Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange)

Ch-ch-changes, don’t tell them to grow up and out of it

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange)

Ch-ch-changes, where’s your shame?

You’ve left us up to our necks in it

Time may change me

But I can’t trace time

~ Bowie (as anyone knows!)

As I prepare myself for a long winter’s nap (known in less flowery prose as X-mas vacation), the track has been pretty quiet, and will remain so through the end of the year. Give me this, dear readers: you can’t fault me for not being honest about it! However, there have been some small improvements made recently to the environs of the track which promise to make things a little more pleasant for racing in the year to come (that would be 1987 for any of you that are keeping “track!”)

I have already gone on at length about the necessary changes and challenges made to my household out of necessity in unwinding a near 20 year occupation of a large workshop when the landlord’s new property “management” company decided they could do better with a “different arrangement.” These have included negative changes such as relegating my beloved Chevy pickup truck to outdoor parking, among others. Now I think its time for me to – as the old song goes – accentuate the positive and point out some by-products of this forced re-allocation of assets that aren’t so negative. In fact, There are ways in which The Garage Betrayal actually lit a fire under my ass to get me to do some things that I had been planning to do for quite a while. Here are a few of those things…

I don’t expect that anybody studies the structure of my basement, but if you have seen some of my previous videos you may notice that something is missing from this corner… namely my dad’s old easy chair, which has been sitting down here in the basement for over 15 years. Ever since gaining the house to myself in 2017, the chair was basically useless down here, and for years I had been intending to move it upstairs, but the amount of effort involved in doing so didn’t seem worth the trouble. That all changed when Patrick and I had to take the rail off the stairwell wall and the door off its hinges in order to get my massive toolbox and a heavy washing machine down the stairs to their new resting places.

Since that work was already done, it didn’t seem like much of an additional effort to raise the easy chair upstairs to my home office. That entailed rearranging some lighting and some furniture in that room as well, and I have to say the end result has been extremely pleasing. There is now a comfortable place for my visitors to sit with me in my creative space upstairs (this is room in which I write and assemble the blog you are now reading), and I’ve already put it to good use on several occasions. Equally important is that an unneeded piece of furniture has been removed from the space it occupied in the basement, which has the added benefit of freeing up space for a possible expansion of the table and the diorama surrounding the track. It still remains to be seen where we’re going from here, but if I decide to stay, this is 1 important step in that potential expansion.

The next project, then, is this old record player, which is currently sitting on a beautiful but buried end table with a shelf on top of it which is completely inappropriate for the purpose. There is a corner of the basement immediately outside the Oddly Angled Room which is shaped in such a way that it is virtually impossible to use. I am currently seeking a perfect piece of furniture to put here which, once I find it, Should serve as both the platform for the record player and it’s detachable stereo speakers as well as a cabinet for the records that I play on it.

Just recently I thought I had found the perfect piece, when my friend Patrick sent me this listing on Facebook marketplace. Alas, I wasn’t able to contact the owner in time before it was sold. Too bad, it was a perfect size and was beautiful besides. But there will be others, and once I find something that will clear the entire West side of the basement wall for that expansion.

Equally important: this plan will give this old record player a proper place to be used down here, and I plan on making this oddly shaped “corner” of the basement a little 1960’s era “shrine” complete with a few posters and record jackets on the walls above it. Getting a jump start on that plan, I recently was fortunate enough to acquire a fantastic original single for my record collection which I was amazed I got for the price I did.

“Pre-punk” is one of those retroactive labels that critics invented long after the fact, but it’s a useful way to describe the songs and attitudes that quietly laid the groundwork for punk before anyone had a name for it. These were the songs that carried a certain rawness, defiance, or stripped-down urgency — from garage rock snarls by bands like The Sonics and The Standells to tough, streetwise anthems like The Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law.” They weren’t punk yet, but they had the DNA: short, sharp structures, a sense of rebellion baked into the rhythm, and an energy that felt more real than the polished mainstream. Pre-punk is the space where punk’s attitude was already alive, waiting for the right cultural moment to explode.” To that end, I acquired an excellent original pressing of that famous single. Considering what I paid for it, I didn’t expect it to be in such excellent condition, but when it arrived I was surprised to find it was virtually pristine. This is a great addition to my collection, and one I hope to build on in the future to expand my collection of 1950s rockabilly 45’s into the following decade!

Once again I must give a shout-out to my great friend Patrick, who made all of this possible, including the old record player! If you’re reading this, buddy, thanks again: you helped me out of a jam when I needed it most, and I couldn’t have done it without you!

And that, I fear, is about all I have to offer you at this time, dear readers. Rest assured, however, there are projects underway in the toy room which will be brought to the track and to this blog shortly after the beginning of the new year. Here is just a small batch of photographic evidence of such, but there’s more to come!

This will be my last post until that brief few days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. May this holiday season find you in good spirits, and hopefully sharing it with family and loved ones, as your humble blogger hisself will be. Check in with me around NYE for more random thoughts and bizarre transmissions, because even in hard times, there’s always something going on at Drag City!