Eric Gale, Ginseng Woman (1977)
Some 20 years ago I moved to Wellington and started raiding the second-hand vinyl stores, there were a few of them then – and you’d also find people giving away whole- or part-collections, garage sales, all sorts. I guess that’s still the case, but the stores are shrinking. Limited market. Back then it seemed like a paradise – particularly because vinyl had no real buzz around it. Quite the opposite if anything. There were record fans, and people that retained their collections, but for the most part people had switched to CDs or were just and only CD buyers. I was buying up CDs galore, and still some tapes, but it was records I craved. (In fact, yes, for about three years there, I was buying across all three formats – I had my own system for whether it was worth having only on tape for the car, on CD or LP or both/all three…) And so anyway, at this time I was also discovering the solo albums by session players. A name like Eric Gale was known to me primarily because of his work with Paul Simon – though a scan of his other credits (some 500 albums he played on apparently) reveals he was on other albums in my collection. But I bought this (for $1) because I loved his playing on One Trick Pony and I love that album – and I bought this album (for $1) because it featured a bunch of other key session guys (Bob James is on there too) and this was Gale’s turn to be a leader. And this album sounds part-glorious, part-dated. And that’s just okay by me. That was exactly what I was after back then. And – arguably – now.

Sample Track: Ginseng Woman

The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown