A Card Show in June

About a month ago, my pal Joey a/k/a Dub Mentality tagged me and Dayf a/k/a Card Junk on Twitter with an announcement about a small card show at a local antique mall here in Atlanta. It gave me an excuse to get up and active on a Saturday morning when I otherwise might have just sat at home, so I marked the tweet and made sure to go.

I'm glad I did.

It had been a while since I had attended a local card show. In fact, it had been probably four or five months. As a result, the folks whose dime boxes I tend to clean out had restocked their supplies of Brewer cards. This led to a great show for me. I even found a non-Brewer I needed:

I know I have posted a lot of Pearl Jam songs here, but they are my favorite band. So, guess what? Y'all have to deal with them again.

While I know that "Last Kiss" -- a cover of a 60s song that PJ issued as a Christmas bonus vinyl to its fan club in 1998 before it was included on a charity album for Kosovar refugees in 1999 -- was PJ's highest ever charting song when it number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Even Flow" is to me one of the band's biggest hits. The band absolutely did not like the take that ended up on its album Ten, with guitarist Mike McCready saying that they redid the track 50 or 70 times and played it "over and over until we hated each other."

For what it's worth, Rolling Stone put this song at #77 on a list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" and VH1 listed it at number 30 of the "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs." After 26 years of hearing the song, I still like it. There's nothing new about it, but sometimes having those classic hits to go back to is a good thing.

Speaking of classics, here are some new cards of classic players from the Milwaukee Braves. I teased the Hank Aaron bat relic card on Twitter right after the show, and it got rave reviews. It's an early relic in terms of baseball card history, so perhaps it is a bat that Hank actually used in a game at some point as opposed to a bat he picked up in Upper Deck's offices, swung it once, and then it got called "event used."

The Spahn Cy Young award card is a super-thick manu-relic from about five years ago. Topps has gone to thinner manu-relics these days. I'm guessing that is a cost measure to save a few bucks on not buying real metal for the relic and saving a few pennies on card stock. 

The Hank Aaron Hall of Fame card just made me realize that there is an error in the Cramer Baseball Legends set that I wrote up for the 1980s Oddball blog yesterday. On the back of Aaron's card, it lists him as being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1981, but he was inducted in 1982. Perhaps that was meant to mean that he was voted into the Hall in 1981. Of course, the real issue I'm having is that his card was included in the 1980 Series 1 set. While he was certainly guaranteed of induction, did Cramer's first issuance of that 1980 card really say he would be inducted in 1981? I'm all confused now.

Finally, those chrome Bowman cards are all nice and shiny. I appreciate the effort at times from Topps/Bowman to keep baseball's past greats in our consciousness by including them in new card sets. It's fun to get new Spahn cards, even if it is the same photo from the 2015 Archives set. I do wish that Topps expanded its pre-World War II player list to go beyond just Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig to add some of the other greats of the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe an Al Simmons card? Or some of the guys in that Cramer Baseball Legends set that you never see in card sets these days like Rabbit Maranville. 

There's always room for improvement. As one law school professor I had once said, "There's nothing so impeccable that it can't be pecked at."

In 2009, Pearl Jam released its album Backspacer. The breakout hit from that album was this introspective ballad called "Just Breathe." Backspacer was a much more upbeat and optimistic and less political album than the band's previous efforts -- a fact that the band attributed to Barack Obama's election. 

The album was also the first time since 1998's Yield that the band worked with Atlanta-based producer Brendan O'Brien on a full album. Indeed, the album was finished at Southern Tracks studio here at Atlanta in April of 2009.

The show provided me an opportunity to stock up on some Ryan Braun cards. Braun is the longest-serving current Brewers player, having passed the ten-year mark with the team earlier this year. He's the team's all-time leader in home runs and, recently, became the team's all-time leader in grand slams. 

As far as other categories, he's third in career WAR (45.0), tied for second with Paul Molitor in batting average (.303), tied for sixth with Richie Sexson in OBP (.366), first in SLG (.544), second in OPS at .911 behind Prince Fielder's .929, fifth in games played with 1401, third in runs scored at 913, fifth in hits with 1642 (54 behind Jim Gantner), third in total bases, fourth in doubles, third in triples, second in RBI, fifth in walks, third in stolen bases, and second in extra base hits (having passed Paul Molitor earlier this year). 

He's creeping up on career totals that give him a potential Hall of Fame argument, or would had it not been for the Biogenesis stuff. Maybe that's what's preventing me from saying that I'd still collect his cards in another uniform, but he's not to that point yet. He's close.

This past Friday at work, four of us got into a very heated discussion about the fact that one of our co-workers did not see much difference between Pearl Jam and Journey. Needless to say, I lost a lot of respect for that misguided opinion coming from someone who otherwise is an educated man. 

I think the reason that he has such an incredibly wrong opinion is contained within another statement he made: that he's not a "live music guy." To me, that's the very essence of Pearl Jam. Their concert versions of songs simply are better than what gets laid down in the studio. The sound is warmer, less antiseptic. Vedder's vocals in concert are just better than what gets put down as a remixed studio track. 

Also, if you're not a "live music" guy or gal, your life priorities are wrong.

I found a vein of the Panini Diamond Kings as well. I think these were in a quarter box, which is slightly annoying for new issues but not as annoying as having a card called "originals" featuring Paul Molitor as a Minnesota DH. 

Still, if ever I were inclined to collect any particular Panini set, it would be the Diamond Kings set. I like the card stock with its canvas feel. The artwork and touch-ups taking these from being photos to make them into what look like paintings is of excellent quality -- much better than the garbage retouching that happens with the Donruss brand. 

On the other hand, that Aurora card of Jonathan Villar may be the most godawful insert of 2017. It's ugly as hell with all that orange coloration. Also, I am guessing that the Aurora insert is meant to signify some sort of sunrise or draw a parallel to a sunrise. If my sunrise has those colors appearing in that way, I'm thinking a nuclear bomb has been dropped.

This song is one that came off PJ's second album, Vs.. The song is a reaction to all the media coverage the band got in its early days, in part from "Spin", "Rolling Stone" and "Circus"; this led to the lyric, "SPIN me round, ROLL me over, f**kin' CIRCUS" in the song. The basic idea behind it is that the media used the band and bled them to "fill their pages."

I can understand how that would be a pain in the ass. No doubt. It's a rage song of guys tired of getting used to sell magazines. When PJ was at its height in the 1990s, people wanted that blood. They wanted that drama. Now that the band is more mature and its fans tend to be more mature, I think the band and its fans appreciate not the drama but the journey in getting there. 

But not the band Journey. 

The rich vein of Brewers cards I found also yielded some decent parallels, inserts, and autographs. Sure, the Carlos Lee card says he is on the Astros, and when the card was released he was. But he's shown on the Brewers so it's a Brewers card. For $1, I'll take that.

While I don't chase Wily Peralta cards and, therefore, have no real reason to pick up a silk card from 2013 serial numbered to 50, I think it was $0.50. For that, I'll take literally any serial numbered Brewers card that I don't have in my collection. Even a Gary Sheffield card.

The rest of these were all $0.50 or $1 or somewhere in that range. I got them all thrown in on a package deal with all the other dime and quarter cards, so I don't quite recall how much each was individually.  

Finally, "Light Years" was released in 2000 from the album Binaural. Recording this song was a chore from all indications. When it started out, it was too close to "Given to Fly" as a song. According to interviews the band has given, the song had its tempo changed, its keys changed, its drum part changed, and its arrangement changed dozens of times before it came together in its current form. 

The song itself is actually about the death of a friend. If you can find a copy of the lyrics, it is worth it to read them. At various times, the band has dedicated the song to Diane Muus of Sony Music (a friend of the band who died at age 33 in 1997) and to Gord Downie, whose band The Tragically Hip was playing their last show on the same night that Pearl Jam played Wrigley. Downie has been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer.

While the song is a bit of a downer, these cards are all really uppers. All of these are player collection cards for me. I think the Fielder manu-patch may have run me about $2, but the rest were all very affordable. 

As always, I recognize I am really lucky with how many card shows there are around Atlanta on a regular basis. With the recent Judge-mania gripping the hobby, there's some hope that this moment could be a real turning point for our hobby in bringing in new collectors -- particularly kids -- who are big fans of the young superstars of the day like Judge, Kris Bryant, and Mike Trout. 

Let's hope that Topps doesn't view this rise like the media viewed the rise of grunge -- in it only to suck all the blood and fun out of everything.

Beats by Dayf

Earlier this week, I featured some cards that I got at my local card show. At that same show, Dayf from Cardboard Junkie -- who is looking svelte these days after losing about 40 pounds! -- reached out to me to see if I had more binders or sheets that I could spare. I don't have any spare binders at this point -- not while I'm trying to figure out how many binders I'll need for all the inserts and parallels from Topps, at least. But, I do have a bunch of sheets still sitting in a pile waiting for use.

So, I grabbed a big stack of the sheets and piled them into my car. Dave found me at the show parked in front of the dime boxes -- per usual -- and we chatted for awhile. Once we both finished up at the show, we went out to our cars and got the sheets into his car. Then Dave handed me a brown paper bag and said, "I hope you can use some of these."

Dave, there were a couple dozen I could use. To thank you, kind sir, I thought, "how about some Aphex Twin music, since I'm pretty sure you like them." Off we go.

Avril 14th

This video for the song "Avril 14th" is listed as the top track on Spotify for Aphex Twin. This song is just a piano solo -- a hauntingly beautiful one at that. 

As an aside and in case you don't know (because I didn't), Aphex Twin is really just one Irishman called Richard David James, who has also recorded under the names AFX, Blue Clax, Bradley Strider, The Universal Indicator, Brian Tregaskin, The, Smojphace, GAK, Karen Tregaskin, Patrick Tregaskin, Martin Tressider, PBoD (Phonic Boy on Dope), Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Q-Chastic, Dice Man, The Tuss, and Soit-P.P. Wikipedia says that James is "known for his influential and idiosyncratic work in electronic music styles such as IDM and acid techno in the 1990s.

Let's start with Bowman Heritage from the early 2000s. As the nostalgia ball got rolling and Topps was looking for new and different ways to (a) issue more cards and (b) protect its copyrights in its past card designs from interlopers like "Fleer Vintage" outright copying the 1971 Topps design, Bowman Heritage was a natural way of doing so. My only surprise these days is that Bowman Archives hasn't come out as a set as well.

Frankly, that would be a decent set for a few years. Of course, that won't happen because it wouldn't be a high-end set for which Topps could charge $750 a box.

Windowlicker

When I'm trying to find out about an artist about which I don't know much, I often turn to Wikipedia and Google. Wikipedia here for this song provides a real insight both into the song and into how obsessive Aphex Twin's fans are. 

If you watch the video above, be careful if you aren't real keen on profanity. As Wikipedia's obsessives point out, "[t]here are 127 uses of profanity in the dialogue segment of the video (which is under 4 minutes), including 44 uses of the word 'f**k'. This averages to more than one use of profanity every two seconds."

Hilarious. Seriously -- it's quite funny.

For some reason, these cards seem appropriate here. The shininess of the mid-1990s goes well with the beats and rhythms of this song. The Jaha is a 1997 New Pinnacle Base Artist's Proof which fell one per 39 packs, according to the always useful Baseball Card Pedia. New Pinnacle was, apparently, the first product ever to include the printing plates in the packages for the cards.

Wax the Nip

The odd visage of Richard James's appears regularly on many of Aphex Twin's album covers and videos. According to James, he did this because it ran counter to the way most techno artists operated -- they did not want to be recognized, so he did the exact opposite. 

This song is on ...I Care Because You Do, which is an album that Dave suggested I listen to when I was looking for something different last weekend. I picked this song because of its name. Of course.

I put the Corey Hart in with some real live 1990s cards because it really is a throwback to Upper Deck's more basic designs of its earlier era. Remember how groundbreaking it was to have top-quality photography on cards -- like Upper Deck and, when it first came out, Stadium Club? To be fair, Stadium Club isn't bad these days, so I'm not complaining there. 

It's humorous that Kelly Wunsch got a card for striking out five guys in one inning. It takes a new level of incompetence either on his part or his catcher's part or both to hit five Ks in an inning. To be fair, though, Wunsch made it to the major leagues as a lefty specialist in the early 2000s. He's now a home builder in Austin, Texas, and he married a girl from Wisconsin.

Tha

It's over 9 minutes of Aphex Twin from his first album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92. James got his start in the world of music by being a DJ isolated in Ireland and unable to find the kind of music he wanted to play. As a result, he started making his own.

Over his career, he notoriously held a great deal of antipathy toward the press. As he got older and had a family, though, he mellowed and ended up giving an extended interview to Philip Sherburne on Pitchfork.com which is intriguing to read.

These stars of the 1980s Brewers -- well, okay, 4 Paul Molitor cards and a Cecil Cooper Archives reprint from 2002 -- belong with early Aphex Twin. They are classic cards in many respects -- even the very recent Stadium Club. 

On that glossy All-Star card, though, I'm betting Molitor is checking out a girl. Just saying.

Analogue Bubblebath Vol I

One of James's very early songs is Analogue Bubblebath Vol. I. It came out in 1991 -- twenty-six years ago! -- and it's very much in a product of that era's electronic music. I don't know if it is the right nomenclature to call this trance, but it sure does put me into something of a trance. 

That last sentence took about 4 minutes to type. I just kind stared off into space for a while. No, I'm not kidding. Just listening to the music and taking it in. I've never really listened to this kind of music all that much before -- I'm a lyrics person when it comes to music, so these instrumental songs are a new world for me.

Not a new world, but all appreciated, are the mix of Upper Deck and Bowman above. Ah, I remember the days three years ago when I first got back into collecting and decided to collect Jean Segura as a player collection. That was funny. I knew that it would end poorly in Milwaukee, and it did.

In fact, the first card show I attended back in 2014, I was at this one guy's table and found about 5 or 6 Segura relics and autographs cheaply and bought them all up. The guy looked at me funny and said, "What's up with Segura? Why are you buying all those?" All I could respond was, "I'm a Brewers fan, and I have high hopes for him."

He then tried to get me to buy a bunch of 1989 Topps Brewers.

Quoth by Polygon Window

Yeah, here's the whole Quoth album. Often, reading the comments on YouTube causes a loss of IQ points, but sometimes they are quite funny. A "David Jackman" said that this album is "so hypnotic, my brain can taste it. it tastes of metal and wood chip." Something called indigopleasuredome said that this album is "the 4 o'clock last-act-rave- Before the musicfestival ends - kind of pulse."

Having never been to a rave, perhaps that is true.

Finishing off the cards from Dave, we have a Chrome Gallardo, an A&G Braun, a Power Players Gomez, and an Orange Wily.

That last card sounds much more menacing to me right now than it should. It must be the trance/dance/techno bender my brain is on right now. In a number of articles, I've seen Richard James's music called "acid house." Is that because it makes you feel like you're on a trip?

Dave, help?

Or is always like this?

Thanks for the great cards, Dave!