What Went On in What Goes On #3

 

One of the cool artifacts that we attempted to sell at the Columbus Flea was this issue of What Goes On, a Velvets Fanzine from the early 80s. Aside from the awesome layout, the great editorials, and comparatively superior content to other VU zines of later origin, we happened to notice that our friend and Cheater Slicks drummer,  Dana Hatch penned a very well written article for this very issue, once upon a time, chronicling live Velvets records and related projects. So, great people of the interwebs, here it is for you to read and appreciate. And maybe if you ask nicely in the comment section, maybe someday we'll scan the whole issue.

New Arrivals! 2/11/2014

 

 

Dead Moon - Trash and Burn (Reissue)

Mississippi/ Change Records

One of their harder to find and more perfect records. An absolute monster of a rocker. Killer high energy songs. Once again DEAD MOON deliver a record of all hits with no misses. Pure as can be. Lovingly remastered by TIMOTHY STOLLENWERK.

Ti Paris et Sa Guitare LP

Little Axe

       

A true masterpiece by one of the legends of Haitian music. The debut album by Haiti's favorite troubadour reissued for the first time on vinyl. Beautiful guitar playing with the minimal rhythmic accompaniment of maracas. Haitian blues music at its best.  ‬

Troubadour music never belonged in studios. It was happening in the backyards of Haiti in the 50s & 60s, played for small gatherings & chickens.  Very minimal, but inventive, entrancing guitar playing, inspired by the Rara Voodoo tradition. His voice hoarsed by too much clairin, the haitian moonshine, he sings of the eternal blues of poverty, simple joys & tough romance. Fans of Joseph Spence will dig this.

His songs, covered over the years by so many Kompa orchestras, are still hummed in Haiti & all over the diaspora. Try whistling Bam Pam Ladan to any Haitian & watch them smile. Some know these wonderful songs that were crafted by Ti-Paris a long time ago, but very few have heard the original versions. Here they are. 

   

Peter Buck - I Am Back To Blow Your Mind Once Again LP

Mississippi

New solo album from Peter Buck.

A second dose of solo weirdness from Peter Buck – whose best known, of course, as guitarist and co-founder of REM – but he's been a lot of cool and interesting stuff with the Minus Five, The

Baseball Project and more in the post REM years – and we admire the heck of his freewheeling solo stuff, too! This one's filled with skronky blues rockers and poetic acoustic tunes alike, with lots of dissonant guitars and unpredictable twists and turns. Other players include Scott McCaughey and other frequent collaborators and special guests. Includes "Ride That Road", "My Slobbering Decline", "Life Is Short", "Southerner", "Here In Heaven", "(You Must Fight To Live) On The Planet Of The Apes", "Welcome To The Party", "Drown With Me", "West Of Sunset", "Roswell" and more. (Vinyl only release!)   

Peter Buck- S/T LP

Mississippi

A loose, raw and charmingly informal first ever solo album by Peter Buck! If memory serves, he was the one in REM who most sounded in interviews like he wanted to cut out of the rock star racket and wished to play what they wanted, where they wanted, be it in a garage, a gymnasium or wherever – and bless him, here he is with a purposely under-the-radar, vinyl-only release for the mostly archival Mississippi label! Frequent collaborator Scott McCaughey, the Decemberists' Jenny Conlee, legendary guitarist Lenny Kaye, Sleater Kinney's Corin Tucker and other guests make up the band. Includes "10 Million BC", "It's Alright", "Some Kind Of Velvet Sunday Morning", "Give Me Back My Wig", "Nothing Matters", "So Long Johnny", "Hard Old World", "Nowhere No Way", "Vaso Lovo", "I'm Alive" and more.

 

Lori Goldston

Mississippi   

Cello solos.

Musings, explorations, meditations, ramblings and a spooky folk song on acoustic—and a bit of amplified—cello. Recorded by Mell Dettmer and released by Mississippi Records.

Based in Seattle, Lori Goldston is a classically trained cellist with quite the CV. Her past collaborations include Nirvana, David Byrne and Cat Power just to name a few. Lori also co-founded Black Cat Orchestra and joined the Seattle band Earth a few years back.

Lori Goldston has scored and/or provided music for several films and shorts including Bass Ackwards (Linas Phillips), Humpday (Lynn Shelton), and Crashing Waves (Britta Johnson) and has also been commissioned to do live scores for several silent films.

 

V/A - 100 Moons LP

Mississippi/Change/Canary

Hindustan Vocal Compilation

Absolutely great compilation of early Indian vocal 78s. Features artists such as FAIYAZ KHAN, HIRABAI BARODEKAR, DATTREYA VISHNU PALUSKAR, and BADE GHULAM ALI KHAN. Mediative and exciting vocals from the masters.  Great liner notes and mastering by IAN NAGOSKI complete with photos. A co-release with Canary Records

V/A Anxious Color: Stranger Than Fiction Psych Rock 1966 to 1967 LP

ABOVE DEATH / Ghanaian Movie Posters

One of the benefits of buying junk is that sometimes, every once in a while, you find something super interesting. This handpainted Ghanaian movie poster was found earlier this year in a whole-sale lot. After doing a bit of research we found out more about the painting, its purpose, and the history behind Ghanian movie posters, and mobile video clubs that emerged in the late 80s. Basically, these mobile cinemas consisted of a VCR, a TV and a power generator. The operator would move the setup from town to town showing films in social clubs, houses, and open air. In order bring out more people, and to advertise their business, artists were commissioned to create large interpretations of scenes from the film (which would be shown to them ahead of time) using acrylic paint on flour sacks. Painters were encouraged to change scenes, or add elements beyond the film's content to make the screenings seem more appealing. Depending on the poster, a depiction might represent personal or social form of expression. Sometimes, the title of the film itself could even be mis-translated. Posters were folded and/or rolled for easy transportation along with the other equipment. Read  more about this interesting history below, and check out the photos of the painting that we found! If you would like to bid on this piece of history, visit the auction on our ebay page. There is also a great book, "Extreme Canvas: Handpainted Movie Posters from Ghana" with hundreds of other great examples that is worth checking out.

TITLE:  ABOVE DEATH

TYPE:  Horror

DATE OF CREATION:  probably 1990s

ARTIST: SA MAGASCO for Peace Video

SIGNED: SA MAGASCO lower right verso

SIZE:  43.5” W x 60” H

MEDIUM:  Acrylic on flour sack canvas

CONDITION:  This is an original authentic piece in good condition.  The painting is mostly complete, the perimeter of the poster worn away and discarded due to usage, travel and light exposure. Please see photos.  

GENERAL BACKGROUND:  In the late 1980s a cottage industry developed in Ghana, West Africa composed of entrepreneurs who possessed three pieces of property – a TV, videocassette recorder (known then as a VCR), and a portable, gas powered generator. Armed with these tools they set up itinerant, make shift theaters inside social clubs, houses, and restaurants where they showed movies on the VCR and sold tickets to a delighted and noisy audience.  Sometimes, they even traveled from village to village; but it was the need to attract customers that gave birth to what is now recognized as a distinctive, compelling collectible — the Ghanaian movie poster.

Generally speaking, the movies they showed fall into four broad categories: Hollywood movies, most often obscure titles with an occasional hit thrown in for good measure; Bollywood movies from India; Kung Fu movies from the Hong Kong film industry; and Nollywood movies from Nigeria along with their Ghanaian counterparts.

The artists who created the posters were essentially commercial illustrators who used acrylic paint to make shop signs and other forms of advertising. When it came to the canvas their own economic circumstances and resourcefulness led them to use opened-up flour sacks.  This material was cheap, readily available, and the perfect size for large posters. These were posters meant to be displayed outside, and surviving posters often have the patina of authenticity, having “aged” in a distressed, engaging manner.

Ghanaian movie posters always present a lurid, colorful patchwork of images intended to attract, engage and entice the viewer. Each and every time they succeed in sucking the viewer into an imaginary, surreal world which may or may not be relevant to the film. As art and advertising, they are wildly successful, and it is the combination of the two which makes them memorable, indeed unforgettable when compared to other movie memorabilia and poster art in general.  Today, the creation of these posters has all but disappeared as they have been replaced by printed advertising.  This and the other original posters we are selling represent a brief moment in time when art, ingenuity and advertising met in the cross hairs of history - and then they were gone.  

Some gems we dredged up from the basement...

Some gems we dredged up from the basement...

"A Grecian beauty reveals her most secret thoughts and passions as she describes her many sensual nights of Lesbian love. Her budding desires awaken on the isle of Lesbos. Voluptuous pleasures she had never known transform her young body into trembling submission"

"actual interviews with prostitutes, homosexuals, pimps and "Johns" in which we hear them tell the fascinating story of their lives; their experiences, how they work, what they do and why, the money they receive and the money they pay; their fears, anxieties, hopes and strange loves... all in their own words in a a frank, graphic and revealing description of a way of life few of us know or understand." 

"Vividly dramatized by the sultry voiced "Ilona", an actress of great talent and beauty" ... "Constance Chatterley bares her most intimate emotions as she tells of her erotic raptures and sexual fulfillment."

BACK IN STOCK From 540 RECORDS

BACK IN STOCK From 540 RECORDS

"Peter Gutteridge is the man who launched a thousand Flying Nun bands. Founding member of The Clean, the Chills, the Great Unwashed, Snapper and the Puddle, Gutteridge released one solo album, Pure, on Xpressway Records in 1989 which was recorded between 1986-1987.

1989 Xpressway, 1 of the finest labels ever 2 exist release Pure. A collection of fragments and completed songs recorded on a Fostex 4 track. They were all written 2 tape, ideas going down as I made them up. I was my own technician. There were no studio bills or aesthetics 2 deal with. Recording in a studio after this experience was a frustration.

Once in a while, I believe u become a kind of channel, even if slightly muddled. The tainted shamen? I don’t know. What I can say is this record yer hopefully holding in hand had its genesis long b4 I ever picked up a guitar. Ive always loved a dirty drone. Notes corrupted and split apart by the miracle of the sympathetic note- ie. Bagpipe, chanters, organs, piano’s, ad infinitum. Throw a few clear notes in and you achieve creation on yr own terms. Link it up 2 the background hum of the universe doing its thing and u have hypnosis in a sound. Shmaya.

Now a word about distortion- fate smiled on me the day an Alron Doubler fell into my hands. Transistors are indeed wonderful things- that multiplicity of notes generated bespeaking some giant periodic table of the cosmos spewing song out of yr humble speakers. I was always blown away by the sheer variety of directions made possible by this small simple piece of divine circuitry with just 2 knobs! And I had the time, I realized this was the moment. This thing had been breathing through me all my life! The stars were in the right position 2 deliver a dose of cosmic junk 2 the hungry ears of N.Z. (The guys 2 doors along View St, Morley, Merritt and visiting co-conspirators thought the same, getting onto and forming their own opinions and units of corruption. ie. Dead C and other miscellaneous. Details- I havnt really got the patience today- whew Dunedin 1986, 7, & 9, quite a remarkable place.)

Pure. Chris Hazlewood, that fine and erudite man slipped me a few notes on the subject. It comes down 2 the essence of things. Music is the food upon which our souls thrives. Its not a luxury. Its an essential. Children simply don’t grow up properly without it. Look back 2 any relatively sane part of human history and u find pulse and melody were a natural part of human existence.

Pure- it’s a 7 yr old called Fenris with his 1st guitar and a Marshall stack, he visits his grandma Liz over the road and if Im lucky pops over, takes in the pulse and sound of things. Immersion in the sacred tide. Ive taught him Buddy. Shmaya- the light and vibration in A. He has a brother called Nate who’s autistic and calls himself Beethoven- shards of language and music flowing him all the time. Now, that’s Pure.

Pure- 1989, this humble cassette strikes the deck and b4 u know it- everybody’s using it, wence b4 its only commercial use was 2 describe Speed. As Ive discovered personally use the word Pure and yve got a long way 2 fall- take note any 1 using this word! Pure= you betta B!

Good Luck and Enjoy." - http://chaosintejas.bigcartel.com/product/peter-gutteridge-pure-2xlp

If this interests you (and it should) here's a great interview from The Snapper...
http://www.slightlydelic.com/the-snapper-interview-w-peter-gutteridge-by-wes-holland/

Tronics SAY! WHAT IS THIS and WHATS THE HUBUB BUB in stock now!

Hey DIY/ Underground music fans! We have a few more copies of the two latest installments from Les Zarjaz in stock. Read about them below:

TRONICS- SAY! WHAT IS THIS? LP

Say! What Is This? is a collection of early, previously unreleased and rare Tronics recordings from between 1978 and 1983.

Tronics, led by Ziro Baby, who issued records between 1979 and 1983 are a musical rarity. The releases brought Tronics and Ziro Baby, then and since, great acclaim being noted in the music press as “a swamp God”, “the essence of Rock n Roll”, “arguably, a pre-cursor for English Post Punk and Indie music” and being credited for issuing the first independent cassette album in 1980 that started the cassette music boom that continues today. Despite the successes of the Tronics releases, being continually highly sought after and loved by so many, Tronics and Zarjaz Baby - the name that Ziro works under today with his group Freakapuss - remain rare, mysterious and enigmatic underground phenomena, 90% of which is previously unreleased material that has never been heard by the general public.

What’s The Hubub Bub originally appeared in 1980/1981, and was so far ahead in its approach to songwriting, performance, recording, and presen- tation that we’re just now catching up. Issued at the height of the British post-punk renaissance, on cassette only, it presaged the DIY underground movement in this country by several years, and until now, has been more rumored than heard. Recorded mostly live to cassette, the album has an astonishing breadth, taking in and transmuting savage rock’n’ roll, tender ballads, tape experiments, and in the case of “The Shark Fucks”, bona fide anthems. Ziro Baby (now known to comrades as Zarjaz Baby and fronting the incredible group FREAKAPUSS) and his songs have held sway with hundreds of the underground cognoscenti for decades now, cassettes of Tronics albums being passed around like secret handshakes. It remains a singular example of true self-expression, whilst at the same time rocking harder than (fill in almost any band‘s name here).

Blood Orange's Cupid Deluxe

Almost every music website out there has praised Blood Orange's new record, Cupid Deluxe. Being canonized by Pitchfork as "Best New Music", followed by Stereogum's "Album of the Week"-- more intensely by the Guardian who at the time of release argued that this was "the one album you should listen to this week," and having landed the cover feature for FADER as well as additional features in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and more; the album's fall release started off solid for Devonte Hynes. In 2012, Hynes' style galvanized with in-demand producers and songwriters after co-writing and producing hit-singles by Sky Ferreira (“Everything Is Embarrassing”) as well as Solange Knowles’ “Losing You”. While the reviews for the record seem to re-articulate adding a bit more perspective to the last, may of them touch on elements of Hynes' vulnerability represented in his music, his importance to the LGBT community, as well as the central theme of New York on his new record. 

Oddly enough, I met Dev back in 2011 when he opened up for the British, post-riot grrl band Throwing Up at what used to be Bruar Falls (now Grand Victory). Literally unknown at that time, before Coastal Grooves' release, it could be said that one felt like they were witnessing young Prince or Nile Rodgers' spirits being evoked on the tiny "stage", but with insanely minimal production. His rise to indie fame-dom was quick, well-deserved and fun to watch.

Anyways, enough of this rant-- we just wanted to let our followers know, that whether your thing is Funk, Soul, Indie, Pop, Disco, or pretty much anything besides country, folk or polka-- you should check this record out. We have a bunch of copies in the store, so give a listen below and come get yr copy.