The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

If there is one thing I miss about working in retail (aside from the people I worked with--which I guess makes two things), it was the idea of "hand selling" or convincing a customer to buy something based on my personal recommendation.  I like to think I was pretty good at it, especially given my eclectic tastes.  I still remember the time a customer that I barely remembered once came back to tell me how much he appreciated my recommendation and that he was definitely going to check out more of the artist I thought he might like (I think it was Santana).

I was recently perusing the shelves of the music section of Half Price Books--a place I should really learn to avoid when I'm trying to save money.  I found a special tenth anniversary edition of what was perhaps my greatest triumph at hand selling.  I was kind of taken aback because I didn't realize that it had been more than a decade since the album had been released.  Because this anniversary edition contained two CDs of live bonus material, I naturally bought it (along with a few other things--at least one of which I've been trying to work into one of these weekly sermons... hopefully soon).

I first heard about it when I saw the artist on "The Tonight Show," waaaayyy back in the day when Jay Leno was still hosting it.  The performance absolutely blew me away.  I bought the album immediately.  I was completely entranced by this 18-year-old kid from England who looked like a young Keith Richards and sounded (at least on this album) like he should have recorded it at Sun Studios in the 1950s.

That summer at Barnes & Noble, all of us were encouraged to pick one item to hand sell to as many customers as possible.  This was my choice.  Over the course of that summer I hand sold close to 100 copies of that album.  (Admittedly, I did have an unfair advantage--as the head cashier, I was primarily at the register, so I interacted with more customers.)  And while nobody came back after the fact to thank me for recommending it and to tell me how much they enjoyed it, nobody came back to tell me they hated it either.  I was also proud of myself because, aside from the appearance on "The Tonight Show," I wasn't seeing a lot of press on this kid--who is now 30, so I guess I can't really call him a kid anymore.  While the album topped the UK charts and did quite well in Europe, here in the U.S. it only reached #75 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart and #24 on the Top Rock Albums chart.  But I've never been one to believe that chart success or overall sales figures (aside from what I can personally sell, obviously) are any indication of how good something is.  And more than a decade later, it's still one of my favourite albums of the 2010s.

Released in the UK in October of 2012 and in the US in April of 2013, please enjoy Jake Bugg's eponymous debut album.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill