Cheap Kiss Records

Note: I recently wrote this article as part of a neighborhood magazine and thought I'd include it as a blog entry on my website.  These guys are class acts working for a great record store.

If you spot a Toyota Venza with the license plate “I BY VYNL” whizzing around the west suburbs of Chicago, consider introducing yourself to Chris (Grey) Ellensohn, who – along with business partner Pete Kuehl – owns Cheap Kiss Records, a store that’s dedicated to buying and selling vinyl and cultivating a love for music for the next generation.  Ellensohn and Kuehl want the world to know: records are still a thing. 

Yes, records, as in those black twelve-inch platters whose grooves contain the stuff of magic.  You may not be one yourself, but chances are you know someone who’s into albums or who laments the collection he traded away for a couple of cases of beer back in the late 80s.  Vinyl is making a serious comeback these days, and now accounts for about twenty percent of revenue for physical recorded music formats, and Cheap Kiss is part of the reason.

Chris, who by day works at Northwestern Mutual, started the business with Kuehl ten years ago after winning an eBay auction to purchase Platterpus Records out of Louisville, KY.  They changed names to Cheap Kiss Records in 2012 and now have two stores: one at Cornerstone Books in Villa Park and another in Glenview at the Rock House, along with a regular inventory at a Schaumburg warehouse where they conduct on-line business and frequent warehouse sales.

What does a normal day look like in the glamorous world of buying and selling vinyl?  Today, Chris is going to meet with an elderly man who purports to own somewhere around 5000 LPs, all in mint condition.  Will it pan out?  You never know.  Chris’s favorite moment is knocking on a would-be seller’s door, because at that point all things are possible.  Sorting through a few boxes of musty LPs might just lead to something amazing, like the time Chris found a copy of an album by the local metal band Amethyst, the most expensive record either Chris or Pete has ever sold.

When approaching a would-be seller, Ellensohn is quick to empathize.  “We understand that albums can be emotional.”  Sometimes a seller can’t pull the trigger, and that’s okay.  “They know that when the time comes, I’ll be here.”

Chris claims he can spot a vinyl collector in just a few seconds.  What are the qualifications?  “Typically a male, age forty to sixty, sporting a concert t-shirt and no females within fifteen feet.”  All joking aside, there’s a certain air that vinyl collectors share, and it’s one that Ellensohn knows well he says because he’s “one of them.”   

“You meet all sort of cool people, actually,” and he meets them in all sort of places.  Chris isn’t a shy guy, and he’s happily approached people at gas stations or concerts to inquire about their interest in vinyl.  At a pop-up sale at the Arcada Theatre last month, Pete and Chris met a woman in her sixties who regaled them with stories about her concert-going days, when she witnessed The Beatles at Comiskey Park and a double bill featuring The Who and The Kinks. 

Chris and Pete don’t have a goal of amassing copious amounts of records – their aim is more virtuous than that.  They view buying and selling vinyl as a way of repurposing LPs and keeping them out of landfills and on people’s turntables.  “We want records to be listened to,” says Chris.  “Vinyl is meant to be played.  It does no good sitting in an attic somewhere.” 

And what about vinyl as a medium in a world in which streaming services can provide almost any song at the touch of a button?  Chris is reminded of something a young woman once told him: “You should have to work for something this good.”  Just as sharing a playlist isn’t nearly as meaningful as creating the mixtapes you once compiled for old flames, vinyl helps the listener connect to the music in ways that streaming can’t.

On April 21st Cheap Kiss Records will host Record Store Day at their Cornerstone Books location.

Elton John's Long-Ass Tour

It’s a pretty ballsy move for a 70-year-old to announce a three-year tour. Will Elton John hang in there long enough to reach the finish line of his farewell tour in 2021? And for a guy who’s calling it a day because he needs “to dedicate more time to raising” his children, isn’t he sort of blowing off the next three years in that department? I’ll refrain from judging further and bank on him to at least make it to 2019, as I laid down significant cash to see him next February, by far the biggest lead-time I've ever allowed for a concert. I haven’t really been a fan of his music since the mid-80s, and I’m attending the concert mostly because Elton John was an essential component to my musical upbringing, by far the most influential artist in my formative years. (Also, he’s performing twenty minutes from my house.) The soundtrack of my youth includes much of his early output, and I fondly recall purchasing his first greatest hits collection at the local K-Mart during a snowstorm in the winter of 1980, soon followed by a piano book that inspired my piano playing for the next several years.

But generally, Elton lost me after 1984’s Breaking Hearts, the follow-up to his surprise comeback a year earlier and the last album that featured his falsetto voice, nailing it on songs like “Burning Buildings” and the title track, and balancing the ballads nicely with gritty songs like “Restless” and “Who Wears These Shoes?” After this release, he sailed off a cliff into adult contemporary schlock, still able to churn out a beautiful melody and occasionally compose a gem – the song “Believe” from Made in England is a standout – but generally wading in the calm, safe waters of Disney and VH1. I stayed away and didn’t purchase another album of his until just recently, when I added Ice on Fire and Leather Jackets just to round out my vinyl collection, but I say it with authority: both of those albums blow.

I saw Elton on that tour of 1984. The French hornist from my high school band drove me and my buddies Kurt and Mike to East Troy, Wisconsin, where Elton performed at Alpine Valley Music Theatre, opening with “Tiny Dancer” and “Levon” before flash-forwarding to his current releases. A beautiful woman in an evening dress stood in front of us, and during the song “Blue Eyes” she gushed with excitement, strolled all the way to the front of the aisle and tossed a bouquet of roses onto the stage. Later, when Elton picked up the bouquet, she started weeping. He didn’t have quite the same effect on me, but I liked the show, though the benefit of hindsight and live recordings from that time show that it wasn’t Elton at his best. He was aided tremendously by the return of his classic band of Nigel Olsson, Davey Johnstone and Dee Murray, but the addition of a synth player Fred Mandell, who layered cheesy string to just about every other song, was a detriment, and Elton yielded a bad attitude, announcing at one point that they would play songs from Too Low For Zero, and that they might as well “get them over with.”  Nonetheless, it was Elton at the end of his purest voice, and I’m glad to have seen him before he had to change keys and employ numerous backup singers to handle the high notes of his 70s recordings. 

Since then, I’ve been tempted to see him numerous times, but something kept telling me to let him go and not witness his decline. I was ready to pull the trigger three years ago here in Chicago, but car trouble kept me from following through. Alas, he opened up with “Funeral for a Friend,” and my brother who attended the show said that song alone was worth the price of admission.

So now I’m in.  Or…I’m in a year from now.  Here’s hoping the piano player can hang in there for at least another.  And here’s hoping that this almost-fifty piano player can too. You never know.

A Poor Batch of Oscar Nominees

Was it just a year ago that we were discussing the merits of Lion, Hell or High Water, Arrival, Manchester by the Sea, La La Land and Fences?  I crammed in a boat-load of movies between November and February last winter and was genuinely impressed with the lot.  Prior years weren’t too shabby either, with 2015 bringing us Spotlight, Bridge of Spies and The Big Short, and the preceding year offering Birdman, Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood.  In short, well-done movies – some of them groundbreaking – with interesting approaches, compelling characters, and important topics.

Not so this year.  I’ve seen eight out of the nine nominees for Best Picture this Oscar season, and only one of them rises to the level that one should expect from Academy Awards nominees.

Recognizing that I don’t see more than a few dozen films a year, here are my favorites for 2017:

Get Out

Wind River

All the Money in the World

I, Tonya

Sadly, only one made it in: the incomparable Get Out, a smart, creepy, important, entertaining and well-executed movie.  It would be a contender for the top prize any given year, but when compared to the other seven entries that I’ve seen, it’s the only one that actually should win.  Which means it probably won’t.

Wind River never stood a chance since it was released by the Weinstein Company in the midst of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse scandal, and Ridley Scott’s reshooting of Kevin Spacey’s scenes in All the Money in the World apparently wasn’t enough to sway voters (perhaps the salary controversy surrounding Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams was a factor?)  Why I, Tonya wasn’t included as a nominee is perplexing, as it was a consistently entertaining story with sharp, snappy dialogue and a lead character who achieved the difficult feat of being both unlikable and sympathetic.

Unfortunately, when compared to those four films, most of this year’s nominees fall far short, at best likable morsels and at worst laborious and flawed.

The Darkest Hour was a great performance surrounded by a poor script with unnecessary scenes and characters and a plot that lacked a compelling arc.  I liken it to The King’s Speech, except there isn’t one monumental speech but three, deflating whatever emotion the final speech was supposed to elicit. 

Better was the film Dunkirk, though this too was flawed with a dearth of urgency despite the obvious importance of the subject matter.  I kept waiting to see an aerial shot of hundreds of boats approaching the shores of France, but was instead led to believe that a dozen vessels rescued over a quarter of a million soldiers.  A missed opportunity.

Similarly, Spielberg’s The Post lacked the suspense and exigency that the real-life drama encompassed.  Coined a political thriller, it contained the politics but not the thrill.  Worse, at no time during the film did I believe that it was taking place in the 1970s.  Instead, it looked like a movie made by present-day actors dressed in 1970s garb.  Why this is the case I can’t entirely say, except that the movie looked too clean, lacking the grit and sweat that other films – Argo comes to mind – have managed to capture.  When one considers how good a newspaper drama can be – Spotlight, All the President’s Men ­– The Post is a disappointment.

My wife, son and I all saw The Shape of Water on Christmas morning, and to a man, we thought it was among the stupidest films we’d ever seen.  I’ve talked to others who’ve really enjoyed it, and it certainly has received numerous critical accolades, so perhaps there’s something seriously flawed not with the movie but with the Heinz family!  Or, perhaps we simply couldn’t accept what was – in essence – a schlocky 1950s monster movie in Oscar-buzz clothing.

Call Me By Your Name benefitted from an excellent ending (I wish Michael Stuhlbarg had been nominated), but suffered from a first half that was coy and plodding. (By the way, Stuhlbarg acted in not one, not two, but three Best Picture nominees this year.  Not bad!)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri began as such an irreverent and funny film with completely unbelievable characters that it was impossible for me to switch gears when the film expected me to take later scenes seriously.  In short, it was disjointed, though again, I’ve talked to some people who really liked it.

And then there’s Lady Bird, an enjoyable coming-of-age story with good performances, but it covers way too much territory and has some oddly extraneous scenes (Father Leviatch’s illness, for example).  I can accept this as an Ocscar nominee as long as it isn’t seriously considered.

Does Paul Thomas Anderon’s Phantom Thread rise to the level of legitimate Oscar contender?  I don’t know.  It’s the one nominated film that I haven’t seen.  I loved Anderson’s Magnolia and really disliked There Will Be Blood and The Master, so it could go either way.

But in the meantime, I will be pulling hard for Jordan Peele and Get Out.  Throw an Oscar in for actor Daniel Kaluuya and I’ll be a happy man (though one could hardly be upset to see Oldman take the prize).

Here’s hoping 2018 births a better batch of films.

Water Shortages Could Make Illinoisans Rich

Today CNN reported on the water crisis in Capetown, where water could run out as soon as April 16th – a day coined "Day Zero" – and how the city is struggling to keep its residents from using more than the daily allotted water amount of approximately thirteen gallons a day. This isn’t a crisis that couldn’t have been predicted, and it’s certainly one we’ll see over and over again in the coming decades as ocean levels rise, severe droughts increase, snowmelt declines, populations grow, and underground aquifers are tapped out. One need only look to recent water shortages in California and Atlanta to understand that the water issue isn’t going to circumvent the United States, though the U.S. may be in a better position than many countries due to financial and natural resources.

The biggest of these natural resources is, of course, the Great Lakes, which account for about one-fifth of the fresh water on the planet, and even though Illinois is currently suffering net-population loss as its citizens flee high taxes, poor services and inept politicians, circumstances that have nothing to do with politics could in time reverse the trend and make Illinois a Destination State. According to the The Chicago Tribune, the fastest-growing state in 2017 was Idaho, followed by Nevada and Utah, with Arizona and Florida in the top five, places where the long-term access to a reliable water supply is in question, and in ten or twenty years it’s conceivable that water could become a determining factor in the migration of U.S. citizens (and also, I believe, a resource over which wars will be fought before this century concludes).

So I’m going to take the long view. I figure it’s only a matter of time before people’s eyes roam northward, and all need to do is hang onto my 1928 bungalow whose value has been stagnant for the past several years, bide my time and wait for rising temperatures to smooth out the more extreme elements of Illinoisan winters and for fresh water supplies to plummet in the south and west where populations are currently increasing.

And then I’m going to cash in, baby.

In the meantime, could we please start taking fresh water supply planning seriously?

Nah. Lower taxes and tougher immigration laws will fix everything. 

Dining at Topolobampo

It was a mere five years ago or so when my son Sam and I flipped through the TV channels and wound up tuning into PBS, where we became entranced with an enthusiastic geeky guy singing the praises of Mexican cuisine. Rick Bayless’s One Plate at a Time had us at “cochinita pibil,” whatever the hell that was. It hardly mattered. It was his passion that roped us in, infectious and encouraging, and like foot soldiers of an oddly ebullient military commander, we were ready to go wherever he led us.

Except to his flagship restaurant, apparently. Yes, about four years ago my wife and I managed to make it down to Chicago for a brunch at Frontera Grill, and twice now in the last year we’ve purchased Cubano sandwiches at Bayless’s O’Hare location, Tortas Frontera. But we’d never been to the Granddaddy of the Bayless franchise, the upscale Topolobampo, so when my son had one request for this 16th birthday – dining at Topolobampo (the name of which I didn’t master until Saturday as we were driving into Chicago) – we decided to take the plunge. 

It helped that we were a group of four instead of our usual family of five, because I’m not used to spending bookoo bucks on dining experiences. I’m simply not wired that way. Hell, my personal wine chart with a y-axis representing the price of a bottle of wine and an x-axis representing my happiness results in a straight vertical line. I like it all. When I “splurge” on a Wednesday afternoon and decide to get a lunch at Chipotle for nine dollars, I’m happy as a clam downing my sofritas, black beans and brown rice. Lovely. Until Saturday night, I believe the most I ever spent on a dinner was somewhere around $120 per person, drinks included. On Saturday we exceeded that by a considerable margin.

Our jovial yet subtle John Goodman-like waiter made the pitch for the newly introduced “Winter Beach Vacation” dinner, and all four of us took the bait (see what I did there?), enjoying seven courses ranging from crab taco (like no other taco I’ve ever had) to seared scallops to octopus, all delectable, though my favorite was probably the lobster chilpachole. Our meal was orchestrated perfectly, neither rushed nor tedious, with just enough time to enjoy our dish, let it settle for a bit, and then move on to the next course. Plates were retrieved at the right time, drinks were replenished timely (the house margarita was superb), and all four of us enjoyed a delicious, leisurely dinner in about two and a half hours.

Originally my daughter was supposed to fly up and join us for the weekend, but when she had to back out due to a school requirement, we invited my son’s friend, whose palette has expanded considerably since our camping trip in 2012 when his diet was restricted to…I think bread and Chips Ahoy. His attendance on Saturday night worked out perfectly, because what ever else you can say about Topolobampo, it isn’t obviously friendly to vegetarians; my daughter would have had to have put in a special request, and I’m not sure what the results would have been. Probably wonderful. But something to think about if you’re a veggie looking for fine Mexican dining.

So was it worth it? I’ve written before about how haphazard we humans value things. We’ll drive three blocks further to save a few cents on gas or spend weeks pricing out the best deal on a grill or refrigerator, and then think nothing of shelling out $12 on a martini or $100 plus on a concert ticket. In short, we are inconsistent, and we’re all a bit different on where we’re willing to spend money. For me, the value I get out of watching a good movie for $10 exceeds that of seeing a musical for $125. For others, it’s just the reverse.

An experience at a place like Topolobampo is a once a year or every other year event for me. Mind you, I have three kids in college and a new sewer coming this spring. There may come a time when our disposable income is such that we can enjoy a high-end restaurant more regularly, but I think it has much more to do with my mindset and my upbringing. My German-Lutheran Midwestern roots taught me to watch my wallet and choose carefully, a practice that has served me well in life, but I still pick my spots and manage to spend money on life experiences where appropriate.

Last Saturday was one of them, one plate at a time. Seven of them. And three margaritas. Say it with me: muy beuno.