tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56392062009-12-03T02:30:56.065-05:00Record GeekA casual dissemination of various vinyl obscurities from the realms of psych, folk, post-punk, prog, electronica, power-pop, free-jazz, avant-garde, you name it.wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1172991141120089372007-03-04T01:50:00.000-05:002007-03-04T01:52:21.130-05:00Hey folks - there's a new blog in town. I've started a prog blog; for those of you who are so inclined, check it out at www.progplace.blogspot.comwewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1088053331295757922004-06-24T01:00:00.000-04:002004-06-24T01:02:11.296-04:00Thespacebaronmylaptop(fromwhichIusuallyblog)isbroken.UnlessIdecidetobecometheJamesJoyceofbloggingI'llhavetogetitfixed.wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1086848459153081372004-06-10T02:09:00.000-04:002004-06-10T02:20:59.153-04:00SSA listening session:
Those daring, discreet, dormouses of popular culture assembled yet again to disseminate vinyl obscurities. Though only two members of the canny cabal were able to be present, the primo selections were many, as seen below:
Santa Fe - I'm Leaving (Santa Fe LP)
Dewey - Rainbow Level (Callin' It Quits LP)
Dewey - Creole (Callin' It Quits LP)
Mason Bricke - Janie (Mason Bricke wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1086328146398664692004-06-04T01:32:00.000-04:002004-06-04T01:49:06.396-04:00I've got to get through the bulk of this batch of records so I can move on to other stuff, so here we go, down and dirty.
The Eloise Trio - s/t
Eloise is the singer/guitarist in this Bahamian calypso trio. I'm guessing this album is from the early-to-mid-'60s. It's got a lot of calypso standards like "Zombie Jamboree (Belly to Belly)" and "Shake Senora," but also some original tunes penned by wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1085374794733111962004-05-24T00:09:00.000-04:002004-05-24T00:59:54.733-04:00Time out for some good clean literary fun:
Look, I liked High Fidelity as much as the next guy, but Nick Hornby is clearly out of control. Not content with being a pop novelist with a musical inclination, he's got it in his head that he's a bona fide music critic. Problem is, he's both a stultifying aesthetic dullard and a dangerously reactionary/neo-conservative polemicist. His recent piece in wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1085293867134163862004-05-23T01:52:00.000-04:002004-05-23T02:34:11.626-04:00OK, continuing with my hit-and-run roundup of new arrivals:
Rip Rig & Panic - I Am Cold
I don't know why more of a fuss isn't made over this band, what with the early-'80s revival and all. They were a UK group that mixed avant-garde jazz, funk, pop, and post-punk in an extremely distinctive and exciting melange. Neneh Cherry was the singer and her dad Don dropped in now and then to play some wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1085209028976952152004-05-22T02:23:00.000-04:002004-05-22T03:03:17.633-04:00OK, as promised I'll continue the quick run-throughs of my most recent acquisitions:
Charles Ives - Piano Sonata No. 1 (Nonesuch, 196?)
Ives wrote two piano sonatas, and this is supposedly the lesser known of them, though it's certainly not for lack of quality. Presented in solo-piano format, it moves through some widely contrasting sections, injecting/subverting/deconstructing the melodies wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1084775030890245162004-05-17T01:45:00.000-04:002004-05-17T02:23:50.890-04:00"Whatever became of the Record Geek?" I can hear you ask. He's not dead he's just:
a) lazy
b) busy
c) bored
d) all of the above
in any case, for those of you who haven't yet given up on this blog as a living, breathing source of information, let me at least take a very quick run through the batch of stuff I mentioned in my last posting, the stuff I got at the WFMU record fair. Or at any rate, wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1083563021465478532004-05-03T01:34:00.000-04:002004-05-03T01:46:49.170-04:00Another day, another heap of goodies from the record fair. Here's what today's visit yielded:
LPs:
The Boswell Sisters - 1932-34
Sir Freddy Grant's Caribbean Troubadours - Calypso
Richard Himber & His Ritz-Carlton Hotel Orchestra w/Joey Nash - 1934-35
Dick Jurgens & His Orchestra - Uncollected: 1937-39
Jack Pettis - Volume 2: 1924-29
Ruth Etting - Hello Baby
The Grimms - Rockin' Duck
The Mud wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1083476371682273342004-05-02T01:26:00.000-04:002004-05-02T01:42:40.233-04:00As expected, today's sojourn to the WFMU record fair yielded a healthy haul. To be specific:
LPs:
Seguin - Festin D'Amour
Ecology - Environment/Evolution (featuring Val Stoecklein of the Blue Things!)
Bill Cowsill - Nervous Breakthrough
Kensington Market - Avenue Road
Karl Korte/Mario Davidovsky/Meyer Kupferman - Music For Flute & Tape (Nonesuch)
60,000,000 Buffalo - Nevada Jukebox (featuring wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1083303415223322362004-04-30T01:35:00.000-04:002004-04-30T01:40:01.796-04:00Ok, so my blog has been pretty inactive for the last couple of weeks. I've been a bit busy, but fear not, because the WFMU record fair is this weekend, and I have no doubt that the bounty I derive from it will be the impetus for much blogging to come. Stay tuned...wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1081751064722941532004-04-12T02:02:00.000-04:002004-04-12T02:31:42.310-04:00John Cage & Lejaren Hiller - HPSCHD/ Ben Johnston - String Quartet No. 2 (Nonesuch, 1969)
Poor Ben Johnston. You wouldn't think there'd be much reason to feel sorry for an avant garde composer who'd studied with John Cage, Darius Milhaud, and Harry Partch, held down a musical professorship for over 30 years, and become a respected enough name in just-intonation/microtonality that the Kronos wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1081659494145287212004-04-11T00:43:00.000-04:002004-04-11T01:02:18.623-04:00Good & Plenty - The World Of Good & Plenty (Senate, 1967)
The duo of Doug Good and Ginny Plenty (you gotta love it) released their sole album on a label I've never heard of, but there was obviously some money behind it, as it was produced, written, and arranged by Wes Farrell and Tony Romeo, famous for their work with the Cowsills, the Partridge Family, and others. Neither Doug nor Ginny is wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1081228282188054032004-04-06T01:02:00.000-04:002004-04-06T01:15:26.390-04:00Michael Smith - Mi Cyaan Believe It (Mango, 1982)
Not to be confused with either the Chicago singer-songwriter or (God forbid) the Christian pop guy of the same name, Jamaican Michael Smith was a reggae poet somewhat in the mold of Linton Kwesi Johnson (in fact, Johnson co-produced this along with Dennis Bovell). Though Smith delivers his dub poetry in a format that bears some similarity to wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1081146885731170352004-04-05T02:12:00.000-04:002004-04-05T02:38:03.623-04:00Max Neuhaus - Electronics & Percussion: Five Realizations (Columbia, 1968)
Back in the '60s, when you could get away with a lot more than you can today, avant garde composer David Behrman wangled a gig producing a series of New Music records for Columbia's Masterworks division under the title Music For Our Time. These included the original recordings of Terry Riley's "Rainbow in Curved Air" and wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1080454931446810462004-03-28T01:02:00.000-05:002004-03-28T01:26:47.373-05:00Lily & Maria - s/t (Columbia, 1968)
In the annals of long, strange trips, that of Lily Fishman ranks right up there. She grew up in the Bronx, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, and released a totally trippy folk-psych album with Maria Neumann under the name Lily & Maria. What's she doing today? Funny you should ask. Why naturally, she's converted to Christianity and is singing with a wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1080149031123793892004-03-24T12:23:00.000-05:002004-03-24T12:26:21.200-05:00I'm back in town, and my return was commemorated yesterday by a session of the esteemed SSA, during which the following songs were heard:
Gallery - Dowie Dens of Yarrow (The Wind That Shakes The Barley CD)
Mort Garson - Cancer at Work (Signs of the Zodiac: Cancer LP)
Vanity Fare - Early in the Morning (Early in the Morning LP)
Flute & Voice - Little Nemo in Slumberland (Imaginations of Light CD)wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1079420771210226642004-03-16T02:04:00.000-05:002004-03-16T02:08:33.043-05:00Geekus Interruptus:
I'll be away for the rest of the week, so no more geekery for a little while. I'll resume when I get back though. wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1079247869977335002004-03-14T01:57:00.000-05:002004-03-14T02:08:37.186-05:00Et Cetera - s/t (Apostrophe, 1976)
Not to be confused with either the '90s Danish neo-prog band of the same name or the early '70s fusion band, Et Cetera was one of (if not the) best of the vintage-era French Canadian prog bands. As far as I know, this is their only album, which is a damn shame, because it's a beautiful record, a classic of melodic, symphonic prog. As has been noted by many wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1079075721359455232004-03-12T02:05:00.000-05:002004-03-12T02:17:39.123-05:00Holy Moses - s/t (RCA, 1971)
This was recorded in NYC at Electric Lady studio, and engineered/co-produced by none other than former Lothar & the Hand People guitarist Kim King, but Holy Moses singer/songwriter/keyboardist Billy Batson later gained some (or at least more) reknown as the singer for Minneapolis garage-rockers the Hypstrz (late '70s-early '80s) and then the Mofo Men (mid-'80s). Withwewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1078725486726104852004-03-08T00:37:00.000-05:002004-03-08T01:02:43.576-05:00King Eric & His Knights - Paging King Eric & His Knights (Elite, 1964)
You know, it's pretty damn hard to find calypso music in most places, even the wierdo used record joints and websites that are my second home. Recently, I've been taking an interest in calypso, so I was happy to come across this little artifact. Apparently this was the fourth album by "King" Eric Gibson and his cohorts. From wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1078641740397039642004-03-07T01:26:00.000-05:002004-03-07T01:44:32.700-05:00Clifford Thornton - Ketchaoua (BYG/Actuel, 1969)
Clifford Thornton's not as unknown as most of the folks I write about here, but he's not exactly front-page news to anyone other than free-jazz cultists. He's played trumpet, cornet, and trombone with a lot of the biggies in the genre (Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray), but never made that many records under his own name before his death in the wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1078556211274426092004-03-06T01:37:00.000-05:002004-03-06T02:00:11.950-05:00Midnight Records is closing its doors tomorrow for good. They were pretty much an institution here in NYC for over 25 years. When they started out in the late '70s they had a lot to do with kickstarting and nurturing the first real wave of interest in '60s psychedelia, and they even had their own reissue label. The owner may have been something of a prick, but some good people have worked there wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1078125177021138532004-03-01T01:46:00.000-05:002004-03-01T02:18:30.170-05:00I've gotten a wealth of cool reissues recently, so here's just a few quick thumbnail sketches of some of them:
The Brazda Brothers - s/t (Dominion, 1974)
Andy and Bystrik Gin Brazda were brothers of indeterminate Eastern European origin (Ukrainian?) who moved to Canada and subsequently recorded this album. It's basically mellow psych-folk with just a few more upbeat fuzz-guitar-and-organ psych wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5639206.post-1078018006560030972004-02-28T20:03:00.000-05:002004-03-06T02:11:41.373-05:00Various Artists - Trouser Press Presents the Best of America Underground (Roir, 1983)
In case anybody's unfortunate enough not to know, Trouser Press was perhaps the best US rock mag of the '70s and '80s. They started out in the mid-'70s covering mostly fringe British bands (Be-Bop Deluxe and Horslips were a couple of editorial faves, so that should give you an idea). Staunchly left-of-center, wewewehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18426042869940418684noreply@blogger.com