Top Five Hits: Vinyl Solution in Huntington Beach

5. Church of Sun, 3 Days in 21 Nights LP (Lavish Womb)

Scraping in at number five this week, locals Church of Sun take yet another spot on the Hits list with their premiere album, 3 Days in 21 Nights off Lavish Womb. While the music can only really be described as unique, it's kind of a weird take on the cure that Orange County might need to hear -- the utterly unfathomable, the music that makes you scratch your head and wonder why. As odd as Church of Sun may be, their bombastic, iconoclastic approach to music has a charming invulnerability to it.

4. The Pop Group, For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? (Rough Trade)

The obscure Pop Group have a long career spanning back to 1978; since then they've been pumping out screeching, scathing political material. For How Much Longer, their second studio album, features probably their most well-known song, "We Are All Prostitutes." While probably unfit for a lazy day at the beach, the erratic and dissonant For How Much Longer serves as anthemic to perhaps a different kind of Orange County emerging from the news lately.

3. The Fall, Container Drivers (Arkain Filloux)

Mark Smith of the Fall once famously said, "If it's me and your granny on bongos, it's a Fall gig." While the term vintage may simply imply that it's an album from when the current band members were younger, digging deeper into the history of the Fall may reveal that the band could have contained any number of musicians besides Smith at any point in time. (We still contest, though, to the involvement of our grandmothers.) In any case, the rarity of this album yields little internet search success, so you'll have to go out on a limb, trust Smith, and test this the  third best selling album in the store.

2. The Deadbeats, Kill the Hippies (Dangerhouse)

As much as the message of Kill the Hippies seems to send against the California peace and love image, the Deadbeats definitely struck a right chord with this post-punk relic. The '78 release indeed put things forward into the post-punk era, leaning just barely short of an '80s post-punk scene that paved the way for '90s experimental and alternative music. Though it's hard to think that a sound like Nirvana's came out of The Deadbeats, the trail is there, and the influence stands at Vinyl Solution.

1. Duane Peters and the Great Unwashed, Beautiful Tragedy
 
Duane Peters and the Great Unwashed were the top seller the last time I called Vinyl for their top list, and that was over a month ago. Still on top, Duane Peters' new band with the Great Unwashed don't have a label, but what they do have is Peters' extensive history in the music scene of Orange County, and all of the glory that comes with that. Peters' smoke-ridden caw soaks Beautiful Tragedy in a sooty film that reeks like the morning after a night of debauchery and feels like a Tom Waits tune gone sour. It's a powerful combination, or at least, powerful enough to stand at number one for a month at Vinyl.