A while back, I talked about my newfound love for the turntable. Since then, I’ve been slowly building my record collection. I tend to stop by record stores occasionally and even thrift stores, though they can be sort of hit or miss or miss or miss. However, on a recent visit to a local thrift store with my girlfriend, Mindy, I stumbled across this gem:
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is Freedomburger by the New York Rock Ensemble. At first, the sheer hilarity of both the album title and the cover artwork overwhelmed me, but I didn’t want to waste my $1.99 on what was going to be, in all likelihood, terrible music (this was something that someone just gave away to the thrift store, remember). I hemmed and hawed for a while until Mindy finally convinced me to buy it. Who knows how or why. After carrying it around the store for bit though, I got to thinking: “Man, I love freedom”, “What’s in a freedomburger?”, and “Why didn’t Washington captain a giant burger across the Delaware?”. So I bought it.
I got it home and threw it on the record player. In my head, I was envisioning some sort of American gastrointestinal disaster but I instead got an earful of some amazing vintage rock! I just had the great sound and songs that you feel like you’ve been listening to your whole life.
Currently, the full extent of my knowledge of the New York Rock Ensemble has been garnered from Wikipedia. The band was started by 3 students at Juilliard in the mid 60’s and they were known for turning classical music pieces into rock songs and for using classical instruments in rock and roll. Sadly, Freedomburger was their last album. The one modern connection that was made to the band is that one of the founding members wrote the theme music for The X-files.
They recently re-released Freedomburger on CD so now you can head on over and check out some samples. My favorites from the album are “I’m Sending a Friend to You” and “Carry Me Up”. I was so surprised by how much I loved this album. Perhaps it was because I went in with rather low expectations, or perhaps I should trust my thrift store radar more often.