Maxim Magazine reviews the new Black Crowes album Warpaint without ever hearing it. At best, the Maxim reviewer heard 1 song from the new LP to be released in March but felt comfortable giving the entire LP a 2 1/2 out of 5 star rating. Maxim said they were sorry.
Several records finding a home in my collection recently have been pretty deluxe. Fancy of package. This, as do many things, got me rummaging about in my collection for more deluxe LPs. There’s tons of em! And they go back to the beginning of the medium too. First, Radiohead’s latest, In Rainbows, a really good album from the best rock band there currently is was released as a pay-what-you-want download. They also announced that two other versions were coming, a standard LP and a discbox deluxe box set. Big surprise which one I bought.
Nicely deluxe. Two 45 RPM discs, two CDs of additional material, and two books all wrapped up in a sweet slipcover. Another recent find is the latest Bjork record, Volta.
Maybe not as beefy as the bound and slipcovered In Rainbows, the packaging on Volta is incredibly ornate, with an outer folder sealed with a sticker of the little Icelandic urchin herself wearing the weirdest outfit ever (someone made their own paper version) then opens to an almost standard-looking sleeve with a cutout at top revealing a russian doll style layering. Flip it over and those layers all pull out as more photos of our favorite sprite in flames. Oh yeah, and there’s several slabs of vinyl in there somewhere.
The latest from those ever energetic California boys The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium is yet another recent example.
This one was not even the “deluxe” version, just the standard vinyl. Another benefit to getting this version over the CD is related here.
After some rummaging, I found a couple of cool examples of early deluxe box sets. The first, from 1955, is Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe put out by RCA.
In addition to the hard-bound cover with its weirdly stylized photo, it comes with a book complete with production drawings and stills of the ballet.
The other early example is this deluxe box of The Barber Of Seville.
A box set from 1957 dressed up as a travel trunk, complete with metal clasp.
Edgar Froese
Kamikaze 1989
Original Soundtrack
Fassbinder starred in Kamikaze 1989 which was written and directed by Wolf Gremm. A truly wacky sci-fi camp who-done-it with terrorists raging against the government which is a corporation that controls all media. Fassbinder is Police Lieutenant Jansen investigating a bomb threat against “The Combine”. He runs around in a leopard-skin suit, pistol cocked and spends an inordinate amount of time staring into the reflection on Buzz Aldrin’s visor in the famous man-on-the-moon photo which Jansen has as a life-sized mural on his office wall. As if to ask…
Froese was the founding member of Tangerine Dream and this 1982 soundtrack LP is more Tangerine Dreamy. Good background music for an ’80s German sci-fi-themed party.
Mingering Mike was discovered at a flea market . Actually his real fake records were by record collector Dori Hadar. In the ’60s, Mike worked up a fantasy character with a fantasy recording career. And he literally made his hit albums – sleeves, liner notes and cardboard LPs. Complete with painted grooves.
Hadar tracked the real Mike down and published a book and a website.
And there’s a limited edition 45 of Mike and his cousin Big D – The Freedom Stompers – really singing in their bedroom in 1969 captured on reel-to-reel. Includes the original artwork by Mingering Mike.
Achingly unhurried Low hit me very deep with this EP, Songs For A Dead Pilot. No polish, no distractions of melody or hook. Close you eyes and listen to the 5 or so minutes of Born By The Wires and tell me where you come out. Requires a good system or you just won’t get it. Really.
Home cookin? Biscuits. These guys are makin records in Camden NJ in 1942. From an RCA film on how they made records (make sure you watch part 2 too).
checking out some master discs!
What they didn’t show was RCA bulldozing this warehouse in the 1960s into the Delaware river along with 4 floors’ worth of catalog and vault masters (most of them pre-tape wax and metal discs), test pressings, lacquer discs, matrix ledgers, and rehearsal recordings. A few collectors were allowed to go through and pick what they could first. Splash.
It’s a radio. It’s a pack of cigarettes. It’s two treats in one.
Hermine
Torture
This is the debut single of Hermine Demoriane released on her private label Salome (after Virgin scrapped the deal) in 1980. This one of 2,000 copies with Virgin crossed out in marker and “Salome Disc” stamped on it. It’s dedicated to Lou Andreas Salome (who Nietzsche, among others, had a huge crush on). Snappy, ’80s dance-beat version of a country tune written by John D Loudermilk (of “Tobacco Road” fame) sung in broken English (poorly) by some mysterious French woman repeating “Baby you’re torturing me” may just be one of my ideas of perfection. “Veiled Women” is the B-side and has a middle eastern tinge as Hermine sings…”veiled women so taboo”…ohh.
This 12″ beauty is on my “have to get” list
More bio stuff: Hermine married English poet Hugo Williams, appeared in Derek Jarman’s punk film Jubilee (1977) as “Chaos” which also starred Adam Ant, recorded a few records (2 singles, 1 EP and 1 LP), studied and practiced tightrope walking and wrote a book “Tightrope Walker”, designed her own character font, etc.
I grabbed this image from a 1 hour film on the making of Electric Ladyland. There’s some great footage and inside the studio stuff. You can watch the whole thing here along with a ton of other films and videos (1,791) in their entirety. Two tidbits: Jimi plays a cellophane-covered comb over his solo on “Crosstown Traffic” to get the sound that was in his head onto the record and Brian Jones tried to play piano on “All Along the Watchtower” but didn’t make the final cut.
And do ya think when Jimi went to the barber he said “Give me a Dylan”?
From Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore:
“Pierre Fournier’s one of my absolute favorite musicians. Like an elegant wine, his playing has an aroma and substance that warms the blood and gently encourages you.”
What he said…
Clocking in $85,000/pair the Tube Research Labs GT-400 monoblocks (undoctored photo) can take (24) KT-90s or KT-88s per side for a heart-warming 400Watts per channel. Someone was selling 2 pair on AudiogoN cause they moved up to the $140k GT-800s. Reminiscent of this (doctored photo).
Cool Audio. Some might need an explanation but this one don’t.
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