sounds. Look for it at Amoeba.
And if you think Babu traveled far, how about record collector Nakajima who flew over all the way from Japan for four days specifically to shop at the all weekend record fair!? But then this record fanatic has also made previous trips to the US from Japan specifically to shop at the Hollywood Amoeba (where he got the Amoeba t-shirt he wore over the weekend as in picture below right). New Yorker Andres (pictured above left proudly clutching his Amoeba record bag), who lives just a few blocks from the Manhattan record fair location, said that he got his bag on "one of several visits" to the Hollywood
Amoeba store. "I love Amoeba and every time I go to LA I go to Amoeba," he smiled. 



The recent business news story reports on the $27 billion sales figure deal by radio station-owning company Clear Channel Communications to Bain Capital and THL Partners have focused on how the two big investment giants had, as of last week, sued a cadre of major Wall Street banks to force them to finance the extremely large dollar takeover. You see, with all the recent drama and fallout and uncertainty of the US economy, the Wall Street bankers who were supposed to finance the takeover (initially agreed to in 2006) basically got cold feet.
Bay Area) as well as oodles of great specialized streaming online music feeds, not to mention your iPod's collection of your favorite fifty thousand songs. But long ago commercial radio also satisfied that same need to hear good music, new music, different music, and presented by DJs who personally programmed (and loved) what they played. But the days of fun, freeform creative commercial radio stations - a la the fictional WKRP Cincinnati or the real KSAN San Francisco- are long long gone.
SF rock group Citay, who had driven up from a gig in Philly the night before after being at SxSW the week before, were in the New York area Friday and Saturday doing a few gigs including one on