Diggin' In The Crates "Often Imitated, Never Duplicated" Edition

Since there was some major brouhaha over a shitty fashion chain store basically pirating a shirt of theirs that the late great Kurt Cobain had not only designed himself (he with his artistic hand, a blank T-shirt, and a new Sharpie) but wore on Saturday Night Live...

Artist: Flipper
Title: "Get Away" b/w "The Old Lady That Swallowed The Fly" 7" single
Label: Subterranean Records
Vinyl: Clear green vinyl

Flipper, for the uninitiated, are one of the most influential American punk bands of the hardcore era of the early 80's... mainly because they didn't play at hyperspeed, instead settling for a slow to medium tempo groove where the bass - alternately played by either Bruce Loose or the late Will Shatter, both of whom alternated between bass and lead vocals - was actually the lead melodic instrument while the guitarist, Ted Falconi, was left to spray all manner of semi-melodic white noise all over the rest of the sonic field not taken up by the bass, vocals, and Steven DePace's drums. Nirvana (of course), The Melvins, Soundgarden, Metallica ("Sad But True" on the 'Black Album' certainly owes a great deal to the Flipper sound; Flipper would later cover it for a Metallica tribute album!), and Sunn O))) are some of the many bands that owe Flipper major props. 

I first heard Flipper on the legendary (and unfortunately out of print) compilation Let Them Eat Jellybeans, via their early single "Ha Ha Ha", which opened the album. I would hear a couple of other Flipper songs on compilations and even get ahold of their brilliant live cassette-only release Blow'n'Chunks [recorded completely live at CBGB's over a week-long stand], but this would be the first piece of Flipper vinyl I would ever get my hands on. I had wandered into a record store in New Hope, PA during a school trip centered around the drama club I was part of, and left the store having scored this 45 along with the Dead Kennedys's "Too Drunk To Fuck" single and Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables album (and probably a couple of other punk 45s that I can't recall right now - hey, that was thirty years ago, what the fuck). The song quickly became one of my favorite 45s ever and definitely my favorite Flipper song. 

The A-side is one of Flipper's most popular songs; Ted Falconi's guitar riffs and Bruce Loose's bass line are still ingrained into this musicians memory (Hell, this band's music made me want to PLAY bass to supplement my guitar skills, a move that served me well and helped me make a few bucks in Reagan America), Steven DePace's drumming on this track made him one of my all-time favorite drummers to listen to (his snapping out great and precise drum breaks every four bars on this track are some of his best playing, in my opinion) while the late great Will Shatter sings about some of his friends that got down on their luck and need to escape. Despite the down tone of the tales Will tells, this song sounds almost joyous.

The B-side - which spins at 33.3 RPM rather than the standard 45 (probably due to the general length of the song, is taken from a cassette recording Ted Falconi made during a Flipper rehearsal/songwriting session during which Bruce Loose starts reciting the nursery rhyme "Old Lady Who Swallowed The Fly" while the rest of the band improvises a musical bed behind him. 

I would only ever get ahold of one other Flipper album wtithin a couple of years after this one, their first LP Album Generic Flipper. A year after that, Will Shatter died while in the process of trying to kick heroin, ending Flipper's existence for awhile. Several years later, Flipper reunited with a new bassist taking Shatter's place, Bruce Loose taking over lead vocals entirely, and - in an even more shocking move than just merely reuniting - signed a major label record deal with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, which would reissue Album Generic Flipper and their Sex Bomb Baby singles and compilation tracks anthology as well as deliver a new Flipper album, American Grafishy. That reunion was short lived (Shatter's replacement as bassist would also die of a heroin overdose, sadly), but the band would kick off the 21st century by reuniting for good, first with their original substitute bassist Bruno DeSmartass (Steve DePace's brother) and then - in a move that certainly had to have pleased Kurt Cobain as he watched from the next dimension - with former Nirvana bassist Krist Novaselic, with whom Flipper made a new studio album, Love, and a companion live album, Fight. The band also regained their back catalog of releases (save for Blow'n Chunks and American Grafishy which are still owned by ROIR and American Recordings respectively) and remastered and reissued them on vinyl, CD, and digital download the same year Love and Fight dropped. 

Krist had to bail on Flipper reluctantly due to some family issues (Bruce Loose would call Krist the best bassist Flipper ever had), but the band continues to tour on occassion... and all three surviving members of Flipper as well as Novaselic's successor, Rachel Theole, are all on Facebook and quite approachable and friendly. Unless some skanky mass-market fashion boutique rips them off, of course. 

Diggin' In The Crates "Return of DITC/Wishing For This Band's Return" Edition

Yep, I'm back... After 16 months of marriage I've finally brought my beloved and much-missed turntable to Casa del CJ y Tara, as well as a whole bunch of wax. And I can't think of a better disc to use for my return post than an interesting little title from a band that I wish never went away...








Artist: The White Stripes
Title: Icky Thump (Mono Edition)
Label: Third ManVinyl: 180g Audiophile black vinyl

Back in 2009, Jack White decided to turn his Third Man Records logo from a holding company for his master tapes and an imprint that appeared on every White Stripes and Raconteurs record released by V2, XL and Warner Bros., into an actual record company. Having moved to Nashville from Detroit two years before, and having had the aforementioned American rights to his masters reverting back to him after V2 closed up shop, he decided to buy a building that happened to be a mile or so away from United Record Pressing, originally intended to store some things until he decided to make the space much more functional. The first release, catalog number TMR 001, was a 45 from his third band, The Dead Weather, issued on Record Store Day in 2009. TMR 002 he saved for this puppy.

This album is a double audiophile vinyl edition of what ended up being the White Stripes's last ever studio album, Icky Thump. The difference between this version and the version easily found online is twofold:

1. The cover of this edition is tinted red.
2. The version of the album on this edition is a MONO mix.

Yep, even though Jack and Meg went into a top-notch professional studio in Nashville, Jack figured he'd be clever and do something retro in the process. Past Stripes studio tunage had been recorded in places ranging from the living room of Jack and Meg's married abode (anything that claims Third Man Studios as a recording location prior to 2009 was actually wherever Jack lived and laid down his multi-track tape deck) to a studio in England that boasted nothing but antique equipment (the location for all but one track on their fourth album Elephant).

Mono mixes used to be the norm back in the days of the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan - in fact, the stereo mixes back then were normally afterthoughts, even for the likes of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds. (Hence, the necessity of Capitol having to put out a Beatles in Mono box set for the pickiest of Beatlemaniacs when the whole Fab Four back catalog got digitally remastered.) When mono started to be phased out in the late 60's, what few mono titles that were being released were usually foldovers of the stereo mix.

Rather than be a dick and just make a foldover of the stereo mix, Jack White and his engineer decided to make a separate mono mix during the mix sessions for Icky Thump in 2007, even though he probably didn't have an immediate use for it. Two years later, with Third Man becoming an actual physical record label and record store, Jack decided to open a subscription record club on top of that called The Third Man Vault. Premium subscribers (this writer included) get for their $60 every three months an album, a 45 and a third item (T-shirt, DVD, or something else entirely - in one case a second 45!), the quantity of which is limited only to how many people were on subscriber rolls at the time.

The mono Icky Thump was the 12" component of the first ever Vault package, along with a 45 of The Dead Weather doing two cover versions and a T-shirt with the Third Man Records logo. And since this was the first ever Vault release, I don't imagine there are too many copies - Third Man aren't disclosing how many they press of each package. Good luck finding one on eBay - at the time of this writing, one dude was reluctantly giving up his copy for close to $150... Me, I'll never give up mine.

(On a semi-related side note, does anyone besides think we should convince Brother Langdon to do a MFK installment with three alternate rock babes, one of whom would be Meg White?)

Diggin' In The Crates "Heavy Metal Blackmail" Edition

I'm sure many of you have heard of a heavy metal band called ManOWar:

I bring this up because their guitarist, Karl Logan, is now offering guitar lessons online for anyone with a Skype account, a guitar, an amp, and a hundred bucks:

Yes, $100. I haven't looked far into it (even though I'm seriously considering getting myself a new guitar soon, and despite the fact that I'm more of a punk rock musician), but there's got to be one way to knock down that price a little...

Suppose I told you that the guy that makes a living doing this...

...started out over 20 years ago with a band that's almost the polar opposite of Manowar?

Artist: Arc Angel

Title: Tracks of My Tears c/w Crazy (For Your Love)

Label: Countach Records

Vinyl: Standard black vinyl; small-hole 45.

Yep, when Karl Logan was still spelling his first name with a "C", the Wilkes-Barre, PA native was playing with a pseudo-Bon Jovi/Ratt glam-metal band called Arc Angel. I know this pretty much personally because I used to see these guys play at least once a month, and got to be friends with him and a couple of the other members over time.

They had a lot of great original tunes, but unforunately for their faithful coal-region following (myself included), the only original they ever released was on the B-side of a single where they Bon Jovi-ized the Smokey Robinson classic.

Whether or not Karl/Carl wants to own up to his hair-metal past is up to him (if he wants to deny it, that can be arranged, too - discounted lesson, transcription of a favorite Black Flag guitar solo, maybe a signed Manowar vinyl) - but having seen the guy several times in his pre-Manowar days (and I was quite surprised when I tried to Google for stuff about Arc Angel and discovered that Carl changed the spelling of his first name and had taken over Ross The Boss' spot in Manowar (so that Ross could go back to his old band, punk legends The Dictators), I can testify on the spot that he was a hell of a guitarist in the Randy Rhoads/Kirk Hammett mode back then - this early single barely hints at his talents, though.

I have two copies of the single - both signed by the entire Arc Angel lineup at the time (for the purposes of this blog entry, I airbrushed them out) - I wonder how much one of the copies would fetch from a diehard Manowar collector on eBay?

Download "Tracks of My Tears" single

Diggin' In The Crates "Candidates For My Jukebox, Pt. 1" Edition

Call me old school, but I've always wanted to own a jukebox. A 45 jukebox - no need for one of those CD jukeboxes. When my future wife and I get our first house (which may be a while), my "man cave" (to use a rather current yet rapidly old already term) will have to have one of those - perfect working order, new needle, the works. I always liked the kind of jukeboxes that could hold at least 100 records and had a little hole where you could see the 45 being loaded onto the turntable, so that's what kind I'd get. Goodness knows, I've accumulated plenty of software over my lifetime. And this is definitely going to be one of the candidates..

Artist: Pink Lady
Title: "S.O.S." b/w "Pinku no Ringo"
Label: Victor
Vinyl: Top-quality Japanese black vinyl

Oh, come on - does anybody reading this need an introduction to Pink Lady? Mei and Kei, my first glimpse into the world of Japanese pop back when they did a guest spot on Leif Garrett's CBS TV special? Of course not. I've had this single and one other (a future candidate for this column) for at least a year now - extremely well-kept Near Mint condition. The seller even put the record in a vinyl inner sleeve before slipping it into the company sleeve! Again, never let it be said that our Japanese friends don't know how to take care of vinyl.

Both songs are in print, so no downloads; besides, anyone who cares about J-pop should have a good Pink Lady anthology in their collection and on their iPod, like this one. The A-side, one of their early hits, is a song many of you may have heard in a version from Music Fair in 2004 when Mei and Kei interrupted the post-Nacchi 14nin Morning Musume lineup's rendition of "The*Peace!" with "S.O.S.", only to have various MoMusu's take turns at singing lines at this kayokyoku classic (and cause a stagehand to have to run in and lower the mic stand for the vertically challenged Mari Yaguchi):

The B-side, "Pinku no Ringo", not only shows up on seemingly every Pink Lady anthology CD that has been pressed in recent years, but is also notable for the fact that the title translates to "Pink Apple" - which isn't too surprising, since "pink lady" is also a type of apple easily found in many supermarkets. I almost didn't find a clip of this rather cute song on YouTube, but at the last minute, I lucked out:

Diggin' In The Crates "Survey Says... Why Do You Need A Survey When Diamond Dave Is Involved?" Edition

Probably NOT interesting for the record itself, even though it's a great one...

Artist: David Lee Roth

Title: Crazy From The Heat

Label: Warner Bros.

Vinyl: Standard black vinyl

There's no need to tell the tale behind this well known record: David Lee Roth's first solo excursion, meant to be a short side trip before he reconvened with Van Halen to record the follow-up to 1984 only to find himself on opposite sides with Eddie Van Halen after this EP became a surprise hit and the videos for "California Girls" (with Langdon's homeboy Christopher Cross sharing backing vocals with Beach Boy Carl Wilson) and "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody" became fixtures on MTV for much of 1985.

The real tale comes with my finding this record and then finding what was in it. No, I didn't find a different record - I had found a copy of the vinyl the other day at one of my usual haunts and, since I had only previously owned the EP on cassette (ugh!) and found the vinyl to be in excellent condition, I nabbed it for four bucks. It wasn't until I brought it home, readied a keeper sleeve and was about to give the record a spin on the turntable when I noticed two sheets of paper inserted within. Looking at the enclosed sheets made me realize what was up with the curious sticker on the bottom left corner:

The "Image" that this particular copy of Crazy From The Heat was compliments of was Image Consultants, a (thankfully) now-defunct company that thought that they could determine what kind of records people want to buy better than the people who actually buy records (this, of course, is around the time when SST Records was shocking the shit out of everyone by having surprise hits with two now-classic double albums from The Minutemen and Husker Du). "Consultants" like this are why most American major label records (the kind that sell only to people who only buy music as an afterthought at Sprawl-Mart) over the past several years swallow (never mind just sucking) while real music fans turn to indie labels for their rock and Japan (and Korea, thanks to BoA and Girls Generation) for their pop. But I digress.

Insert number one was a blue sheet meant to be filled out by store owners for each record to give their opinion on what they thought of the record and how many copies they think they sell every time they play the record in-store (never mind that the equation of Diamond Dave plus four interesting and well-done cover versions equals artistic and commercial win). Kind of pathetic if you ask me...

The other sheet of paper enclosed by Image in this promo copy is all sorts of win, since its' a reprint of a press release featuring some tasty Diamond Dave philosphy about the record and immediate future he was planning on at the time:

Diamond Dave, of course, was right about how well he got along with the rest of Van Halen in the penultimate paragraph of page two... only he was 23 years early! Here's to VH picking up where they left off back then!

Diggin' In The Crates "Gangsta Punk" Edition

Was looking through a crate of 45s and 7" EPs when I came across this little puppy...

Artist: H2O

Title: "It Was a Good Day"/"I Want More"

Label: Side One Dummy

Vinyl: Clear deep-blue vinyl

Another random purchase from years ago during my frequent peeks into the singles bin at Gallery of Sound... New York hardcore punk band H2O doing two cover versions. The B-side is a vaguely standard cover of Suicidal Tendencies' "I Want More" from their eponymous debut album (the same one that spawned the hit single "Institutionalized") - I say vaguely because the band's lead singer, Toby Morse, doesn't exactly have a melodic voice compared to Suicidal's Mike Muir, so that kind of ruins it for me.

The A-side, though... oy vey! The band takes Ice Cube's hit from The Predator and turns it into a punk song. The rhythms are more like Green Day pop-punk than Youth of Today-style old-school hardcore, but the funny part is the band changes around some of the lyrics in their version, most notably changing the racial self-references to "honkies", which makes this a little less hard to take seriously. I don't know what Cube thought of this when it came out, but I'm assuming that the photo on the A-side label was taken before the band committed their cover version to tape (or hard drive):

Diggin' In The Crates "15 Years Before I Discovered Whiteberry" Edition

In more ways than one, this week's edition was worth the wait...

Artist: The Street Sliders
Album: Tenshi Tachi
Label: Epic/Sony
Vinyl: Standard black vinyl

In 1986, while I was slogging it out as a bassist in a semi-crappy Top 40 band (Hey, it was my only source of income at the time), I was also engaging in some pen-pal correspondence with a few people via the pen-pal listings in Smash Hits magazine. One Christmas, a Japanese pen-pal I had for awhile sent me a package containing a rather kawaii teddy bear (which I probably still have somewhere) and three home-recorded cassettes; she also saw fit to slip pictures of the bands and hand-written track listings on either side of the j-cards. I still have the cassettes, but I can only recall one of the two other artists she sent (The Mods). The third was these guys:

This tape - recorded directly from her own vinyl copy - was the first one I popped into my stereo, probably because it was the first one on the stack. The song represented above, "Boys Jump the Midnight", is the album's opening track. I was hooked for the next 45 minutes - great post-punk rock that blurs the fine line between The Clash's London Calling and The Rolling Stones' Tattoo You - and remained hooked for years. And that musical comparison is probably a bit closer to the Stones in many places, especially in many of the guitar parts and on the two tracks where lead guitarist Kohei Tsuchiya takes over for primary vocalist/guitarist Kiroaki Murakoshi and sings very Keith Richards-esque vocals.

Unfortunately, it would be several years - perhaps close to two decades - before I would have a more tactile copy of the album on CD, by which time I had already starting to keep some poor shipping department guy at CDJapan busy with orders for Morning Musume, Whiteberry, Yui Horie, Koda Kumi, etc. I did a somewhat random search one day for The Street Sliders, found that all of their albums were still in print on CD, and immediately looked for and nailed a copy of Tenshi Tachi. (I recall putting songs from the album on mix CD's back then in my pre-MiniDisc and iPod days, so that would mean that I had gotten my CD copy around 2003).

Fast forward to this year. While I was on my writing hiatus last month and working on the manuscript for Here Is The Wonderland, I was playing the album on my iPod via my speaker dock, and decided to take a quick break and see if I could find a vinyl copy of my own in order to enhance my collection and nourish my turntable. I went to the same site that I had acquired my Sayuri Ishikawa mid-70's best-of album from, discovered a near mint copy of the album (inside and out, complete with lyric insert and photo book) - never let it be said that the Japanese don't love their vinyl! Before two minutes had passed, I bought myself what I figured would be an early birthday present.

No such luck. By the time my actual birthday rolled around, my precious copy of this album arrived at US Customs at JFK in New York (isn't package tracking wonderful?), and sat there for three fucking weeks, wondering if it was ever going to make its way to the TGML/So Hot She Shits Fire/My Sweet Meetan/YODC East Coast home office.

It'a arrival day? This morning. Was there a leftover Homeland Security directive from the Bush Administration that President Obama's people missed that said, "Al Queda terrorists may be disguised as Japanese rock albums of at least 20 years vintage?" In all my years of ordering music and whatnot from Japan, I have never had ANYTHING held up in customs. Ever. My original pen-pal-generated cassette of this album made it through with no problems. My CD made it through with no problems. Finally getting a vinyl copy after 23 years? Not so easy...

Rather than piss and moan further about that, it would probably be better to share a couple of more videos from the album: "Back to Back", heard here in its 12" remix version...

And "Angel Duster":

Diggin' In The Crates "Double Update" Edition

Referencing this post... it took me six and a half months, but I finally nailed a copy of this motherfucker:

Artist: AKB48
Title: "Skirt, Hirari"/"Aozora no soba ni ite"

Label: AKB48 Records/AKS

I have AKB48 as a daily search on my eBay e-mail updates... and when this came up, I nailed it. Now, especially since the "Namida Surprise" single and video came out in time for my birthday, this really makes my collection of main AKB48 singles (one of every single release; I haven't gone variation crazy save for grabbing the "Theatre Version" of "Oogoe Diamond") complete.

And secondly, referencing back to the very first Diggin' In The Crates post...

Artist: Beastie Boys featuring Nas
Title: "Too Many Rappers" 12" single
Label: Capitol Records
Vinyl: 180-gram vinyl

The Beasties love vinyl, so it's no surprise that, in advance of their forthcoming album and in the wake of Paul's Boutique, Check Your Head and Ill Communication getting new heavy-vinyl reissue treatments, they'd drop a new 12" single - on 180-gram stock, yet - as part of Record Store Day's new "Vinyl Saturday" monthly campaign. It's also no surprise that, since they love hip-hop, they've had it with all the 10th generation 50 Cent clones filling much needed voids over the past several years, or that Mr. Nasir Jones came in, plugged in a mic of his own, and joined Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA on this testimonial lament about "too many rappers, not enough emcees." Enough said. Tell 'em where it's at, boys:

If that isn't enough for you, there's a live version from the band's appearance at Bonnaroo on YouTube here.

Diggin' In The Crates "Belated Birthday" Edition

Since yesterday (July 12) was his 72nd birthday...

Artist: Bill Cosby

Title: At Last Bill Cosby Really Sings

Label: Partee/Stax

Vinyl: Somewhat thin black vinyl

This album is neither the Bill Cosby that was turning Stevie Wonder and Jimi Hendrix songs into comic gold with the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band backing him up, and slipping those singles in with either serious covers of Jimmy Reed tunes (the whole first side of his first singing album, Silver Throat [Warner Bros. WS 1709 (1966)] is dominated by Reed covers) or tongue-in-cheek covers of Beatles, Stones, and Motown tunes (on Hooray For The Salvation Army Band [Warner Bros.-Seven Arts WS 1728 (1967)], nor the Cos that was composing and producing jazz sessions for Verve while The Cosby Show was mandatory Thursday night TV viewing, and it sure isn't the Bill C. that had pseudonymously led a more serious music album under the Badfoot Brown & The Bunions Bradford Funeral Marching Band name for Uni (two sides of improvised and funky music with Bill on keyboards, most notable for being sampled by A Tribe Called Quest on The Low End Theory). Nope, this little known "gem", if it can be called that, is so off the chart indescribable that it's probably a wonder that this mofo hasn't hit CD yet.

Cosby had longtime pal Stu Gardner (who would later help Cosby compose much of his first Verve jazz album Where You Lay Your Head) came up with nine tunes, grabbed a few Los Angeles session pros of the day, including Ray Parker Jr. (yes, that Ray Parker Jr.), recorded the whole thing, and offered it to Stax Records under the title At Last Bill Cosby Really Sings.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, there were several factors involved in this album pretty much disappearing not long after its 1974 release. For one, Stax Records itself was on its last legs, having been buttraped by an ill-fated distribution deal with CBS Records that did no favors for either Stax, who closed up shop before 1974 itself was a memory, or for CBS, who had balked on buying a 50% share of the label when it was first offered in favor of the distribution deal, then avoided many of the same outlets in the black community that Stax used to sell to and kept the label in the background as far as larger retailers were concerned so that they wouldn't undercut CBS's own R&B roster. For another, the album doesn't really live up to its title. Bill does a little crooning on "Kiss Me", and some goofy faux-African scat-singing on "Dance of the Frozen Lion", but what he does mostly on this album is either talk or yelp, and while those might qualify as vocals, they don't qualify as singing! Folks, Henry Rollins (who grew up on a lot of soul and funk music when he was a young boy in D.C., before the Ramones happened) could have a case of laryngitis awful enough to reduce his voice to a whisper, and he'd still be able to croak out successions of in-tune notes compared to what passes for Cosby's vocal work on most of this disc. Stax themselves probably did The Cos a favor by putting the record out on their comedy-oriented Partee imprint (the same label that Richard Pryor's That Nigger's Crazy album was originally released on) instead of on the regular Stax label or one of their other subsidiaries, lest they face thousands of angry fans ganging up on the label's McLemore Avenue headquarters with pitchforks and torches, demanding the heads of Al Bell and Jim Stewart (Stax's brain trust at the time), demanding to know why this travesty was released on the same label as "Hold On I'm Comin'" and Hot Buttered Soul.

Perhaps its fortunate that, presuming that they still own the master rights, this more oddball of Bill C.'s musical adventures has not yet been reissued on CD by Stax's current owners, Concord Music Group (Badfoot Brown was finally reissued last year by Dusty Grooves, while Wounded Bird digitized Silver Throat and Hooray...). But that's just my opinion; a perusal of the vinyl rip posted below should help in forming yours:

At Last Bill Cosby Really Sings
(320kbps gapless mp3 files)

Diggin In The Crates "Dedicated To Morning Musume" Edition

Thanks to a few things that prevented me from getting there (being engaged and having to save up for the wedding; having a thieving Republican bastard of a boss, etc.), I was not able to witness my favorite band make their American debut (and thus hang out with my YODC brothers Langdon, Eriku and SoG, and my partner at MegumiOhori.com, CK). Thus, the opening weekend of my July hiatus from my shitty jewelry store job was (in-between near-marathon work on my manuscript for Here Is The Wonderland) spent exchanging texts, Twitter SMS relays, and BlackBerry IM's with fellow Cancerian and all around good woman VeePinku as we mourned the fact that we would not be in the same room with The World's Greatest Girl Group. So, this selection from my Blue Note vinyl library is dedicated to Reina, Takitty, Risa, Koharu, Eri, Sayumi, Aika, JunJun and LinLin:

Artist: The Horace Silver Quintet

Title: The Tokyo Blues

Label: Blue Note

First released: 1962

Vinyl: Standard black vinyl; repress from Liberty/UA

Horace Silver, original pianist with the Jazz Messengers (yep, the same one Art Blakey took over, turned into a breeding ground for jazz greats, and led into jazz history), already with a nice nine-album back catalog on Blue Note (his most enduring classic, Song For My Father, wouldn't occur for three years yet), came back from a Japanese tour (where he was already godhead compared to his pre-Song For My Father status in America) at the start of 1962 so completely touched by his experience there that... well, we'll let the man's own opening sleeve note tell it:

This album is dedicated to all of our many fans in Japan and to all of the Japanese people who were so very kind to us while we were making our concert tour there. It is our wish to return again some day soon. While in Japan, I noticed that the Japanese people were very fond of Latin music, which I am also very fond of. In writing some of these compositions I have attempted to combine the Japanese feeling in the melodies with the Latin feeling in the rhythms. I hope you enjoy them.

The album is in print on both vinyl and CD as well as the ever handy iTunes and AmazonMP3, so I won't post a vinyl rip of such classics as "Sayanora Blues", "Too Much Sake", and "Ah! So" even though I did one of my own copy. I will say, that since my copy is a repress from when United Artists bought the Liberty label in1968 (Liberty had bought Blue Note from founder Albert Lion three years earlier), United Artists' label design for Blue Note has to be one of the fugliest I have ever seen... and unfortunately for me, a few of my Blue Notes (including a "fake stereo" copy of Miles Davis' Vol. 2) have this ugly-ass label, which was apparently patterened off of United Artists' own label:

The true Blue Note label design, for the record, is the one that existed since the label's beginning and was wisely revived when Capitol relaunched the label in 1985:

Diggin' In The Crates "Interplanetary Music" Edition

Still jazzin' it up on DITC...

Artist: Sun Ra

Title: Astro Black

Label: Impulse!/ABC

Vinyl: Standard black vinyl

I love this man:



In 1972, the pioneering jazz label Impulse! Records (yeah, same people who gave you the record featured last week) sought to sign free-jazz pioneer and self-professed resident of the planet Saturn, Sun Ra. On paper, it sounded like a good fit: Ra's releases on his own Saturn Research label had influenced John Coltrane and others. The initial attempt to sign Ra was fraught with some unique legal difficulties - Ra and his manager/business partner, Alton Abraham, had taken the standard contract Impulse! offered them home, and according to Impulse!'s head producer at the time, Ed Michel:

"The following day, Alton was back with a retyped contract, turning everything on its head, with ABC, rather than Saturn, at the short end of the stick."

It probably didn't help that the contract Ra and Abraham handed back contained clauses such as:

SIMILAR RIGHTS ON PLANETS OTHER THAN EARTH. Company agrees that all rights discussed in paragraph 5 above, as well as all rights of distribution and retail sales, on planets other than Earth (including but not limited to Saturn, Pluto, Jupiter, and Mars) shall belong to Sun Ra.

Deciding to play it safe (well, as safe as one can with someone like Sun Ra), Impulse! decided to make a distribution deal with Saturn Records for Ra's older recordings, some of which were known more by reputation than by their content because of how hard to get many of the titles were. Going even further, Michel decided to give the tapes -- 21 albums worth, all mono masters except for one previously unreleased title -- a serious sonic overhaul, bringing the recordings up to then-current industry standards. All of the albums got new artwork from Impulse as well.





That one previously unreleased title was an eight-track multi-channel tape containing what would result in this particular album. The tape wasn't mixed down, so Michel, Abraham, and Ra went into the studio to mix the album for stereo and quadrophonic sound (as can be seen on the label, the record is "compatible stereo/quad"), which led to this particular anectdote from Michel:

"At that point I liked to mix at the pain threshold. It was really loud. We were mixing it quadrophonically in a relatively small room. Sun Ra was sleeping deep and snoring loud. For some reason, I stopped the tape in the middle of the tune. He came awake, wheeled his head like an owl does - all around the room, checking everything out. He said, 'You Earth people sleep too much.' He put his head down and started to snore again."

Nine titles out of a planned 21 came out between 1973 and 1975; when the deal was terminated by ABC, all of the restored masters and new cover artwork were returned to Saturn Records.

Almost two decades later, Evidence Records struck up a deal with Sun Ra and Saturn Records to release the records on compact disc (in very excellently mastered, packaged, and annotated editions, yet!) - but for some odd reason, Astro Black was not amongst the titles. I didn't find this out myself until I read Ashley Kahn's excellent book on Impulse! Records, The House That Trane Built, so I started an eBay search recently and found a tip-top-shape copy of the album, which finally arrived in my PO Box today.

I didn't play this yet, but as soon as I post this, I'm doing up a vinyl rip for myself.

Diggin' In The Crates "Psychedelic Trane" Edition

Sorry for not dropping in to share new installments of DITC with you all, but I was only short of energy and time, not material to share. Now to catch up:

My John Coltrane collection expanded by a few titles since I did this post back in April sharing what was then my Coltrane vinyl library to date. And one of the titles I went for was this rather infamous puppy:

Artist: John Coltrane

Title: OM

Label: Impulse!/ABC

Vinyl: Standard black vinyl

So sayeth Wikipedia (after I edited a glaring error in the paragraph):

In October, 1965, Coltrane recorded Om, referring to the sacred syllable in Hindu religion, which symbolizes the infinite or the entire Universe. Coltrane described Om as the "first syllable, the primal word, the word of power". The 29-minute recording contains chants from the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu epic. It is alleged that Coltrane began taking LSD around the time of the Om session. A 1967 LP, issued posthumously, has Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders chanting from a Buddhist text, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and reciting a passage describing the primal verbalization "om" as a cosmic/spiritual common denominator in all things.

When Impulse!/ABC, the label Coltrane recorded for during the last seven years of his life, issued this album, there was a rumor afoot that Coltrane and his band (which at the time was his Classic Quartet of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrisson, and drummer Elvin Jones, plus the addition of tenor saxist Pharoah Sanders playing DMC to Coltrane's DJ Run) had dropped acid before the tapes rolled. No doubt some people gave further credence to this rumor after just one hearing of this album. Suffice it to say that the critics of the time, always eager to shit on Coltrane when he didn't record something that wasn't "Return of the Son of 'My Favorite Things'," hated this album.

Trivia: The "Om" amulet on the album's front cover belonged to Impulse! head and John Coltrane's producer, Bob Thiele.

My copy is an original pressing using the standard Impulse!/ABC label of the day, which had morphed from the original orange-dominated label, to the black label with red trim and that ubiquitous TV network logo stuck next to it.

Like every Impulse release until the evil MCA empire got its hands on the ABC Records tape vault, the album came in a righteous gatefold.

As its own album, Om has not been in print in America for several years, and import copies, when you can find them sometimes have the track split into two parts (as on the original vinyl), while others present the piece uninterrupted. In the US, Om did finally get some digital compact disc respect as part of the double CD anthology The Major Works of John Coltrane in 1992. Hopefully, a remastered edition of the original album will be making its way to store shelves later this year or early next year as part of The Impulse Years: Volume Four 5-CD box set. In the meantime, give a gander to the entire piece via this link here: (Give it a couple of minutes to load, due to its length)

http://drop.io/rtn3b2s/asset/1-02-om-m4a

Diggin' In The Crates "Pick a Color... Any Color!" Edition

Artist: The Meat Puppets

Album: Sewn Together

Label: Megaforce Records

Vinyl: Multi-color vinyl

...VERY multi-colored vinyl, as it turns out:

And between you and me, folks, if I had known that pre-orders direct from the band's website would have been in mailboxes at least a week before pre-orders direct from the label were, this record would have been posted at least a WEEK ago! (The street date for this album is tomorrow [May 12th], for Chrissakes!)

And speaking of the label... what in the blue hell are alternative rock icons the Meat Puppets doing on Megaforce Records, home of such far-from-alternative stalwarts as Anthrax, Overkill, and Ace Frehley?

Diggin' in the Crates "Take the Coltrane" Edition

Last year, when I came back from the New York CD & Record Show in Wilkes-Barre, PA and showed off my newest aquisitions here (crossposted with my LiveJournal), a longtime LJ friend told me, "I'm super jealous of all your Coltrane."

So, after giving her fair warning with the mantra of Randy Bachman ("You ain't seen nothing yet"), I pulled out all of the 'Trane vinyls I had to date, grabbed my digital camera, and set them up like so:

From top to bottom:

• A Love Supreme (Impulse!/GRP, 1995 180-gram reissue)
• John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (Impulse/GRP, 1995 180-gram reissue)
• Crescent (Impulse/GRP, 1995 180-gram reissue)
• The Coltrane Legacy (Atlantic, pressing date unknown)
• Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard Again! (ABC Impulse! mid-70's repress with green target label)
• Impressions (MCA/Impulse!, 1980's repress, blue label, non-gatefold)
• The Stardust Session (Prestige/Fantasy, 1975 original pressing)
• Kulu Se Mama (MCA/Impulse!, 1980's repress, blue label, non-gatefold)
• Coltrane Live at Birdland (ABC Impulse mid-70's repress with green target label)
• Coltrane/Prestige 7105 (Prestige/Fantasy, 1987 "Original Jazz Classics" reissue)
• Coltrane's Sound (Atlantic, pressing date unknown)
• The Best of John Coltrane (Atlantic, pressing date unknown)
• My Favorite Things (Atlantic, pressing date unknown)
• The Mastery of John Coltrane, Vol. III: Jupiter Variation (ABC Impulse, 1978 original pressing)
• The Mastery of John Coltrane, Vol. I: Feel Good (ABC Impulse, 1978 original pressing)
• The Mastery of John Coltrane, Vol. IV: Trane's Modes (ABC Impulse, 1979 original pressing)
• Alternate Takes (Atlantic, pressing date unknown)
• Sun Ship (MCA/Victor, 1976 Japanese pressing)
• Soul Trane (Prestige/Fantasy, repress of "Original Jazz Classics" reissue)
• Blue Train (Blue Note/Manhattan/EMI, pressing date unknown)
• Giant Steps (Rhino/Atlantic, early 2000's 180-gram reissue)

To date, I think I've only added one Coltrane vinyl to my collection since those pictures were taken, the 200-gram double vinyl edition of Impulse!'s archival Coltrane release One Down, One Up: Live at the Half-Note. 

At the end of the post, I warned my friend, "Don't make me break out all of my Miles Davis vinyls." I haven't done a hard count, but I probably have more Miles vinyl than I do Coltrane vinyl. Maybe someday soon, I'll do a similar photo shoot and blog post with those records...

Diggin' in the Crates "Six of Frank, Half a Dozen of Sinatra" Edition

Every once in a while, I get in the mood for the music of Francis Albert Sinatra, and and I'm in the beginning of one of those periods:

Additionally, there have been times when I feel the need to kickstart or expand certain parts of my vinyl collection. Last year, after I got my Numark TTUSB, I started grabbing Miles Davis and John Coltrane records, then records on the Blue Note label. Now, I'm expanding my very meager collection of Frank vinyls (as of this writing, 90% of my Sinatra library is on CD). A first package of six Sinatra LPs from eBay arrived in my PO Box over the weekend, and I bought a second lot that includes the vinyl of one of my favorite Frank albums, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, this afternoon. Until that package arrives, here's the exact booty I opened up today:

Clockwise from top left:

• Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra featuring Frank Sinatra (Cornet CX-186, 1963)
• That's Life (Reprise, 1966)
• The Broadway Kick (Columbia, 1959)
• Adventures of the Heart (Columbia, 1957)
• Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (Capitol, 1958)
• Pal Joey soundtrack (Capitol, 1957)

The two Columbia albums are really compilations of material from when he was with that label for about the first decade or so of his solo career, and the Tommy Dorsey album, or at least Sinatra's cuts on it (only half the songs on the album feature Frank's vocals), predate even those recordings. Also... ALL of these albums are in MONO. I've only played The Broadway Kick and That's Life (the latter is spinning on my turntable in the top photograph and just finished playing Side 2 while I was writing this) but they sound pretty damn  good for records that are eight and one years older than I am! So, yep, vintage pressings all around (the two Columbia releases are with the "six-eye" labels, trainspotters...). 

In a side note, I'm not completely sure of the legitimacy of the Tommy Dorsey record, only because I've nevered own any of the guy's records in any format until today, but as far as I know, recent legit CD releases are on RCA and its vintage jazz imprint Bluebird (and thus currently under Sony Music ownership)... anyone knowledgeable want to clue me in? 

End note: Speaking of Frank's Reprise masters... his estate took the rights back from Warner Bros. (who manufactured and distributed Reprise for Frank, then bought the label off of him a few years later) last year, and all of his Reprise-era albums are being reissued soon on CD by Concord (they're already on iTunes and AmazonMP3.com!), the same folks who are the caretakers of the Fantasy,  Stax, and Prestige tape libraries (amongst others)... that includes quite a few titles that have either been available only as import CDs or not released on CD EVER. Excuse me while I check my download options...

Diggin' in the Crates "Is It or Isn't It Legit?" Edition

Most of the items I've been posting for this feature since it started are more recent additions to my collection. This week, we dust off something that I've had for several years and nabbed when I saw it while flipping through the 7" bin at Gallery of Sound in 1997:

Artist: Youth of Today

Title: LIVE at Van Hall, Amsterdam

Label: Commitment Records

Vinyl: Gray vinyl

In what has to be a testament to the enduring interest/popularity in a band that only existed for a few years in the late 80's (in their short lifetime, Youth of Today only released two 7" EPs and two albums, but also gave rise to the still-active indie labels Revelation and Equal Vision), in 1996 a start-up label from Amsterdam called Commitment Records issued a colored-vinyl EP of a show Youth of Today played at Van Hall, a former clothing warehouse in Amsterdamn's Stattsliedenbuurt (a neighborhood "notorious in the Eighties for its strong squat scene", according to the liner notes on the six-panel insert(!) enclosed with this record.

In 1989, Youth of Today were on a European tour that was marred with problems from troublemakers (drunks trying to hit lead singer Ray Cappo in Belgium, "so-called punks" throwing beer bottles at the band at another gig, Nazi skinheads crashing a third and forcing the band to curtail the gig seven songs in). By the time the band reached Amsterdam, however, the Van Hall gig went without a hitch - something Cappo can be heard complimenting/thanking the crowd for at the end of the recording. Even more thankfully, someone had the wherewithal to record the show with a Sony Walkman.

Fast forward to July 1995 when a few enterprising Amsterdam punks started Committment Records first as a distributor to facilitate the easier availability of American and European straight-edge punk records that would otherwise be hard to get, and (to again quote this record's insert) "to release records of straight edge bands with a positive attitude" to counter what they most disliked in the then current straight-edge scene - bands who played "slow metal moshcore" with more negative lyrics, and European labels that refused to release straight-edge material on vinyl. 

To finance the operation, the label decided to press a 7" EP containing tracks from the audience recording of the Van Hall Youth of Today gig. Their reasoning was spelled out right on the record's back cover:

Why a Youth of Today Live EP?

In the first place, because we had a live recording of Youth of Today at our disposal, which perfectly captured the atmosphere existing in the European hardcore scene at the end of the Eighties, at a time in which the Straight Edge scene in Holland, Belgium and Germany was at its peak.

In the second place, the ideology of the band Youth of Today has a lot in common with the ideology from which Committment Records was started: Straight Edge, positive thinking, and awareness of the wrongs in this world.

In the third place, by releasing a record of a very popular band, we can bring Committment Records to the attention of a lot of people. All proceeds of this record will be invested in the label and the distribution service. It will give us the opportunity to lay a solid foundation for the future releases on Committment Records by less known bands. 

Now, here's the fun part: When I recently went to look up this record on Rate Your Music, they had it listed (as of today, and when I added my copy to my database there) as a bootleg. While the recording itself would be considered "bootleg" quality, the label itself is not a bootleg label.In fact, the label still continues today, has its own website as well as a MySpace page, and points out in its own label discography that some asshole in the United States managed to issue a counterfeit version of the record on black vinyl (probably without the professionally-printed six-panel insert legit copies contain). One would have to conclude that the consent of Youth of Today's Ray Cappo and John Porcelly (the band's founding and only constant members from beginning to end) plus their approval of Committment's modus operandi made the record legitimately possible. 

So, is this record a bootleg? I would daresay, only if you don't come across a gray vinyl copy. Good luck finding one on eBay.  

Diggin' In The Crates "Double Vision Vinyl Eyecandy" Edition

Short but sweet, and maybe leave you with a bit of a buzz too, throwing in two items to make up for missing last week.

From the ongoing split-single series Under The Influence, released by Suburban Home Records and sold through their vinyl lovers' site VinylCollective.com: 

Artists: Mustard Plug/Bomb The Music Industry!

Title: Waiting Room/Gold Sounds

Label: Suburban Home

Vinyl: Red and green splattered clear vinyl (700 copies)

Several BTMI! records have been featured here in DITC when it was a more irregular and random series, including the half-black, half-transparent green edition of their Goodbye Cool World album that caught Brother Langdon's eye. On this disc, BTMI! cover Pavement's "Gold Sounds" (from their seminal Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain album) while third-wave ska veterans Mustard Plug present a version of Fugazi's "Waiting Room" (from their first 12" EP, later the first half of the 13 Songs CD) that brings out more of the reggae side of the song that was only hinted at by Joe Lally's bass lines and Ian MacKaye's guitar parts on the original recording. 

And then we have...

Artist: Drag The River
Title: Having A Party/Jeff Black Song
Label: Suburban Home
Vinyl: "Whiskey and Coke" colored vinyl (700 copies)

Musically, the band turns their A-side cover of the Sam Cooke classic into a last-call country-esque lament. Physically, this release is probably the only release in the Under The Influence series to date to not only have the same band be on both sides of the 45, but also have a non-rare color that is nicer than the "rare" color (300 yellow and white half-and-half) offered by Suburban Home (although, granted, the almost equally nice Mustard Plug/BTMI! 45 is also the more common color of that 1000-copy pressing).

Diggin' In The Crates "Dischord Classics" Edition

For the past year or so, the venerable Washington DC-based punk/indie label Dischord Records has seen fit to take advantage of the growing renewed popularity in vinyl, combined it with the continuing interest in the substantial back catalog of titles the label has issued since their foundation in December of 1980, and started to have new vinyl masters cut for their releases at Chicago Mastering Service (co-founded and co-owned by Bob Weston of Shellac/Volcano Suns/Mission of Burma fame). This is a title that I nabbed the minute the re-release was announced:

Artist: Embrace
Title: Embrace
Label: Dischord
Vinyl: Clear red vinyl

Embrace (absolutely no relation whatsoever to a more recent band of English vintage) was one of the first "emo" bands, for lack of a better description. The group was founded by Dischord Records co-founder and former Minor Threat lead singer/songwriter Ian MacKaye along with guitarist Michael Hampton, bassist Chris Bald, and drummer Ivor Hanson. Hampton and Hanson had been in State of Alert with Henry Rollins (before Rollins left for California to join Black Flag), and then joined up with Bald and Ian MacKaye's younger brother Alec to form The Faith. Originally, MacKaye wanted to have Jeff Nelson, Dischord's other co-founder and ex-Minor Threat drummer, occupy the drum throne, but business issues (Nelson balked at the idea of playing "free" or benefit shows beyond a certain point in the band's career, which led MacKaye to lament "Jeff, I can't be in a band with you") put the kibosh on that intent. 

So says the liner notes to the excellent and highly recommended 20 Years of Dischord CD box set:

Minor Threat played its final show in September of 1983 and recorded the Salad Days 7" in December. At that point Jeff and Ian had been in 4 different bands together and after a few months of no music, they figured it was time to start working on the next project. 

After a series of different line-ups with Ian playing bass, then guitar, and then singing, and after almost a year of playing, the new band had started taking shape with Chris and Mike (both ex-Faith), However, there were still plenty of unresolved frustrations held over from Minor Threat, and upon further discussion, Ian and Jeff decided that it was probably a better idea to not embark on another band together. Ivor, who had left the Faith to go to college was home on winter break at that time and was asked to play drums. He was up for it and the band agreed to wait for him until he finished the school year.  

The irony of the situation was that Ian ended up singing for the Faith, a band that his brother had sung for, and one that had already gone through a heated break-up. Still, everyone was really eager to be in a band again, especially since there was so much activity surrounding the scene in connection with Revolution Summer, and it was decided to go ahead with the line-up.

Embrace played its first show with Rites of Spring and Gray Matter at Food for Thought in July '85 and managed to play about 15 shows before things came apart. 

The album, compiled from the two separate demo sessions, came out posthumously in 1987. Michael Hampton joined then-ex-Rites of Spring members Guy Picciotto, Brendan Canty and Eddie Janney in the short lived One Last Wish, which would release (after high demand) their lone recording session as the 1986 album in 1999. Chris Bald switched to guitar and joined Ignition with fellow ex-Faith and Ian's brother Alec MacKaye. Ian later joined up with Picciotto, Canty, and bassist Joe Lally to form one of America's greatest contributions to late-20th-Century rock music, Fugazi. 

I first heard this album in 1988 at a band practice. A friend of the guitar player had brought it over and it was playing on the stereo in our practice space, which was the basement level of said guitarist's parent's house. At the time, the album was only available on vinyl. Dischord wouldn't release the title on cassette or CD for a few years yet, and at the time the only titles Dischord were seeing fit to release on CD were all of Minor Threat's output on one CD and the first two Fugazi mini-albums on another CD. We were all blown away by the album, but I was already starting to buy CDs back then and was reluctant to buy vinyl at the time (this, of course, was long before CD burners, USB turntables, laptop recording software, and enclosed download codes in records!). Now, of course, the album is now considered a proto-emo classic.  

According to the excellent history of DC punk and indie music, Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital (itself named after an Embrace song!), "Money" seems to be directed at Jeff Nelson, "Last Song" is said to be inspired by the breakup of Rites of Spring, and "Do Not Consider Yourself Free" and "Said Gun" were said to be directed at the neo-Nazi punks that were causing much trouble at DC punk and indie shows at the time.

The new 2009 reissue comes in clear red vinyl and comes with an exact replica of the original album's lyric insert. 

A highly recommended album, irregardless of the format.