Spanish label Vampisoul, they who brought you the aforementioned Elia y Elizabeth reissues (so good), is currently selling a bunch of their old CD stock for cheap, even with postage from Madrid. Lots of great vintage Peruvian, Colombian, African stuff, all lovingly preserved and presented, with ample liner notes in many cases. And there's a CD with a goat playing the congas on the cover that makes my son crack up. I spent double figures including lightning-fast international shipping** and ended up with a gluttonous feast of digital wonder on my doorstep.
One of the deeply groovy CDs* from the Peruvian pack had a feature that I appreciated:
Why yes, that IS an inner sleeve with rounded edges. Is there any need for an inner sleeve at all in a CD case, much less one with rounded edges? Not at all, but it's a nice detail and ups the verisimilitude factor for us cheapskates who like obsolete perfect sound objects instead of cruddy warped half-ass modern vinyls at ten times the price.
One more small delight and then I'll stop: Getting packages sent from abroad! Yesterday I got a box full of Hario V60 02 coffee filters straight from Japan. The packages are delightful (photo swiped from sincere.coffee):
It is great to see the phrases "Flexible coffee style!" and "Why cone shape?" every morning. On top of that, the box was filled out with a Japanese newspaper, so I got to look at the stock page, a picture of Hello Kitty advertising something, more ads, lots of things to explain to the boy.
*Does "groovy" work as a dad joke about CDs? OK, how about "so pitted"? Wait, what year is this anyway?
**It is sad that at this point, international shipping is probably faster than shipping from the next ZIP code over. Mandatory political reference: That gross dude aimed for full-on fascism but forgot the bit about making the trains run on time?!
