Japanese Rumba



I just got back from the post office, and I feel like I just got a huge breath of fresh air.
I bought some stupid stuff this week.
I'm not patient enough to scour yard sales very often. I always see the same 500 records at all of the thrift stores. Their junk jewerly is too expensive. The car trips are too expensive.
And so it is that I sometimes find myself on ebay buying the most pointless things.
This week it was 78s. Japanese 78s. For awhile now my feeble mind has been intrigued by the simple concept that America isn't the only country with a history of recorded music.
I can't count how many times I've put a record on my Califone and tried to imagine someone buying this record, hearing this song for the first time, hating it, returning it, or liking it, playing it over and over driving the neighbors crazy. I don't know why recently, it is all of the sudden so much more exciting to imagine this taking place in some other country. I guess In my past life I didn't travel much either.
I love this music. I've been playing these 8 sides, over and over again. There's a "Japanese Rumba," a Korean folk song, a song in English, and some 1930s Japanese pop songs. Every single one of them is thrilling to me.
Am I just getting off on the obscurity of it? Am I secretly thrilled that even less people care about this than all of my other records? I feel like I'd be too embarrassed to mention this interest in conversation. I'm writing this whole entry out of shame.
Blahhhh I'm really into listening to foreign 78 rpm records.
Please, just shut up, I bet you secretly listen to Ashlee Simpson.
Well yeah, I mean.. I do... but
I want to play these one more time. And I want to look for some Italian ones this time...