Poi Dog Pondering-Wishing Like A Mountain And Thinking Like The Sea (1990)

 

Artist: Poi Dog Pondering

Title: Wishing Like A Mountain And Thinking Like The Sea

Label: CBS/Texas Hotel

Format: LP

Cat #: C 45403

Year of Release: 1990

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1990

Listed Condition: M/M sealed

Sell Date: 4/11/22

Sell Price: $19.99

Discogs Last Sold: 1/27/22 $17.99 VG+/VG+

Low: $4.00 M/NM with drill hole 9/8/20

Median: $9.50

Average: $11.96

High:$19.99

Current low price:$5.73 NM/VG+ cutout hole

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 12

Have/Want: 206/31

Where Sold: Memphis, TN

Time it took to sell: 2 weeks

Where and When Bought: facebook budget vinyl lot

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: C

Sad To See It Go: No

You may be noticing less write-ups lately.  Sales on my collection have slowed in recent weeks, so I often don't have enough content for a daily post.  In the heady days of stimulus payments I'd have a month of topics in front of me to pick and choose.   This has led to the reversecollector methodically collecting budget vinyl  in small bargain lots.  It's an addiction more than a profit thing, but often the mere act of adding titles gets my discogs line more action, even if the titles I add don't sell.

I got this Poi Dog Pondering album sealed in one set of $5 records I bought, probably with some sort of quantity discount.  Nothing else sold in the lot but this flipped for $20 in a couple weeks, so a nice one there.  I know I could and probably will sit on this stuff for years, if not decades.  I got time if not space.    I really liked the first album by this band when it came out, but ignored their entire career after.  The collective led by Frank Orrall has cranked out 19 albums and a bunch of other single and EP releases on top of that, this was the 3rd.  This Austin via Hawaii collective has been going since 1984, 5 years before the first album I liked in it's time.

The opener, "Bury Me Deep" has some probably unintentional aaahs out of Robert Plant.  The guitar and bass on this has a feel of late 80's Paul Simon in Africa mixed with violins and perky alterna vocals.  It's got a coffee-house-folk feel as well.  You're gonna get every grade school instrument under the sun in this type of collective whether an autoharp, woodblock or conga in this (at the time) 11 person unit.   Something you'd find in less urban liberalish small towns with a college in it.  You know the places, a mishmash of college towns and small cities in the US ate this stuff up in the 90's and aughts. Maybe they'll move, take over a backyard space in deep ass Brooklyn.   You'll have an easier time with "Sugarbush Cush" in Vermont in these troubled times.

Poi Dog Pondering had no premonition of such modern discontent in 1990.  All they want in "The Watermelon Song" is to be on your radio. They won't just provide your soundtrack, they will farm said watermelon and serve it up to you in nice big chunks. "Everybody's Trying" offers up an olive branch to those who might dare question their sunny disposition. That one still makes their recent setlists and is the most played live song on the record over the last few decades plus.   "The Ancient Egyptians" walked everywhere, doncha know?  Frank wants to avoid cars, buses and cabs!   In "Big Walk," Orrall proclaims nationalism and "sole religion" as an ideal of the past.  

It is a world of infinite possibilities after all.