After (miraculously) finding relatively affordable copies on Amazon of Albert Ayler & Don Cherry's VIBRATIONS (a/k/a GHOSTS) and The Sound's JEOPARDY, both of which I received and listened to today, I now own 2,993 of the current top 3,000 albums.

Here's the checklist now:
1638 Tom Zé Estudando O Samba
2403 George Russell Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature
2444 Marquis de Sade Rue De Siam
2591 Bérurier Noir Concerto pour detraques
2654 Francesco Guccini Radici
2735 Smokey Robinson Warm Thoughts
2848 Artists United Against Apartheid Sun City

Not being able to find that Tom Ze is killing me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Incidentally, JEOPARDY is absolutely killer - it's the great lost British postpunk album, and it's a crime that it isn't widely available. A YouTube channel called ABorlandFan (named for the band's late frontman Adrian Borland) has just sprung up within the past month featuring pretty much the entire Sound oeuvre; here's a taste.

I have the Tom Zé album, but i downloaded via torrent and i've found links of many of his albums. But i guess you're looking for the originals LP/Compact Disc/(Tape?).

Incidentally, what did you think when you heard Fingers Inc? For people not trying to build a complete AM collection is it anywhere near worth the cost?

For what it is - early and definitive Chicago house music, about which I know very little - it's good. My main complaint, as with most electronic music, is that the tracks invariably go on way too long.

As for the cost, considering how insanely exorbitant the price of ANOTHER SIDE tends to be on those rare occasions when someone makes it available, no, it's not worth it unless you're collecting.

(You do realize the list changes, right?)
The Smokey Robinson album shouldn't be hard to find.

Well, it might, considering that WARM THOUGHTS has never been released on CD.

Well, that shows how much I know.

And I thought *I* was a music fan- that's some crazy-arse music fandom, Harold.

I've spent thousands of hours illegally downloading the entire AM 3000 and renaming and organizing the files to make one killer digital collection and I can tell you that, even scouring file-sharing services and the web, Smokey Robinson's Warm Thoughts took FOREVER to find. It's his only album which has never been released on CD and, seeing as it was after his heyday, nobody's really been in a rush to digitize the vinyl. The only one that was arguably harder to locate was Franco's 20ème anniversaire. Have you actually managed to track that one down, Harold?

seriously. i did purchase that album rather accidently from a small east german second hand record store about ten years years ago, just because it was a cheap vinyl cutout print and, hey, it was Smokey. but the moment i tried to digitalize my record collection a couple of years ago it was the first time i realised how rare that hifi/mofo actually was... that said, i've gotten the Franco one from the iTunes store for a mere 6 eurobucks.. but i respect those who aren't willing to make a pact with the devil anyway..

Yes, after it first made the top 3000 some years ago. It took a while, but someone finally offered it on Amazon for a decent price.

By the way, as if by magic, a "Like New" copy of that Tom Ze two-fer that contains Estudando O Samba in its entirety suddenly appeared on Amazon the other day. I snapped it up and eagerly await its arrival. The seller wasn't one of you kind folks, was it?