Crooked Beat sent along a list of the Adams Morgan stores top-ten sellers for May. I pass it along not so much for its tiny news value as merely a reminder. Maybe you’re like me and totally slept on the new Camera Obscura album (it’s….No. 1 at Crooked Beat). Or maybe you still do not own Neutral Milk Hotel’s classic (No. 9).

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Crooked Beat just got in a huge shipment of reggae vinyl. I am told that the shipment includes over 100 LPs and about 80 CDs—a lot of King Tubby, Augustus Pablo, Scientist, Keith Hudson, Dillinger, and quite a few Prince Buster records.

“A lot of stuff that people have been asking for,” says Crooked Beat’s owner Bill Daly. “They look like they are coming right from Jamaica. They look close to the way [they did] when they first came out….It’s a lot of really good stuff. You are the fourth person already today asking. One of the guys who used to work at DJ Hut is coming down. I’m listing to Junior Murvin right now—’Police and Thieves.’”

Link Wray looking supercool.

Crooked Beat sent along this e-mail with a list of new arrivals at their shop. Includes Link Wray, the Wedding Present, and the new Animal Collective LP.

List after the jump.

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Crooked Beat just announced that Benjy Ferree will be playing an in-store on Valentine’s Day at 7 p.m. Doesn’t this beat a fancy dinner at fixed-menu prices? Ferree will be playing new stuff from his new album, Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee. Crooked Beat promises to have CDs of the new record on hand three days before its official release date. Meanwhile, you can preview tracks which have an experimental soul vibe. Maybe for the in-store, he’ll sound closer to his Daytrotter session. If you can’t make it, there will be a listening party the next night at Saint Ex.

There’s lots of interesting info in an update posted Friday on Crooked Beat’s MySpace page: Vinyl is now the big sales driver for the store, which is now dialing back the new CDs it stocks and getting more selective with its used CD selection as well. Excerpts from the post below. (But go read the whole thing. Thanks to Don Carr for the heads-up.):

For the second year in a row (2008) New & Used Vinyl LPs have outsold CDs at Crooked Beat. LPs now account for around 70% of our total sales. We will be increasing our vinyl selection even more in the coming months.

New CDs: Crooked Beat will continue to stock New CDs but on a more limited basis. Effective Immediately: we will now only primarily stock CDs from indie and import labels such as Touch & Go, Matador, Dischord, Merge, 4AD, Sub Pop, Numero, Bomp, Damaged Goods, Cherry Red, Secretly Canadian, Ace, Bear Family, Soul Jazz, Anti, etc….

Used CDs: We will now only carry Used CDs that mirror our selection of New CDs. e.g., Crooked Beat always stocks New CDs by artists such as Built To Spill, Magnetic Fields, Cat Power. Therefore, we will usually accept them as USED trade-ins provided they are in good condition.