what's goin' on over here at the true vine

3544 hickory ave, Baltimore MD 21211
410-235-4500

hello there,
here's some blurbs of about 1% of what's come through our door this week, just to make a few points in space.
but first i will mention an upcoming true vine performance:

DANIEL HIGGS
live at the true vine
saturday october 18th
daniel will start at 3:00 p.m.
during open store hours
when he will stop, nobody knows
there is no admission charge


LP'S:

THE FLYING LIZARDS: S/T $12 (virgin records 1979 debut album by david cunningham's brilliant attack on pop music pop band. features the top ten hit 'money (that's what i want)' which is a phenomenon, in that something so quickly thrown together & intentionally weird could be successful on the american charts. i dont it's happened since.
by the way, the rest of this album is great despite the radio program director's note for dj's on my personal promo copy that says "by no means try to play any other track on this record!")

BLO: CHAPTER ONE $30 (out of print shadoks issue of their early 70's album. heavy african funk with traces of psychedelia & hard rock.
)

ZOMES: S/T $12 aisa osborne's (of lungfish) solo album. the music works with slow repetitive murky lines that feel ancient & homespun. the melodies & pulses of lungfish can be found living inside. excellent late night listening. also available as a cd for $10.


FOX & COMPANY: S/T: $25 (1977 rare private press album that moves through funky disco rock

MARGO GURYAN: TAKE A PICTURE $17 (reissue of her 1968 debut album. "love. what does it mean to live between the beginning & the ending of love? where do you go to get to know the reason why a brand new feeling comes to take you away from reason? love. how do you know the things you do you do not only from need. and not from greed. but only from love? love.
when do you get to be someone who can give, & live without hurting someone you love? why do we grow & never show the little that we know of love?)

CHRISTIANA: FINAL CHURCH $12 (an 80's 12" EP i've never seen before, featuring f.m.einheit of einsturzende neubauten. the cover has been through alot but the vinyl is in good shape. i would recommend this record for dj's for the first cut entitled 'suechtig'. funky avant industrial dub...ness.
)

THE ETERNAL RUSH EAST: JESUS CELEBRATION $7.5 (70's church album featuring kid musicians making songs to help the youth in the desperate battle with narcotics. when they aren't playing, minister wade akins takes the mic & bores us all to tears.
)

DR. OCTOPUS: PARTS 1 & 2 $14 (atmospheric excursion feat. ju suk reet meate of smegma. beautiful silkscreened jacket art & limited to 333 copies.
probably out of print by now)

SCOTTIE B: FUK DAT $10 (raw scottie b 12" EP on hardhead records)


CD'S:

GILBERTO GIL: EXPRESSO 2222 $15 (1972 reissue of brazilian artist & tropicalia pioneer, gilberto gil.
features some of of the most tight fast & funky songs of his career)

THE CAN OPENERS: IS THE ONE $10 (new megaphone limited release of the can openers third album that took not much time to record but 10 years to release because after all, it's just time. guaranteed to rub your fur the wrong way & pluck out your feathers.
)

ANDRE POPP & HIS ORCHESTRA: DELIRIUM IN HI-FI $18 (import cd issue of this french arranger's 1957 album. this works in a similar vein to spike jones but uses tape manipulation to create the wacky disturbances.
)

ERSEN: S/T $17 (finders keepers label. ersen are turkish & this record is from the 70's & it's funky & it's groovy & it rocks & it's great.
)

JOHN GAVANTI: S/T $14 (early 80's concept album created by sumner crane of the no wave band mars with help from members of mars & dna. when i had a record shop in frederick in the early 90's i spent weeks tracking down sumner's phone # & he gave me a box of sealed copies of the vinyl & i took down all the display records in the store & replaced them with 20 copies of this record. they cost $5 a piece & i never sold one over the course of a few years.
)

ENNIO MORRICONE: IN THE BRAIN (cherry red records compilation of morricone's psychedelic, groovy, atmospheric, wacky, dark & beautiful sides. i'm so happy this man was born on earth.
)

MODERN SHIT: WILL MAKE YOU ILL $19 (modern shit was a very limited edition cassette from the 80's that has now been reissued on disc by alga marghen. one driving force behind modern shit is amos who was in the homosexuals. any project that this man has been involved in ends up being incredibly unique & surreal.
)

in a couple of days this post should be up on aural states website with sounds to accompany the descriptions: auralstates.com


FROM THE REPAIR SHOP:
karl just finished the vaginanator & it is now for sale fpr $75. he also finished it's little brother, the kuken 500, for $60. both are modified kid's keyboards that can do so much more than before. ask to try them out & karl will hook them up for you.


two new instruments are available here now from instrument creator peter blasser. the radio zither & the sidrassi. i will step down now & let peter take the mic.



peter:
Hello my friends. RADIOZITHER is wireless technology, in marriage with a fine wooden casket carved from Pawlonia logs at the Baltimore Municipal Stump Dump. Modeled after the pan-Asian tradition of plank zithers (guqin, gayageum, koto), its form reflects upon ancient heritages. Its function is to transcend traditions through radio, to inspire global thinking physically as well as ethereally. This instrument sonifies plucks as well as movements between plucks, it is played / meta-played, my friends.


Oil is too sophisticated to burn, said the chemist Dmitrii Mendeleev on examining petroleum. Plastic is a sublimation of oil, and it is key to develop the acoustic resonance of RadioZither. The colorful nylon strings feel like silk, and sound like crystal. The translucent triangle "bridges" are resonant plastic, which prop up the strings and transmit their tone to the body of the instrument. In the words of Carson, "Plastic is a sound".


Two radio fields envelop your left hand and your right hand. You pluck Nylon chords on a wooden plank. my friends, these two vibrations are multiplied (heterodyned) to produce an electro-acoustic vector.


The antennae are aluminum discs, which give a visual cue to the invisible shape of the radio field.
Each field has three controls:
-volume controls how loud the tone is, my friends.

-modulation lets the other RadioPad twist this one's shape (NEW)
-tuning sets the general pitch range

The body of the instrument contains two large (louder) piezo-transducers, embedded at strategic locations to relay the acoustics to a preamplifier circuit which also generates an envelope. When the player does no action, the instrument will be electronically silent due to this envelope. Another way to say this is "the theremins are triggered by plucking the strings". To counter this "silence based modality" there is a "GrungeKnob" which brings the sound of the electronics up as well as microphonic sensitivity in the cavity. my friends, you can also press anywhere on the body to shape the volume of the theremins.


acoustic demonstration (through Fender Blues Junior)
playing strings with para-plucking (hitting, pressing, scraping)
bass and walking meta-chords
feedback system times radio sounds times space within room with loud Fender amp
listening, my friends, to the new cross-modulations in the RadioPads

Because the each zither is carved from a different hunk of wood, they will all be different, thus you can purchase finished pieces below, or comission a certain style by contacting me. The current run of 9-stringers ($888) are 56 inches long and about 8 wide. 12 volt transformer included in the USA, my friends.


The SIDRASSI ORGAN has seven pressure sensitive bars, my friends, which you press to express the seven tones within. Use the buttons on the front to scroll each tone through tuning, which then is set to what you choose. There is a master pitch knob, as well as a master modulation knob. There are 42 nodes to touch or weave with wire. When wired, the bars go solipsistic; each one is unique now. Press a bar, its sound goes left, release it, its sound goes right; it has a stereo influence. The Sidrassi is an Organ, designed to reflect the glory of god. But it allows exploration of the Devils' Tone, which is irrational relationships. The instrument runs on transformer ("wall-wart").
"

thankyou peter.

that's enough for now.

til next time,
love,
jason

hello everyone,
our telephone & credit card machine is now hooked up & working. new & exciting lp’s & cd’s have been rolling through our doors over the past 2 weeks & i’d like to tell you about a few of them. here are a few drops in the bucket:

LP’S:

NAUTICAL ALMANAC: MELDING LINEARALITY $15 (brand new release limited to 70 copies. the vinyl is hand lathe cut & plays outwards from the inside of the record.

“the grooves on the record disc require the person (THATS YOU) to have interactions with them. THIS RECORDS PLAYS DIFFERENTLY EVERY INSTANCE IT IS PLAYED. YOU MUST GIVE BACK.”)

LEPRECHAUN CATERING: MALE PLUMAGE $18 (small pressing by white denim release from 2 years ago which has been out of print for a while now. we found a few copies)

RUTH COPELAND: I AM WHAT I AM $21 (bad ass deep fiery vocals with funkadelic musicians in the backing band is a good combo)

V/A: LA GUEPE VOLUME 2 $15 (fantastic funky & occasionally electronic quiky 70’s library collection from the french label pulp flavor)

ACNODE ONE $21 (new pressing of never released material from 1978 by dr. id & ju suk reet meate from smegma)

FUNKADELIC: MAGGOT BRAIN $15 (original westbound pressing cutout with cover ringwear but decent to good vinyl condition)

CHARLES MANSON: LIE $30 (original 1987 awareness records pressing of his 60’s recordings)

R.STEVIE MOORE: TEENAGE SPECTACULAR $10 (pop pioneer DIY genius godfather. i dont see this record floating around much. grab it before it’s gone!)

R. STEVIE MOORE: WHAT’S THE POINT? $7 (this one i do see floating around over the years but that has no bearing on the fact that it’s a singularly brilliant & unique collection of r. stevie’s music)

NOVOS BAINOS: ACABOU CHORARE $30 (beautiful early 70’s groovy bossa cuts from one of my favorite brazilian bands. this is the first time i’ve seen a record by them in a record store!)

DAEVID ALLEN: NOW IS THE HAPPIEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE $22.50 (1977 release on tapioca records of the best daevid allen solo album i’ve heard. if you’re a fan of early gong but aren’t thrilled with the later albums then you’ll be fine with this)

BIG STAR: #1 RECORD $20.00 (1986 repress an ace records of their first album)

KRAFTWERK: COMPUTERWELT $20 (original 1981 kling klng german pressing of what in america is titled ‘computer world’. inside is a full color sleeve with kraftwerk posed in their androidic mindstate)

THE LAST POETS: DOUGLAS 3 $15 (original 1970 pressing of their first album. percussion & political-racial vocals that are very brethren to some of sun ra’s work)

V/A: PUPPET JAZZ $15 (rare jazz, funk, libray  & soul instrumentals from west germany in the 60’s & 70’s)

CD’S:

PEOPLE LIKE US & KENNY G: NOTHING SPECIAL $14 (one woman sound sculptor live on the kenny g show, on wfmu radio. fantastic torture! i cant tell you enough how healthy this record is for your head.)

CHRIS MCGREGOR’S BROTHERHOOD OF BREATH $17 (brotherhoodof breath were formed by chris mcgregor in london in 1970. an invigorating & joyous mix of african—dance rhythms & feely improvised jazz)

DAVIE ALLEN & THE ARROWS: DEVIL’S RUMBLE $27 (double cd anthology 1964 - 1968 from the master of wicked fuzzed biker film soundtrack instumentals. there is no

collection of their material as extensive as this elsewhere)

BILL COSBY: BADFOOT BROWN & THE BUNIONS BRADFORD FUNERAL & MARCHING BAND $12 (”one of the few sets ever cut by his short-lived bunions bradford band - quite dark at times, with a really freaked-out messed-up quality that might almost be described as psychedelic funk.” 1971)

KARL HECTOR & THE MALCOUNS: SAHARA SWING $15 (new album of african influenced heavy funk. highly recommended for fans of budos band, sugarmen 3 & whitefield brothers… or for that matter anyone who likes funky music)

MODERN SHIT: WILL MAKE YOU ILL $19 (modern shit was a very limited edition cassette from the 80’s that has now been reissued on disc by alga marghen. one driving force behind modern shit is amos who was in the homosexuals. any project that this man has been involved in ends up being incredibly unique & surreal.)

EDDA DELL’ORSO: VOICE $18 (a collection of 60’s/70’s italian cuts by ennio morricone, armando trovajoli, piero piccioni & roberto pregadio that have one thing in common….the gorgeous haunting sensual otherworldly wordless vocals of edda dell’orso.)

CHRISSY ZEBBY TEMBO & NGOZI FAMILY: MY ANCESTORS $21 (”Mega-rare African psyche rock from the 1970s! Scuzzy, over-driven, Hendrix-inspired biker rock action from Africa!”)

there are hundreds more to check out the next time you swing by.

THE REPAIR SHOP is getting itself off the ground at this point & a few new ideas have come about. Karl who runs the repair division is now making small synthesizers for sale in the shop. he’s just finishing the first one which will be named ‘THE VAGINANATOR’. it’s a modified small keyboard with many organic added features like control voltage input, noise, freak button, touch button, kill button & best of all a strip near the keybaord that is played with a small stylus pen that slides up & down the pitch or tempo. it’s selling for $75. come in and try it out if your interested. also if you would like karl to modify an electronic instrument that you own into something else, either with your direction or not, then have a word with him. karl is also repairing turntables, amps, speakers, reel to reel players, synthesizers, electronic modules & many other electronic devices.

thanks,
love,
jason

hello everyone,
the true vine vine has moved to 3544 hickory ave. in hamden. if you were to walk out of the true vine pt. 1 & make a right, you would then make a right on the very next street (hickory ave.) & the true vine pt. 2 is right there on your right. we are actually in the back of  the same building as philly's best. there are several differences at our new location.

for instance:

ian is not running the shop
(he's working away at other great endeavors which will take the form of beautiful records which we will surely carry in the shop).

our stock is small in quantity but large in quality
(just like when we started the first time. give a few months & the record bins should start filling up).

we are offering repair services for turntables, amplifiers, synthesizers, instruments & various electric & electronic things.
(call the shop or bring in your broken thing & our "repair team" will have a look. you may have to leave it for a day because they will not be in the shop every hour of every day. they will however be on call. we will also consider buying equipment).

we have different hours: tues. - sat. 12 - 9 & sun./mon. 12 - 6

our phone # is still 410 235 4500
(it wont be connected until sept 25th though which also means we cant run credit cards until then as well)

love,
jason

TRUE VINE REOPENING PARTY
monday sept. 15th at the new location (3544 hickory ave)
come down around 8 pm or later & bring whatever beverage you like.

there will be live music by people who dont have band names for what they are doing that evening & i dont know everyone's last name so here is my organic description: GRACE & OWEN who were in TEETH MOUNTAIN are doing a set with MAX who is in NEEDLEGUN & DAN BREEN who is in SNACKS & LEPRECHAUN CATERING. KIT who just moved to baltimore & who's sister is LEXIE MOUNTAIN is doing a set based on the joke A WHALE WALKS INTO A BAR with a SAXOPHONE PLAYER WHO'S NAME I DONT KNOW & A VOLUNTEER WHO IS NEEDED TO PLAY THE BARTENDER PART. NICK BECKER & JAKE FREEMAN who are in CRAZY DREAMS BAND are playing with the SAXOPHONE PLAYER WHO'S NAME I DONT KNOW & finally SEJAY which is two thirds of SEJAYNO, minus SEVY who lives in oakland, ca. SEJAY does contain PETER B & CARSON GARHART. the stereo will be positively monopolized by MATMOS throughout the night. come on down if you like.

members of the true vine & half japanese present:

non stop music from 3pm til the a.m. hours featuring music from inside baltimore, music from out of baltimore & a rare performance from the complete original half japanese line up.

TRUE VINE CDR SERIES
our own mixtapes of very old and/or foreign-only releases.   all $5 a piece.
previous volumes back in stock:

-Groovy Malaysian Pop Chicks of the 60s and 70s
-Central Javanese Gamelan:  Archaic Styles and Austere Performances of the early 1970s
-Last Gasps of Courtly Hindustani vocal music 30s - 50s
-Percussion (and Vocal) Recordings from Vietnam, Loas, Thailand, Java, Borneo and the Phillipines 1960s- 70s
-Folk and Rural Music of Brazil, 1970s
-1920s-40s Recordings from Indochina and Indonesia from 78s:  Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Sunda, Java, & Bali
-1910-30s Classical, Ceremonial and Folk Music Recordings from Japan
-Traditional Music Recordings from the Saharan Countries, vol 1:  Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco, Tunesia; 1960s-70s

plus these BRAND NEW ENTRIES, each lovingly compiled by yours truly and now available

BALKAN FOLK & RURAL MUSIC RECORDINGS 60s-80s & 30s
gathered from commercial and scholarly recordings, ranging from performances by a 100-singer and 100-bagpipe Bulgarian choir recorded outdoors, ace Macedonaian bagpiper Pece Atanasovskoga, a field recording from an east Serbian cemetary of women lamenting over a man's corpse, Albanian folk dances, Epriot wife-abduction wedding music and much more.

RURAL & TRADITIONAL MUSIC OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN FRENCH COLONIES IN THE 60s
hot recordings from March & April of 1961 of ritual and labor music from Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) & the Ivory Coast.

SUB-SAHARAN GUITAR & STRING MUSIC OF THE 60s
a direct reply to Mississippi records Lipi Kodi Ya City Council LP, using different tracks from several of the same source LPs.  begins with urban performances from Congo, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Zambia before moving into rural recordings from Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi.

MISSA PRO DEFUNCTIS (Requiem Mass):  Gregorian Chant according to the Solesmes edition
the entire Gregorian mass for the dead, performed in 1934 Manhattanville, NY by the Choir of the Pius X School, comprised of pre-pubescent boys, and issued as a set of 5 12" 78rpm records by Victor.  Gregorian chant we re-introduced to the Catholic liturgy in 1904 by the newly-coronated Pope Pius X in his decree Tra le sollecitudini.  Church music had moved toward more contemporary mannerist and romantic writing, but under the influence of the Pope's dear friend, a guilt-ridden paranoiac and prolific composer named Lorenzo Perosi a  "purification" of church music was undertaken.  Perosi was named "Perpetual Director" of the Sistine chapel choir, a post which he held for 50 years, despite periods spent in mental institutions for periods of mania.  Under his influence, monastic institutions like Solesmes in France published editions of medieval liturgial music for modern use, including the one heard here.  Until 1968, the Requiem mass included the Dies Irae (God's Wrath), a 13th century hymn, a powerful vision of the earth's ultimate destruction by fire and the desperate pleading of a sinner for exception from the descruction.  It is performed here in almost whispered form by a choir of boys, all about 11 years old - truly one of the weirdest examples of human music in the context of grief and mourning.

TWO EUROPEAN FOLK DIVAS OF THE 30s-40s:  La Nina de los Peines & Sotiria Bellou
12 tracks recorded in the 30s by the 20th century's greatest female flamenco singer of Andelusia, la Nina de los Peines (the Girls with the Combs) in brilliant sound quality, followed by 13 tracks of the 40s and early 50s by the last great diva of Greek rembetika, Sotiria Bellou, a strident leftist, open lesbian and all-around stunning human being.  Utterly breath-taking and masterful vocal performances all around.  A Sotiria tribute myspace page:  http://www.myspace.com/sotiriabellou   Info on la Nina de los Peines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ni%C3%B1a_de_los_Peines

KRONTJONG:  Popular Songs of Java, 60s-70s
Not as elevated as the courtly tembang and not as folksy as dandut, krongcong (as it is also spelled) is sweet, gentle, yearning, nostalgic middle-class vocal music accompanied by kacapi (zithers) or the string instruments brought to Indonesia by the Portuguese 500 years ago or, more recently, electronic keyboards.  This collection includes 8 achingly lovely performances of the 60s with a few more from the 70s. 

IVORY COAST:  Dan mask recordings 1965-67; Guoro recordings 1968-69
stunning ethnographic village ritual music recordings.  The Dan group recordings are the sound componants of masks, which are comprised of costumes, gesture and sound.  For instance, the "voice" of one mask is made by rubbing a wet string; other masks include special devices for altering the performer's voices in otherworldly abstractions of the human vocal sound.  The Guoro performances range from a funeral mask performance and other public festival musics to bragging songs of professional musicians and the grinding song of women at work.

BHIMSEN JOSHI:  Early Long-form Ragas of the 1950s
One of the greatest singers of the 20th century, Bhimsen Joshi was born in Karnataka, India in 1922 and left home to begin his formal music studies at age 11, eventually becoming the disciple of Sawai Ghandarva, himself a disciple of Abdul Karim Khan (the founder of the Kirana school of singing), with whom Joshi also studied.  He began recording 78rpm discs in 1944 containing two 3-4 minute performances each, followed by 45rpm EPs containing twice as much music and then, in the mid-50s, LPs which allowed Joshi to develop performances for up to 20 minutes at a time.  These three performances of the mid- to -late-50s are among his earliest of this stunning longer-form performances, exploiting his three octave vocal range, mind-boggling virtuosity, intonation and sense of development and unfolding of the moods of the ragas, which in turns are achingly devotional, heroic or full of pathos.  Masterpieces, to put it simply, it astounds me that these have never been issued in the West. 

PLUS two bonus volumes compiled by Angela of the primo Boston-based mail-order outfit Weirdo records http://www.weirdorecords.com

BONUS NOVELTIES AND POP TUNES
25 20s-50s recordings taken from 78rpm discs including music from Shanghai, Portugal, Armenia, Greece-Turkey (the always stellar Achilleas Poulos!), Hawaii, Armenia, Taiwan (the utterly weird Blind and Polio Children from Bethany Home Pingtung), Mexico, the Caribbean and the good, old USA (H Bomb Ferguson, Hank Williams, Helen Myers Dude Martin, Teresa Brewer and others). 

UNKNOWN MUSICS FROM BRAZIL & CUBA
raw rural ethnographic field recordings probably from the late 60s or early 70s of vocal, percussion and wind performances. 

A FEW NOTABLY NEW RELEASES IN-STOCK

Yoro Sidibe - s/t  (Yaala Yaala)  CD  $13
Baltimore's own Jack Carneal has assembled and released this officially sanctioned (non-exploitative) collection of epic performances by the elderly donso ngonifola Yoro Sidibe, a hunter-musician of rural Mali.  A magnificent collection of nourishing, heroic and magic-tinged stuff and arguably the best of the four Yaala Yaala releases to date.  Highest recommendation.

Group Doueh - Guitar Music of the Western Saharah  (Sublime Frequencies)  CD  $15
new CD issue of the now-out of print (and hotly desirable) LP, this disc is a stark masterpiece of modern electric guitar and vocal performances from the desert country.  Furious and ecstatic stuff.  Highest recommendation.

v/a - Radio Myanmar (Burma)  (Sublime Frequencies)  CD  $15
a fascinating and tragically timely collection of 44 tracks grabbed from the waves emitted from this politically isolated country in western Indochina, including sweet pop, political propaganda (in English), April Lavigne covers, tribal music, classical performances, news,  commercials and much more.  My personal favorite of the label's collagic radio braodcast collections.

Hatred (Nate Young) - 3:57 / 4:20  (Alleypiss)  7"  $7
limited clear wax release from the brand new label run by Baltimore's Max "Dogdick" Eisenberg.  Wolf Eyes frontman Young spews ghostly and relatively delicate electronic stuff.  Almost crumbling, almost composerly, almost a song.  Nice.

NEW BALTIMORE RELEASES

Jason Willett - The Sounds of Megaphone Unlimited  (MT6)  CD  $11
brand new 20-track collection from the maestro's many hours of unreleased material, spanning the years 1995-2007, covering his various bands (Can Openers, Jaunties, Pleasant Livers, X-Ray Eyes, Attitude Robots, Dramatics & Leprechaun Catering) and including apperances by members of Half Japanese, Boredoms, Ruins, Gaybomb, Snacks, and many more, including two ducks, a cat and at least one very drunk drummer.  If you're already a devotee of Willett's spasmodic free-punk brain-scrub, you'll need this for your already overflowing "W" shelf.  If you just found out about the 40-year-old Marylander's ear-splitting hypno-splat, you couln't ask for a better intro.  Willett lists three catagories that these tracks fall under:  "Punk Rock Anomalies," "Psychic Cholestorol Cleaners," and "Goodtime Happy Organ Tunes," but we could list at least three catagories for each song, if we had the time and a six-pack to kill.

Hex Screw / Needle Gun (TerraFirma) 2CDR  $5
one-man psychedelic-electronic-energy-punk jammer Hex Screw and five-man teenage no-wave killers Needle Gun each get a 20-minute CD (plus stickers and inserts) in a numbered edition of 50 copies.  Did you know that Needlegun got a 10-out-of-ten-vote in the Village Voice's year-end music poll and they they're one of the best rock bands in Baltimore?  Nice!

Human Bell - Live at WNYU  (self)  CDR  $11
tour-only 40-minute live improvisation by the Popol Vuh of Appalachia

Whispers for Wolves - Language of the Dards  (Boring Machines)  CD  $12
3-track 40-minute collection of acoustic guitar / voice / electronics compositions by Melissa Moore, recorded late last year and given delux issue in Italy (!) with drawings by Erin Womack.  Moore's singular combination of densely-layered anti-system electronics (courtesy of instruments invented by Peter Blasser of Sejayno), quasi-prayer-howling vocalizing and angular, intuitive guit-freakery is way way way more zonked than anything out of the freak-folk (R.I.P.) camp; it is, in short, something ELSE. The first, we are told, of a series of releases regarding the life of Milarepa.

Microkingdom - Prohour  (self)  LP  $13
delux colored vinyl in printed jacket and printed outersleeve from a numbered edition of 300 copies.  two side-long energy-improv jams by the trio of John Dierker (sax; Swingin Swamis, Can Openers, New Volcanoes, etc), Marc Miller (guitar; Oxes), and Will Redman (drums).  One of few documents of the sound-centric ESP/BYG-style improv thread that runs deep in this town (if usually buried under performance and personality shanigans) and a damn fine one at that.

Thank You new LP on Thrill Jockey will be here early this week.  CD will follow in a few weeks.

MORE HOT NEW RELEASES

v/a - Shadow Music of Thailand  (Sublime Frequencies)  LP  $24
holy mackrel - it's a new Sublime Frequencies LP, limited to a one-time pressing of 1500 copies and we only got ten of them.  Grab while you can.  The two previous LPs they did (of Nigerian and Mauritanian guitar music in editions of 1000 copies) became nearly instant collector-bait, and we're still fielding half a dozen phone calls from all over the world asking if we have copies.  (We don't - try ebay and keep a C note handy - although both titles are being reissued on CD this summer.)  This one, a Mark Gergis-curated, colllection of late-60s/early-70s Thai psyche guitar freakery, is sure to blow out in a matter of weeks.

v/a - Bollywood Steel Guitar  (Sublime Frequencies)  CD  $15
21 tracks of Indian pop instrumental slide guitar performances 1962-86. 

v/a - New Orleans Funk vol 2  (Soul Jazz)  CD  $19  3LP  $25
sequel to the best-selling and monumentally fun collection of late-60s/early-70s NoLa funk masterpieces. 

v/a - Nigeria Disco Funk  (Soundway)  CD  $17
is, indeed, what it says it is. 

Richard Bishop - God Damn Religion  (Locust)  DVD & CD  $20
"a diabolical experiment in hypnotic mind control -- a phantasmagoric presentation of demonic and divine imagery, meticulously assembled and designed to put the viewer into an altered state of darkened awareness."  includes a CD of the soundtrack, Elektronika Demonika.

Evan Parker - Conic Sections  (Psi)  CD  $20
new reissue of this 1989 solo circular-breathing saxophone improvisation pinnacle.  Easily one of the most virtuosic and hypnogically focused examples of any unprocessed acoustic instrument as virtual electronic-composition tool.  A singularly intense and brilliant album.

Michael J. Schumacher - Five Sound Installations  (XI)  DVD-ROM  $35
Schumacher (b. 1967) is one of the most talented electronic music composers alive, and this release is extraordinary by any measure.  For nearly 20 years now, Schumacher has focused on multi-channel sound installation without beginning middle or end (drawing, in part, from the "eternal music" performances and installations of La Monte Young) in which sounds (acoustic and electronic), chosen with an exquisitely-trained ear for timbre, are given relative volumes, durations and spatial-locational relationships by computer-run algoriths.  It is my belief that the forefront of electonic composition must be concerned with the ear's primary function - as a system for locating oneself in space, and no one in the US, to my knowlege, has given more care to exploration and expression in this area.  (Ten years ago, he founded the dedicated multi-channell sound installation space Studio 5 Beekman, and has for the past nine years, run Diapason Gallery, New York's only dedicated sound-art gallery - maybe the only dedicated sound art gallery in the U.S.)  His previous releases were fixed two-channel representations of a much more complicated body of work, but with this innovative release Schumacher offers five pieces, each made of hundreds of constituent sound-components, which can run from your Mac or PC through as many as 8 speakers into your home system in endless permutations in space and time.  Minimum system requirements: PC: Windows XP, Vista, 1 gig processor speed, 5 gig free disc space. Mac: OS 10.3 or higher, 1 gig processor speed, 5 gig free disc space.  To the technically savvy sound explorer, we couldn't recommend this any higher for weeks, months and years of fun. 

Boredoms - Super Roots 9  (Thrill Jockey)  CD  $14
domestic issue of their grandiose one-track 40-minute fermata-filled shaman-trip live extravaganza of choral samples and ever-expanding live drum patterning in eye-popping (does that cound as a pun? probably not...) cardboard sleeve with full score enclosed.

Jandek - The Myth of Blue  (Corwood)  CD  $8
his first release this year; his 52nd overall.  Four acoustic guitar and voice piece. 

Julian Cope - Japrocksampler  (Bloomsbury) book, clothbound in dustjacket  $28
second edition, UK-only, 302 pages with 16 page inset of color photos.  Hipster gotta-have guide ot Japanese psychedelic rock.

RECENTLY RESTOCKED CDs OF NOTE

Antena - Camino del Sol  (Numero)  $16

Brokenhearted Dragonflies  (Sublime Frequencies)  $15
brain-splitting field-recordings of Southeast Asian insect choruses.

Can - Tago Mago  (Mute)  $13
Can - Ege Bamyasi  (Mute)  $13
remastered versions, now a few bucks cheaper.

Ornette Coleman - Dancing in Your Head  (A&M)  $15

Shirley Collins & Davy Graham - New Folk Routes  (Fled'gling)  $15
Shirley & Dolly Collins - Love, Death & the Lady  (Fled'gling)  $15
Shirley & Dolly Collins - The Power of the True Love Knot  (Fled'gling)  $15

DNA - DNA on DNA  (No More)  $15

ESG - South Bronx Story  (Soul Jazz)  $19

Galaxie 500 - On Fire  (Ryko)  $13
Galaxie 500 - This is Our Music  (Ryko)  $13

Francoise Hardy - Comment te Dire Adieu  (Virgin, France)  $15
Francoise Hardy - Et Si Je M'en Vais Avant Toi  (Virgin, France)  $16
Francoise Hardy - If You Listen  (Virgin, France)  $15
Francoise Hardy - Star  (Virgin, France)  $15

Het - Let's Het  (AdHoc) $18

Jandek - The Living End  (Corwood)  $8
Jandek - Somebody in the Now  (Corwood)  $8
Jandek - Lost Cause  (Corwood)  $8

Florence Foster Jenkins - The Glory (???) of the Human Voice  (RCA)  $12
catastrophically, heroicilly bad opera self-released in the 40s by a rich lady who actually thought she had talent.  In a weird way, her delusion itself is a gift to us all...

Ustad Hafizullah Khan - Khalifa Kirana Gharana  (Just Dreams)  $17
intensely beautiful Hindustani classical sarangi performances by the son of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan, opium-glazed guru of Pandit Pran Nath.

Takehisa Kosugi - Catch Wave  (World Psychedelic)  $17
Takehisa Kosugi - Violin  (Lovely)  $13
amazing 70s and 80s solo material from the Taj Mahal Travellers main man and long-running David Tudor collaborator.  Highly recommended. 

Luie Luie - Touchy  (Companion)  $14
delux reissue of a hard-to-believe private press outsider LP of multi-layered one-man-band mania combining the bubbly Tijuana Brass with Joe Meekish production and a heartfelt post-hippie-burnout sense of the need for human contact.  Weird and amazing.

Mars - 78  (Atavistic)  $14

Merzbow - Batztoutai and Material Gadgets  (RRR)  2CD  $10
early industrial-influenced sound-collage stuff.

Jackie Mittoo - Keyboard Man at Studio One  (Soul Jazz)  $19

The Monks - Monk Time  (Retribution)  $15

OOIOO - Taiga  (Thrill Jockey)  $14
OOIOO - Kila Kila Kila  (Thrill Jockey)  $14

Shuggie Otis - Inspirational Information  (Luaka Bop)  $13

Pandit Ashok Pathak - Ancient Court Raga Traditions (World Arbiter)  $17
two long and beautiful dhrupad performances on surbahar, unique for their use of harmonies.

Eliane Radigue - Jetsun Mila  (Lovely)  2CD  $26
Eliane Radigue - Trilogie de la Morte  (XI)  3CD  $26

Sun City Girls - You're Never Alone With a Cigarette  (Abduction)  $15

Richard Thompson - Henry the Human Fly  (Feld'gling)  $15

v/a - Hollerin'  (Ronder)  $17
startling and life-affirming field recordings of rural southern white yowling their lungs out.  

v/a - New Orleans Funk  (Soul Jazz)  $19

v/a - Nigeria Special  (Soundway)  2CD  $23

v/a - The Roots of Gamelan  (World Arbiter)  $17
the two earliest recording session of Balinese gong kebyar from 1928 and the late 40s (includes the entire 6-side suite recorded by Walter Spies, the first side of which was issued on the Black Mirror, for what it's worth). 

Wha-ha-ha - Shinutokiwa Betsu  (Columbia, Japan)  $19 
first time in-stock, actually.  early 80s Japanese drums/percussion/computer trio:  a revelation: daring dub mixes, sudden changes, humour, virtuosic playing; extreme; very musical and pretty eccentric. Not to be missed."  In other words, straight up the Jason Willett alley of cute-blang.

Wha-ha-ha - Getahaitekonakucha  (Columbia, Japan)  $19
again, somewhere in the aesthetic confluence of OOIOO and Henry Cow.

The Work - Slow Crimes  (AdHoc)  $18

it's monk time!
Ian

USED INDIAN DISCS
we recently brought in a collection of 150 CDs of Indian music, including some nice stuff.  Here's a few highlights:

Noor Jehan - vol 5:  Medium Romantic:  Punjabi Master Songs  (Time Line)  $7
Noor Jehan - vol 6:  Punjabi Sad Songs  (TimeLine)  $7
Noor Jehan - vol 8:  Punjabi Awarded Songs  (TimeLine)  $7
Noor Jehan - vol 14:  Mehfil-e-Mujrah, Meri Nathli Da  (TimeLine)  $7
Noor Jehan - vol 15:  Mehfil-e-Mujrah, Mehiya We Bol We  (TimeLine)  $7 
Noor Jehan - vol 16:  Mehfil-e-Mujrah, Mehfil-e-Mujra (TimeLine)  $7
Noor Jehan - vol 17:  Mehfil-e-Mujrah, Huasan Mukhde Ton (TimeLine)  $7
Noor Jehan - vol 18:  Mehfil-e-Mujrah, Too Ne Mathe Pe Saja Di Bindya  (TimeLine)  $7
Noor Jehan - vol 19:  Mehfil-e-Mujrah, We Chhaad Meri Wini Na Maroor  (TimeLine)  $7
one of the subconitent's great divas of the 20th century, singer and actress, Noor Jehan (b. 1926; d. 2000) was born to a poor family in the rural Punjab and became a child star in films during the 30s.  By the early 40s, she had become grown into a Bardot-esque sex goddess frame. Between 1939 and 1961, she starred in dozens of Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu language films and was a major influence on Lata Mangeshkar.  From the 60s through the mid-90s, she was a playback singer.  Her complex love life paralells the Egyptian diva Oum Kalthoum's and added to her status as a national icon of modern Pakistan.  These discs, issued in the mid or late 90s span her career from about 1960 - 1990 and were augmented in some cases by new percussion tracks to make them feel more "modern" to the buying public of the time.

Munni Begum - Vol 1:  Intoxicating  (TimeLine)  $7
Munni Begum - Vol 2:  Botal Khuli Hai Raqs Mein  (TimeLine)  $7
Munni Begum - Vol 4:  Ke Paayal Bol Padi  (TimeLine)  $7
one of Pakistan's most renowned ghazal (light classical love/devotional song) singers.  She began recording in the 70s; these recordings of the 90s are given heavy "modern" electronic production.

Arati Mukherjee - The Best Of:  Bengali Modern Songs  (Gramophone Company)  $8
twenty-two lovely mid-70s - early-80s playback recordings. 

K.J. Yesudas - Gaanamrutham, Vol 1  (Magnasound)  $7  greatest hits
K.J. Yesudas - Many Moods  (EMI)  $7  70s-80s performances
K.J. Yesudas - Ennum Madhuram:  Malayalam Modern Songs  (EMI)  $7  performances of 1967-70
trained as a Carnatic classical musician, Yesudas is the most famous playback singer of the South Indian film industry ("Kollywood" after the Kerala state of which he is native).  "He has recorded songs for many languages including Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tulu, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English through his long career.  In his heyday, he was known as the Jim Reeves of South India." 

v/a - Qambel Maran:  Syriac chants from South India  (Pan)  $8
Christian liturgical music from the Southwest of India, recorded by a Christian Indian musicologist and presented with full notes and analysis.  "According to tradtion, St. Thomas the Apostle landed on Dodungallor in Kerala on the Southwest coast of India in 52AD and established Christian communities there and in the neighboring region of the Tamil Nadu."  For any anyone interested, we also have eleven discs from Kerala in the Malayalam, mainly of popular Christian devotional music, released between 2000 and 2002, which are for sale as a lot for $12.  More information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Malabar_Nasrani

Anuradha Paudwal - Bhaktimala:  Vishncu Sahasranamavali  (T Series)  $7
an hour of incredibly devotional chanting to Vishnu by a tender-voiced woman, accompanied only by a very faint tamboura. 

Sudha Ragunathan - Carnatic Vocal  (Pyramid)  $7
Sudha Ragunathan - Manasa Poigayile  (Shankar Co)  $7
Sudha Ragunathan - Classical Vocal  (AVM)  $7
Sudha Ragunathan - Papanasam Sivan Krithis, vol 2 (Amutham)  $7
Sudha Ragunathan - Bindhumalini:  Tamil Melodies from Thennisaith Thilagam  (Amutham)  $7
Sudha Ragunathan - Kaleeya Krishna  (Amuthan)  $7
one of the most celebrated singers of South Indian classical music of the past 30 years.

S. Sowmya - Carnatic Vocal  (Inreco / Pyramid)  $8
amazing classical performances, including a 22-minute performance of "Jesi Nadella" in rag Thodi.  The celebrated singer holds Masters degree in both music and chemical engineering, has won a gazillion awards and co-authored a CD-ROM encyclopedia on Carnatic music.

Nithyasree Mahadevan - Isaiyamutham  (Amutham)  $7
Nithyasree Mahadevan - Idhu Thano Thilai Sthalam  (Inreco)  $7
alarmingly masterful Carnatic classical performances by the then 24-year old female singer. 

A. Durga Prasad - Delightful Gottuvadyam   (Dual Marketing)  $8
the gottuvadyam is similar to the Carnatic Sarawarti veena or Hindustani sitar, but it is played horizontally using a slide.  This disc includes excellent 10 intrumental Carnatic performances.

Karaikudi Subramanian & Trichy Sakaran - Sunada  (Music of the World)  $8
eight Carnatic veena performances by Subramanian, a professor of music at the University of Madras, a phD in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan who belongs to the ninth generation of an unbroken lineage of Carnatic musicians.

Smt. E. Gayathri - South Indian Classical Veena  (Saican)  $8
9 Carnatic veena performances by one of the most celebrated Carnatic musicians of the recent past.  Gayathri was born in 1959 and began studying music at age 6, going on to receive dozens of awards and titles.  >From her web page:  "the scintillating performance which she gave in the direct divine presence of  Jagath Guru Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham (reverentially known as "Maha Periyava") at the age 11 had enhanced the innate divinity in her veena playing. Maha Periyava presented a sandalwood crown with "OM" engraved on it and asked her to wear it on her head. His holiness blessed Veena Gayathri while she played with the crown.  She has also had the unique privilege of giving exclusive concerts in the immediate presence of saints, savants, sages and siddha purushas."

Sikkil Sisters - Neela - Kunjumani  (EMI)  $8
seven masterful Carnatic flute duos recorded in 1969 (and one recorded in 1984). 

T.V. Gopalakrishnan - Eatern Beats:  Mridangam Solo  (Koel / Sangeetha)  $8
two half-hour-long percussion solos of mind-splitting virtuosity.


and much more, including several dozen Tamil and Telugu dozen pop & film music discs...

GREEK & TURKISH MUSIC

we've been building up a selection of music from the Balkans and Asia Minor on CD here lately.  There's a lot of amazing stuff.  Here's a quick overview:

v/a - Greek-Oriental Rebetica:  Songs and Dances in the Asia Minor Style:  The Golden Years 1911-1937  (Arhoolie)  $17
the first release of the urban folk style generally referred to under the banner heading "rembetika" (among other spellings) - a word which described as an analog of "blues," but which shares comminality in that it is mostly urban music, born of the suffering of an underclass, and a style which is so vaguely as to be barely definable - in the West, beautifully compiled by Dr. Martin Schwartz in the late 80s.  His notes give a nearly ideal introduction to the music:

"The selections on this disc consist of some of the finest examples of songs and instrumentals of urban Greek musical traditions of Asia Minor (Turkey). 

"Until its complete seizure by the Turks in the 15th century, Asia Minor, and especially Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, was the focus of Greek cultural life.  This situation persisted under the Ottoman Turkish rule of the Balkans and even in 1921, a century after Greece had become independent from the Turks, the cities of Constantinople (Istanbul) and Smyrna (Izmir) continued to have large Greek populations, with commercial and cultural life far more developed than that of Athens. 

"Under the Ottomans, there was a complex two-way interaction of the music of the Greeks and Turks (whose urban music was strongly influenced by that of the Persians and Arabs, themselves heirs of early Greek music theory).  In the early part of this century, Greek musicians of Turkey performed Turkish and Greek music and hybrids thereof.  The Greek musicians of Asia Minor were also well acquainted with music of Romania, Italy, and European music in general. 

"As a result of the Greco-Turkish wars, a period of numerous atrocities culminating in a vast fire in Smyrna, well over a million Greeks from Turkey [mostly women, children and older people] emigrated [under duress] in the period 1922-23, and many were quartered in Athens & Pireaus.  [Those two cities, in fact, doubled in size, from a quarter million inhabitants to populations of half a million each in a matter of three weeks.]  Forced upon an already depressed economy, the majority of the 'refugee' faced a variety of financial and social problems including resentment of the native Greek poplation.

"Nevertheless, by the end of the 20s, a group of these refugees, including most of the performers on this CD, through their talent, perseverance and professionalism (including a degree of musical education and literacy superior to what was ususal for indigenous performers of vernacular music), managed to become the predominant force in Greek popular music..."

The performers represented here, in fact, are variety of backgrounds, covering nearly two generations.  Marika Papagika, for instance, was born on the Greek island of Kos, near Turkey, and traveled extensively through a cafe scene during the late Ottoman period that included cities in Greece, Turkey, the Dodecanese and Egypt.  She was "discovered" and recorded in Alexandria by the Gramophone company in 1914, and by 1918 had relocated to New York City where she had a fabulously successful recording career for the next fifteen years and opened the first of many Greek cafes near the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan.  Her repetoir was widely varied, including folk songs from many places in the Eastern Mediterranean as well as light classical and pop stuff.  Rita Abadzi and Roza Eskanazi, by contrast, were children during the tragedy at Smyrna and were transfered by force with their remaining families (the fathers and brothers having perished in the slaughter of Christians in Turkey at the time, although it's worth pointing out that Eskanazi was not Christian but Jewish - and not Ashkenazi at that, but Sephardic, her family having fled persecution in Spain in the mid-19th century to Constaninople, only to be discplaced again seventy years later).  Their popularity during from the late 20s and early 30s as singers of songs almost strictly about heartbreak, longing, the criminal underworld and hashish, latested through the period of censorship in the 1940s.  Yorghos Papsidheris, by contrast was from central Greece and in addition to singing the amanes - the stylized laments derived from the interaction of Greek and Turkish cultures - was most well-known for singing kleftes, nationalist folk songs named for the mountain-dwelling outcast theives who became heroes of patriotism for having lived outside of Turkish rule at the beginning of the wave of nationalist sentiment in the 19th century which ultimately won the Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.  Yangos Psamatyano's near-anonymous group, by contrast, recorded the amane included here in Constantinople in 1913, although most other recordings under his name are oscene songs from whorehouses.

Among the disc's lyrics, given in tranlation in the disc's notes:
"I sigh in pain, I with with grief and rue / In all the world I have no hope but you." - Marika Papagika

"Open the tombs, dig up the poor, the rich / Look at them and see if you know which is which." - Stratos Payumdzis

"First fill me a water-pipe and then I'll hear your song / I'll sit and smoke a little while and then I'll play along
"I'll fix you up a pipe with kif - great stuff, it's from Isfahani / And we'll get stoned at Uncle John's, down in Pasalimani" - Rita Abadzi

"Constantinople and the Bosporous are my dream / My love lives there, and there's my torment." - Andonis Dalgas

"How much longer will my fate condemn me / To drag myself through foreigh lands like a withered leaf?" - Marika Kanaropulu

"That cokehead came and wrecked my brain / So I myself now smoke cocaine" - Roza Eskanazi

"Tell me, O Charon (may you enjoy your black gloom!) / Will my pain at last be cured in the netherworld?" - Yorghos Papasidheris

v/a - Rembetica: Historic Urban Folk Songs From Greece  (Rounder)
easily the OTHER ideal starting place for beginning to explore this music.  Compiled in the early 90s by the British-born painter Charles Howard, who moved to Greece at least partially due to his passion for the music, and who is responsible for majority of the great compilations of rembetika.  His focus is less on the interaction of Greece with Turkey than Schwartz, but rather on the hashish-culture of Athens and Pireaus in the 20s and 30s, a world of hip, well-dressed, jive talking gangsters and their molls, a world of knives, prisons and utter devotion to the pipe, where the musicians and the afficianados of the music half-jokingly/half-knowingly referred to themselves as dervishes, after the esoteric Muslims who thought they knew better than the orthodox sects and showed it by their heresies, and called their hash-dens tekkes after the dervish lodges. 

v/a - Rebetika 2  (JSP)  $29
one of two bargain priced five-hour four-CD sets compiled by Charles Howard released in the past year.  (We're temporarily out of stock in the first volume.)  Both are as sprawling and in-depth as their sheer heft would imply, although the first set is a bit better suited to the novice explorer than this one.  What we have here, in large part is a mixture of exceedingly rare and beautiful performances from the depths of the Greek folk music underworld from 1918 to 1938.  Imagine, for instance, if you had never heard of rock n roll before, and someone handed you a box of music which included as much Johnny Otis and Chocolate Watchband and Johnny Ray as it did Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and Rolling Stones.  That's a little what this is like.  An expansive set of brilliant performances which probably wouldn't make the slightest sense unless you already had the basic repetoir under your belt, but still so many incredible jewels that for the fan, an absolute must, particularly since original rembetika discs are collected and fought-over nearly as heavily as 50s and 60s be-bop LPs on Blue Note and Prestige or delta blues 78s on Paramount and Vocalion (read:  enormous amounts of money changing hands under conditions of jealousy and underhanded competition.)  The mastering is nothing to write home about (a magnificent violin solo by Makedounas from the late 10s is rendered practically unlistenable by digital over-processing), but the peculiar quality of the performances makes up for it (for instance, a strange novelty record depicting two guys getting stoned to a bouzouki solo complete with the sound of waterpipe, so prominant as to sound like a group of galloping hourses, everytime one of them takes a hit, and satisfied and quite-authentic-sounding groaning in cannabis-glazed pleasure.)

Amalia Baka - Old Greek Songs in the New Land 1923 - 1950:  In Foreigh Lands Since my Girlhood  (Arhoolie)  $12
Amalia (born Mazeltov) Baka was born a Romaniote Jew in Janina, Greece in 1897 and was sent to New York in an arranged marraige at the age of 15.  She began recording for an independent company that catered to Turkish, Greek and Armenian immigrants in 1923, beginning a career as a renowned cafe singer performing for a variety of Eastern Medditerraneans for the next 30-plus years.  Through marraiges, affairs, personal tragedies, she was a colorful character who shook her shimmy, flirted like a champ, and carried the standard of the old world songs of heartbreak in a variation of the late-Ottoman style.  She was a friend of Marika Papagika and frequent collaborator with the great oudist Markos Malkoun.  This disc is beautifully compiled by David Soffa who has been responsible for much of the research on the cafe music from Greece that arose in the US in the mid-10s to cater to the half-million immigrants, most of them single men who came to raise dowry money. 

v/a - The Women of Istanbul  (Traditional Crossroads)  $17
an exceptionally strong collection, both in terms of performances and sound-quality, of performances recorded between 1931 and 1946 of folk and light-classical music by female singers at the dawn of modern Turkey.  Turkey's first president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (in office 1923 - 1938) was famously a fierce secularist who banned the headscarf and advocated European dress for women.  The singers on this disc were powerful artists through that period, singing touching songs from one of the largest and most cosmopolitan cities on earth and in full possession of the florid vocal ornaments of the late Ottoman classical music.  Gorgeous stuff.  (Notably, Roza Eskenazi, perhaps the most famous female rembetika singer of all time, is included on the disc, having been born in Constantinople and having traveled back there many times to peform and record.  Her inclusion is almost seamless.)

v/a - The Masters of Turkish Music  (Rounder)  $17
released in 1990 under the auspices, interestingly, of the UMBC Center for Turkish Music in Catonsville, Maryland, these 20 tracks are derived from 70s recorded in the first few decades of the 20th century, at the tail end of the Ottoman Empire and include spectacular performances of classical (gazels and sarkis), dances and taksim (instrumental improvisations).  A window into the final flowering of the musical art of the Ottomans. 

Christos Zotos & Ionna Anghelou - Music from Continental Greece  (Al Sur)  $14
utterly exquisite 1993 voice-and-lauto recordings of epic folk songs.  There's a brief YouTube clip of Zotos showing off his instrumental abilities, which doesn't begin to touch the depth and immeadiately palpable profundity of the performances on this disc, and does not include the grace of his voice which is more comparable to the best Hindustani vocalists (Bhimsen Joshi, for instance) than any modern Greek singer I've heard, but....
http://youtube.com/watch?v=L30ZFexUSvE

mercy, mercy,
into the salty sea
I shall pour honey,
Ian

ANN EVERTON VIDEOS
we got a couple copies of the DVD on HereSee of Baltimorian Ann Everton's videos yesterday (now already gone, but hopefully restocked soon).  But, I can't recommend them highly enough.  Many are available on her YouTube site, and you really oughta check them out in all their ecstatic, trippy, hilarious, unsettled glory. 
my personal favorite is this two-and-a-half-minute ode to sensory overload, which is as secretly badass and erotically liquified as anything I can think of:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MBCgpHQ3vbQ
and dig the rest of them, by all means at:
http://youtube.com/user/droobleball

THE FEBRUARY ISSUE OF THE WIRE
the new issue of the UK experimental music periodic directory sold out of here in a matter of minutes, although we're gonna try and get in a few more copies because it includes a bunch of talk about Baltimore.  Have you noticed that things are changing around here, what with the recent immigration of, for instance, Axolotl, Moutus and Matmos into town has meant that there's gonna be a lost more use of the B word in record reviews.  Like that new ANP article on the Wildfire Wildfire label (if you're listening, we need more stuff here!), which also goes on at length about the goings on at Floristree and within the Wham City scene.  Anyway, we're gleeful in welcoming the wild batch of sounders to Backwash Backwater (as Twig Harper once called it), and we want to encourage ALL Baltimore musicians to come SELL US YOUR STUFF so we can sell it to everyone else. 
Anyway, the Wire has got positive reviews of the new Human Bell record (due in early next week) and the Black Mirror (from yours truly, given one sentence of criticism which I'll say here and here only is half true and half speculative) as well as an overview of the city by hyper-articulate newcomer Drew Daniel (whose new book on the 33 1/3 series on Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats is WELL worth digging into - even if you don't care much about TG).  Daneil gives direct appraisal of bands including Nautical Almanac, Wzt Hearts, Snacks, Leprechaun Catering,  Rubbed Raw, Jock Jams, Jimmy Joe Roche, Dan Deacon, OCDJ, John Berndt and, most of all, Lexie Mountain and venues the Bank, Tarantula Hill, Floristree, Ottobar, Talking Head, Red Room, High Zero and (ahem) the True Vine (calling us "an essential underground resouce."  Consider yourself undergrounded!)
OK? OK.

VICTROLA FAVORITES:  ARTIFACTS FROM BYGONE DAYS
Dust-to-Digital's latest masterpiece is a 2CD set and 144-page full-color cloth bound book on the glories of early sound recording, assembled by Seattle's Climax Golden Twins.  In the 90s, the Twins used to release cassettes of great 78s from their collections , taped to DAT straight from the horn of their wind-up player, called Victrola Favorites, which you could buy mail order from Anomalous (my copies were regular favorite car jams).  The CD distills the essential enthusiasm of those releases and amplifies them from moments of humble sharing to epic redefinition of aesthetic criteria in recorded sound.  The music is a mind-blowing mix of found sound from shellac issued in the 10s-40s split about 50-50 between world/ethnic stuff (heavy on the East Asian material as well as some great African and Middle Eastern stuff and including some great American immigrant music like Maria Smyrnea's jaw-dropping mid-10s "Grass Widow," a theatrical cafe-amane-derived Greek piece in the same ballpark as Marika Papagika) as well as some outstanding hillbilly, blues, folk and jug band performances.  The giant book is made up of imagry from the Victrola era, reveling in the eye-popping sensuality of labels, sleeves and needle-tins.  The whole thing is a monument to subjective exploration in search of the pinnacles of musical behavior. 
At $40, it doesn't pretend to be an introduction to early music, but it's such a lasting and rich set that it's more than worth saving your pennies (or selling a few lesser titles in your collection) for.
highest recommendation.

NEW RELEASES IN-STOCK

Black Mountain - In The Future  (Jagjaguwar)  2CD  $14
limited two-disc version of the new prog-psyche title.

Cat Power - Jukebox  (Matador)  CD  $15  or limited digipack with 5 bonus tracks  $20

Yoshi Wada - Lament for the Elephantine Serpentine  (EM)  CD  $21
long-awaited reissue of the early 80s site-specific psychoacoustic exploration drone motherload by a Pandit Pran Nath student (and La Monte Young associate), notable for the side-long recording of giant-modified bagpipes.  Awesome.

GazHeart - s/t  (Locust)  LP $21
one-sided collaboration between vocalist and visual artist Rita Ackerman (Angelblood) and percussion Dave Nuss (No Neck Blues Band) with etched B-side.

Mahjongg - Kontpab  (K)  CD $12  LP $12

Jonas Gwangwa and African Explosion - Who (Ngubani)?  LP  $12
"Jonas Gwangwa recorded his first LP in the USA on Ahmad Jamal's label in 1969. A colleague of fellow musical exiles Caiphus Semenya, Hugh Masekela, Letta Mbulu, Dudu Pukwana, Abdullah Ibrahim and Johnny Dyani, Gwangwa later became the musical director of Amandla -- the cultural ensemble of the African National Congress."

Don Cherry - Tibet (Pic-a-Dilly)  LP  $11
early 70s ethno-psychedelic Swedish session originally released as the Eternal Now, featuring Cherry on a variety instruments (but not the trumpet he's pictured playing on the sleeve).

LEON KAGARISE, RIP
Baltimore-area country music documentarian and afficianado Leon Kagarise was a mainstay of the Vintage Record Collector's Club and turntable repairman at Joe's Record Paradise on Harford Road.  He'll be fondly remembered.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/obituaries/bal-md.ob.kagarise29jan29,0,4131381.story

there's so much more, including some insane funky music and impending store-related projects and wonderful and notable restocks, but I'm so tired.

chew is up and swallow it,
Ian

THE BLACK MIRROR:  REFLECTIONS IN GLOBAL MUSICS 1918-55
now in stock  $13
new from Dust-to-Digital
Single CD of recordings made between 1918 and 1955 assembled and
annotated by Ian Nagoski. This compilation contains 24 tracks from
Bali, Burma, Cameroon, China, England, Germany, Greece, India, Japan,
Java, Laos, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Syria,
Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia all newly
transferred and mastered from 78 rpm discs. At least 18 tracks appear
on compact disc for the first time with all but one never having been
previously reissued in the U.S.

"Immortal, it passes through the mirror
Pupil contracts a clean destruction
It's the star-ghost with black-fire soul
A null point in its inner coursing
Eye devours eye at the eternal nothing."
—"Eternity In the Blink of an Eye" from the Black Mirror: The Selected
Poems of Roger Gilbert-Lecomte (1938)

"Shellac is unique among resins in that it is an animal product. It is
made by reddish insects about 0.03 inch long, the larvae of which,
after swarming, settle on the surface of soft twigs of the host trees
of which there are six or seven main varieties, the lac from the Kusum
tree being the most prized. They thrust their beaks into the bark and
commence sucking, exuding almost simultaneously a resinous secretion
through three tubes, two of which may be considered as extensions of
the trachea for breathing, the third being the anal cleft."
-H. Courtney Bryson, The Gramophone Record (1930)

http://dust-digital.com/black-mirror.htm
http://www.myspace.com/theblackmirror
http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=14682

International release date:  November 20th.  Now available for
pre-order through Dust-to-Digital, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Cargo,
Norman Records, CDUniverse, Ear-Rational and elsewhere.


NOTABLE RECENT USED ARRIVALS

Guns n Roses - Appetite for Destruction  (Geffen)  SS  $40
still sealed original Robert Williams cover w/ "Contains Language
Which May Be Unsuitable for Some Listeners" sticker, which sort of
understates the case.  Not that it kept me from allowing this
gorgeous, raging slop from infecting my very DNA at age 12...

Charles Bukowski - Hostage  VG+/EX  (Rhino/Freeway)  $85
Charles Bukoski - Reads His Poetry  Ex/Ex  (Takoma)  $35
neither as good nor as droonk as the Blaster LP on Ehse, if you ask
me, but necrophilia being what it is these days...

Group Doueh - Guitar Music of the Western Sahara  (Sublime
Frequencies)  M-/M-  $40
one of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful and intense LPs of the past
five years.

Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music  (RCA)  Ex/M-  $30
stereo and NOT a cut-out.  About a nice a copy of this jewel as you'll
 ever see.

v/a - Burning Ambitions:  A History of Punk  (Cherry Red)  VG+/VG+  $22
2LP comp, including biggies like Buzzcocks, Wire, Saints, Fall,
Damned, Dead Kennedys, Heartbreakers etc but also Atilla the
Stockbroker, Angelic Upstarts, 101ers, Dave Goodman and Friends, ATV,
Swell Maps, Eaters, Lurkers, Anti-Pasti, and, uh, the Boomtown Rats...

Aphrodite's Child - 666  (Vertigo)  VG/Ex  $20
2LP 1970 Greek prog/psyche overblown full-heaviosity funbag on
original swirl label.  light ringwear and 1 1/2" tear on front panel.

James Brown - Say it Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud  (King)  VG/VG  $12
we are accepting poems of 10 lines or less on the subject of "Licking
Stick" for a future email.

Funkadelic - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On  (Westbound)
  VG+/VG  $22
libidinous cannabis
Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop  (Westbound)  VG/VG  $15
Funkadelic - Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow  (Bellaphon,
Germany)  G/VG  $12
dampstained cover.  very lightly maked disc.  timeless, burning music.
Funkadelic - Uncle Jam Wants You  (Warner Bros)  VG+/Ex  $18

The Who - Sings My Generation  (Decca)  VG/VG  $18
stereo original.  minor edgewear and lightringwear.  Disc is Ex but
for a pressing bubble on side 1, track 3 which causes a skip.

Public Image Limited - Second Edition  (Island)  VG/VG+  $15
moderate edgewear.

OST - Liquid Sky  (Varese Sarabande)  VG+/M-  $12
dysrhythmic all-Fairlight 1982 New Wave vision.  all instrumental but
for one track ("Me and My Rythm Box") and weird as hell.  Fans of
Leprechaun Catering take note:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=S9-n9gpFVpk

My Dad is Dead - The Taller You Are The Shorter You Get  (Homestead)
VG+/M-  $18
1989 one-man downer Joy Division-inspired ("Transmission" rather than
"Atmosphere," thank God) Ohio proto-emo rocker.  If you can deal with
maudlin self-loathing and post-break-up angst, a pretty great record
which has been out of print for a decade.  (Was a huge deal to my
16-year-old self and still holds up pretty good.)  Posted in its
entirety as free mp3s by the artist here:
http://www.mydadisdead.com/music/taller/

Toni Basil - Mickey  (Chrysalis)  VG+/M-  $4
12" Club Mix b/w Spanish Version.  six minute Club Mix of
cheerleader-Kate Bush-OOIOO-new wave-Cars-Bow Wow
Wow-rockabilly-bubblegum - absolutely.

Bill Fay Group - Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow  (Drag City)  M-/M-
$10  in shrink

Alastair Galbraith / Alexander Neilson / Richard Youngs  - Belsayer
Time  (Time Lag)  M-/M-  $20
delux 2005 LP-only collaboration, from a numbered edition of 900
 copies.

Blossom Toes - We are Ever So Clean  (Sunbeam)  Ex/Ex  $15
recent reissue of the highly-regarded 1967 Kinksy/whimsical acid-pop
LP with an extra LP of bonus tracks.

Sabicas Rock Encounter with Joe Beck - s/t  (Polydor)  VG+/Ex  $8
late 60s heavy/funky rock instrumental LP based around flamenco guitar.

Cecil Taylor - In Transition  (Blue Note)  VG+/VG+  $9
2LP reissue of Taylor's first two LPs Jazz Advance and Love for Sale
w/ two "bonus tracks" from the sessions.  Aces.

Evangalist Arizona Jenkins - Shake it Off  (Apostolic)  Ex/Ex  $7 in
 shrink
great late-70s live recording of a sermon by a female Holiness or
C.O.G.I.C. preacher from Detroit.  In addition to Jenkins' screamingly
enthusiastic, if somewhat disjointed, testimony, there's an awesomely
responsive audience and guitar-piano-organ-drums band.  Opens and
closes with two ecstatic stompers.

Central Javanese Court Gameland, vol II:  Istana Mangukegaran,
Surakarta  (Nonesuch)  VG+/VG+  $12
1" seam split at top edge.  One of the two best Explorer Series LPs
(along with with the Hindustani Nectar of the Moon LP), this is one of
the most austere and radiant gamelan recordings issued in the US.
Achingly lovely stuff, performed on a set of instruments likely built
in the mid-17th century which is made of up of especially large
instruments which are made of especially light and thin bronze.  A
very special sound.

NEW RELEASES IN-STOCK

v/a - LatinAmericanCarpet:  Exploring the Vinyl Warp of Latin American
Psychedelia  (Sublime Frequencies)  CD  $15
v/a - Proibidao CV:  Forbidden Gang Funk from Rio de Janeiro  (Sublime
Frequencies)  CD  $15

LSD March - Constellation of Tragedy  (Important)  CD  $14

Richard Youngs - Autumn Response  (Jajaguwar)  CD or LP  $14

Aaron Dilloway - Lucifer  (Hanson)  1-sided LP  $15

v/a - Jamaica Funk:  Original Jamaican Funk and Soul 45s  (Soul Jazz)
2LP  $22;  CD  $19

Lee Hazelwood - Somthing Special  (Water)  $15
Lee Hazelwood - Very Special World Of...  (Water)  $15

Flower Travellin Band - Satori  (Phoenix)  ltd 1000 mini-LP sleeve CD
  $15

Bobb Trimble - Iron Curtain Innocence  (Secretly Canadian)  CD $14
Bobb Trimble - Harvest of Dreams  (Secretly Canadian)  CD  $14
"A cross between extreme gentility and musical savagry that will have
you growing horns out of your own forehead..." - Byron Coley
"two of THOSE records..." - our buddy James

Caetano Veloso - s/t  ("A Little More Blue"; third album)  (Lillith)
CD  $20; also LP $22

Sun City Girls - Jack's Creek  (Abduction)  $15
Sun City Girls - Dulce  (Abduction)  $15
more early 90s reissues.  great.  and not so great.  but still
great... it's complicated...

Blues Magoos - Psychedelic Lollipop  ("Mercury")  LP $12

The Growing Concern - s/t  ("Mainstream")  LP  $16
Tangerine Zoo - s/t  ("Mainstream")  LP  $16
Bohemian Vendetta - s/t  ("Mainstream")  LP  $16
The Tiffany Shade - s/t  ("Mainstream")  LP  $16

UPCOMING TRUE VINE EVENTS

Nov 29:  Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Black Twig Pickers.  location and
further details to follow this week.
Dec 8:  True Vine night at the Talking Head w/ Leprechaun Catering,
Eve Rissler, Stewart Mostofsky, Amanda Vickers, DJ Ian Nagoski and
more.
Dec 13:  filmmaker and Sublime Frequencies co-conspirator Hisham Mayet
presents new films of African and Southeast Asian musical performances
at the Floristree Space, @ the H&H, 405 W Franklin

you're so fine you blow my mind,
Ian

Someone sold us virtually the entire Atavistic Unheard Music series of
CDs, so we've got all the Brotzman, Vandermark, von Schlippenbach,
Euro free jazz, etc that you could shake a stick at for $7 and $8 a
throw.

And a nice, little pile of early 80s electro and hip-hop 12s from the
early and mid 80s (Skinny Boys self titled jam! Boogie Boys and more)
came in...  pretty clean copies.

also forgot to mention in time for last week's debut screening
there's a great new documentary about the mighty mighty Tinklers called
EVERYBODY LOVES THE TINKLERS
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EgGykkbs7-Q
next time it comes around, you should see it.

thought you'd wanna know,
Ian

WATCH OUT FOR THE BIG PILEOFRECORDS

we just bought the collection of Baltimore DJ/producer Booman.  4000 records, most of them hiphop, club and house.
too many to get into now.
I just spent all day listening to - I dunno - a hundred club records.
and I'm feeling a little queasy.

in addition another 2000 records have come in the past week - most of them classic-era hip-hop.

get your guns out,
Ian

FRIDAY AUGUST 3, 8:30 PM
GEORGE BRIGMAN - BLOWIN SMOKE 7" RERELEASE PARTY
George Brigman, who during the late 70s and early 80s released a string of scuzzy, stoned psychedelic punk records here in Baltimore, will be here to rerelease his "Blowin' Smoke" 45 (actually old stock copies from its initial 1977 pressing with new covers).  He'll be hanging out, telling stories and signing copies of his records.  "Blowin' Smoke" is a cool record (recently compiled on the Cherrystones Word mix disc), a grinding head-nod boogie about some kinda witchy woman and weed.  We're glad to be hosting one of our city's great rockers.
dig him on local TV in 1980:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=61L9RK2t7CU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QUVKi0pNEgs

lotta records coming in - 1500 or more in the past week and several thousand more due to arrive next week.  below is a sampling from some of the interesting stuff that's arrived.

REGGAE
Augustus Pablo - Dubbing in a Africa  (Abraham)  M-/M-  $20
Augustus Pablo - Meets Rockers Uptown  (Message)  M-/M-  $20
Augustus Pablo - Afrrica Must be Free by 1983 Dub  (Rockers)  M-/M-  $35  
Prince Jammy - Kamikazi Dub  (Trojan)  M-/M-  $20
Prince Jammy - Strictly Dub  (Jammy)  VG+/VG  $20 scuff across two and a half tracks that does not sound.
Sly & Robbie with King Tubby / Roots Radics with Scientist - Ranking Dread in Dub  (Silver Camel)  M-/M-  $50
Toyan with Scientist and Roots Radics at King Tubby's - How the West Was Won  (Greensleeves)  M-/M-  $40
Scientist - People's Choice  (Kingdom)  M-/M-  $20
Scientist - World at War  (Black Ovation)  M-/M-  $50
King Tubby, Prince Jammy and Scientist - First Second and Third Generation of Dub  (King Imperial)  M-/M-  $70
I Roy - Ten Commandments  (Virgin)  SS  $40  picture disc.  still sealed.
Carlton Livingston - Soweto  (El Bebo Intl)  M-/M-  $15
Prince Far I - Livity  (Pre)  VG+/M-  $35
Bunny Wailer - Black Heart Man  (Island)  Ex/M-  $20  cut corner
Toots and the Maytals - In the Dark  (Dragon)  VG+/M-  $25
Peter Tosh - Get Up Stand Up  (Columbia)  M-/M-  $10  promo-only white label 12" in pic sleeve.  stereo/mono.

ART / ROCK
Debris' - Static Disposal  (Static Disposal)  VG+/M-  $145  original self-released copy of this much-loved 1976 acid-punk thing out of Oklahoma.  There's a light crease along one corner of the jacket and small (less than 1/2") paper tear at the top edge.  The LP is absolutely flawless and the labels show exactly one spindle mark on each side.  pretty awesome.
Roxy Music - The Best is Yet to Come  (Unicorn)  M-/M-  $25  live in Paris
Roxy Music - Warped Leatherezz  (Saturated)  M-/M-  $25 2LP live 1979 in Pasedena
Roxy Music - Champagne and Novicaine  (Saturated)  M-/M- $30  2LP live 1975 in New York
Roxy Music - Country Life  (Atco)  SS  $45  still sealed original of the withdrawn naked lady cover.  The shrink is the plain, clear kind, not the dark green kind sometimes seen, including the sticker with the album title and track list, of course, but particularly notable that someone at the factory bothered to put two round "Factory Sealed for Your Protection" stickers over one (but not the other) of the ladies' breasts.  
David Bowie - An Evening With  (RCA)  M-/M-  $15
David Bowie - Low  (RCA)  M-/M-  $10  notch
Talking Heads - Houses in Motion / Air  (Sire)  M-/M-  $10  12" single with remix and live version of title track
Talking Heads - Crosseyed and Painless (Sire)  M-/M-  $9  promo 12" with two edits
Talking Heads - Slippery People / Making Flippy Floppy (Sire)  M-/M-  $9  remixes
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues  (Sire)  Ex/M-  $45  limited Robert Rauchenberg package
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues  (Sire) SS  $65  sealed.  limited Robert Rauchenberg package
Talking Heads - Emitting Diode  (TBS)  M-/M-  $25  2LP live 1980
Talking Heads - Workshop Image  (Lunar Toones)  VG+/M-  $25  2LP live CBGBs 1977
Blondie - Peroxide on Blonde  (Rising Sun)  M-/M-  $25  2LP live Toronto 1978
Residents - Third Reich and Roll  (Ralph)  M-/M-  $20
Liliental - s/t  (Brain)  M-/M-  $50  1978 kraut supergroup with Mobius, Plank, Tietchesn, etc.  mostly ambient, electronic stuff with a couple of sample-ready tracks w/ drums.
Joy Division - She's Lost Control / Atmosphere  (Factory)  M-/M-  $15  incredibly clean copy.
Christopher Hobbs / John Adams / Gavin Bryars - Ensemble Pieces  (Obscure)  M-/M-  $8
Lol Creme & Kevin Godley [& Peter Cook] - Consequences  (Mercury)  M-/M-  $10  3LP monstrosity.
Ultimate Spinach - Behold and See  (MGM)  Ex/Ex  $15
Kraftwerk - s/t  (Vertigo)  Ex/M-  $25  2LP repackage of the first two (disowned but arguably best) LPs in gatefold.
Faust - IV  (Virgin, UK)  Ex/M-  $50  stunning, not-upgradable UK original.

7"s
Spastic Rats - Rodentia  (Vermin Scum)  M-/M-  $30  first ever Vermin Scum release.  w/ insert.
The Hated - No More We Cry  (Vermin Scum)  M-/M-  $45
David Bowie - Heroes (RCA, Australia)  Ex/Ex  $10  versions in English, French and German plus "V-2 Schneider"
David Bowie - Alabama Song / Space Oddity  (RCA, UK)  M-/M-  $6  in poster sleeve
David Bowie - Love You Till Tuesday / My Dream  ("Deram")  M-/M-  $5  pirate reissue
David Bowie - And I Say to Myself / Good Morning Girl  ("Pye")  M-/M-  $5  pirate reissue
David Bowie - Memory of a Free Festival pts 1 & 2  (Major Tom)  M-/M-  $6
David Bowie - London Bye Tata / Bombers  (Pop)  VG/M-  $6  German issue, I think?
David Bowie - All the Young Dudes / Bombers #2; You Didn't Hear it From Me  (MainMan)  Ex/M-  $6  three unreleased recordings.
Talking Heads - I Zimbra / Air  (Sire, Japan)  M-/M-  $9
Talking Heads - Take Me to the River / Thank You for Sending me and Angel  (Sire, Japan)  M-/M-  $9
Talking Heads - Take Me to the River / Thank You for Sending me and Angel  (Sire)  VG/M-  $5
Talking Heads - Cities / live version (Sire, UK)  Ex/M-  $8
Talking Heads - Psycho Killers  (no label)  M-  $8  4-track boot of early demos, seemingly.
Blondie - Heart of Glass / Out in the Street; Platinum Blonde  (no label)  $7  demo versions
Pere Ubu - Datapanik in the Year Zero:  Final Solution / My Dark Ages  (Rough Trade)  M-/M-  $9
v/a - Buy or Die  (Ralph)  Ex/M-  $9  Residents; Frith; Snakefinger; Yellow.  Gary Panter cover.
Flying Lizards - Money  (Virgin)  Ex/M-  $4
Tubeway Army - Bombers  (Beggars Banquet)  M-/M-  $10  2x7" in gatefold.
Brian Eno - King's Lead Hat / RAF  Ex/Ex  $9  1977 non-LP
Brian Eno - Seven Deadly Finns / Wimoweh  (Heat)  Ex/M-  $6  pirate issue of two non-LP tracks
Brian Eno - Baby's On Fire / Fever  (Muzak)  M-/M-  $15 boot of two alternate/out-takes
Nico - untitled  (What Goes On)  Ex/M-  $15  four songs recorded live at CBGB 3/8/79  

FUNKY MUSIC
Funkadelic - Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow  (Westbound)  VG+/Ex  $20
Leroy Hutson - The Man!  (Curtom)  VG/G+  $12 affordable copy of a scarce and undersung 1974 funky soul jewel.  light marks overall.
Cannonball Adderly - Soul Zodiac  (Capitol)  VG/VG  $15  notorious 2LP Axelrod production.
American Gypsy - s/t  (Chess)  VG/VG  $18  exceedingly scarce 1974 funk workout.
Lonnie Smith - Move Your Hand  (Blue Note)  G+/VG  $10
Greene Sisters - Whatever's Fair  (Manking)  VG+/VG  $10  scarce 1974  Swamp Dogg production in a post-Shaft vein.
Bernard Purdie - Shaft  (Prestive)  VG/VG  $8
The Voices of East Harlem - Can You Feel It  (Just Sunshine)  Ex/VG+  $15
Eddie Harris - Come on Down  (Atlantic)  Ex/VG+  $10
Joe Farrell - Canned Funk  (CTI)  Ex/Ex  $12  great record in one of the most alarming covers I've seen in a while - a blue human eye staring up from within a can of peaches.  
Stainless Soul - The New Apocalypse  (MTA)  G/G+  $12  small-press Baltimore funk group.  a good record, notable for several amazing breaks.n  split across the top seam.

(IT'S BIGGER THAN) HIP-HOP
Captain Rock - Cosmic Blast  (NIA)  VG+  $20
Schooly D - Saturday Night/ Doit Doit  (Schooly D)  VG  $15  self-released original of two of the most amazing songs ever.  Like the "96 Tears" and "Satisfaction" of hip-hop.
MC EC - What is It? / Back to Basics  (Jamm City)  VG  $25  an affordable copy of this sought-after 1988 Baltimore electro jam, produced by then-teenaged DJ Spen.
Ultramagnetic MCs - Watch Me Now / Feelin It  (Next Plateau)  VG  $8
The Rangers - I'm Hot / Jacks On Crack  (Woojon)  VG  $12  original press of this late 80s random electro jam
Trends of Culture - Trendz...  (Mad Sounds)  Ex $12  scarce and good one-off LP out of Brooklyn.  White label promo in stock sleeve w/ sticker.
Cella Dwellas - Realms n Reality  (Loud)  VG+/Ex  $30  beautifully produced and alarmingly imaginatively written one-off 1996 LP out of Brooklyn.
Sadat X - Wild Cowboys  (Loud)  VG+/Ex  $18
Phife Dawg - Ventilation  (Groove Attack)  Ex/Ex  $10  in retrospect, one of the best post-Tribe LP, including the swaggering/not-nice/funny/mean "Bend Ova," featuring one of J Dilla's most memorable beats.
Edo G - The Truth Hurts  (NDA)  VG+/Ex  $8  solid 1999 LP, notable for a cover which juxtaposes three numbingly horrific slave trade and lynching photograph imaginable with snapshots of the artist, his family and crew.
Marley Marl - Re Entry  (BBE)  Ex/Ex  $18  signed, for what it's worth, on the front panel by rapper Kevin Brown.
Mr. Ruckuz - s/t  (Madd Versatile)  Ex  $20  very worthwhile 1998 small-press LP out of Owings Mills (!)  Anyone know anything about this guy?  I can't find anything...
and a TON more

R n R n R n B COMPS
Desperate Rock n Roll  (Flame)  UK series of raunchy 50s rarities in great sleeves, all M-/M- but for side numbers inked to the white labels, volumes 1-19, $12 each.
Stompin  (Stompin)  UK series of wild 50s r&b and jazz, all M-/M-, volumes 1 - 14, $12 each.
Savage Kick  (Savage Kick)  UK series of 50s Black r-n-r, blues and r&b, all M-/M- , volumes 3 - 9, $12 each.
Black Rock n Roll  (Savage Kick)  UK series of what it says it is, both M-/M-, volumes 1 & 2, $12  (are these the first two volumes of the above series?)
Jook Block Busters:  100% Bona-Fide Rhythm and Blues Stompers 1956-62  (Valmor)  volumes 1 & 2, both M-/M-, $12 each
Frolic Diner, vol 2:  Slices of Food, Drinks, Frogs, Swingers, Exotica, From the 50s and 60s  (Romulan)  M-/M-  $12  in shrink
Hot Boppin Girls, Vol 7  (Supersonic)  M-/M-  $10  post-Wanda Jackson ladies of rockabilly
Angels of the Night:  The Girl Groups  (Wizard)  M-/M-  $10  female doo-wop rarities
Lookin for Boys:  16 Girl Group Classics from the 60s  (Roxy)  M-/M-  $12  all-aces collection, including the titular Pin-Ups track about showing some skin for the fellas and the Whyte Boots "Nightmare," a weird and amazing psychodrama about what they call a "cat-fight."  
Best of Baton R&B  (Flyright)  M-/M-  $10  50s r&b from the NYC label
Carnival Time!:  The Best of Ric Records, vol 1  (Rounder)  M-/M-  $10  1958-62  Nola r&b jewels, including Eddie Bo's "Check Mr. Popeye."  in shrink.
We Got a Party!:  The Best of Ron Records, vol 1  (Rounder)  M-/M-  $10 ditto, including Prof. Longhair's "Go to the Mardi Gras."
Troubles, Troubles!:  New Orleans Blues from the Vaults of Ric & Ron  (Rounder)  M-/M-  $10  in shrink
New Orleans Ladies:  Rhythm and Blues from the Vaults of Ric & Ron  (Rounder)  VG/M-  $10  in shrink  6" razor slice to spine.
Sun Sound Special:  Shoobie Oobie  (Charly)  M-/M-  $12  1953-54 tracks out of the Memphis Studio, including the Prisonaires, Billy Emerson and others.
The Blues Came Down From Memphis  (Charly)  M-/M-  $12  awesome first-ever collection of early-mid-50s Sun studio blues tracks.  
Rock and Roll Hunting  (White Label)  M-/M-  $10
Rock From Rare Small Labels  (White Label)  M-/M-  $10
Take It...  It's Rock and Roll  (White Label)  M-/M-  $10

had enough?
there's more.
you buy records now.

I want money.  that's what I want,
I'm a greedy man,
Funky dollar bill
Ian

although there've been a fair number of both nice new releases (Dungen, Yesterday's New Quartet, etc.) and used LPs (killer early R&R comps, Native American documents, a Messaien 3LP set w/ Solti conducting and Janos Starker soloing, etc), the stuff that's been tickling me lately are the 78s which have been coming in.  Like-a these:

Six Jumping Jacks - I Love That Girl / Dolores  (Brunswick)  VG+  $4
novelty hot jazz ca late-20s in the proto-Spike Jones vein, which immeadiately brings to mind that Crumbish combo of nostalgia and libidinous panting - always a winner in my book.  Credited on the label as a "Fox Trot with Vocal Duet and Vocal Effects," the A-side might just as well be described as "Squeaky Pervert with Maniacally Bouncy Accompaniment."  Witness the lyrics:  "I love that girl right over there / She makes me wanna tear my hair / I'm wild - simply WILD over women / I know I'm not hansome and haven't much dough / But try me in the parlor in when lights are low / I love that girl and that one too and you and You and YOU and YOU / Girlies, you're driving me cookoo!"  The B-side is just about as good and features several inexplicable bars of human quacking.  Who doesn't like quacking?

Tampa Red - I'll Be Up Again Some Day / I Ought to Bite You  (RCA)  VG  $4
just fine 30s piano-based blues boogies, but the B-side is another lyrical pearl:  "I'll cut you / Or maybe shoot you / I oughta fight you / Or maybe bite you / But I can't quit you baby cause you ain't no good no how."  And then there' a kazoo solo.  A winner, obviously.  Nuff said.  

Wynonie Harris - All She Wants to Do is Rock / I Want My Fanny Brown  (King)  VG  $4
stompin 40s jump blues.  Of course, it's filthy.  "All she wants to do is stay at home / And hucklebuck with daddy all night long."  The other side is no better and plenty fun.  "Anybody here seen Miss Fanny Brown? / She ain't good lookin but she lays that lovin down / She's 40 years old and she ain't young no more / But the way she loves you will make you come back for more."  Absolutely.

Memphis Minnie - Million Dollar Blues / Daybreak Blues  (Columbia)  E  $5
A powerful personality, Memphis Minnie (b 1897; d. 1973) was, at times, a giftedly haunted writer.  This relatively late (war-era) recording is one of the earliest examples of electric guitar on a blues record and includes some totally fuggit out-of-tune piano playing and is just a cool and badass performance all around, with a sneer on its lips and a yowl in its heart and a little hunch in its back.  

Little Walter - Lights Out / You're So Fine  (Checker)  VG+  $15
arguably the deepest, raunchiest and most soulful harmonica player to ever record.  The A-side is a classic of post-War Chicago blues - a well-lubricated-feeling slow twelve-bar jam with motherfucker performances by every player.  The B is a swaggering mid-tempo boogie, short on harp on long on cliches, but still better than 98% of what passes for cool in these post-Blues Hammer (you've seen Ghost World, right?) days.  

Willie Mabon - I Don't Know /  Worry Blues (Chess)  VG  $7
1952 r&b hit.  He's no Muddy Waters; he's not even H-Bomb Ferguson.  But he's alright, for sure.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Little Boy, How Old Are You? / Going Back to Jesus  (Brunswick)  VG+  $3
Fine war-era gospel-blues with a hot band and a dazzling two-chorus guitar solo.  But the A-side is one of my favorite gospel tunes because of the subject - the earliest biblical reference to Jesus after his birth.  Seems at the age of 12, He was a precocious thinker who amazed lawyers and doctors.  So, this is a jaunty tune in honor of bright, young people and their spiritual potentials.  

Birmingham Jubilee Quartet - He Took My Sins Away / Crying Holy Unto the Lord  (Columbia)  VG+  $9
One of the greatest recordings of African-American gospel quartet singing of the late 20s, and one of my favorite records ever.  (I found my nearly loved-to-death copy, the only other one I have ever seen, ten years ago in a big, plastic pickle bucket in Chester, Pennsylvania.)  A dazzlingly complex arrangement of tempo shifts punctuated by quavering drones, performed with seemingly super-human discipline.  Shortly after first hearing it, I wrote that had the lyrics been in Urdu or Maylay, the sheer exoticism of the sound and extraordiariness of performance could not have been more shocking to me.  Among America's aspiring "ethnic" middle class masterpieces, this is one of the earliest and most beautiful.  I am forsaking upgrading my own copy; you can thank me with nine dollaroonies.

anon - To Rung  (lathe)  Ex  $6
anon - Notul Kun Pyun  (lathe)  Ex  $6
anon - Chon Ha  (lathe)  Ex  $6
three home-lathed laquer transfers of commercially issued Korean classical dance pieces, likely from the late 30s or early 40s.  These were found several years ago in the Eutaw Street home of a wealthy Jewish woman who made a career or ethnic styles of dance in the 40s.  The recordings, having been exceedingly rare then, as now, were dubbed specially for her - each piece cut with a microgroove stylus on both sides of the disc.  The performances are the exquisitely courtly and dignified work of highly trained musicians - windows into a lost world and not the kind of thing you run into every day.

Abe Schwartz Orchestra - Sher pt 1 / pt 2  VG/G+  $3
Schwartz (born in Bucharest, Romania in 1881, moved to New York in 1899, died 1963) was one of the greatest bandleaders of klezmer in the 20s.  This pre-electicrical disc is a gorgeous, ever-shifting uptempo virtuoso dance number across both sides of the disc.  The B-side has an ugly needle-drag across half of the surface which sounds only lightly.     

Mihalyka Falusi Zenekara - Dunai Liba (Geese Over the Danube) / Zempli  (Victor)  VG  $4
20s recording of a Hungarian gypsy (Roma) band of an exceptional good clarinette, one or two accordion(s), bass, violin and maybe trumpet.  Fine performances and good, creaky, drinky old-world dance stuff.

Roland Lebrun - L'Adieu du Soldat / Grand' Maman  (Starr)  VG  $6
Roland Lebrun - Au Debut de la Vie / Chantons Notre Amour  (Starr)  VG  $6
Yvan Trempe - L'Adieu de ma Jeuesse / Viens Pres de Moi  (Starr)  VG  $6
Marcel Martel - Ne Ris Pas de mon Coeur / Hello Central  (Apex Francais)  VG+  $6
four 30s recordings of French Canadian country singing (all solo accompanied by simple guitar strumming), each one a artless and noble song of love and/or nostalgia.  

Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys - Spanish Fandango / Bubbles in My Beer   (MGM)  VG+  $2
mid-40s performances by the boozy maestro of Western Swing (b. 1905; d. 1975).  The A-side is a charming if ineffectual dance tune.  The B-side has a little more traction lyrically as a description of a down-and-outer among revelers.  Not bad!

The Turbans - Wadada-Do / Congratulations  (Herald)  Ex  $4
shimmy-shake mid-50s rocknroll rhumba by the top-notch Philly doo-wop group backed by a bittersweet tune which bridges Sam Cooke and the Stones.  

and, of course, more
but enough for tonight.

DJ JASON WILLETT DANCE PARTY
June 22
h&h bulding, 5th floor 405 W Franklin
following solo electronic sets by
Dave Smolen
Mincemeat or Ten Speed
Cars Will Burn

I want to hold her in my arms and listen to her backbone crack,
Ian

BALTIMORIANA

Daniel Higgs - Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot  (Thrill Jockey)  $13  LP
all-new instrumental LP from Baltimore's own oracularly-oriented punk-poet mind-jockey of guitar, banjo and jews harp improvisations, recorded, if my ears are right, to cassette and about as often outdoors as not, and almost as often totally blown-out, sound-wise, as not.  Way more chewable and delicious than last year's relatively restrainted Ancestral Songs - less of a structured "statement" and more of a free-mind document of the human brain a-poppin.  Limited to just 1000 copies, each copy come in a stapled-together xeroxed book of acrostics on heavy topics like Death, Christ, Time, etc etc.  
or
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot  (Thrill Jockey)  $15  book & CD
the CD version comes in a 9" x 6 1/2" hardbound book with the acrostics en face to full-color plates of Higgs' paintings in a style which relates as much to Miro as Harry Smith.  

Peter B - Luteus  (Resipiscent)  $10  CD
one of Baltimore's most gymnastically structrual minds, instrument inventor, low-key performer, Sejayno member and Westside denizen Peter B is one of the best friends to chaos and intuition that I've ever had the pleasure to meet - a toxic engineering yogi.  The electronic devices he makes (and beautifully names, ie:  Fyrall, Cocolase, Sidrassi, Ambrazier) are unlike anything else on earth - attempts at unknowable minds which become a part of your cognitive process.  So, we're real glad to have his first full-length solo release.  13 tracks of rather LAFMS-ish tumult with nice names like "Osiris, the Fancy Chef" and "I'm Your Owl, What is Your Mystery."  (Blasser also recently installed a Dan Conrad lightbox, wired through a recent circuit design, here at the shop in a back room.  Drop by and check it out, or dig Peter's web page http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/ )

Erin Womack - Folk Wars  (self)  Free  comic
Erin Womack - Films of  (self)  $10  DVD
the former is newsprint publication of fragmentary epic narratives of wit's end.  "Even in Space, You Stay True to Your Roots," it says.  true enough.
The latter is a collection of half a dozen short films, found and homemade, affirming the magic secreted within the day to day world, including this wonderful little thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na32koHWmmw

New Flesh - Dog / Memory Scrap  $4 7"
two huzzy and kinda Jesus Lizardy polished scraps of rock love on rust colored wax.

THIS HEAT
finally, each of the individual titles included in last year's pricey Out of Cold Storage box set is available as individual CDs.  This Heat were an aggressively "off" and arty rock trio in late 70s/early 80s UK, more structural and spatial than Swell Maps, more snarling and anxious than Can, more overtly brainy, more distant and weirder than the New York No Wavers.  Massively influential, and even still much too little-heard.  Another record dealer points out that "trying to explain why this band is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious."

Deceit  (This)  $17  the classic and probably the place to start
Health and Efficiency  (This)  $12  EP
Repeat  (This)  $17  my personal favorite, including the long, maniacal remix of "24 Track Loop" from their self-titled debut.
Live 80/81  (This)  $17
Made Available:  John Peel Sessions  (This)  $17

MORE NEW NOTABLE NOISES

Leslie Keffer - Feels Like Frenching  (Ecstatic Peace)  $13  LP
a few years back HereSee put out a CDR of Leslie Keffer's glowing, musical electronic messes, and it was a jewel - rich and inventive and the kind of stuff that indicates an amazing set of ears, the likes of which are scarcer than hen's teeth in the Noise (as genre) world.  Now, here's her first full length vinyl, and the focus has shifted to intensely focused, long, physically overloading sensual soundsheeting, bearing a strong resemblance to the most psychedelic (and personal favorite) 90s Japanese noise outfit C.C.C.C.  It's gonna take a while for the fullness of Keffer's punishingly intense and supersensual (I mean, the title is there for a reason) sounds to sink in, but on first listen, it's easy to see that it's nourishing stuff.  Eye-poppingly beautiful cover, too.

Oren Ambarchi - Lost Like a Star  (Bo Weavil)  $27  LP
squirmily lovely slowly shifting dronefields by the Australian guitarist.  from a numbered edition of 650 copies.

NVH / Chasney - Plays the Book of Revelations  (Yik Yak)  $25  LP
two long tracks of Matt Bower-ish instrumental morbid/cathartic noise improvisation by two members of Comets on Fire (including Ben "Six Organs" Chasney).  Intense stuff, packaged in a way over-the-top ritualistic sleeve (black-on-black printing, cross-shaped fold-out) in an edition of 666 copies.

Sapat - Mortise and Tenon  (Siltbreeze)  $15
new psyche folk krauty quagmire from Kentucky.

Selda - s/t  (B-Music)  $17  LP
supremely likable early 70s funky Turkish psyche goddess now on LP.  The rest of the esteemed B-Music catalog should be in on wax in short order as similarly reasonable domestic prices in fancy gatefold jackets.

Sun Ra - Strange Strings  (Atavistic)  $15  CD
Pretty easily the "outest" Sun Ra record ever (Atlantis and The Magic City running close behind) and an absolute shinining masterpiece on CD for the first time.

in closing, I think of the words sung by Annette Hanshaw, one of the best opening lines to a song I can think of:

There's no accounting for taste, I'm sure
And that's why I picked you.

Ian

Eliane Radigue - Jetsun Mila  (Lovely)  2CD  $26
Love and money for other men; a new Eliane Radigue CD for me.
This is an indescribably exquisite hour-and-a-half of glacially slow, unfolding, warm electronic sound mass/environment/organism and one of the greatest compositions by the woman who I have contended for the past ten years is the greatest living composer.
Eliane Radigue is a greatgrandmother and practicing Tibetan Bhuddist living in Paris.  She was born there to a middle-class family and married young to an artist named Yves Arman, a close friend of Yves Klien, with whom she had three children.  They lived in the resort town of Nice, where she composed for twelve tones on paper and played piano without much success while raising their children.  Around 1950, she heard a radio broadcast by Pierre Schaefer, the engineer-turned-musician who invented the practice of creating music from processing pre-recorded sound, musique concrete.  Shorly thereafter, while visiting her family in Paris, she attended a round-table discussion of Gurdieff where one of the panelists was Schaefer.  She had herself introduced to him and became his first student, traveling periodically to Paris to make sounds on tape at the Studio d'Essai.  (When the studio was moved to the larger, government-funded Groupe Recherche Musicale, all of her work was discarded in a tragic act of male chauvenism.)  During the early 60s, she was assistant to Pierre Henry, creating many sounds which he used in his peak works.  By the late 60s, she had begun to create large-scale permutating environments, derived mainly from processed microphone feedback.  Her musical fathers, Schaefer and Henry, uncermemoniously walked out of her concerts.  But her mature work had begun.  She had, by this time, a vision - to create sounds which would open from within themselves.  She told a friend that she wanted to create something like a mountain which could be pulled by threads into its inverse state as a cup.  To do this, she decided that she needed a synthesizer, but there were none in France.  Synthesizers were German; tape was French - no synthesizers in France.  So, she came to New York to work on a Buchla deposited at NYU by Morton Subotnik (sharing studio space with Laurie Spiegel) and fraternizing with Charlemagne Palestine, Phil Glass, etc.  In the early 70s, she was invited to Mills by Terry Riley to present a recent piece of hers, a deeply contemplative, permutating electronic drone piece in her now fully-formed style, Psi 847.  (A review of a similar concert from around the same time, noted the remarkable effect of her music in the space - the ears and body located with a vibrating mass and the sounds appearing to move within the space, even at one point seeming to "drip from the walls.")  After the concert, she was approched by a few young men who said to her, "you know - you are not doing your music yourself."  What did they mean?  They gave her a phone number to call when she returned to Paris, which turned out to be a center for Tibetan Buddhism.  She swan-dove into it, abandoning music for four or five years to study at a monestary in the south of France with Pawo Rinpoche.  When she announced to her guru that she intended to sell her synthesizer, quit music and meditate and practice, he responded that she was wrong - that she should leave the monestary, return to Paris and return to her music.  She had no choice but to do so, picking up exactly where she left off, painstaking recording and proccessing her Arp 2600 to tape.  She first completed the final hour of her three-hour Adnos.  Then over several years, she created this piece, Jetsun Mila, a sound-portrait of the Tibetan saint Milarepa.  For the next eight years, she worked on what would be her mastpiece, the three hour Trilogy of Death - a monument for the ages.  She continues to work in more or less then same way, slowly and carefully.
Many things have come and gone, but Radigue's music, to a great extent, defined my deepest hopes for music over the past ten years.  My feelings for it and for her, are devout, reverential and lasting.  
This piece was among the first and favorite things of hers I heard - my second-favorite of her works, right after the Trilogie - although it has never before been issued on disc or vinyl for that matter.  Previously, it was released only as a cassette in the mid-80s.  But ten years ago, a guy I never met and never spoke to again made me a spectacular CD copy (someone with a CD burner AND a copy of a long-out-of-print Eliane Radigue tape in 1997!  What are the odds??)  This issue, despite its rather bland packaging and a price-tag which makes you pay double for a duration just fifteen minutes longer than would fit on a single disc, is a new digital transfer of the master, made by Radigue herself and is, as you might expect, a glorious and powerful sound.  
Never quite still, almost embracing, almost loving, gentle, even as it asks you to hold on through wrenching and anxious landscapes, it never becomes easy to understand, and it is never quite without pain, but it makes me happy.
Stay here.  Wait.  Are you alright?  This is going to be difficult, and it's going to get more difficult.  It's beautiful, though, isn't it?  Do you see that we're somewhere else now?  Did you notice how we got here?  Look at where we are.

Jack Rose - s/t  (Tequila Sunrise)  LP  $22
easily the best record yet by the generally acknowledged best acoustic guitarist around.  This all-lap-slide affair is a near-perfect distallation of Rose's muscular, ecstatic, romantic, snarling, cascading playing.  
It was released last year as a tour-only CD in an edition of 1000 copies, and this incredibly delux LP issue is likely about as short a run, too, and therefore instant collector bait.  But really, as a listen, you just can't do better, including a new and vastly better reading of Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (which Rose originally recorded on his first LP Red Horse and White Mule some years back).  Word has it that one of the tracks on the LP is a different recording than on the CD.  And there may be another CD issue in the future.  Who knows?  But, if you've got a record player - get the LP.  Tequila Sunrise (also a record store in Philly, and a really great one at that) does absolutely the nicest (and obsessive) pressing and packaging jobs of just about anyone anywhere.  

may I interest you in more superlatives?

Pekos / Yoro Diallo  (Yaala Yaala)  CD  $13
Bougouni Yaalali  (Yaala Yaala)  CD  $13
Daoda Dembele  (Yaala Yaala)  CD  $13
Three stunning and compelling collections of rural Malian music, collected and compiled by Baltimore tubman, writer, photographer and educator Jack Carneal, who has been given his own subsidiary imprint by Drag City specifically for this wonderful project.  A couple years back, Jack brought by copies of eight CDRs of this stuff to the shop packaged in his own photos but couldn't be bothered to make more of them after we quickly sold out.  Well, now we know why - because he was about to conquer the world with them!  Right on, Jack!

DJ Blaqstarr - I'm Banging  (self)  $6
I've been waiting for this.
Blaqstarr, as you probably know, has got to be the best Club producer in Baltimore.  No disrepect to anyone else, but "Tote It" alone is one of the most amazing tracks ever to come out of this city.  That EP he did earlier in the year for Diplo's label is amazing.
Well, here you get a 30-minute no-cover-art mix disc of hits and new tracks.  Starts a little rocky but by the time you get to track three (of 22 tracks), it's as good as an army of martian funk cicadas (if that's you're thing).
Now look, here's what I want yall to do for me:
If you like Club, I want you to come here and give me six dollars - Happy Meal Money - and I will give you this.  We will both be happy.  Simple.

ALSO NOW IN

Parts and Labor - Mapmaker  (Jajaguwar)  LP  $13

Acid Mothers Temple - Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Tour:  US & Canada 2007  (Important)  LP  $17  CD  $13

hands up, thumbs down
Ian

"The densely massed foliage of the jungle swells like a sea of huge black cushions against the last phase of the night sky, where a faint transparency is already perceptible in the east.  One after another the big bright stars are losing their brilliance; they fade and go out one by one.
The nebulous lightening of the east extends and intensifies, opening into a great rose-gold fan, its incandescent sticks being the advance rays the rising sun shoots ahead over the horizon - blazing upward streams which produce an effect not unlike that of the aurora borealis, except that they substitute heat and colour for icy dazzle.
"Life is just beginning to stir in the depths of the dim, leafy ocean below.  When suddenly, from the deepest and darkest thickets of the tropical sun forest unexplored by man, comes and extraordinary musical chiming, as of innumerable crystal bells; an amazing sound, utterly unexpected in that place, melodious and of limpid purity, which is only the prelude to the still more astounding chorus that follows.  All at once, many voices, none of them human, burst into song together, rising and falling in eerie harmony; their sound doesn't belong to this world at all.  At the same time the sun leaps into the sky, gilding the sides of tree-trunks and branches and lighting gold flames on myriad of leaves.
"Only somebody up in the sky would be able to watch the stir that begins now in the topmost branches of certain trees, which seem to be blowing about in a strong wind, restricted to these trees alone, as the mysterious singers start moving, singing as they go, towards another outburst of similar singing not far away.  From the ground, it's quite impossible to see them leaping lightly from tree to tree; they are the whole time completely hidden by the dense foliage, the violent swaying of which, only visible from above, affords a clue to their size, as well as tracing their rapid progress.
The legend of the dog-headed man is said to have originated in these rare man-sized lemurs which are called Indris; now almost extinct, found nowhere but in the forests of this one remote tropical island.  With perfect balance and muscular control they fly through the air like birds in great effortless bounds, all their movements soundless in spite of their size, and as sure and accurate in the dangerous tree-tops as a human being's on solid ground.  Then the two choirs meet there is no need of adjustment, they simply continue singing in perfect unison, so that they surrounding forest rings with their combined voices.
"Even the youngest of them join in, though they, out of sheer high spirits have been indulging in all sorts of pranks and acrobatics as they travelled along, using the lianas as airy swings and walking precarious tightropes on the slederest, loftiest boughs, but never letting these gymnastics delay the others.
"The song has a distinct, regular rhythm, sinking to a gentle croon between mounting waves of the central refrain; which is consistently repeated throughout, always clearly distinguishable, although with numerous variations and elaborations of the main theme, the singers showing great virtuosity in this proliferation of musical sounds.  The uncanny strangeness of the singing, totally unlike man-made music, has its own fascination.  But the most extraordinary thing of all is the way the song - in spite of its wordlessness and its inhuman quality - seems closely related to all forms of life on this planet, towards which it expresses an attitude entirely different from ours, as if giving a glimpse of another, quite different life, which could be lived here on earth - possibly even IS being lived already somewhere in secret... Attempting to translate into human terms, one can only say the singing is the symbol of aspiration...  of that deeply felt longing for something or somewhere else...  with which we react instinctively to the violence and cruelty endemic in our existence.
The concert ends as suddenly as it began.  Not once during the performance have the Indris been visible from the ground; and they are no more visible now, screened by the many leaves of the tallest and largest trees, where they recline at ease or play in the branches, with many affectionate interludes, innocent caresses and kisses exchanged in spontaneous overflowing of their general hapiness and goodwill.  The goodwill extends to their whole environment:  in feeding each other with flower petals they detach  the blooms with the utmost delicacy - not a leaf is accidentally damaged, not a twig broken or bent.  Now that their singing is over, they are silent as they  are unseen, so noiseless in all their movements that a human watcher could actually be under the tree where their varied activities were taking place, and still remain unaware that the lemurs were anywhere near.  
They have no enemies in their jungle world.  And one naturally shrinks from naming the ferocious enemy who must have taught them their protective invisibility, so that they pass their whole lives unseen, never leaving the inmost secrecy of the forest.  Their happy harmless community seems content with this hidden existence, spending the hours among the crowding massed leaves in peace, playfulness and affection, until the setting sun gives the signal for their second concert:  which starts off with the same suddenness, and incorporates many of the same harmonies as the first, but is by no means a mere repetition of the dawn chorus.  Indeed, as it continues, so many modifications are introduced that the result is a quite different complex of musical sounds, and conveys a a quite different feeling... subdued, even melancholy...
"Constantly falling cadences keep suggesting the end of something.  The plaintive melody builds up a sense of loss, of finality, of nothing more left, which is profoundly sad.
"Yet, in the midst of the mournful passages, again and again, there's a reprise, the original refrain reappearing as an assurance that there's been no break in continuity, a reaffirmation of the singers' former declaration of otherness... other values... introducing a hopeful note at the very point where the tragic climax might seem more imminent and inevitable.
"But then, immeadiately afterwards, sombre low notes restore the later version, so that two different conclusions are presented simultaneously and without any perceptible bias toward either...  In the end one is left to choose between them; a choice implying the non-existence of a fixed or final form of reality, for which is substituted the idea of all eventualities being equally plausible or unlikely."
-the first chapter of Anna Kavan's Mercury

Friday May 11, 9PM
SNACKS RECORD RELEASE PARTY
here at the shop with
LOUIS LOUISE  (Breen / Boram / Willett classic rock cover band)
Max & Adam's MIDI KARAOKE
eats by Grass "Tom" Boram
new disc downloadable (free!) at http://www.ehserecords.com or some getit on 10 pic vinyl w/ hand-screen, individually laser-cut sleeve.

MORE BORE
now that you've had two months to chew, swallow and digest the six Super Roots reissues, there are two new, odd, little transmissions from planet Eye.
OOIOO - OOEYEOO  (Thrill Jockey)  $6, both CD or 12"
Two long trance-house-style remixes of the best song from OOIOO's recent album Taiga, stunning straight club-ready music but for the chirpy weirdness taken directly from the original and the distinct euphoric scent floating lotus.  Neat.
Boredoms - Super Roots #9  (Commons, Japan)  $29  CD
terribly expensive and rather wonderful brand new Japanese-only 45-minute, one-track epic, recorded live (the first live Boredoms album to be released, actually) New Year's Eve 2004.  With all of the ecstacy-riding drum-circlism of Vision Creation New Sun but with the unexpected addition of Eye DJing and/or playing some kind of a synth which is made to sound, almost believably, like a huge church choir.  Not for everyone, but for the Boredoms devotee, essential.  Therefore, we have exactly two copies and then, bye bye.  Comes in a big, oversized box with what appears to be a score, made up mostly of fermatas and whole notes tied for pages at a time.

BEDAZZLED
Peter Cook's sole feature film screenplay is a retelling of Faust in swinging London ca 1967 and delving some of the filthiest neuroses of the male psyche.  And it's one of our all-time favorite movies.
Dig, for instance, this scene depicting hapless and suicidal burger-cook Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore)'s fantasy-fullment moment as a heart-throb pop star, only to be immeadiately upset by The Devil (Peter Cook)'s eclipsing of his fame by uber-hip disengagement (under the name "Drimble Wedge and the Vegetation."  my kind of band name.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pW7T7MbZQ
Bedazzled  (20th Century Fox)  $20  DVD

MORE PRE-WAR RURAL MUSIC BOX SETS
we've been digging these bargain-priced JSP label sets of essential masterpieces of early country and blues that have been coming out.  The sound is great.  The packaging is adequate.  And the material just can't be beat.   So, we managed to get our hands of a few more great ones.

v/a - Legends of Country Blues  (JSP)  $30  5CDs
subtitled:  The Complete Pre-War Recordings of Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Tommy Johnson & Ishmon Bracey.  To say that a similar set in literature would be something like The Complete Works of Tolstoy, Dickens, Melville, Dostoevsky and Cervantes for depth, quality, and sheer beauty is something of an understatement if you asked me.  Simply six hours of the some of the most tragic, elevated, genius music ever put to record.  I mean, am I supposed to lie??

v/a - Mississippi Blues:  Rare Cuts 1926-1941  (JSP)  $30  4CDs
100 exceptionally bright and often virtuosic rural blues jaw-droppers by sadly lesser motherfuckers like Garfield Ackers, Geeshie Wiley (God, I love Geeshie Wiley), William Harris, King Solomon Hill, and many many more.  But if there were one song on here which made the ticket price worthwhile on its own (and there are many, actually), I'd pick Elvie Thomas's perfect nightmare "Motherless Child Blues."  
I only have one personal Joe Bussard story, actually, which comes from the evening that he came to our shop to play music and tell stories and year or so back.  We were introduced, and he immeadiately began to feel me out for an interest in old blues, which of course I have in abundance.  Our brief conversation culminated as he told me that he'd found several very good records in Baltimore record stores over the years.  "Yeah?"  I said, "Like what?"  
"Last one was about twenty years ago, I found Elvie Thomas 'Motherless Child'." he says.
"You are fucking kidding me," I say.  "That is one of my absolute favorite records ever.  I can't believe you found that in Baltimore..."
"Oh, yeah!  Great record!  Incredible record!  And you know what the best part of that record is?" he asked
yes, I knew exactly what the best part of that record was.
"The very first note.  That first note."
"oh, yeah!  You've got it!  That's it, it's that first note and then after that... my God!"
And we'd never spoken before, and we've never spoken since, but I'm gald to have had that one true moment with this guy.  We both complete understood one note and were able to share it with each other.  I thought that was cool
But there's way way more to the song than that.  First of all, it's one of only, what, eight songs, all of them self-penned, recorded jointly and apart by two African-American women - Geechie Wiley and Elvie Thomas - from the Mississippi delta in 1930-1, all of them played with an originality, virtuosity and knowingness of the very best male players.  Virtually nothing is known about either one of them.  I mean, think about it - this couple of poor, rural, African-American FEMALE blues congescenti (name one other really good female prewar blues guitarist - you say "Memphis Minnie" - and I say she's a great writer but just a passable guitarist - not stark, raving brilliant like Geechie and Elvie) make this tiny handful of utterly unique records and are then lost to time.  What in the hell is this all about?
And then there's the song itself - the kind of song, structurally which makes white beard-scratchers like yours truly go "well, there's the West African griot thing happening in the South."  Sure, there's a little parlor-ballad style in there, but the intricacy that Thomas wrenches out of that shitty Stella or whatever it is sounds as much like an attempt to make the damn thing sing like a harp as anything Skip James or John Lee Hooker ever laid down.
And the first verse.  One line, repeated four times in a structure that musicologists would be tempted to describe as A,A,A,A.  "My mother told me must before she died."  "My mother told me must before she died." "My mother told me must before she died." "My mother told me must before she died."
It ain't till line one of verse two that we get the awful truth "Daughter daughter, don't you be like me."  And this time, she give you relief after two repetitions by closing the verse with "To fall in love with every man you see."
So, the mother's dead.  The daughter has heard her deathbed regret - loving men too easily.  Three verses five lines - total loss, heartbreak and tragedy.  And then it gets worse.
Although it's too many syllables for the line, she has to say the whole thing "Do you remember the day, baby, you drove me from your door?"  And then she has to do it twice more, before quoting her beloved: "Get away from here woman and don't come back no more."
Ah, FUCK.  
Fate.
Stupidity.
Weakness.
Something awful and inevitable.
"I walked away and I wrang my hands and cried."
and then the last line, still mysterious to me, a haunting question mark like the last line of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain" (as he watches the two lights on the train taking his beloved away, he thinks, "The blue light was my blues and the red light was my mind."  Gone gone gone...  Now, I am a madman.)
Elvie say:
"Didn't have no blues but I couldn't be satisfied."
Wit's end.  Total fucking horror.
That's why it's one my favorite records.
You can hear that incredible first note and the rest of it here:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=67529094
That's one of 100 songs on this set.

The Carter Family - 1927 - 1934  (JSP)  $30  5CDs
The complete early reccordings for Victor.  125 songs.  Six hours.  Not a bad song on it.  Vastly better sound quality than the vastly more expensive Rounder issues of the same material.  It's hard to know what to say about some the best music in the world, except to say that I actually bought one of these and my own CD collection is maybe 60 discs total.  There are so many levels to enjoy the Carters on, but to me it's always been the mystery and complexity of interpersonal insanity in the context of family and love.  AP Carter, the ostensible patriach and leader, gathering songs in solitude and isolation, not showing up to their second session (no one knows where he went), wandering off mid-verse from his warbling and ineffectual harmonies at the microphone to stare at the birds through the studio window, ultimately divorced from his staggeringly talented wife but forced to continue their professional relationship, even as she remarries.  The bittersweetness of in-law Sara's voice and guitar, sisterly and stoic and full of the plainest pleasure of singing itself through these hopeful ditties of death and loss and worry and nostalgia and needing needing needing to go home someday.

v/a - Mountain Gospel:  The Sacred Roots of Country Music  (JSP)  $30  4CDs
Five flabbergasting hours of pre-war white gospel, including stringband stuff by Ernest Stoneman, JE Mainer, etc, gaggles of Sacred Harp Singing and top-notch quartets.  But for me, the prize is the opening eight cuts, the entire recorded output of Alfred G. Karnes, put to wax at the Bristol Sessions in 1927 and including two take-them-with-you-to-the-grave glorious little rides to heaven, "Called to the Foriegn Land," a song which Dick Spottswood, if I remember right, described in the notes to Goodbye, Babylon as a combination of "missionary zeal" with a real "death wish" - a truly insane song.  But more than that, "I am Bound for the Promised Land" easily one of the most ferocious guitar performances of the prewar period, made especially notable for having been played on a now-strange hybrid instrument, the harp-guitar, having a long course of unfretted bass strings, which Karnes whacks with his right hand thumb like he wants Heaven to hurt to good - a vigorous Man's Heaven - as he sings masochistically "filled with delight / my wretched soul / would here no longer stay / Sickness and sorrow pain and death / [And scatters night a-way] (or somthing like that; I can't quite make it out...)  Anyway, it's maniacal and a tune you can stomp your sorry loafers to from now till they haul you off to the hospital.  

v/a - Blind Willie Johnson and the Guitar Evangalists  (JSP)  $30  4CDs
If you are among the many people we know who love Revenant's American Primitive Vol 1:  Pre-War Gospel (the disc from which we took the name of our shop), this set is the fuller picture of exactly that set of artists:  the life's work of Blind Mamie Forehand, Edward W. Clayborn, Lonnie McIntorsh, Blind Willie Harris, Rev. A Johnson - PLUS the complete works of Blind Willie Johnson, one of the greatest performers to ever tread American soil, whose wordless lament "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground," would be, were a gun put to my head, the single most exquisite performance by an American on record ever, (you can hear it here: http://www.myspace.com/blindwilliejohnson ) but whose "I Just Can't Keep From Crying," "Let Your Light Shine on Me," and "God Don't Never Change" will also give you a reason to keep getting out of bed every goddamn day for years to come.  Thirty bucks.


THE HEAVY MIDDLE EAST
some of these monsters of maqam have floated through here before, but we've never had quite this critical a mass of truly profound Middle Eastern classical performances.  So, let's dig in a little:

Ostad Elahi - Spiritual Epic  (Harmonia Mundi)  $18  CD
Ostad Elahi - Cascade  (Harmonia Mundi)  $18  CD
Ostad Elahi - Dialogue with the Beloved (Harmonia Mundi)  $18  CD
Born in 1895 in the Kurdistan region of Iran and iniated as a Sufi by his father, Elahi first served as a judge but gave up to persue music and thought.  These three discs compile profoundly intense and masterful solo tanbur (saz-style lute) performances in an atmosphere of deep, if turbulent, contemplation and prayer.  Very serious and very real stuff.  http://ostadelahi.com/english/

Munir Bashir - The Art of the Ud  (Ocora)  $13  CD
Munir Bashir - Rhythms and Melodies  (Chant du Monde)  $18  CD
Bashir, primarily known as a brilliant and innovative Oud player who brought elements of flamenco technique into classical Iraqi music, was also a premier arranger and composer given a cultural post by the nascet Baath party in the early 70s.  Around the same time, his son Omar, now also a brilliant oud player, was born in Budapest where Munir spent a great deal of time, studying Western Classical music, particularly that of Hungary.  (He died in exile of heart failure in Budapest in 1997.)  The former disc presents Bashir in starkly brilliant form.  The latter shows his more "progressive" side, including a great deal of borrowed performance technique from outside Iraq, including substantial echo treatment.

Hamza El Din - Eclipse  (Ryko) $13  CD
Born in the Nubian part of Southern Egypt in 1929 and died only this time last year, Hamza El Din was one of the 20th century's great masterers of the oud, whose late 60s LP The Water Wheel for Nonesuch will continue to blow minds left, right and center for decades to come.  For the first time, we have this Mickey Hart-produced minimalist masterpiece of voice, oud and percussion (all played by El Din) is a hypnotic and planar joy.

v/a - Musics from the Yayla  (Ocora)  $13  CD
This is why I love the French Ocora label.  For all its intellectual distance and framing and dense, scholarly, swiss-cheese-like liner notes, they give us something like this:  12 performances, 72 minutes, of vernacular volk music from the moutainous Eastern border of Turkey (much cloer to Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran than it is to Istanbul), played by highly articulate and masterful (if near-anonymous) peasantry.  As wrenching and lovely (and nearly perfectly recorded) as any "hillbilly" music gets, from any locale.

MISC JEWELS

Sly and the Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin On  (Epic)  $12
it's been said before but warrants saying again - what an incredibly great record.  1971 five-star masterpiece of futuristic funk, without which certainly Shuggie Otis's relatively trifling (although much beloved) Inspiration Information would never have been.  And, if you're all amped about Betty Davis (as well you should be) and you don't have this record, well you really oughta get Riot in your life.  Newly remastered (with some pretty cool outtake bonus tracks) so you can hear exactly how shitty, cheap, fast and rough the recording and mixing sessions were on this bad boy.  Includes, of course, the staggeringly weird radio hit "Family Affair," "Runnin Away," and "You Caught me Smilin" but also my favorite, the total what-thu? Jimmie Rodgers-meets-a-drum-machine, stoned, almost Yoko-ishly brilliant "Spaced Cowboy."

Sarolta Zalatnay - s/t  (B-Music)  $15  CD  (Finders Keepers)  $26  LP
From the folks who brought you the Selda, Jean-Claude Vannier and Mustafa Ozkent (all totally great freaker-funk-psyche reissues) comes another sure-shot motherload - this time out of Hungary, in the form of "sassy gal" (Jason Willett's words) Zalatnay who fronted several bands with her Janis-Jimi-Cream attitude and a shuffle to give Bill Withers or the Meters something to bump to, had they visited Eastern Europe in the early 70s.  Wicked fuzz guitars, insanely funky funky drums and platform-heel strut everywhere you look.  Hazel-green-eyed funk?  Highly recommended.

Smegma - 33 1/3  (Important  $14  CD;  $13  LP
another brand new slab of elsewhere present joys by long-running Seattle improv genii.  CD includes bonus live footage (including Specer Yeh and Twig Harper).  LP includes a non-CD bonus track.  

Rubbed Raw - Street Mix vol 2  (self)  $5  CDR
12 new top-drawer hip-hop jams by Max Eisenberg and Fat Rob Francisco about fuckin' played in a way that that wouldn't seduce any but the weirdest and wastedest art-school dropout.  Inner sleeve includes a photo of patron saints / hopelessly-effed-up-individuals Lexie Mountain, Dirty Tony Hazmat and Ian Nagoski.

you fill me with inertia,
Nathan Barley 

NEW LPS IN-STOCK
LSD March - Empry Rubious Red  (Tequila Sunrise)  $21
Fursaxa - Alone in the Dark Wood  (Eclipse)  $16
Current 93 - Black Ships Ate the Sky  (Durtro Jnana)  $25  2LP
Burning Star Core - Solo Violin I-X  (Tone Filth)  $14
Burning Star Core - A Brighter Summer Day /  Baybe It Wasn't Me  (Thin Wrist)  $14
Carl Craig -Science Fiction  (Blanco Y Negro)  $13  4 mixes, reissue of last year's promo-only 12"

NEW CDS IN-STOCK

Mats Gustafsson & Yoshimi - Words on the Floor  (Smalltown Superjazz)  $17
Jana Hunter - There's No Home  (Gnomonsong)  $13
Aufgehoben - Messidor  (Holy Mountain)  $13
v/a - An Overdose of Heavy Psych  (Arf! Arf!)  $14
v/a - A Lethal dose of Heavy Psych  (Arf! Arf!)  $14
v/a - A Deadly dose of Heavy Psych  (Arf! Arf!)  $14
MIA - Bittersub  (Substatic)  $18
Basil Kirchin - Particles  (Trunk)  $15

Earth - Hibernaculum  (Southern Lord)  $17  CD & DVD
v/a - Florida Funk  (Now Again)  $15
Joe Meek - Joe Meek's Freekbeat  (Castle)  $17
Joe Meek - Vampires, Cowboys, Spacemen & Spooks  (Castle)  $17
Jessica Rylan - Interior Deigns  (Important)  $13
Basil Kirchin - Particles  (Trunk)  $15
Wild Man Fischer - Pronounced Normal  (Collector's Choice)  $13
Wild Man Fischer - Nothing Scary  (Collector's Choice)  $13
The Fall - Rebellious Jukebox  (Castle)  $13  2CD best-of

WAY MORE EXCELLENT CATALOG CDS
never before available here and now in stock
Glaxie 500 - On Fire  $14
Daniel Johnston - Yip Jump Music  $13
Daniel Johnston - 1990  $12
Hasil Adkins - Wild Man  $15
Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady  $12
Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales  $12
Pentagram - Turn to Stone  $12
Pentagram - Be Forewarned  $12
Residents - Not Available  $17
The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World  $12
Stereolab - Dots and Loops  $12
Tuxedomoon - Half Mute  $12
Tuxedomoon - Pinheads  $12
Tuxedomoon - Desire  $12
Cecil Taylor - Jazz Master  $9
Celtic Frost - Best of  $10
Howlin Wolf - Live  $8
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Ecstacy  $8
Q-Tip - Amplified  $10
Rutles - Archaeology  $14
Syd Barrett - Madcap Laughs / Barrett  $18  2cd set w/ bonus tracks
Leadbelly - Important Recordings  $30  4CD set
Memphis Jug Band - Best of  $16
Milton Nascimento - Clube da Esquina  $15
Harry Nilsson - Nilsson  Schmilsson  $12
Ramomes - It's Alive  $11
Ramones - Ramones Mania  $10
Spinal Tap - This Is  $15
Eddie Bo - Best Of  $10
Elmore James - Dust My Broom  $8
Flamin Groovies - Shake Some Ation  $10
John Lee Hooker - The Cream  $10
Josh White - Comlete Recorded Works  1929-1932  $12
Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express $13
Last Poets - Chastisement  $10
Last Poets - This is Madness $12
Lee Perry - Africa's Blood  $12
Lightnin Hopkins - Blues in my Bottle  $12
Lightnin Hopkins - Freeform Patterns  $8
Malcolm X  - Ballots or Bulletts:  the Complete Speech  $12
Maypole - s/t  $14
Memphis Minnie - Crazy Crying Blues  $10
Motorhead - Overkill  $10
Motorhead - The Collection  $10
Oneness of Juju - Space Jungle Luv  $12
Otis Redding - Otis Blue  $11
Throbbing Gristle - Grief  $12
Throbbing Gristle - Final Muzak  $11
Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon - Complete Recordings, vol 1 1929-1932  $12
v/a - Field Recordings 1933-43:  Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missippi, Florida, Georgia, Tennesse, South Carolina, Delaware  $12
v/a - Preachers and Congregations 1927-38 $12
v/a - Preachers and Congregations 1926-41 $12
v/a -Preachers and Congregations 1924-36 $12
v/a - Preachers and Congregations 1925-29 $12
v/a - Gospel Singers and Preachers 1926-48  $12
 
JUST A SMATTERING FROM THE USED LPs 1000+ ARRIVED IN THE PAST WEEK
Garrett Lund - Almost Grown  (World In Sound)  M-/Ex  $25  insanely delux reissue of a private press psych-folk oddity.
Uganda - s/t  ("Toshiba")  $25  M-/M-  $25  scarce wicked Japanese psych-prog jammer from a now long-gone reissue, still in shrink
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five - Volume 1  (Columbia)  M-/M-  $15  six-eye and flawless.
Louis Armstrong - Great Early Recordings  (Riverside)  VG+/M- $12  small ink notation on rear panel.  3" split at mouth of bottom seam.
Johnny Dodds - New Orleans Clarinet:  Classic Early Recordings  (Prestige)  Ex/M-  $12  microphone label
New Orleans Rhythm Kings w/ Jell Roll Morton  (Riverside)  Ex/Ex  $12
King Oliver (Epic)  Ex/Ex  $12  1923 recordings.  stunning.
v/a - Chicago South Side, vol 2. 1927-29  (Historical)  $12  in shrink
v/a - New Orleans Sounds in New York:  1924 - 1926  (Herwin)  $20  flawless in shrink.
v/a - Jazz Sounds of the 20s  (Odeon)  Ex/M-  $15  including the Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra, the Chocolate Dandies, Arthur Sims and his Creole Jazz Orchestra, Bennie Moten, Clarence Williams and more.

chewin out a rhythm on my bubblegum,
Ian

USED VINYL
we've taken in thousands of used record in the past couple weeks - way more than I can tackle, including tons of 50s, 60s and 70s soul and r&b, classic rock, hip-hop and jazz sides.  But here are few chosen by pure virtue of my own subjective interest in them.

Andre Williams - Jail Bait  (Fortune)  M-/M-  $18
1984 reissue, flawless in shrink, of Williams only (1960) LP before his raunched-out 90s comeback discs.  These 12 tracks were recorded 1956-58 when Williams was only in his very early 20s, never reissued on CD to my knowledge and amouning to some choice stripped-down r&b all around, including some eccentric stuff which fans of Bo Diddly and Screamin Jay, in particular the maniacally frenzied "Is it True?", the name-sez-it-all slop-fest "Greasy Chicken," and of course the titular psychodrama regarding people not to fuck.

I, Brute Force - Confections of Love  (Columbia)  M-/M-  $18
mono original copy of this proto-freak early-1967 LP, sort of related aesthetically to Zappa, Tiny Tim, the Bonzo Dog Band or - I dunno - Sparks, kind of, or Fozzie Bear.  Chirpy, polished songraft is the tortilla to a musical burrito stuffed with a flippant, cynical worldview cover subjects like "The Sad Sad World of Mothers and Fathers," "To Sit on a Sandwich," the "Tapeworm of Love," "Making Faces at Each Other," and a girl who makes out with a car mechanic and has to explain the post-date greasestains on her duds to her parents.  John Lennon and George Harrison were impressed-qua-stoned enough to release an undistributed single by Mr. Force on Apple called "The King of Fuh" (the Fuh-King, getit?).  Weird with a beard.  Turns out he's still going and played at South by Southwest this year.  Dig his almost totally incomprehensible (and almost totally unrelated to this LP) web page:  http://www.brutesforce.com/index02.html

The Raspberries - Fresh  (Capitol)  VG+/M-  $12
their second and generally considered best LP, released in 1972, the same year as Big Star's first and in many ways equivalently beautiful record.  A year before Sweet's self-titled record and five years before the first Cheap Trick record, this thing ebulliently summarizes teenage kicks (see "I Wanna be With You") and nostalgia for the bygone era of the Beatles, Hollies and Kinks (see "Let's Pretend") in the era of encounter groups and flowered shower curtains (see "I Reach for the Light").  Endearingly earnest and a more than a little silly tranmission from a world that mostly had the Eagles, David Geffen's Asylum Records and Steely Dan to offer.  If you get the bubblegum-sweetheart side of the Ramones, here's a key forerunner.

10cc - Sheet Music  (UK/London)  Ex/Ex  $8
near center of a quadrant of Sparks and Steely Dan on the Y axis and Todd Rundgren and John Cale on the X, mid-70s 10cc were an implausibly thorough British fusion of end-of-Vietnam cynicism, technical over-perfection, and smart semi-adult pop songcraft.  On first glance, it sounds like a worst-case-scenario Pete Townsend solo record, and not a single song on this record really means diddley-squat to me, feeling like overblown Use Your Illusion gobbeldy-gook - with, maybe the exceptions of "Silly Love," a Bowie-esque fractal-type-pomo-endless-pastiche construction around the word "Silly" (kinda cool) and the frankly hilarious "Worst Band in the World," (notably reconstructed, just a few bpms faster, by J. Dilla for the opening of his masterpiece Donuts as "Workin on It.")
10cc - Original Soundtrack  (Mercury)  VG+/Ex  $7
1975 - Watergate, the end of Vietnam, the release of Jaws, "Love Will Keep us Together" by Captain & Tennile, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, Pasolini's death, my birth and the worst year for records, quality-wise, since the dawn of sound recording.  Over and over, I have challenged aquaintences to name two excellent records released by major labels that year (Pour Down Like Silver by Richard and Linda Thompson and Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed are my two - both anomalies - although War's Why Can't we be Friends is an easy contender) but apart from Born to Run (I don't care for Springsteen), Chocolate City (not as good as Up for the Down Stroke which preceeded it or the Mothership Connection which followed) and Another Green World (a lowlight to my mind in Eno's 70 discography, but I'm open to reasonable debate), I don't get many replies, partly because the 50s-60s rock continuum had burned out and the big record companies hadn't caught on to the nacent punk and disco undergrounds (Patti Smith, Pere Ubu and Television all had indie 7"s that year, not to mention scads of small-press funk and dance records).  It was really the eye of the hurricane, which allowed for overwrought monstrosities like this one to see the light of day.  Vastly more clever, of course, than the Eagles' The Long Run or the Doobies' Stampede (not even THEIR best records), 10cc's Original Soundtrack in an anglophile's answer to Steely Dan's Kay Lied, a deeply burnished and at times startlingly insightful trifle of popsong, most notable for its one foray upward of midtempo, "Blackmail," which burns a little more wickedly than a really good Badfinger song.  I guess that's a recommendation.  Generally thought of as their best record.  

Roy Harper - 1970-1975  (Harvest)  VG/M-  $10  cut corner.
twelve songs from six albums made during the most fertile period of songwriting and recording by my personal favorite songwriter other than Bob Dylan.  All of his stuff is hard to get your hands on at this point (he owns the rights and reissues his discs himself from Ireland, although they aren't distrubuted in the US at all.  For $20 or $30 a throw, you may be able to get a few through Amazon or his own Science Friction site.  And best luck.)  This thing includes only one track from Harper's best record, Stormcock, two from the jewel which followed it, Lifemask, and again only one from the sprawling and droolingly, eye-crossingly fascinating mostly-live double LP, Flashes from the Archive from of Oblivion.  Those you'll have to track down on your own.  But you get a track of three each from Flat Baroque and Berserk, Valentine and HQ, excellent records but not for the uninitiated.  So, this is a pretty OK starting point for curious Harper dilletantes or any one (like me) so desperate for insight into Harper that a chance for study of Harper's recordings are a welcome respite from what else has come along.  The highlights here are "Don't You Grieve," a song written from Judas' standpoint in Hell, "Little Lady," a watery production surrounding a song of loss and nostalgia, and the live version of "Another Day," a song so rich in euphoria and anxiety and boredom and sweetness that the heart stops.

Dolly Parton - Best Of  (RCA)  M-/M-  $6  with poster
another 1975 record, coincidentally.  All but two Parton's early 70s hit singles presented here were self-penned and are remarkably intense, consisely written and exquisitely sung, better than the best Grace Slick performances if you ask me.  In many ways, she is the Maybelle Carter of the period since the inception of the Nashville hit-machine, a voice so pure and humble and welcoming.  Or for that matter, like Bill Withers, simultaneously strong and gentle, funky and compassionate.  Includes, of course, "Jolene," a woman-to-other-woman talk in song, "Love is Like a Butterfly," an childlike and churchy jingle of earthly redemption, "Coat of Many Colors," as sweet a song about poverty as was ever written by someone who experienced it, and "I Will Always Love You," a still-astounding hymn of earthly devotion which everyone ought to be able to understand.

Lamont Dozier - Black Bach  (ABC)  VG/Ex  $8  very light rubbing on jacket.  cutout punch.
yet another 1975 records, the second solo record by one of the members of the songwriting team best known for almost innumerable 60s Detroit hits, including "Sugar Pie Honey Bunch" and "Where Did Our Love Go?", this LP contains no particularly memorable tunes to my ear but makes up for it in head-nodding proto-hip-hop grooves and luxurient, if somewhat crowded, production.  Had Dozier given the vocals to a more keening singer - either a Marvin Gaye or a Gram Parsons would have been appropriate - this record would have ascended to rubies-and-saphires status.  As it is, to my ears, it's a very enjoyable period piece of exquisitely arranged soul.

Main Ingredient - Euphrates River  (RCA)  VG+/Ex  $9
1974 and what a difference a year makes.  This record is a gorgeous, bordering on magnificent, piece of Motown-inspired funky soul-boogie with tasteful and blissy arrangements, heavily derived from Norman Whitfield's genius early 70s Temptations productions, to match the conscious lyrics (including a seriously great smooth-funk reading of Seals and Croft's "Summer Breeze" - "blowing through the jasmine of my mind".)  Just wonderful.

Joe Tex - From the Roots Came the Rapper  (Atlantic)  M-/M-  $9
Joe Tex - Spills the Beans  (Dial)  M-/M-  $9
both from 1972, and like his peers in Southern Soul at the time - Don Covay, Swamp Dogg and Al Green in particular - Tex was merging blues into funk in deep tempos and post-Wilson Pickett gospel-tinged vocals with production as planar and compressed as any younger pop artist of the day (think T Rex or Sly Stone).  It's a compelling and very listenable mix which warrants revisiting.  The Dial LP doesn't have much to offer on its ballads but the uptempo stuff which makes up the majority is killer, notably including "All the Heaven a Man Needs," the JB-esque rap-over-drum-break "Cat's got her Tongue" and the and the lip-curling uh-huh chugger "A Mother's Prayer."  The Atlantic LP boasts uniformly excellent vocal performances, better song selections overall and less punchy but more intricate arrangements.  The two long Isaac Hayes-y rap-over-song pieces are obvious standouts, but the string-drenched boogaloo "Chained in Mind" is hard to miss.

Tony D - Music Makes You Move  (Sure Shot)  VG+/VG  $18
1989 almost-entirely-instrumental hip-hop LP from Trenton, New Jersey, the opening track of which "Adam's Nightmare" jacked the Jackson 5's ABC but was itself jacked by Naughty by Nature a year later for "OPP."  The LP is brimming with a meticulously crafted, upbeat underground party vibe

NEW RELEASE CDS

J Dilla - Ruff Draft  (Stones Throw)  $15
very exciting new reissue of the brilliant short-run 2003 German-distributed LP which has quickly gained collector status, Ruff Draft shows Dilla at his (al)most experimental (surpassed only by Donuts and tied, sorta, by Jaylib).  Certainly a jewel that will be loved by those recently initiated by Donuts (more so than the Shining, much as I love the instrumentals -  Ruff Draft is just more personal and crazier).  Issued as a 2CD set with the first disc having all the vocals (by Jay Dee himself) and the second as instrumentals.  The label hypse helps:  "Ruff Draft proved to mark a turning point in Dilla's career. He spent the '90s making a name for himself as an all-around, top-notch hip-hop producer, first arriving with his own group Slum Village, then on classic tracks for A Tribe Called Quest, Common, The Pharcyde and De La Soul, eventually branching out with Busta Rhymes and The Roots to D'Angelo and Erykah Badu.  In contrast to the understated, mellow vibes and minimal, crisp drumbeats he brought to the boards for those groups, Ruff Draft revealed - to those who heard it the first time around - a new side to Dilla's musical genius. Freewheeling, in-your-face synthesizers and an uncharacteristically sample-heavy approach that was as bangin' as it was experimental. And, as hey say in the intro, it's supposed to bump in your car like an old cassette – one of those well-loved ones that get played over and over and over.  2003 was the year he transplanted to sunny Southern California, and while he was completing Ruff Draft, Dilla was crafting the beats that would become his contribution to the Jaylib album, Champion Sound – his collaboration with Madlib."  also on LP.

Talib Kweli and Madlib - Liberation  (Blacksmith)  $15

RJD2 - The Third Hand  (XL)  $14

Mustafa Ozkent - Genclik Ile Elele  (B-Music)  $14
has been available for a month or two, appearantly, but new to us and a total monster.  Seriouly crazed psyche-funk from early 70s Turkey.  Highly recommended.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders  (B-Music)  $14
whacked-out orchestral-dream-folk soundtrack to an early 70s Czech film about a girl's first menstruation.  Issued, like the above disc, carefully by the folks that brought you the reissue of the first Selda record and the domestic issue of the wonderful Jean Claude Vannier disc.

Ennio Morricone - In the Brain:  Blowing Your Mind with the Maestro  (Cherry Red)  $17
new comp of particularly dark and lovely material from the 70s.  

v/a - Cherrystones Word  (Lo)  $11
ferocious blown-out heavy groove-laden psyche-guitar monstrosities, mostly dating from the 70s and early 80s, including George Brigman, Dead Moon, the Deviants, Chrome, Lard Free (incredibly whacked mid-70s French band including the drummer from Jacques Berrocal's Catalog and Richard fuggin Pinhas), assembled by the man behind the all-time great Cherrystones Rocks and Cherrystones Hidden Charms comps.

Goblin - The Sweet Sound of Hell  (Cherry Red)  $17
nicely assembled 19-track overview of the Italian prog horror-flick soundtrackers.

Salah Ragab and the Egyptian Jazz Band - Egyptian Jazz  (Art Yard)  $21
astounding, incredibly complex and sophisitcated recordings late-60s modern jazz large ensemble composition from the Middle East.

Ornette Coleman - Whom do You Work For?  (Get Back)  $16
1971 live recordings with Ed Blackwell, Charlie Haden and Dewey Redman.  also on LP.

Baby Grandmothers - s/t (Subliminal)  $15
new reissue of a 1967 Swedish psyche power-trio LP by contemporaries of Parsons Sound who transmogrified into Sweden's answer to Soft Machine, the Mecki Mark Men.  Lovingly researched and assembled by one of the guys in Dungen.

Chubby Checker - s/t  (Underground Masters)  $19
legendary late 60s session in which the man who brought you "The Twist" fronts a garage-psyche band (from Ohio, if memory serves) for some brooding and f-ed up chug-a-lug guitar splurt in an alarmingly heart-felt drug-culture-exploitation outing, including titles like "Stoned in the Bathroom," "My Mind," and "No Need to get so Heavy."  

La Grecas - Gipsy Rock  (Underground Masters)  $19
1974 fuzzbomb psyche-rock by two Spanish Gipsy women.

Brigitte Bardot - And God Created Woman  (Cherry Red)  $17
soundtrack to the 1956 film by Paul Miraski.

v/a - Awon Ojise Olorun:  Popular Music in Yorubaland 1931-52  (Savannaphone)  $22
expsensive but utterly unique collection of 78-era recordings from Nigeria of tribal and urban musics.  Includes complete and annotated translations of every track, which from a research point of view is worth the hefty ticket price alone; the music, of course, is flabbergasting, and what price can you put on that?  Not the kind of thing you come across every day, even if you lived in Nigeria.

and so I am reminded of John Lennon who once said
"bye and thanks for the bread"
Ian

BORAT
it'll seem a little off track from the casual observer of our shop, but we are delighted to announce that we have copies of the new DVD of
Borat:  Cultral Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
released today and available for the next two weeks at just $23
One of the most demented pieces of UK comedy in the Peter Cook tradition ever created, there is little that has not been said about this film already (including Jason Willett's assertion that one scene in particular counts, along with Derek and Clive and ciragettes and sex as among his five favorite things about being alive).  
Including thirty minutes of deleted footage, the DVD comes in a slipcase which hides a package which looks like a 12th generation Kazakh bootleg, covered entirely in Kazakh script.  "Nice."

ALTAR
the new drone-doom collector grail awaits you
Sunn O)))) / Boris - Altar  (Southern Lord)  $32
sledgehammer-heavy TRIPLE LP version of the collaborative LP by the two metal giants with a full-size sixteen page libretto in an edition of only 2000 copies (out of print in the next three days, in other words, most likely), including the now deleted-from-CD 28-minute bonus jam with Dylan Carlson of Earth et al.  Grab while you can.

THE WEIRDNESS
The Stooges - The Weirdness  (Virgin)  $12
brand new today, the Ashton brothers, Iggy and bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, etc) recorded these 12 new jams late last year following their much-lauded reunion shows of the past couple years.  Produced by Steve Albini.  Vinyl forthcoming.

MORE JAMS THE WHOLE WORLD LOVES TO JAM
further entries in our recent efforts to offer superlative major-label back-catalog dreamboats:
Afrika Bambaata - Looking for the Perfect Beat  $14
Tim Buckley - Works in Progress  $26  Rhino handmade, numbered edition of 2000 copies
John Cale - Fear  $15  his best.
Captain Beefheart - Safe as Milk  $12
Captain Beefheart - Mirror Man Sessions  $11  includes "Kandy Korn," my all-time favorite air-guitar song.
Erik Satie - Solo Piano Works  $15  essential 2CD set of the Aldo Ciccolini performances
Olivier Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time  $8  1990 stunning recording made under the composer's supervision with his widow on piano
J.S. Bach - Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin  $11  1954-6 performances by Nathan Milstein
Java:  Court Gamelan, vol 2  $12  devastating 70s recordings of the physically humongous set of instruments at the Mangkunegaran court in Surakarta of the most beautiful music in the world.
Java:  Court Gamelan, vol 3  $12  mid-70s recordings from Kraton Yogyakarta, including 26 minutes of "Golek Lambangsari."
Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger  $12  his stoner-romantic-concept masterpiece w/ bonus tracks
Ennio Morricone - Fear  $30  three all-time masterpiece soundtracks packaged in a slipcase.  Each one is from Morricone's most experimental period in the early 70s, the whacked Gatto a Nove Code, the improv-based Gatto a Nove Code, and our all-time favorite Morricone work, Una Lucertola Con La Pelle di Donna ("The Lizard with the Lady's Skin.")
Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music  $12  "my greatest guitar solo" - Lou Reed, understating the case for once
MF Doom as Victor Vaughn - Venemous Villain  $13
Ghostface - Fishscale  $14
The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo  $12  remastered and with essential Gram-vocal bonus tracks
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Shahen Shah  $16  easily my favorite of his.
Red Crayola - Parable of Arable Land / God Bless...  $14  their first two blown-mind masterpieces on one great disc.
Pharoah Sanders - Tauhid  $15
Pharoah Sanders - Karma  $15
Pharoah Sanders - Thembi  $15
Pharoah Sanders - Impulse Story  $12  best-of
Sun Ra - Space is the Place  $15
v/a - A Date with John Waters  $14   the liner notes:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbSRQUuLE2c

USED RECORDS
I'll get back to listing them next week.  Promise.  But they're still rolling in at an alarming rate.

my hands on the wheel of something that's real and I feel like I'm going home,
Ian

"WE PLAY THE SOUND OF AFTER DEATH AND BEFORE BIRTH"
We were saddened to hear last week of the death of drummer Charles Gocher, late of Seattle, Washington, best known as a third of the Sun City Girls.  He also performed and recorded with Joke Flower, Tripod, The Master Musicians of Bukkake and others and recorded an extraordinary solo concept disc titled Pint-Sized Spartacus with sound engineer Scott Colburn.  (A clip from PSS can be heard here:  http://www.suncitygirls.com/radio/mp3/Pint_Sized_Spartacus-PartingTheSea.mp3 ).  I only met him only twice, once after a SCG show in Philly when he spoke with me about spiritual aspects the Girls' music and a second time when he arrived with a small drumkit on a handcart, a half hour too late to play with Jason Glover and I at a bithday party at a kid's house in Seattle.  On both occaissons he deeply impressed me as an exquisitely magical, playful and thoughtful creature.  I'm deeply grateful for his music and send my condolences to all of his friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQzFlO1aLWM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGeKOYPDeUc

===========================

the True Vine presents at
405 W Franklin, Baltimore MD
Saturday March 3rd, 9PM
BORBETOMAGUS
TWIG HARPER
RAVI BINNING
LEXIE MOUNTAIN
and guest
"Perhaps this is what the world would sound like if you developed an ailment that caused you to hear all sounds at once. On one hand, Borbetomagus's concept is as pure as a La Monte Young drone installation: the superficial effect was a deafening and almost unchanging thickly octaved hum. Within that hum, though, a Cagean hell broke loose: the saxes wailed a vaguely ethnic complaint, roaring noises ripped up and down in counterpoint, raspy pulses added an inconstant beat, even pipe organs seemed to barrel down on us with Phantom of the Opera maliciousness. Focus on the roaring mass, and the inner flux called for your attention; try to isolate an element, and the noise would congeal back into a roar. It's the perfect experience of the Wall of Noise, a paradigm that has attracted little attention in mainstream musical discourse, but has been a Holy Grail in the underground for 30 years." - Kyle Gann, Village Voice , 1999
Baltimore City Paper's Bret McCabe enthuses on Borbeto this week:  http://citypaper.com/music/story.asp?id=13303

===============

ENDLESS SERIES
We're delighted over here about Chiara Giavando and Caleb Johnston's new Baltimore-based label, but rather than just issuing records or MP3s or 8-tracks or whatever every other label is doing, their Endless Series imprint requires a little explaining.  
What they're doing is soliciting unreleased tracks from contemporary artists, each between 5 and 10 minutes long.  Then, they list the tracks on their website http://endleseries.com/ .   Then, a person can order any two tracks they like for $25 plus shipping.  Those two tracks are then lathed in real time at 33 rpm on to each side of 10" virgin laquer plates and packaged in clean, thick vintage 78 sleeves (with accompanying rubber stamps and nice labels, artists and titles hand-written.)  Unlike most lathe cuts cirulating in experimental circles, they're exquisitely produced and they sound incredible.  
We have commissioned twenty discs from them, which will arrive in batches over the next couple months.  These are for sale in the shop only.  Those interested in mailorder are encouraged to contact them directly at endless@endleseries.com/
Here are the first four titles, every one a killer, now in stock and available for $29 each.

Andy Hayleck - Demolished Man (8:00) / Angst Hasse Pfeffer Nasse - Reveille and Commiseration  (7:52)
Smegma - Nov. 1973 (9:51) / Thurston Moore - Touch You  (5:22)
Daniel Higgs - Armageddon Lullaby (8:51) / Recitation (9:00)
Beastmaster - Kinda Knew (10:00) / Quintron - Drum Buddy Demo #9: The Heartbeat (7:30)

===============

NEW RELEASE VINYL IN STOCK

Blaq Starr - Suparstarr EP  (Mad)  $9

Tittsworth & Ayers - T&A Breaks  (Ammo)  $13  60 B-more Club and Miami-Bass derived breaks on lock grooves and compilation tracks on one big record of DJ Tools.  

Juceboxx & Dre Skull - Sweat  (Vicious Pop)  $10  feather-weight new "Baltimore Club" track (with a Freedom Williams / Vanilla Ice impersonator rapping) by two Brooklyn dudes.  Also includes a DJ Technis remix.

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity  (Children of Hoof)  $14  also on CD

Animal Collective - People  (Fatcat)  $9  now on vinyl

Panda Bear - Bro's  (Fatcat)  $8

High Llamas - Can Cladders  (Drag City)  $14  also on CD

PG Six - Slightly Sorry  (Drag City)  $14  also on CD

Prurient - Pleasure Ground  (Load)  $13  now on vinyl

v/a - Halleluwah:  Festival of Enthused Arts  (Yeti)  $14  
new compilation LP curated by Mike McGonigal of Yeti / Chemical Imbalence magazines, inluding unreleased tracks by Deerhoof, Sir Richard Bishop, Vashti Bunyan and many more.

Alan Sondheim - Fifty-Six  (Qbico)  $24  
first new record in 35 years by poet / theoretician Sondheim who made three zonked LPs in the 60s for ESP Disk and Riverboat.  This one is solo acoustic instrument-plumming and is real good.

Flower Travellin Band - Satori  (Radioactive)  $26  
the second time in two years that this all-time Japanese psyche monstrosity has been reissued in a "limited numbered edition of 1000 copies."

Amnesty - Free Your Mind  (Now Again)  $15   
from the label that brought you the Stark Reality and Kashmere Stage Band reissues, another utterly phenomenal collection of obscure psychedelic-era funk, this time from Indianapolis and with a positive vibe and mind-expansion agenda to match their outrageous chops and gorgeous arrangements.  

Bob & Gene - If This World Were Mine  (Daptone)  $15  
from the label that brought you the contemoprary retro acts the Budos Band, Sharon Jones and the Sugarman Three, this is a first-issue of previously unreleased unreleased late-60s soul recordings from Buffalo, NY.  Some dazzling, if sometimes intonationally-challenged, stuff here.  

v/a - MuthafunkinSonofaBitch:  The Truth Behind the Philly Legend  (Funkadelphia)  $18  
now on vinyl.  collection of obscure 1968-73 Philly funk killers from the circle of Sonny Hopson, Vincent Montana, Gamble & Huff, Thomas Bell, etc  pre-TSOP when these dudes were badasses on the scene.  Highly recommended.  

DJ Afrika Bambaata - Death Mix 2  ("Paul Winley")  $8  
has this come out before?  is it a boot?  not really sure, but goddamn, the two 12(ish)-minute performances here (probably from around 1980 or so?) are HEART-STOPPINGLY beautiful and way way better sound quality than the first Death Mix.  Comes in a truly shitty-looking paste-on sleeve.  Awesome.  Also on CD.

Black Milk - Popular Demand  (FatBeats)  $13  
new full-length by much-hyped Detroit sampler-whiz.

================

NOTABLE NEW CDS

Jr and His Soulette - Psychodelic Sunds  (Vampi-Soul)  $21
one of the greatest records ever made!  1969 (?  1970?) private press recording by pre-teen Harold M. Moore, Jr and his three sisters (each no more than three years older than him) - originally manufactured in approximately 300 copies - with most destroyed as the record was shrink wrapped in a meat packing machine by their uncle at his meat packing plant.  Wah-wah guitar- and organ-fueled and soul burners.  Awesome awesome awesome.

Evil Moisture / Hanatarash - Fatanarchy On Airtube  (Harbinger)  $13
collaborations from 1995-2004 between Eye (of Boredoms) and Bolus.  a gazillion short tracks of insane super-mind spew.  excellent.

Smegma - Nattering Naybobs of Negativity / Morass (Harbinger)  $13
reissue of their 1987 LP and parts of 1988 cassette.  like all Smeggers stuff, an ace.

Organization - Tone Float  (Germanofone / World's Leading Terrorist State)  $18
pre-Kraftwerk stuff by Ralph, Florian and co - psyche freakout improv stuff and way wonked.  well worth checking out.

Kraftwerk - Ralph & Florian  (Germanofone / World's Leading Terrorist State)  $18
third Kraftwerk LP reissued on disc, including the magical fairyland "Tanzmusik."

================
SALE STUFF

dollar records are now 3-for-$1 for the month of March.
we've added a couple hundred CDs to our "bargain" rack.

================

USED STUFF

several hundred more LPs and a hundered or so CDs in the racks in the past week.   
the mind boggles at the thought of trying to list a fraction of them...

don't.
stop.
thinkin about tomorrow,
Ian

JSP etc
the UK label JSP has been producing box sets of great early American music and issuing them at bargain prices over the past few years.  We just got a stack of some of the best of them:

Serenade on the Mountain:  Early Old Time Music on Record  4CDs  $30
some incredible performances of the 20s and 30s by Ernest Stoneman, Carolina Tar Heels, Riley Puckett, Carson Robinson, Clayton McMichen, Floyd County Ramblers, Uncle Eck Dunsford, Bascom Lamar Lunsford (including his stunning reading of the unrequited-love parlor ballad "Lulu Walls":  "if she only would be mine / I would build a house so fine / and all around it build a fence so tall / that no one except myself should ever gaze upon her face / that aggrevating beauty, Lulu Wall.") and many many more.

Paramount Old Time Recordings  4CDs  $30
20s and 30s hillbilly stuff from the rural south from the catalog of the seminal Paramount label, taken from the collection of Jolly Joe Bussard himself.

Uncle Dave Macon - Classic Cuts 1924- 1938, vol 2  4CDs $30
two hundred recordings by one of the greatest entertainers that America ever produced.

Charley Patton - Complete Recordings 1929 - 1934  5CDs  $30
you know that big Revenant box set of all of Patton's indispensible recordings that costs a couple hundred bucks?  Well, here it is without all the notes and packaging for just a few cocoanuts.  

Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, vol 4  (Revenant)  2CDs  $30
speaking of revenant, they've reissued the set of material that Harry Smith had planned to release as the fourth volume of his masterpiece Folkways Anthology, seemingly themed around death, despair and tragedy of one kind of another.  Includes performances by Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, the Memphis Jug Band, memphis Minnie, JE Mainer, Bradley Kinkaid, and the Carter Family (including "No Depression in Heaven," one of the most starkly tragic songs I've ever heard, made even more horrific by their grim, stoic performance :  "In that bright land, there'll be no hunger / No orphan children crying for bread / No weeping widows, toil or struggle / No shrouds, no coffins and no dead.") and many more.

SUPA ROOOOTS!
the three remaining titles in the Boredom's Super Roots CD reissue on the Vice label series just arrived:
Super Roots 6  $15  one of my all-time favorite records
Super Roots 8  $12  first domestic issue
Super Roots 7  $12  first domestic issue

MORE BACK CATALOG DISCS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
as I mentioned a week ago, we've made the plunge into the world of mainstream distribution services, so we're now able to some great major label stuff that we haven't had access to before.  Here are some newly-arrived titles we hope to carry until people stop buying CDs...
Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information  $13
Terry Riley - In C  $12
Tom Waits - Small Change  $12
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs  $11
Tom Waits - Frank's Wild Years  $11
Muddy Waters - Electric Mud  $10
Buddy Guy and Junior Wells - Hoodoo Man Blues  $13
Bukka White - Sonnet Blues  $12
Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom  $17

MORE NEW STUFF
Meerk Puffy - Nung  (Animal Disguise)  $12  LP
restock of this 2003 or 04 solo release by Matt Brinkman, one of the five greatest living electronic musicians.

Selwyn Lissak - Friendship Next of Kin  (Downtown Music Gallery)  $14  CD
new reissue of a rare late-60s UK jazz session, including Louis Moholo.

Afflicted Man - Complete Recordings  (Senseless Whale / World's Leading Terrorist State)  $21  2CDs
haven't heard this one yet, but dig the label hype:  "Play this for your friends and watch them walk off to the other side of the fence. Too freaked out for punks and too punked out for freaks, Steve Hall stalked the nascent British punk/DIY scene under the guise of Afflicted (later Afflicted Man) throughout the early '80s to the interest of almost no one. Hiding in plain sight, Hall unleashed a string of 7"s and LPs that evoked a singular and unique take on the punk sneer made fashionable by the Sex Pistols and their minion. Primitively blending elements of psychedelia and dub over his feral, chainsaw approach, Afflicted Man unleashed a miasma of tripped-out, fuzzy aggro thrashers that would eventually climax into a masterpiece of pedal stomping carnage -- the unimpeachable Get Stoned Ezy LP -- the likes of which are only now being fully digested. Easily one of the UK's strangest and ignored DIY punk bands. This collection includes the entire output; all three mega rare 7"s, plus the hard to find LPs The Afflicted Man's Musical Bag, I'm Off Me 'ead, and the aforementioned Get Stoned Ezy. Essential in every way."

Tony Oxley & Derek Bailey - The Advoate  (Tzadik)  $15  CD
never previously released 1975 studio sessions by the UK founders of free improv with a bonus live percussion-and-electronics tribute to Bailey by Oxley.

Do Make Say Think - You, You're a History in Rust  (Constellation)  $15  CD

RE: BLAQ STARR
I hadn't dropped the needle on the new 7-track Blaq Starr on Diplo's label, but lemme say, HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD!  If you only own three Baltimore Club records, this should be one of them.  Includes a new no-bullshit remix of the long out-of-print masterpiece "Tote It" as well as the essential "Shake it to the Ground," "Automatic Lover," and more!  (and, sorry, it's $9, not $8, but still...)  

put it in glass and blowed it,
Ian

BOREDOMS
Three of the six volumes in the Boredoms Super Roots series have been reissued, and we've got em.  (We'll have the next three when they come out in a few weeks.)  
During the Super Roots period, the Bores were moving from aggro-spaz-energy to lotus-mind-energy, so you get both, overlapping, and super-fun, super-creative, as if it's just coming pouring and pouring out of them.

LAFMS
The Los Angeles Free Music Society has, since the late 70s, been the banner heading for a loose collective of experimental musicians, whose approaches have been characterized by a raw, playful and highly creative sound, drawing from the history of the avant-garde but presenting some of the wildest, spiritually punkiest, stonedest spew America has ever made.  Although the artists and groups under the LAFMS remain, almost universally proundly obscure, their influence is felt all over the place, from the earliest Japanese noise like Incapacitants, Hanatarash and Merzbow to the freekiest factions of modern noise, notably including Nautical Almanac and Wolf Eyes.  
There's been a recent spate of breath-taking new releases and jump-up-and-down-exiciting reissues.  Here's what's just rolled in the door:
Airway - Live at Lace  (Harbinger)  $12 CD
an incredibly brutal 1978 collective live improvisation, including Joe Potts, Tom Recchion, Dennis Duck and others.  In many ways, the record that defines the origin of noise as a genre.  Blown-mind grail stuff.
Smegma - Pigs for Lepers  (Harbinger)  $15  CD
1972-1979 recordings of retardo-conceptualist awesomeness.  
Dennis Duck - Goes Disco  (Pooh Bah)  $13  CD
alarmingly fierce 1979 recording, made entirely of playing vinyl records "wrong"  (off center, wrong speed, wildly off tracking, etc.)  An infuriatingly simple, difficult, beautiful and effective listen.  Originally released on cassette in edition of 50 copies, this reissue has instantly become a huge favorite of mine.  Great package and beautiful Joseph Hammer mastering job.
Smegma - Live at No Fun Fest  (Qbico)  $20  LP
brand new delux red-wax Italian-produced live record of gooey cotton-mouthed free improv rumble-grumble-fumble.
Lee Rockey - Music  (De Stijl)  $17  LP
jaw-dropping mid-70s recordings of heavily processed violin improvisations.  Wild, tuned-in stuff.  Highly recommended.
**Keep your eyes peeled for a True Vine-sponsored Smegma / Tom Recchion concert in Baltimore in late April!

NEW SUBLIME FREQUENCIES TITLES
Omar Souleyman - Highway to Hassake:  Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria  CD  $15
Group Doueh - Guitar Music From the Western Sahara  LP  $23
this latter title is being issued in a one-time pressing of 1000 on LP only, no CD.  And it is some serious shit.  We got in five copies yesterday, and we sold four of them immeadiately.  We expect in a big box of them early next week.  In an incredible full-color gatefold package with notes by Hisham Mayet, pressed on super-heavy high quality vinyl, this document of electric guitar playing, which feels, simultaneously, both meltingly sweet and ferociously spiky, is just one of those records that's never gonna get old.  If you have a record player, and you want something to listen to, come by the middle of next week, and grab yourself one of the best records released in a long time, from, literally, the middle of nowhere to you.

REMBETIKA:  GREEK MUSIC FROM THE UNDERGROUND
The English CD label JSP recently released a phenomenal 4-disc collection of 20s-40s recordings of some of the the most achingly sweet and starkly desperate music ever recorded.  It's got interesting notes, truly excellent sound, and it's only THIRTY BUCKS. 
Rembetika is the music of the Greek underclass, originating in prisons and hashdens in the mid-19th century, it came into full flower following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent slaughter and ethnic cleansing of thousands of Christians in Turkey, resulting in the exile of thousands of Turks being sent into exile to Greece, where they largely fell into a pre-existing underworld of pimping, prostitution and drug addiction - fertile ground for some heavy music.  The players of the style were slick-shit hipsters with their own lingo and a cocky attitude, even as their songs spoke in equal parts about personal tragedy in the forms of unrequited love and ambivalence spoken from within crushing addiction, as wells as the beauty of the dawn and eternity.  It's just amazing stuff.  And this set is a great place to start or an absolutely essential purchase if you're already gotten into it.

SELLING OUT
In order to get the Boredoms stuff, we wound up opening an account with what they call in the record business a one-stop.  This is the kind of place which carries all of the new releases listed in Billboard each week and back catalog for all of the major labels.  This the kind of place where most stores get most of their inventory.
Well, we're gonna give getting some music that people actually want, in addition to the weird crap that makes our lives worth living, and see what happens.
So, here's a sampling of new CDs which just arrived:
13th Floor Elevators - Psychedelic Sounds  $13
Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum  $11
Nick Cave - From Her to Eternity  $16
Nick Cave - Tender Prey  $16
Ornette Coleman - Dancing in Your Head  $15
Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda  $15
Miles Davis - On the Corner  $12
De La Soul - Is Dead  $14
Sandy Denny - Sandy  $12
DJ Screw - Best of  $16
Nick Drake - all three, remastered  $11 each
John Fahey - The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death  $15
John Fahey - Great San Bernandino Birthday Party and Other Disasters  $15  (my personal favorite Fahey record)
John Fahey - Days Have Gone By  $15
Faust - Faust / So Far  $17
Flying Burrito Brothers - Gilded Palace of Sin / Burrito Deluxe  $13
Funkadelic - Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow  $16
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain  $16
Serge Gainsbourg - Comic Strip  $15
GZA - Liquid Swords  $15
Richard Hell - Blank Generation  $12
Son House - Heroes of the Blues  $11
Mississippi John Hurt -  1928 Sessions  $17
Kinks - Village Green Preservation Society  $12
Konono No 1 - Congotronics 1  $17
Love - Forever Changes  $12
Charles Mingus - Ah Um  $12
Nico - Desertshore  $12
Nico - Chelsea Girl  $11
Os Mutantes - Everything is Possible  $13
Os Mutantes - Mutantes  $15
Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes  $15
Gram Parsons - GP/ Grevious Angel  $14
Pete Rock & CL Smooth - Main Ingredient
Public Enemy - all the good ones $10 each
Pharoah Sanders - Thembi  $15
Richard and Linda Thompson - Pour Down Like Silver  $12
Richard and Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight  $12
various - several excellent volumes in the Ethiopiques series  $17 each
Scott Walker - Scott 4  $13
etc etc
that kind of stuff.  
almost like a real CD store.
pretty smart of us to get into the format, just as it's about to expire, huh?

USED LPs
plenty of them - you betcha:
Beefheart, Eno, 45 King, Public Enemy, more indie hip-hop and dance records... more than I can really get into.

by finer and finer and finer agreeing,
Ian

check out our $1 sale on many cdrs

the true vine interview section is now up & ready: http://www.thetruevinerecordshop.com/1-21-07%20the%20true%20vine%20interviews%20info.htm

I TOTALLY FORGOT
one of the recently-released Baltimore-local CDs that we've got here by
Ponytail - Kamehameha  (Creative Capitalism)  CD  $12
actually, we have two of them because I forgot we had one and ordered another one, and the reason I forgot it (twice) is because it's in this big, cardboard-foldy pack that doesn't fit in the CD rack and has nice, artsy lettering that I can't read too good.  Anyhoo, it's nice, a little like B-more's answer to OOIOO with groggy-churning drums and a girl yowlping through an echobox and some energy-patterns.  Here's what the Chicago Reader said: "Baltimore is the new weirdo mecca, and Ponytail is one of the latest fruits of that scene. Hooky, athletic choogling is their game, and they play to win -- lightning solos beget even faster lightning solos beget some shit that'd make Yes blush. And singer Molly Siegel makes the sort of noises often understood to mean, 'Hi, I could really use some Meow Mix in my little bowl.' Fans of Deerhoof and Melt-Banana, take note."  Here's the band's website:  http://www.jeremyhyman.com/

and

Lo Moda - Gospel Store Front  (Creative Capitalism)  CD  $12
also in an oversized cardboard package in a baggie.  label sez:  "sextet sounds interweaving beats repeating like a train threatening to derail within a glimpse of political threshold and courtship.   There is no reality TV."

NO RECORD LISTINGS THIS WEEK
know why?
cause we bought another collection - about a thousand pieces - from a super-tidy collection of brainy rock and jazz.  
and I'm knocking myself out pricing the stuff and putting it out on the shelves.  
quick name-check overview:
Lou Reed / Velvets, Eno, Iggy / Stooges, Talking Heads, Ramones, Elvis Costello, Airto, Beatles, Cramps, Zappa, Hendrix, Roxy Music, Freddie Hubbard.
If this sounds appealing to you, I'm just saying you might stick your nose in the bins.  Cause there it is and plenty of it.

NEW STUFF?
you bet.  White Heaven, Peanut Butter Wolf, Rhys Chatham, Krautrock back-catalog and all the ESP-Disk CDs you could shake a stick at.
RARITIES?
yep.  a mess of 'em.
HIP-HOP and UNDERGROUND DANCE MUSIC?
don't get me started.  (hey - our Italo section beefed up a bit, for those who were asking about that...)

NEXT WEEK
the Boredoms Super-Roots series reissued!
central Javanese gamelan!
Ethiopiques at the True Vine (finally)!
LAFMS like crazy!

fish that sparkling bubble,
Ian

YOKELS
B-more's been spitting out tons of good shit over the past six months - way more than I can keep track of or account for - from the recent crops of stuff of HereSee http://www.heresee.com to MT6 http://www.mt6records.com/ , getting consistent nods from the larger, outside worlds, including mentions of Bonnie Jones's English project, the Jason Willett's Music de Wolfe project, TV On the Radio (do they count? - why not?) and Human Bell in the year-end wrap-up issue of the Wire.  Late in the last year, we noted stellar releases by Dan Higgs, Leprechaun Catering, Andy Hayleck, and Sejayno, to name just a few, but in the past couple weeks in particular, we've seen a glut of wonderful homegrown musical madness in our joint.  Here's a few:

Snacks - Data Dumplings  (self)  USB  $27  
A tiny edition of USB drives, each individually decorated in preserved foodstuffs, containing 229 megabytes - hours and hours - of sound and video of the joyous splutter-spew of Tom Boram and Dan Breer, supergenii.  The less said the better, but I can't resist opining that these are way better than the Buddha machine.  Dig some of the video action (which, I'm proud to say features my unborn daughter in the former and our shop in the latter):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cGxfp6dtwI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCz2L3EQLuw

Arboretum - Rites of Uncovering  (Thrill Jockey)  CD  $14 / LP  $12
Practically universally acclaimed expansive song-jam upward-by-means-of-downward gorgeousness.
http://www.thrilljockey.com/artists/index.html?id=10145

Video Hippos - s/t  (Rococo)  LP  $17
one-sided LP super-lo-bit Casio-punk spazchow in a numbered edition on only 150 copies in paste-on sleeves from the Wham City-related weirdos.  Cheap for them; expensive for you.
http://www.videohippos.com/

Cex - Sketchi  (Temporary Residence)  CD  $10
Sand Cats - Some Kind of Mantra  (Must Finish)  cass  $7
New, limited tweaker-house disc and Reichian (in both the Wilhelm and Steve senses) psyche-out electro environment tape by Ryjan and Ryjan and Roby.

v/a - Cambodian Psych-Out  (Eclipse / El Supremo)  LP  $13
Compiled by our compadres Jay down at El Supremo Records and DJ Bump, former CEO of Defective Records, from tapes that they gathered in their travels in Southeast Asia, this compilation of 60s-70s former French-Indochina buzzbombs is derived from the Cambodia Rocks LP but it's got way more wicked fuzz workouts, so we just like it better.  

Maypole - The Real  (Anopheles)  LP  $19
Recoreded in 1970 and released a year later on the same label the released Shocking Blue's "Venus," if memory serves, Baltimore's Maypole made one of the only truly good vintage psyche LPs from our little city.  Reissued by the same folks that pressed the Brigman Jungle Rot LP, if that tells you anything; it stretches out and digs in.

FROGGIES
we just got in another shipment from our Parisian Film Library hookup, so we've got some incredibly funky an fabulous CDs of late 60s-early 70s sweet dream CDs, now at slightly better prices:

v/a - Dou a Dou  (Vadim)  $20 
60s-70 French swinger creamers.

v/a - Montparnasse 2000 Classics:  Anthology of a French Library Label  (Pulp Flavor)  $20
Small orchestra funk-drama dreams-come-true.

v/a - Pulp Flavor  (Dare Dare)  $20
Insanely great 17-track 1999 comp of funky euro diamond-rubble.

Bernard Estardy - La Formule du Baron  (Dare Dare)  $20
One of the greatest progressive Euro-funk recordings of all time, perhaps better than Gainsbourg's Melody Nelson.

SHOOT YOUR SHOT
So, like I said last week, we got over seven thousand (!) records from one of our city's finest DJs, including tons of classics and more than a few bona-fide rarities.  I still haven't even opened all the boxes, much less priced everything (although I'm pricing about a hundred records a day, not counting the ones I've been doing in my sleep, because you know how it goes when you work really hard - your brain just can't turn off).  In addition, we've picked up a nice, little classic rock collection of a couple hundred titles and four hundred club and acid house and proto-rave/Brit-pop/ambient records.  So, we're - how you say - busy.  Here's a few of the heaviest vinyl gorrilla's we've gotten so far:
(note:  these are all conservatively play-graded.  Being a DJ's collection and mostly 12" singles, they mostly look worse than they play, but our grades are, I believe, happy compromises between the visual grades I might give to LPs and the sound-grades that I recieve through the speakers, so that whereas VG would normally mean "no big deal" condition-wise, in these cases it usually tranlates as "totally fine."  Grades as always are cover/record.   Write or call for more info.)

[Dan the] Automator - King of the Beats  (Radioactive)  VG+/VG+  $50
First LP (1990) by the guy best know for producing the Dr. Octogon LP, all instumentals and totally aesthetically warped.  In shrink.

Raw Dope Posse - Listen to my Turbo  (Show Jazz)  VG  $70
1988 electro mind-overloading track.  Owner name on both labels.  

Numarx - Buss It  (KMA)  Ex  $40
Outrageously fun 1984 electro-hip-hop jam produced by Baltimore's then-teenage DJ Spen.

Sparrow - Physics / Rhyme Impotence  (Unruly)  VG/VG  $120
Sparrow - Get Your Ass Up / What You Expect  (SO)  Ex  $25
Baltimore MC Sparrow made two truly excellent small-press 12s in the early-to-mid 90s.  The first of them wound up on a mixtape produced by a Parisian DJ who was worphipped professionally and hated personally within his scene.  Those in his mileu drove the price of that record up to as much as $600 for a copy, just to one-up him.  Trippy, I know.  But really good records.

MC EC with Level 4  - What is It? / Back to the Basics  (Jamm City)  VG  $50
MC EC - Girl, You Ain't No Vanessa / Beauty and the Beat  (Jamm City)  VG  $50
Exceedingly scarce and sought-after late-80s Baltimore small-press electro-hip-hop jams.  Great stuff.

Crooked - Analyze  (Yay Son Ent.)  VG+  $20
1997 Baltimore hip-hop small press jewel.

Curtis - How Can I Tell Her / I Remember  (Charm City)  VG  $60
1979 soul-boogie 12 out of Baltimore.

The Irvin Lee Project - s/t  (Checkpoint)  Ex/VG+  $80
1987 9-track small-press in-demand Baltimore soul outing.  

A Tribe Called Quest - People's Instictive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm  (Jive)  Ex/Ex  $25
First LP in shrink with sticker on the front panel.  A milestone.  Lesser copies available at lesser prices.

Tribe Called Quest - Revised Quest for the Seasoned Traveller  (Jive)  VG+/VG+  $18
2LP 1992 collection of remixes.

Fu-Schnickens - La Schmoove  (Jive)  Ex/Ex  $30

Pete Rock & CL Smooth - They Reminisce Over You /  Creator  (Elektra)  Ex/Ex  $35
1992 masterpiece in shrink.  Less condition copies available at proportional prices.

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - On the Run  (Cold Chillin)  Ex/Ex  $25  in shrink
Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Run to the Riches (Cold Chillin)  Ex/VG+  $18  in shrink

O.C. - Word... Life  (Wild Pitch)  VG/VG+  $35

UMCs - Never Never Land / Hey Here We Go  (Wild Pitch)  VG+/VG+  $15  test press
UMCs - One to Grow On / Swing it to the Arena  (Wild Pitch)  VG+  $15
UMCs - Blue Cheese / Any Way the Wind Blows  (Wild Pitch)  Ex/  VG+  $25  in shrink.

Black Sheep - Choice is Yours / Have U.N.E. Pull  (Polygram)  VG+  $15
test press.

3rd Bass - The Gas Face / Wordz of Wizdom AKA the Hardway  (Dem Jam)  Ex/Ex  $18
includes the first appearence on record of KMD/Zev Love X aka MF Doom.

Show & AG - Next Level  (Payday)  VG+/Ex  $20
Show & AG - U Know Now  (Payday)  VG+  $25  white label promo

Masta Ace - Born to Roll  (Delicious)  VG+  $20

Mobb Deep - Peer Pressure / Flavor for the Non-Believers (4th & B'way)  VG+  $20

Pudgee / Gemini / ODB - On the Reguar; 50 MCs in a Cipher; Think Big / Freestyle Session  (Well Fat)  VG+  $18
awesome boot of early-90s MCing, including a side-long Dirt McGirt live set, goin OFF.

Jay Dee presents Frank n Dank - Off Ya Chest / Take Dem Clothes Off  (ABB)  Ex  $12
scarce 1997 Dilla jewel, with his homie-bozos from the D MCing, but it's got instrumentals.

Double J - Cannibal Town  (Chanpen)  VG+  $25
super-scarce 80s 45 King production with proto-Chuck D-style vocals.  

Dynamic Breakers - Dynamic (Total Control)  Ex/Ex  $25
scarce 1984 electro B-boy killer, in shrink.

Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five - Scorpio  (Sugar Hill)  VG+  $15
promo copy of 1982 monster.

untraced - "Can I Get a Ho?"  (acetate)  VG+  $30
one-sided acetate of a Sing-Sing-break-fuelled Baltimore Club track with rapping, likely circa late 90s.  Four mixes.

Jackmaster Dick's Revenge - Sensuous Woman Goes Disco / Sensuous Man Goes Disco  (Trax)  VG  $20
hilarioiusly dumb 1986 Chicago house mix of Rudy Ray Moore-produced verbal raunch combined with original Acid-Jack backing beats.  

Model 500 (Juan Atkins) - Testing 1-2 / Bang the Beat  (Metroplex)  VG+  $20
killer and insanely scarce 1986 Detroit techno treat.

Freddi / Henchi & the Soulsetters - Dance  (The Record Company)  VG/VG  $60
A lightly scuffed copy with a moderately moisture-warped sleeve of privately-pressed mid-70s LA funk-soul LP with drum breaks galore.

plus all the DJ International, Dance Mania, Metroplex, Payday, Sleeping Bag and Cold Chillin you could shake a stick at, plus a bunch of Partytimes and Enjoys, not in such great shape but whaddaya whaddaya, and all the DJ Premier and Pete Rock mixes you could ever want. 
And it's just the beginning.

time's up,
Ian

WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN YOU GET OUTTA JAIL?
I'm gonna have some fun.
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER FUN?
Fun! Natural fun!

BIGGEST COLLECTION EVER
We just bought more than seven thousand (7000) records - the entire collection - of one of Baltimore's greatest DJs, one of the founders our indigenous Club style, name-checked repeatedly on this nice history-of-Club-thru-records:
http://www.baltimoreclubtracks.com/history.htm
as well as on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Club
and on this Wire blog entry:
http://www.wirenh.com/Music/Music_-_general/Scottie_B_and_Baltimore_Club_200605031242.html

Yes, it's the collection of Scottie B., long-time DJ master (remembered to me recently by another DJ as "the craziest white boy I ever saw.  He had long hair and three turntables AND a reel-to-reel - and all these black people were LOVING him...")  Scottie's doing real well at present, working with Diplo and the Hollertronix crew and getting press all over.  In my brief interactions with him, he's clearly a superior human being, and based on his collection, he is incredibly well-versed in the history of undergound dance music, having collected obscurities by Chicago and Detroit masters as well as New York garage kings, Italo funk oddities and tons and tons and tons of classic hip-hop.  

It will take months for me to comb through all of the material in the collection - even as I add a couple hundred titles a week to the shelves - but it is a significantly representative cross-section of whatever of Baltimore club-goers have enjoyed, including stuff which Scottie himself (who started working at Music Liberated - RIP Bernie - in 1985) "broke" and has since been a part of our unconscoius musical vocabulary ever since (Circle Chidren's "Zulu"? the Andrew Dice Clay promo-only 12" produced by Rick Rubin??? Two copies of Gaz's "Sing Sing" rubbed so raw, you could comb your hair in them??) as well as super-rarities obtained only by thoughs in-the-know (80s Transmat originals and short-run remixes by the dozen, Nu Groove, Trax and Larry Heard by the score, weirdo non-hit Baltimore Club test presses and acetates, 80s hip-hop oddities, disco-funk monsters, etc.)   Condition is all over the place, from flawless unplayed copies to chewed-and-swallowed copies, of everything from mega-rarities to so-what records.  We're pricing them all accordingly, and we'll send an update concerning the mega-rarities next week, but don't expect regular updates on this material;  we'll just be filing it in with regular stock along with everything else, as we do with all collections.  And we never ebay anything until it has sat on our shelves for a reasonable price, so you - our customers - have a fair chance at the stuff.  

AMONG THE TRACKS
are many classic 90s hip-hop tracks.  Here's our YouTube mixtape of songs - everyone of which we already have in our stacks in original its release form - which we think you should hear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRvZISC-RhU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3iSBVxQaVI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud-CTiJh9V4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQGkEGiBWuE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC0poV6OeW4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzCG6rFWIlk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N58K8JULaKM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4kyoKvKvU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3krRGQMe5U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbiEfsfEteg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6CK3NdMaw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SfRa5CrqgA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlLvL7CbSmM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZNGI3g369k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-_5SGTpgzM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoCRkKksF0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHRhF-hyNc4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJGjuzp8kY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMbYYihBiAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QBqll___rg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQTCW8JHbVk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKIginOO_r8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O459U_VtDK0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVsIauS2vUI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt3QvoF8eK4

my mind's expanding with Sly and Robbie,
Ian

=====================================================


TEN BEST 06 RECORDINGS says me
J. Dilla - Donuts  (Stones Throw)  
Harrius - Enter the Cotton Ring  (Ehse)  
Joseph Hammer and Joe Potts - Joe and Joe  (LAFMS)
Leprechaun Catering - Male Plumage  (White Denim)
Andy Hayleck - Two Gong/Wire Pieces  (Ehse)
Georgia Anne Muldrow - Olesi:  Fragments of Earth  (Stones Throw)
Raionbashi - Kollekte  (Hanson)
v/a - Music De Wolfe  (Megaphone Unlimited)
Donna Parker - Debutante  (Twisted Village)
Eliane Radigue - L'Ile Re-sonante (Shiiin)

DONATE DIRECTLY TO CARLY PTAK AND TWIG HARPER
send money via PayPal directly to hello@heresee.com

INFORMATION ON THE PROGRESS AND NEEDS OF CARLY PTAK AND TWIG HARPER:  
text:  http://heresee.com/
photos: what was T-Hill (is now Cidition House)

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