This CD, issued by Allan Henry's imprint Topplers (perhaps best known for releases by former Swell Maps Jowe Head and Phones Sportsman), on their "cheap and nasty offshoot label" Topplers Lite, comes in a card cover upon which is reproduced the lovely colourful artwork from an old Hong Kong-manufactured "C-60 Compact Cassette" - an Eltex Space Tape (there's a fantastic web site, a gallery devoted to such recordable cassettes - it shows the inlays if you click on the pictures of the tapes to enlarge them : http://www.c-90.org/catalogue/tapes).
The disc itself is unusual as it's black rather than the typical silver, its label side cleverly designed to resemble a five-track vinyl record, with raised, feelable grooves.
In 2004, the cassette in question was unearthed in a Kilmarnock charity shop, and an edited version released by Topplers Lite in 2008; my copy is the '09 reissue (no catalogue number visible), the full recording with new music added. Sometimes this music is gentle and unobtrusive beneath the dialogue, other times it's a little more bubbly, makes its presence felt slightly more. Said dialogue is a day-to-day diary documenting an unknown Scottish woman's holiday in Europe : she visits France, Belgium and The Netherlands, a bit of a whistle-stop tour, seemingly. In her delightful accent, we hear details of her travels, learn of the various hotels, one "the full length of the street" with 290 bedrooms; of the weather; of what she had for breakfast and dinner - each meal almost invariably concluding with a cup of tea; of her inability to work the lift as she couldn't read the French-language instructions; of her impressions of the French (a lack of friendliness); about her having been told not to drink the water in foreign countries; of the dirtiness of Belgium; of the coronation of the new Dutch Queen (Beatrix); of a visit to an 81-year-old Mae West, who turned out to just be a woman who dressed up as her; of the Dutch flower market; and of the exploitative prices of certain things - "£23 for a headsquare ! It was ridiculous !". We also get guide book descriptions of the places Granny visits, including their populations, and we hear her chatting and joking with a couple of fellow holidaymakers. Prize quote for me has to be, in a French hotel, "I had twenty-eight potatoes on my plate !"
This release doesn't appear to be available any more.
Topplers : http://www.topplers.net.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Thursday, 5 November 2009
The ESP Sampler
In my early teens, the sampler album was an excellent way of having seemingly important artists represented in my tiny record collection. Island's late 'sixties/early 'seventies various artists budget releases were still in the racks, the single L.P.s available for the price of a new 45 - King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man and Dr. Strangely Strange's Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal were particular favourites at thirteen. Other tremendous discoveries via samplers were the Third Ear Band's Stone Circle (off the twenty-track cheapie promoting the Harvest Heritage series - Shirley Collins was featured too, as well as Tomorrow's My White Bicycle); and Peter Hammill's German Overalls from a reduced-in-the-sale Charisma round-up. A few weren't so great, like the free CBS and Polydor ones I acquired through music weekly Sounds - generally, pretty dull; I wish I'd put the postage and packing money towards an Ivor Cutler or Lol Coxhill L.P. instead, but I was impatient to hear, and own music by, as many different artists as I could.
Amongst the most consistent samplers I've found are the three Virgin Front Line collections; and the 1982 double put out by Recommended, two hours long and encased in a glitter-decorated thick plastic outer. By comparison with the latter, On-U Sound's first Pay It All Back offering looks disappointingly cheap and nasty, though houses some gems like Prince Far I's classic ode to Bedward, a preacher whose faith erroneously led him to believe he could fly. Y Records' Birth Of The Y is pretty fine too, as are those assemblages of music from around the world on GlobeStyle. Then, each having its moments, there's Virgin's V double with its famous sleeve image of the six-fingered hand making a victory (or peace) sign... and of course Dandelion's There Is Some Fun Going Forward, the cover star being John Peel in the bath, with female company.
In the 'eighties I haunted Brighton's secondhand record shops, one day stumbling across The ESP Sampler (ESP-Disk' 1051) in Vinyl Demand. I knew of The Fugs, and Pearls Before Swine, and of course Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra, had an awareness of the label... The vinyl looks very distinctive, twenty-one tracks per side, most of equal(ish) length - one-minute excerpts from the ESP-Disk' catalogue. There are so many tracks that the listing had to be continued from the back cover onto an insert tucked inside the blue and red sleeve. I'd always loved records with lots of little tracks, from Young Marble Giants' Testcard (unusually, a six-band E.P.) through to Ivor Cutler's Privilege which had track separation lacking on his Virgin albums. I enjoy studying vinyl, generally trying out the shortest tracks first, wondering, "What on earth... ? !" if they clock in at a minute or less.
There's plenty of free music on this 99 cent sampler - it proved a crash course for me on those artists I'd read about in Valerie Wilmer's overview of the new jazz, As Serious As Your Life : Pharaoh Sanders, Milford Graves, Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler... There's so much more besides, though - underground stuff like The Godz (and the aforementioned Fugs and Pearls Before Swine); a portion from The Coach With The Six Insides (a musical adaptation of Joyce's Finnegans Wake); William Burroughs; Allen Ginsberg; Ishmael Reed; something from the Movement Soul L.P. of sounds of the freedom movement of the deep south; and a version, sung in Esperanto, of Auld Lang Syne, taken from the label's inaugural release. Vocalist Patty Waters first came to my attention via this sampler.
I guess The ESP Sampler might be filed alongside Morgan-Fisher's Miniatures project for which he enlisted numerous artists who submitted short tracks of around one minute. Although there were different reasons behind the two records, they seem to fit together nicely because of the brevity of the pieces.
The ESP Sampler was perhaps a canny commercial idea : give just a mouthwatering minute of things, enough to tantalise, arouse curiosity, encourage purchase. Maybe it was a little mean not to offer up entire tracks in most instances; or was that more to do with the lengths of many of the free jazz excursions which could scarcely be kept intact ? It's a pretty different story with rock-based samplers where whole tracks appear.
Link : http://espdisk.com/official/catalog/1051.html.
Amongst the most consistent samplers I've found are the three Virgin Front Line collections; and the 1982 double put out by Recommended, two hours long and encased in a glitter-decorated thick plastic outer. By comparison with the latter, On-U Sound's first Pay It All Back offering looks disappointingly cheap and nasty, though houses some gems like Prince Far I's classic ode to Bedward, a preacher whose faith erroneously led him to believe he could fly. Y Records' Birth Of The Y is pretty fine too, as are those assemblages of music from around the world on GlobeStyle. Then, each having its moments, there's Virgin's V double with its famous sleeve image of the six-fingered hand making a victory (or peace) sign... and of course Dandelion's There Is Some Fun Going Forward, the cover star being John Peel in the bath, with female company.
In the 'eighties I haunted Brighton's secondhand record shops, one day stumbling across The ESP Sampler (ESP-Disk' 1051) in Vinyl Demand. I knew of The Fugs, and Pearls Before Swine, and of course Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra, had an awareness of the label... The vinyl looks very distinctive, twenty-one tracks per side, most of equal(ish) length - one-minute excerpts from the ESP-Disk' catalogue. There are so many tracks that the listing had to be continued from the back cover onto an insert tucked inside the blue and red sleeve. I'd always loved records with lots of little tracks, from Young Marble Giants' Testcard (unusually, a six-band E.P.) through to Ivor Cutler's Privilege which had track separation lacking on his Virgin albums. I enjoy studying vinyl, generally trying out the shortest tracks first, wondering, "What on earth... ? !" if they clock in at a minute or less.
There's plenty of free music on this 99 cent sampler - it proved a crash course for me on those artists I'd read about in Valerie Wilmer's overview of the new jazz, As Serious As Your Life : Pharaoh Sanders, Milford Graves, Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler... There's so much more besides, though - underground stuff like The Godz (and the aforementioned Fugs and Pearls Before Swine); a portion from The Coach With The Six Insides (a musical adaptation of Joyce's Finnegans Wake); William Burroughs; Allen Ginsberg; Ishmael Reed; something from the Movement Soul L.P. of sounds of the freedom movement of the deep south; and a version, sung in Esperanto, of Auld Lang Syne, taken from the label's inaugural release. Vocalist Patty Waters first came to my attention via this sampler.
I guess The ESP Sampler might be filed alongside Morgan-Fisher's Miniatures project for which he enlisted numerous artists who submitted short tracks of around one minute. Although there were different reasons behind the two records, they seem to fit together nicely because of the brevity of the pieces.
The ESP Sampler was perhaps a canny commercial idea : give just a mouthwatering minute of things, enough to tantalise, arouse curiosity, encourage purchase. Maybe it was a little mean not to offer up entire tracks in most instances; or was that more to do with the lengths of many of the free jazz excursions which could scarcely be kept intact ? It's a pretty different story with rock-based samplers where whole tracks appear.
Link : http://espdisk.com/official/catalog/1051.html.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
David Ewan Campbell : Stucked - Up PART ONE (Stucks One to Twenty-Six)
This self-released, no-company-name 60-min cassette from sometime during the 'nineties was assembled by I'm Being Good's David Ewan Campbell, who recorded vinyl sticking on an irritatingly malfunctioning record deck, turning things around to make a virtue out of a hindrance.
No source listing, though David included a folded piece of paper showing approximate timings; and, if more than one for a source track, disc speeds. The inlay's spine reads, "Stucked Vinylesque Emmisions (sic)." The shortest stucks are a scant fifteen seconds apiece, the longest clocking in at a respectable-for-a-punk-45 2:36.
David invited folk to mail him blank cassettes which he promised/threatened to fill with their choice(s) from this collection - "guaranteed to be mesmerising, even mind-warping." He continues, "I defy anyone to gues where all these come from....." - quite a challenge. He did reveal his sources to me once, but - aside from his beloved Bonzos - I've entirely forgotten, which is possibly more fun than having immediate access to my jotted-down info, if indeed I still own that document. Knowing David, I'd wager there'd be some Beatles or an unusual Beatles cover here somewhere... Yesterday was my first listen to this cassette in years.
There's some jazz - David gives us a few secs past the stuck bit, but I don't recognise it. A nice one features some tuneful jazz piano with the typical appreciative smattering of applause which just continues and continues. Something that sounds like cartoon music reveals itself to be from a crackly old E.P. called Musical Multiplication Tables. Side B opens with a 45 version of side A's 33 closer, putting me in mind of when Neu filled a side of an album with a single played at different speeds - supposedly due to no recording budget remaining, or is that a myth ?
There's little chance of mistaking Beefheart - another of David's favourites.
On more than one piece it sounds as though David was monkeying about with the turntable, speeding up the disc with his fingers for comic effect... or perhaps he'd placed a finger on one of the tape machine buttons, half-depressing it to slow down the cassette so it'd play back super-fast. Or both.
Some tracks were recorded sticking at different speeds and in a variety of spots - there are as many as five examples from the disc used as the source for side A, number 6. Some have been faded carefully, others chopped abruptly.
Appropriately, David selected a Rev. Awdry illustration of a stuck steam engine for the b&w Xeroxed inlay - the inside has a quote from an Awdry Thomas story. My tape is black and labelled with manual-typewritten slips of paper, cut out wonkily and sticky-taped on.
To end the whole shebang, some spoken word : something perhaps Churchillian (?) and suitable for these stucks' "unquenchable spirit" (until, that is, David decided to fade/chop them) : "unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit of the British race."
I think this photo was taken several years after the cassette...
No source listing, though David included a folded piece of paper showing approximate timings; and, if more than one for a source track, disc speeds. The inlay's spine reads, "Stucked Vinylesque Emmisions (sic)." The shortest stucks are a scant fifteen seconds apiece, the longest clocking in at a respectable-for-a-punk-45 2:36.
David invited folk to mail him blank cassettes which he promised/threatened to fill with their choice(s) from this collection - "guaranteed to be mesmerising, even mind-warping." He continues, "I defy anyone to gues where all these come from....." - quite a challenge. He did reveal his sources to me once, but - aside from his beloved Bonzos - I've entirely forgotten, which is possibly more fun than having immediate access to my jotted-down info, if indeed I still own that document. Knowing David, I'd wager there'd be some Beatles or an unusual Beatles cover here somewhere... Yesterday was my first listen to this cassette in years.
There's some jazz - David gives us a few secs past the stuck bit, but I don't recognise it. A nice one features some tuneful jazz piano with the typical appreciative smattering of applause which just continues and continues. Something that sounds like cartoon music reveals itself to be from a crackly old E.P. called Musical Multiplication Tables. Side B opens with a 45 version of side A's 33 closer, putting me in mind of when Neu filled a side of an album with a single played at different speeds - supposedly due to no recording budget remaining, or is that a myth ?
There's little chance of mistaking Beefheart - another of David's favourites.
On more than one piece it sounds as though David was monkeying about with the turntable, speeding up the disc with his fingers for comic effect... or perhaps he'd placed a finger on one of the tape machine buttons, half-depressing it to slow down the cassette so it'd play back super-fast. Or both.
Some tracks were recorded sticking at different speeds and in a variety of spots - there are as many as five examples from the disc used as the source for side A, number 6. Some have been faded carefully, others chopped abruptly.
Appropriately, David selected a Rev. Awdry illustration of a stuck steam engine for the b&w Xeroxed inlay - the inside has a quote from an Awdry Thomas story. My tape is black and labelled with manual-typewritten slips of paper, cut out wonkily and sticky-taped on.
To end the whole shebang, some spoken word : something perhaps Churchillian (?) and suitable for these stucks' "unquenchable spirit" (until, that is, David decided to fade/chop them) : "unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit of the British race."
I think this photo was taken several years after the cassette...
Monday, 2 November 2009
Christof Migone : Crackers
The only joint Christof Migone is able to crack at will is his right ankle. (Experimenting, I discover that I can do my right elbow.) Eight other joint-crackers join him for this CD, dated 2001, which I guess was Chicago label Locust Music's inaugural release (Locust no. 1), which came to my attention via an ReR Megacorp mailout.
The reverse of this package reproduces a small ad run in a weekly paper : "Do you crack your fingers? Your neck? Your back? Your knees? Your elbows? Your ankles? Your hips? And your...? If so, please phone 230-2749 to make an appointment for a recording session."
Said sessions took place during a residency at Ottawa's Gallery 101 back in October '97 : the gallery's membership and the radio were the other two channels used for the recruitment of volunteers. Editing was performed the following January, and mixing in July 2000.
Here are fifty-two minutes-plus of knuckles, knees, wrists, jaws, toes, ankles, backs, necks, elbows and hips, all pressed into service to create Migone's compositions. It's enjoyable to hear enjoy the shards of fascinating dialogue from interviews preceding the cracking sessions.
Track one is quiet, necessitating the raising of hi-fi volume, or listening church mouse-like, but it's insistent with it : sharp pops and sizzles, plus what's possibly the high-pitched whistle of mic feedback. Another piece comes closer to replicating the sound of something ablaze; whilst a further one has plenty of off-kilter rhythm to it, as though a mysterious sport or dance is being participated in out of view : one can only guess, picturing a bizarre combination of, say, ping pong and tap. Close to the CD's end is a piece during which the individual cracks seem less apparent : there's something of a dense cloud effect.
A very engaging collection of works, and interesting to contemplate how the viewpoint of an uninitiated listener might alter upon their learning of the sound sources - would they be quite as receptive or would the ick factor prejudice them ? If they'd no notion that joints were being cracked, the pieces might not sound a million miles away from Jana Winderen's cassette of sea crustaceas, perhaps...
Links : http://www.christofmigone.com/html/projects_gallery/crackers.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christof_Migone.
The reverse of this package reproduces a small ad run in a weekly paper : "Do you crack your fingers? Your neck? Your back? Your knees? Your elbows? Your ankles? Your hips? And your...? If so, please phone 230-2749 to make an appointment for a recording session."
Said sessions took place during a residency at Ottawa's Gallery 101 back in October '97 : the gallery's membership and the radio were the other two channels used for the recruitment of volunteers. Editing was performed the following January, and mixing in July 2000.
Here are fifty-two minutes-plus of knuckles, knees, wrists, jaws, toes, ankles, backs, necks, elbows and hips, all pressed into service to create Migone's compositions. It's enjoyable to hear enjoy the shards of fascinating dialogue from interviews preceding the cracking sessions.
Track one is quiet, necessitating the raising of hi-fi volume, or listening church mouse-like, but it's insistent with it : sharp pops and sizzles, plus what's possibly the high-pitched whistle of mic feedback. Another piece comes closer to replicating the sound of something ablaze; whilst a further one has plenty of off-kilter rhythm to it, as though a mysterious sport or dance is being participated in out of view : one can only guess, picturing a bizarre combination of, say, ping pong and tap. Close to the CD's end is a piece during which the individual cracks seem less apparent : there's something of a dense cloud effect.
A very engaging collection of works, and interesting to contemplate how the viewpoint of an uninitiated listener might alter upon their learning of the sound sources - would they be quite as receptive or would the ick factor prejudice them ? If they'd no notion that joints were being cracked, the pieces might not sound a million miles away from Jana Winderen's cassette of sea crustaceas, perhaps...
Links : http://www.christofmigone.com/html/projects_gallery/crackers.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christof_Migone.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
The Sparticus Stargazer : Old Hank Schultz / One Nest Rolls After Another
I'm unaware as to the oldest ever person to have made a record; my copy of the excellent The Guinness Book Of Recorded Sound doesn't appear to supply said information, although it does mention that Eubie Blake was recording on his own label into his nineties. I can remember George Burns having a major U.S. hit late in life with I Wish I Was Eighteen Again. Almost certainly, The Sparticus Stargazer could be added to the list of the top dozen; she was ninety when this seven-inch was released by her grandson Ian (a.k.a. DJ Ordeal, and Beef; no surname, by request), on his Sparticus Stargazer imprint (SPARTY 006 - didn't Arista have "SPARTY" as a prefix too ?). Ian's gran's real name was Mary Susannah DeCramer (nee Laughton), called Sue by her friends. Ian enjoyed listening to her speak, thought her accent was interesting. He felt it would satisfy his family to have a recorded snapshot.
The A side is a poem written by Peggy Lee, discovered in her 1990 autobiography and here read to an insistent percussive effect followed by what might a loop of guitar-based music (Ian says that the sounds were extracted from a flamenco and Hawaiian tape); the second track is a Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) poem found on the sleeve of the reissue of Mirror Man, augmented by wiggy electronics and a cuckoo clock (according to Ian, the sounds are instrumental fragments from work by Tino Rossi and The Four Tops). That's one of many Beefheart poems Ian's gran recorded - "I believe she captured the spirit of them superbly." Poem : http://www.freewebs.com/teejo/odd/daypoem.jpg.
Ian brought out two other 45s simultaneous with this release, all with black labels with white stars around the edges and housed in the same lovely die-cut card sleeve showing colourful Russian sweet wrapper designs.
Amongst Ian's numerous wonderful projects have been an extremely limited (ten) vinyl round-up of recordings by singing actors, an area Ian's very partial to and knowledgeable about; a plunderphonics-esque excursion utilising stitched-together fragments of orchestral parts pilfered from Johnny Mathis tracks; a handful of minuscule-edition Supremes-related pressings for diehard completists only; and an L.P. of his own crooning, backing courtesy of one of those play-along discs where one instrument's absent, requiring the listener to fill in. Ian also uses easy listening album sleeves as the basis for his visual art, temporarily masking out the women who so commonly feature on the front sleeves and painting over the text-printed backgrounds against which they pose seductively, luring the prospective purchaser.
Interviews with Ian here : http://www.robotsandelectronicbrains.co.uk/interviews/interviews/dj_ordeal.html
and here : http://www.erasingclouds.com/wk2106ordeal.html.
This is the only image I can find to link to : http://pan.priceminister.es/photo/497690314_M.jpg.
Many thanks to Ian for extra information.
The A side is a poem written by Peggy Lee, discovered in her 1990 autobiography and here read to an insistent percussive effect followed by what might a loop of guitar-based music (Ian says that the sounds were extracted from a flamenco and Hawaiian tape); the second track is a Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) poem found on the sleeve of the reissue of Mirror Man, augmented by wiggy electronics and a cuckoo clock (according to Ian, the sounds are instrumental fragments from work by Tino Rossi and The Four Tops). That's one of many Beefheart poems Ian's gran recorded - "I believe she captured the spirit of them superbly." Poem : http://www.freewebs.com/teejo/odd/daypoem.jpg.
Ian brought out two other 45s simultaneous with this release, all with black labels with white stars around the edges and housed in the same lovely die-cut card sleeve showing colourful Russian sweet wrapper designs.
Amongst Ian's numerous wonderful projects have been an extremely limited (ten) vinyl round-up of recordings by singing actors, an area Ian's very partial to and knowledgeable about; a plunderphonics-esque excursion utilising stitched-together fragments of orchestral parts pilfered from Johnny Mathis tracks; a handful of minuscule-edition Supremes-related pressings for diehard completists only; and an L.P. of his own crooning, backing courtesy of one of those play-along discs where one instrument's absent, requiring the listener to fill in. Ian also uses easy listening album sleeves as the basis for his visual art, temporarily masking out the women who so commonly feature on the front sleeves and painting over the text-printed backgrounds against which they pose seductively, luring the prospective purchaser.
Interviews with Ian here : http://www.robotsandelectronicbrains.co.uk/interviews/interviews/dj_ordeal.html
and here : http://www.erasingclouds.com/wk2106ordeal.html.
This is the only image I can find to link to : http://pan.priceminister.es/photo/497690314_M.jpg.
Many thanks to Ian for extra information.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Stock, Hausen & Walkman : Buy Me / Sue Me
Hot Air label, SPME 2.
Silver-labelled and clear-sleeved, this uncoloured see-through 33-revs seven-inch from 1997 comprises eighty-four locked-to-infinity grooves, each a fragment extracted from a larger work - an isolated sung or spoken "me", in fact.
Some sounds are sufficiently distinctive for straight-off identification : there's Ashes To Ashes; Ian Dury's ...Rhythm Stick; the unmistakable voice of Ivor Cutler; The Seeds' Pushin' Too Hard; Television's Marquee Moon; Magazine's The Light Pours Out Of Me; The Beatles' Help and Come Together. Other locks are irritatingly familiar, real tip-of-tongue-sters : we're teased, tantalised but never presented with enough sonic information for that magical brainbox click we so desire.
Whilst I'm in the dark as to S,H & W's motivation behind the forging of this wonderful plaything of a record, this Pop Quiz gone awry, I'd hazard a guess that it's a sarky comment upon the egomania present in much of popular music - the very me, me, me of it all, if you like. Then there's that age-old question of how literally we take the narrator - should we have belief in them, view their words as autobiographical; or is what's in the grooves all just pretence, stuff which presses all the required emotional and consequently commercial buttons ?
I very much enjoy listening to these locks - in particular, the little shard of Marquee Moon has an incredible relentless energy when on ad infinitum repeat. Quite a contrast with the dynamics of its original near-ten minute parent.
I notice that this is the third record in this journal thus far featuring The Beatles, Favorite Recorded Scream and the Roger Miller release being the others, though the latter only incorporates pre-track crackle from a Fabs disc.
Images : http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=209384.
Silver-labelled and clear-sleeved, this uncoloured see-through 33-revs seven-inch from 1997 comprises eighty-four locked-to-infinity grooves, each a fragment extracted from a larger work - an isolated sung or spoken "me", in fact.
Some sounds are sufficiently distinctive for straight-off identification : there's Ashes To Ashes; Ian Dury's ...Rhythm Stick; the unmistakable voice of Ivor Cutler; The Seeds' Pushin' Too Hard; Television's Marquee Moon; Magazine's The Light Pours Out Of Me; The Beatles' Help and Come Together. Other locks are irritatingly familiar, real tip-of-tongue-sters : we're teased, tantalised but never presented with enough sonic information for that magical brainbox click we so desire.
Whilst I'm in the dark as to S,H & W's motivation behind the forging of this wonderful plaything of a record, this Pop Quiz gone awry, I'd hazard a guess that it's a sarky comment upon the egomania present in much of popular music - the very me, me, me of it all, if you like. Then there's that age-old question of how literally we take the narrator - should we have belief in them, view their words as autobiographical; or is what's in the grooves all just pretence, stuff which presses all the required emotional and consequently commercial buttons ?
I very much enjoy listening to these locks - in particular, the little shard of Marquee Moon has an incredible relentless energy when on ad infinitum repeat. Quite a contrast with the dynamics of its original near-ten minute parent.
I notice that this is the third record in this journal thus far featuring The Beatles, Favorite Recorded Scream and the Roger Miller release being the others, though the latter only incorporates pre-track crackle from a Fabs disc.
Images : http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=209384.
EMI open day souvenir seven-inch
Another unplayable record (see Denkmal write-up :
http://steviecurates.blogspot.com/2009/10/denkmal-old-dog-no-tricks.html).
This one was pressed (in what quantity ?) by EMI as a special souvenir to commemorate the owner's visit, on their Silver Jubilee year open day, 28th and 29th May 1977. One to file alongside the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen, perhaps, the single is housed in a thin card sleeve which is die-cut, and plain white save for a small Union Jack in the top left hand corner on the front.
One label has a detail of said red-white-and-blue, with the info on the other alongside the crest for The Queen's Silver Jubilee - and two flags, one with the Nipper (dog and gramophone) trademark and the other bearing the boxed EMI logo. The flag label side has some very nice scroll lettering which goes halfway round, informing the recipient of EMI's Hayes, Middlesex address. The reverse also has etchings - three of the Nipper trademark with three unidentified pieces of music interspersed, the significance of which I've no idea : perhaps one was from the first ever item pressed at EMI ?
The only sound on each side is a short warning beep at the start, followed by a long continuous one (so that you really know you're in trouble); the pictorial side has a little more groove available to hear before the stylus-mangling etchings intrude.
A really aesthetically pleasing if purely decorative, non-functional giveaway. definitely designed not to be auditioned, whereas the Denkmal single could be tried out to whatever extent with an old, outgoing needle. Interesting to compare these two records each of which has been made to be unplayable though with a different motivation for that.
http://steviecurates.blogspot.com/2009/10/denkmal-old-dog-no-tricks.html).
This one was pressed (in what quantity ?) by EMI as a special souvenir to commemorate the owner's visit, on their Silver Jubilee year open day, 28th and 29th May 1977. One to file alongside the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen, perhaps, the single is housed in a thin card sleeve which is die-cut, and plain white save for a small Union Jack in the top left hand corner on the front.
One label has a detail of said red-white-and-blue, with the info on the other alongside the crest for The Queen's Silver Jubilee - and two flags, one with the Nipper (dog and gramophone) trademark and the other bearing the boxed EMI logo. The flag label side has some very nice scroll lettering which goes halfway round, informing the recipient of EMI's Hayes, Middlesex address. The reverse also has etchings - three of the Nipper trademark with three unidentified pieces of music interspersed, the significance of which I've no idea : perhaps one was from the first ever item pressed at EMI ?
The only sound on each side is a short warning beep at the start, followed by a long continuous one (so that you really know you're in trouble); the pictorial side has a little more groove available to hear before the stylus-mangling etchings intrude.
A really aesthetically pleasing if purely decorative, non-functional giveaway. definitely designed not to be auditioned, whereas the Denkmal single could be tried out to whatever extent with an old, outgoing needle. Interesting to compare these two records each of which has been made to be unplayable though with a different motivation for that.
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