Ok, we're going to narrow the focus of the ole' blog here, rock n' rollers. While it used to be musings of any sort that struck my fancy. Now with the birth of my online radio station I think it's time to focus on music. Let's start with my newest quest: the acquiring of the songs that made the samples for The Beastie Boys magnum opus "Paul's Boutique"

As a child of the 80's, I was one of those kids completely enamored with the B-Boys first effort "License to Ill" I luved that tape so much it positively scared me. When there second album came out in '89, I don't think I gave it much of a chance. I was in 8th grade when I fell under the spell of License to Ill and when the Paul's Boutique came out I was old enough to dismiss the Beasties as a fascination of my youth and couldn't possibly offer anything to me I wasn't already getting from The Smith's, Love and Rocket's or The Cure.

That was until I met my English friend Graham. His dad worked for BP and that summer, moved the family to the US. I met when we both worked at Sea World, he was impressed that I had heard of, let alone liked, the band Pop Will Eat Itself and I was impressed with the amount of ladies a guy with an English accent could get. Anyway, it was that summer in between listening to The Cult and the aforementioned he got me to give Paul's Boutique a real listen and it's been a love affair ever since.

I know the album so well now I don't even need to put the CD on to listen to the songs. It's part of the rotation of songs that appear in my head when I'm showering in the morning. So, when I saw a website which lists the songs the were sampled to create Paul's Boutique I decided collecting all these songs together would be a great way to revisit an old friend and gain a better knowledge of this incredible album.

First stop GEMM, online resource for any recording in any format on this great earth. I wanted as much of these albums on vinyl as possible because I'm a vinyl snob and that's what we do. At GEMM I located: James Brown and Afrika Bambaataa, Tower of Power, 2 rekids from Sly and the Family Stone and the Incredible Bongo Band. All for around $50. For items that were too scarce to find I vinyl, I hit Amazon. From Amazon I picked up Idris Muhammed and LoveBug Starski. Rock On.

Next up is a trip to my local (Jive Time Records) to find the more common records that I figured that they would stock. Bingo. In minutes I had my hands on the Isley Brothers, The Commodores, the Soundtrack to Shaft and Sweet's "Desolation Blvd." (god, I love the cover art).

Alright, so that's where I stand right now. I've got two things to do now, pick up the remaining albums that I need and cull through my current collections and find the tracks I already have.