A Vinyl Haul From Legend Records

One of the great vinyl stores in Ottawa is Legend Records. I use to frequent there all of the time when I was living in the west end, as it used to be in the Lincoln Fields shopping mall. Well, they've moved to a new store on Wellington Street since I moved to Toronto. And today I decided to give myself a little treat and check it out.

The new store is, quite simply, huge. There's at least four anti-chambers in the place, which is a big improvement over the old store -- where some of the records were crammed into cupboard beneath the shelves in the tiny space that they used to have. The guy who runs the place now has dividers noting what artist is in that section along the shelves, which makes it a lot easier to find what you're looking for.

So here's what I picked up:

I got the Carpenters' Now and Then album. Cheesy, I know, but one of my aunts used to have this on 8-track and I gave it a good wearing out as a kid. Eager to see if the record still holds up to my memories.

I'm on a bit of a Blue Oyster Cult kick lately, and while I know that their first four or five albums are probably the best, I picked up the Some Enchanted Evening live set, and Imaginos, which I'm curious to hear as I understand it is a bit of a return to form after the horrendous Club Ninja.

I also managed to score Chicago's V and VII, which pretty much rounds out my collection of said band. (I still have a few gaps post-Terry Kath but I'm not too interested in filling them in.) I now own pretty much everything they did from 1969 to 1978, which are the key years.

That's pretty much it, though I was tempted to scour for more. Early Christmas gift to myself I guess.

I should mention that the rarities in the store are amazing. The dude who runs the place happens to have a rare promo copy of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" on 7-inch. As many of you may know, the group decided to forgo releasing that song as a single at the last minute, so that's a particularly cool thing to have in stock. I didn't really go rummaging, but there's a section of Beatles vinyl ... both in mono and in stereo!

When I was buying the records, I mentioned that I hadn't been there in awhile as I had moved to Toronto for two years. It turns out the owner's daughter moved there, and doesn't like it too much. She's having a hard time making new friends down there, and kind of misses Ottawa. That's sort of parallel to my story, I guess. Funny how these things line up.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some vinyl to listen to. :-)