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!

Binders for Brewers

Atlanta is the home of a few of us bloggers and online card people. Dayf of Card Junk and I both live on the north side of Atlanta, and to be fair, both of us spend a lot of free time (and probably some not-so-free time) on Twitter too. He's @CardJunk and I'm @OffHiatusBBC. 

We met up today at the twice-monthly card show on Windy Hill Road in Atlanta and did a little trade off: I got Brewers cards, and he got binders and pages from that massive bunch of binders that I got from my in-laws for Christmas.

He's been documenting his side of the swap on Twitter.  Here's a photo of his car trunk with the binders in it:

Thanks to @OffHiatusBBC I'm set for binders for at least a couple months pic.twitter.com/NBPbbAmpn5

— Space Combat Junkie (@CardJunk) February 7, 2016

I also grabbed a stack of the pages that were in the binders and brought them along as well.  So, what did I give up? Here's the totals:

final total from @OffHiatusBBC - 32 binders and 417 pages

— Space Combat Junkie (@CardJunk) February 7, 2016

I am just happy that these binders and sheets are not heading to Waste Management, to be fair. I have probably another 50 binders left -- some of which I'll be using -- and I have at least another 1500-2000 pages left. Again, I'll use some of those, but I'll probably trade more of them to Dave at some point in the future.

And, why wouldn't I trade some to him when I get such great stuff in return? Like some Milwaukee Braves:



I get so tied up with trying to stay organized in my Brewers that my Milwaukee Braves collection's organization is somewhat lacking. I need to get more organized on cards issued after the Braves moved from Milwaukee. I have a bunch that need to get into binders and be organized properly. The Hank Aaron from 1999 reminds me of that. The other cards are great additions to my player collections or, perhaps, that neglected post-Milwaukee move group of Braves.

But the Braves were just the tip of the iceberg, because, as Dave put it, "When I saw Bowman, I started cleaning out stuff for you."



Dave was not kidding about that, pretty clearly! This highlights my lack of Bowman from about 1993 to about 2009 or so, I guess -- which coincides well with the cards readily available at the local card show, not coincidentally at all.

Surprisingly, though, there were more cards besides all those. Seriously. The newest one:



Ryan Braun is grimacing as he's about to slide on his own name, wondering why the word "Perspective" is floating around behind him on the basepaths. In all seriousness, this subset is filled with good photos. 

I don't know what differentiates it from the good photos you get with Stadium Club, though, nor do I understand how this photo of Braun sliding into third has anything to do with the "perspective" on the back of the card -- which highlights Braun's solo homer on September 6, 2015 making him the first Brewer with 7 or more seasons of 25 homers or more. I'd have liked this card more if the photo matched the "perspective" on the back: either show me Braun hitting the homer, or tell me what the story of this play is. 

Okay, the "get off my damn lawn" portion of this post is done. On to happier things.



First is this 1998 Topps "Minted in Cooperstown" parallel of Mike Fetters. I blame that 1984 Nestle set for begetting cards like this.



Dave even found a Robin Yount card that I need. I have the other Yount from this Topps Woolworth set from 1990, but I didn't have this one. That's a total win in my book. 

Finally, Dave found a bunch of Paul Molitor cards that I did not have:



That is my first Pacific Prism. To think that Panini feels the need to go with the aluminum foil versions of "Prizms" every year...now, obviously, that's to distract from the lack of logos and all. But, if we're going for distracting designs, no one did it better than Pacific.

Dave, thanks a ton for all these great cards. I know you're a big time "Brony", so in honor of that...

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