Somewhere into our two-hour conversation, my brother Patrick started talking about the week’s top sellers on Discogs. This was something Patrick liked to do, and we would gasp at the prices people were paying for their holy grails. If you’ve collected albums for any length of time, you almost certainly have a few holy grail records out there and, like me, you’ve probably scrolled longingly through Discogs eyeing the prize or scanning the rare section at your favorite record store, ever hopeful to finally complete the quest.
Two thousand dollars for an obscure Japanese pressing of some jazz performance most of us have never heard of seems ludicrous, let alone the amount of hard-earned cash being shelled out for 7-inches.
But is it? Not for me to decide.
I hung up the phone with Patrick but stayed on the Discogs website and punched in the name of a band, more specifically an album, I’d been searching for, for some time. This was a quest I thought I had completed nearly 25 years ago, but I’ll be go-to-hell … Morcheba wasn’t done with me yet. The list came up; so few copies, so much money – nothing in the $2,000 stratosphere, mind you, but champagne prices colliding against my cheap beer budget.
Like I said, this wasn’t the first time this band and this album had me on a quest — for that we have to go back to 1997. Around that time I was separating from the Marine Corps, separating from California, and separating myself from a life up to that point guided by the decisions and dictates of others. My buddy Tim was from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and loves to tell people that’s actually where Billy Joel was when he wrote his classic, “Allentown.” Turns out, unless you’re writing a Christmas carol, Bethlehem doesn’t work real well in a song. We’d thrown our meager belongings into the back of a GMC Jimmy I had purchased three weeks earlier and struck out from Camp Pendleton bound for Pennsylvania. We needed somewhere to land for a minute as we settled into new careers and found an apartment closer to our New York City locale, so we settled on Tim’s childhood home for the time being.
We’d only been in town for a couple days; our sleep patterns not yet adjusted to East Coast time. We’d been up chit-chatting with the family, who around midnight or so finally decided to call it a night. Tim and I, still very much awake, flipped on the television and settled on The Late Show with David Letterman. On the television a band was already performing their song, and almost immediately I was transfixed by the pulsating rhythm. The lead singer, a beautiful, dark-skinned woman, was singing something about love and being the trigger hippie … here. Across the board I was smitten. I hung around to see if they would say who the band was, but no such luck. I drifted off to sleep that night thinking about that song and how I was going to figure out who that was. So, my first quest for Morcheba officially began.
A couple things worth noting here — this was 1997, so I couldn’t Shazam it, I couldn’t pop over to the program’s website and see who that was, hell there wasn’t even a Google to at least point me in the right direction. So I did what any self-respecting music fan would — I went and made an ass of myself.
I’d walk into record stores in Hoboken, Jersey City, the Village, Harlem, with the basic idea of a tune and a few lyrics. I apologize to the universe and every poor clerk who had to suffer through … “Hey, any idea what this song might be” as they looked at me horrified while I tried to hum something. This went on for something like three months as I’d walk into a shop, give them my pitch, the clerk looking at me like I had something growing out of my forehead. And then I walked into Bleecker Bob’s.
In some of my previous writing, I’ve talked about “the universe.” I don’t believe in a god per se, but some days it sure does feel like there’s some sort of mischievous trickster up there, and every so often their gaze falls to you. Had I walked into Bleecker Bob’s months ago, I probably would have short-cutted this quest back then. But no. Apparently, I had to prove something to someone — store after store, embarrassment after embarrassment, like some initiation or passage of fealty to the music gods. I’ll never forget the exchange.
Me: “Hi, I’m hoping you can help me … I’ve been looking for this album for months now, saw them on Letterman a few months back, loved it, but can’t find it.”
Clerk, giving me a stern but helpful look: “I’m happy to try, got anything more than what you just told me?”
Me: “Well, I think I have the tune, it goes something like this …” and I would start humming. “And the lead singer, a woman, sings about being a trigger hippie, that’s about all I know,” I said, disappointment rising in my voice.
The clerk thought for a minute. “Well, give me a second, I’m not positive, but I think I have a thought on this.”
She disappeared for a few minutes, came back with a CD in her hands, cracked it open, and put it into the store’s system. The song began and at first I thought to myself, “No, this isn’t it…” but then Skye’s voice came in and my eyes widened. This. Was. It!
A smile spread across the clerk’s face — based on my reaction, she knew she’d hit a home run. She went on to tell me a bit about the band — Morcheba. Where they were from — London. If I liked them, I should check out a few others — Air, DJ Shadow, Massive Attack.
Let me tell you, that album is about as strong a debut as anything anyone has ever put out. Ultimately, I would go through three copies of the CD, the first one I burnt through having played it so much.
Every so often I wonder to myself — would this album have meant as much to me if I had been able to instantly queue it up on Spotify, or if it had come wrapped in some algorithmic discovery playlist? If I could have just popped over to the Late Show’s website and most likely not only caught the name of the act but been able to watch the performance? And then, after all of those steps that never require me to step off my front porch, opened Apple Music and downloaded the album? Look, I’m not going to get too preachy, but it’s my strongly held belief that our instant access to everything has made everything more ephemeral, more disposable. Who Can You Trust means something to me, in part, because I had to work so hard to find it. Which brings us to the current.
Along California Interstate 15 between the Nevada state line and Barstow, there’s a series of billboards advertising Alien Fresh Jerky. I first encountered these signs in the early ‘90s as a Marine going between Barstow and Camp Pendleton — back then the signs for the Baker, California shop started way early. Along with the store’s tall thermometer, it’s the only thing of note in Baker, California. Desert towns being what they are, I suppose you’ve got to lean into what you’ve got.
I was intrigued and told myself I would stop in there one day and try it. And this went on. For years … like 30 years. I’d pass the sign and think to myself — is today the day? And decide nope — keep moving.
Until just a few years ago.
K and I were coming back from Zion to our then-home in San Diego. K knew the beef jerky story and was deeply in on the joke — she asked me with excitement if this was the moment, was today the day, as we’d speed past. But, for reasons known only to that mischievous fucker in the sky, this day was different — we stopped, picked up a couple bags of the overpriced salted meat, and got back to our travels, ripping open a package to satisfy a thirty-year itch.
Maybe I’d built it up too much in my head, or maybe — and I suspect this to be the truer thought — the idea of it, the wonder of it, was always going to be better than the actualization of it. It was mediocre at best. But more importantly, that drive along the 15? It’s different now.
But what in the world does Morcheba and beef jerky have to do with each other?! I’m glad you asked. I’m at a hinge point with the band, and again, more specifically, this album.
Unlike the United States, the U.K. didn’t experience a complete vinyl collapse. By 1996, U.S. vinyl sales had cratered to a tiny fraction of the market — CD had fully taken over, and vinyl in America was mostly a niche/DJ/collector format. The U.K., by contrast, retained a much stronger vinyl culture throughout the ‘90s, particularly in dance, electronic, and DJ-adjacent genres — vinyl was still a functional, expected format for club play and specialist record shops, not a nostalgia item. The U.K. never let go of the physical object the way the U.S. did — vinyl culture didn’t die there; it just kept going quietly while America moved on to CDs. All of that is to say, Who Can You Trust saw a limited vinyl release in the U.K. under the China Records label. In the U.S., the album was put out as a CD release only.
As I sit here typing this essay, one of my browser windows is open to Discogs, more accurately a listing for Who Can You Trust. The album is going anywhere from $300 on the low end to nearly $500 for truly mint pressings. Over the course of the last year, I’ve placed it in my cart only to close the window before hitting the buy button. Get a little bit of unexpected money? Put it in the cart. Have a little too much whiskey? Put it in the cart. And so far, every time I’ve closed the window before completing the sale.
I have twin boys. One of them, Lucien, is totally my clone, and he’s gone to great lengths to get up early with me for as long as I can remember. Some time ago — Lucien had to be about a year old — I was down the pathway taking care of our goats. I heard him talking and crying from the bedroom, so I quietly went in, scooped him out of the bed next to a sleeping K and Tristan, into my arms, and walked back down the pathway with him. It was early, like 5:30 or so. Mother Nature was in a rare mood, deciding she was going to start the day with a light show exclusive to those of us awake at that moment. I stood there in awe, my son in my arms, and I said to him, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it.” Lucien looked at me, stretched out his arm and finger to the sky, and in his tiny baby voice said, “Beautiful,” as he continued to stare for several more minutes. I fell to my knees in that moment and quietly wept, overwhelmed by the beauty of the world, the beauty of my son.
And so I sit here, a vinyl pressing of Who Can You Trust in my cart, unsure of which it will be — a bag of mediocre jerky or a one-year-old pointing at the sky, his tiny voice repeating … beautiful.
