I think I spent $50 US on something once.
But it was rare or impossible to find... and I mean the music on there, not just the pressing. Can't remember what the hell it was, or if it was worth it.

if you don't remember, it definitely wasn't worth it.

When I was in high school I used to pay anywhere from 25-50 bucks for bootlegs and imports at TLM Records in Williamsport (greatest shitty record store ever, RIP). The bootlegs were mostly Pearl Jam and the imports were mostly Skyclad and other early 90's Noise Records bands, after Noise lost their US distro. But I lived in a small town and there wasn't much access to music.

I also paid like 30 bucks for Jawbreaker's Dear You on ebay after it went out of print, which is a lot to pay for a CD that was widely available probably only a couple years before I bought it.

It is difficult to overstate or overhype the importance of this CD, for it exhaustively documents the starting point of bossa nova in Brazil prior to the global craze. The building blocks are solidly in place — Joao Gilberto's highly distinctive, pioneering acoustic guitar rhythms, his precisely enunciated vocals (recorded not too closely for a change!), the stripped-down samba-based percussion, Antonio Carlos Jobim's extraordinary songs, and most tellingly on many tracks, Jobim's spare, often-copied backdrops and countermelodies for strings, winds and horns that are so much a part of his compositions. We can eavesdrop on the exact beginning of the bossa nova movement with the 1958 single containing Jobim's "Chega De Saudade" and Gilberto's "Bim Bom"; one can easily see why this quietly revolutionary record hit the Brazilian music scene like a silent cruise missile. Moreover, the second single was "Desafinado," a fully formed masterpiece long before it became an international hit, with Gilberto producing a precision-cut gem of vocal pinpointing. Along with the singles, there are three albums of material squeezed onto one CD, 38 tracks in all, of which only a dozen surfaced in the U.S. on LP at the time. In addition to Jobim's songs, there are plenty of first-rate contributions by Gilberto, Dorival Caymmi, Ary Barroso, Carlos Lyra, and other writers. And perhaps most importantly, besides being historically indispensible and an extraordinary deal for the consumer, this music is an absolute pleasure to hear.

I spent $50 total to finally own The God Machine's "One Last Laugh in a Place of Dying". It was the holy grail for me. Only a handful released in Europe.


.