Hip-Hop Culture and Calvin & Hobbes have both taught me alot of important lessons,pehaps the most crucial being a philosophy common to them both: there's treasure everywhere. The endless quest for that perfect break requires, first and foremost, an open mind. You've gotta un-learn what Rock Orthodoxy has told you 'bout The Canon. Diggin' in the crates is all about taking a risk. Infact, it's about having fun. Buying a re-issue of Third/Sister Lovers by Big Star for £14.99 isn't fun. You get a pretty good LP out of it, but you knew that already, 'cos Mojo Magzine gave it a 4* review. Buying a battered copy of a piece of crap lookin' Liberace LP for £2 and finding a great funk track on it...that's fun. (In a really nerdy way. It's relative.)
One of the really fun things about that hip-hop mentality is finding unusual albums, ignored albums, even maligned albums, by big-name artists (especially big-name artists deemed 'uncool' by The Orthodox Rock Police), which actually turn out to be really great. If it were up to The Orthodox Rock Police, we woulda never heard Electric Mud by Muddy Waters, or all those great psyche-fuzz 45s that Fats Domino put out, or 'I Got The' by Labi Siffre, or even Elvis' 'A Little Less Conversation'. They were saved from obscurity by open-minded, happy-go-lucky crate-diggers, people who were judging what they found by a whole different set of prejudice-free criteria, ie: "check out the drums on this", people listening in a different way. Often it is the work of big name acts which is uncharacteristic of the sound they were commercially succesful with that suffers the most disrespectful, ignorant treatment. Hip-hop has taught us better than that. It tells us that there's treasure everywhere, and that we shoud be prepared to look everywhere for it. To that ends, enjoy Sammy Davis Jr's funky-ass version of 'Hi Heel Sneakers', from his totally un-loved 1970 Motown LP,'Something For Everyone!
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