Randy Newman - Good Old Boys (plus an illustrated story of the time I went to medicine hat) (1974)

In the summer, I took a greyhound to Medicine Hat with a friend of mine so he could buy a vintage Traynor amp. Medicine Hat is a really cool small city. I had only ever been there briefly when I was much much younger before this trip, but it was a great time. Downtown Medicine Hat is really tiny, and it has a feel of an artists city that hasn't progressed in the last 30 years, it has a really weird charm to it, also it's super super hot.

When we got off the greyhound, naturally one of the first things we had to do was find a hotel. A block or so away we found an old hotel called the Assiniboia Inn.

The Assiniboia Inn, as seen in the picture above, was pretty god damn old. It had 2 bars in it, one was called The Sin Bin, and the other was just some pub, only one of them was still in service, and unfortunately it was not The Sin Bin. We decided that this would be a good place to settle on a room, so we went inside, and the front desk was closed, so we checked the bar, the lady working the bar told us that they were no longer a hotel, and the bar was all that was open in that building, and she told us to try The Medicine Hat Inn a block up the road.

During our one block trek to the Medicine Hat Inn, we stumbled upon a pawn shop. Not just any pawn shop, but the king of pawn shops, it was even called King of Trades. This place was huge, and I noticed they had a whole corner dedicated to vinyl/cd's, so of course I had to check it out. The outside walls of this place were lined with boxes and boxes and boxes of LP's, after searching through about 20 boxes of Engelbert Humperdinck and polka records, I was about to throw in the towel, before my friend yelled across the room "Hey, there's a Small Faces record, you like them dont you?". So I went over to check, and it was a sealed copy of The Small Faces album Playmates. The entire wall of records that he found The Small Faces on had some really really great records, either sealer or in mint condition with the original shrink wrap still on the sleeve. Thats where this Randy Newman record (and also the Boogie Down Productions single, and I'm sure more future uploads) came from.

Anyways, after The King of Trade, we finally made it to the Medicine Hat Inn to get a room. When we got there, it looked deserted like the Assiniboia, and it also had a bar. There was a phone in the lobby saying to call '0' to reach an operator to get a room, so we called and the lady from the bar came up. She told us it was $90 for a room for two, and we told her that was too much, so she asked how much we had and gave it to us for $65.

So after checking in, and going and getting the Traynor amp we came down there to get, we got a 15 pack of Keystone and headed back to the hotel for a bit of pre-gaming before an exciting night in Medicine Hat.

After getting Keystoned, we called a taxi cab to take us to the bar. Before we came to Medicine Hat and discovered how awesome the city is, we asked a few people in Calgary what was cool to do in Medicine Hat, and everyone said either "Go to Rosscos" or "Go to The Wing King". So we get in the cab, and we ask to go to Rosscos, and we're telling the cabbie that we also heard The Wing King is pretty good. The cabbie said something along the lines of "I've been driving cab in Medicine Hat for 20 years and I've never heard of The Wing King". When we arrived at Rossco's, the sign read "Rossco's: The Wing King" and our entire lives made sense after that.

So we got drunk at Rossco's, the servers thought we were cool and gave us free Bud Light Lime and there was some guy really fucked up on ecstacy named Tobin who wouldn't leave us alone and in the end gave us rubber duckies and little toy aliens. When we were leaving we saw the police pull up to the front of Rossco's, and then saw Tobin get up from behind a bush across the parking lot and start running.

Most of the night after this is a pretty drunken haze. I smoked about 2 packs of Winstons, we broke into the abandoned Assiniboia but got too scared of ghosts because it was the creepiest fucking place ever so we left, and some fat girls tried taking us to a party but we convinced them we were from Texas and we had to work on the rigs in the morning. After wandering for an hour or so and breaking into abandoned hotels we went in search of another beer, we found some bar that looked like it was still open, but when we went in they were done last call but told us that "there's a bar around the corner that will serve you, walk down the alley and look for a red door". So we did, and it was this huge bar with a stage, a dj booth, and a dance floor, and they sold us a 6 pack to go. We spent the rest of the night on the roof of an abandoned restaurant getting drunk and smoking more Winstons.

If this story didnt convince you that Medicine Hat is really cool, this video will:


And the whole point of this story was that I found this Randy Newman record in Medicine Hat, and it's really fucking good. I'm supposed to be working on a 10 page report on annual goal setting for work, but instead I wrote this.

Tracklist:
1. Rednecks
2. Birmingham
3. Marie
4. Mr. President (Have Pity On The Working Man)
5. Guilty
6. Louisiana 1927
7. Every Man A King
8. Kingfish
9. Naked Man
10. A Wedding In Cherokee Country
11. Back On My Feet Again
12. Rollin'

Download: mediafire

For more info on Rossco's: http://www.rosscospub.com/