Rolling 2008 Vinyl Thread

Second CK on the Dutchess and the Duke. My favorite summertime pop record of the year (so far).

i'd only heard the single and was waiting for them to get to town before picking up the lp. i saw unnatural helpers down in austin in march, they were good. i've been pining for the fe fi fo fums to come here forever but that will probably never happen, ;_;

scott OTM, I have having something pressed privately soon and I'm nervous as fuck about it!

-- J0hn D.

o_O

Scott: I wonder, too, if the bigger pressing plants who used to get most of their business from major labels (and then from big indies back in vinyl's dying days) have gone out of business. And the folks who've jumped in to fill the gaps, as hard as they try and no matter how good their intentions, just don't always have the top-flite gear and deep technical know-how to really do it right. I mean, I listen to floppy old Prince 45's from the early 80s, so thin they're practically flexidiscs, records have probably been played 100 times, and they STILL sound a 100 times better than most (not all) new vinyl I buy nowadays. I think Silver could have sounded better, and maybe it's dumb/sheeplike to blame the cool silver vinyl, but, you know, gotta blame something. Nor did those crazy ugly VCacoon represses knock me out, soundwise.

a lot of pressing places have gone out of business. and you figure all the old timer people who knew how to do that kind of work went with them. but, you figure, where there is a need...

and someone is putting out all this new vinyl! i'm no expert. i'd like to hear how easy/hard it is to put out decent quality vinyl these days.

I've wondered that myself.

i'm fairly happy with most of the new stuff i buy. other than the price. but i do understand the price hikes. during the big cd buying days, you could buy non-limited/fancy vinyl records for cheap. ten bucks or under was standard for most indie records for years.

now that labels like el numero have me addicted to their fancypants comps, i have to be very creative. i trade a lot of stuff in. and i help ou t at the record store in exchange for records!

even those celtic frost picture discs that i apparently couldn't resist sound decent.

southern lord wise: that big-ass triple vinyl boris/merzbow thing sounds fuckin' GREAT.

I am guessing it's a question of being willing to spend the money on the super-heavy vinyl & the smarter mastering (you can send your tapes to the plant, or you can have it done yourself and send mastered recordings; the latter's smarter, and you should pick an experienced engineer who knows about vinyl) and just cut your profits a little. I have I think 6 NWN pressings (all Pirates Press) and 5 of them are just gorgeous-looking and beautiful sounding works of art, I suspect Yosuke is very demanding with his stuff.

Agree about the Boris/Merzbow thing: sounds spectacular. Then again, my gold/black copy of Here Come the Waterworks has more crackle than I'd like. Them's the breaks. FWIW, I sincerely regret besmirching Pirates Press' good name, cuz I only dragged them into this as a thoughtless tangent, and they do a MUCH better job than most of their competition. Mea culpa.

But to clarify, in bitching about this stuff, I'm mostly not complaining about vinyl mastering, but about crackle and rumble: artifacts of the pressing itself.

now that labels like el numero have me addicted to their fancypants comps, i have to be very creative. i trade a lot of stuff in.

i'm trading in a couple of numero group comps this weekend.

probably already all sold out and up on ebay at this point

-- omar little, Thursday, 24 July 2008 19:08 (1 hour ago) Link

re: Reatard, i can make this happen for you. #3, not #2, that one is gone.

it's tough to generalize about the quality of new vinyl. some of it sounds great, some of it does not, and it depends on mastering as much as pressing (as others have already pointed out.) colored vinyl tends to be lighter than a lot of black vinyl (who will press 180g colored vinyl at reasonable cost?), but i don't find that to wildly affect the quality one way or another. for one label, same pressing plant, i think the colored vinyl of the Christina Carter/Pocahaunted split LP sounds better than the black vinyl of the Cloudland Canyon/Mythical Beast split, even though the latter is at 45.

I need a UK mono copy of "Music From Big Pink."

oh i have #1-3, i was talking about #4! let me know if you get that one, i went to the amoeba info desk on tuesday and the guy was like "yeah nothing's coming up" and he looked at me like i was an idiot. btw, your boss was partly responsible for the obsession comp, right? good stuff.

wait yeah, #4. sorry, i'm not keeping track. i don't care for the jay reatard stuff much. but it's the split single with someone or other rite? i can get u that one.

sweet, just let me know where to send the $$$ : D

Guru Guru - Don't Call Us We Call You
Funkadelic - Let's Take It To The Stage
Quincy Jones - Body Heat
Aztec Camera - Knife
Bo Diddley - Where It All Began

Bo Diddley - Where It All Began

First track on this is "I've Had It Hard," right? Shit straight changed my life if it's the same record - beautiful fold-down cover.

i was listening to that album last night.

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/d/diddle_bo~~_whereital_101b.jpg

Bassholes - Hey OJ

Awesome and warped Hey Joe cover with lyrics changed to the OJ Simpson story.

*NEWSFLASH*

i bought THREE count them THREE CDs today!

i know, right? CDs? sooooo archaic. i spent two dollars and ninety eight cents on them too! i couldn't resist. i got the best of don cherry (columbia and monument sides)(no, not that don cherry. smooth 50's crooner don cherry. sealed, too.), beechwood sparks album i didn't have (make the cowboy robots cry. i really liked that band. and the tyde!), and psychedelic underground 6 (a garden of delights psych/prog comp/sampler that is way cool and which makes me wish i owned every garden of delights cd reissue, but i don't. kalacakra! el shalom! erlkoenig! hax cel! art boy's collection! all the german hitmakers of the 70's.)

i got records too though:

lloyd mc neill quartet - asha (reissue on lloyd's asha label. no way i could afford an original copy. the cover is different from the original too. the store did get some original lloyd records in on asha and i promptly handed them over to mike the owner to sell on ebay.)

charles lloyd - moon man (kapp)

joe farrell - canned funk (CTI)

joe farrell - moon germs (CTI)

and i got 5 hampton hawes reissues that i didn't have. i love hampton hawes. everybody likes hapton hawes, the three volume all night session series that came out on contemporary, and the challenge on storyville which is live solo action.

flin flon - dixie (version) (i heart mark)

children of the sixth root race - songs from the source (unreleased rehearsal tapes of yahowa nuttiness courtesy of drag city. i also got the new vinyl reissue of that live yahowa album a couple weeks back. that shit is great.)

holy toledo, how cum yoo guyz didn't tell me about that charles lloyd album before????????????? can't believe i've never heard it. i've owned various rekkerds by him over the years, but i ain't never heard nothing like moon man! shambling and wordy psychjazzrock is where i live after all.

Snake Charmer - Jah Wobble, Holger Czukay, The Edge for 5$ couple of weeks back

At the Pfork record fair last weekend:
Don't Stop: Tap Recordings - V/A on Numero Group (highly recommended)
S/T - Boscoe
All are Welcome - Male (friend's band from Chicago, very awesome)
Pavilion of Dreams - Harold Budd

Hugh Masakela - The Americanization of Ooga Booga (you don't pass us albums with titles like this, and I'm glad i didn't, awesome South African township/jazz hybrid stuff, mid 60s)

The Scorpions - Taken By Force

Generation X - s/t (damn these guys are AMAZING! fake punk 4 ever!)

Phil Manzera - Primitive Guitars

i have to remind myself to make a list of stuff they have at the record store that is new-ish and post it here. cuz i just don't know about some things. i know i want to hear vibracathedral orchestra stuff, and they have some vinyl at the store, but which to get? that kind of thing. do i need a blues control album? do i need a double leopards album? actually, they probably have more double leopards spin-off records at the store than actual double leopards albums.

i say this, cuz this is the kinda stuff that i am curious about, but it's also the stuff that sometimes costs the most. you know? sometimes i'll take a chance and all is good. i bought a limited edition stephen r. smith album on important (jewelled antler dude) and it was costly and i ended up really loving it. on the other hand, i bought that double mv & ee album on time lag and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...sold it on ebay a year later.

i do really want that honest jon comp of 20's baghdad music. that looks awesome. but that's a no-brainer:

http://www.honestjons.com/doc_library/Originals/33043.jpg

this looked cool too:

http://www.honestjons.com/doc_library/Originals/33334.jpg

god, all that african reissue stuff looks amazing. but there is too much! not just the funk and disco and psych stuff, but all the ethiopiques vinyl and on and on. i'm no zillionare.

Scot, you can still check some Blues Control here:
http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=810 What do Lloyd McNeill and Molkie Cole sound like?

molkie cole are the bomb! only one album. i never tire of it. crazy high energy power rock and pop. very humorous and giddy and the songs are way catchy. you should be able to find the album pretty cheap used:

http://www.geocities.com/suff1107/MolkieCole-FRONT.jpg

they were, apparently, known for their wacky live shows. course, i go looking for a live shot and google directs me to this thread!

lloyd mcneill was into making smoky afro-flute jazz. i don't know if he is filed under "spiritual jazz" in hepcat circles, but his stuff is pretty cool. not that out there.

holy toledo, how cum yoo guyz didn't tell me about that charles lloyd album before????????????? can't believe i've never heard it. i've owned various rekkerds by him over the years, but i ain't never heard nothing like moon man! shambling and wordy psychjazzrock is where i live after all.

sounds like it might be like his warm waters LP, which is pretty cool. i'll have to keep an eye out for moon man.

i don't think i've ever heard him SING before. does he sing on warm waters? i might have to check out his other 70's albums. i was never the biggest fan of his hippy-ish 60's jazz stuff. though there is good stuff there.

BEST NEGATIVE AMAZON REVIEW EVER! totally makes you want to hear the album:

"It is rather amazing how such great music never gets the sonic makeover to the CD format and how sometimes such BAD music does; unfortunately this disc falls into the later category. I love Charles Lloyd music, have been listening to him since the " Forest Flower " days. I have this particular "Moonman" lp and recently gave it a fresh listen with mind wide open because I recall my dissapointment at the time of the original release back in the day. It is horrendous and speaks volumes to the decline of his musicianship at the time and his dabbling in a few too many mind altering activities. The title is on the money because this is the spaciest of spacey Charles Lloyd releases. He subsequently made a number of forgetable lp's but eventually came back to his incredible form.This is Lloyd in his hippie Fillmore persona with a bunch of other space cadets forming a band. Probably the worst part about this release is the fact that someone told Lloyd he could sing and he does so throughout the disc in a cryptic voice that is as bizarre as this disc is. This is not really a jazz disc but rather some type of musical exploration to destinies unknown, well somewhere between earth and the moon. The lyrics are strange and really out there. There are no instrumentals. Some samples of the lyrics, from the idealistic "Moonman , " "They know you killed Geronimo, They know you done took the Gold, But I got another plan, for a brand new land, Where the sky runs free,. no more pollution". From " Sweet Juvenia," "Ow ,Mr. Alpert's studio, Ow in your studio, Ow in your studio, I've been in America before the dudes say, Hi hello Communications network chicago calling, London, connecticut, Anybody there? Hello? Computer man say , Hey man is anyone home"? From the dark "Heavy Karma" Toss the coins against the mirror. Bringing Karma comesback clearer, Bringing with it Satans daughter. Ashes scaterred 'cross the sea to show you must be free." The one song of any saving grace that keeps it from a one star is "Hejira" tha is a nice five part song coming in at 7:10 that begins with Prayer, Exile, Journey, Hurrikit and ends with Forever. If you are new to Charles Lloyd stay away from this one but rather begin with the excellent "Forest Flower."

i'm assuming it's him singing, i only have mp3s. it's pretty great, though, hippie-ish and mellow for the most part. i put the hard-rockingest track on my whiteeyes muxtape.

that review pretty much just sold me a copy of that album.

I'd like to hear that for sure. Was it Waves that had the Beach Boys? I liked that, and Forest Flower. "Mr. Alpert's studio" could refer to Herb (and herbal) and/or Baba Ram Dass, if he was the former Richard Alpert (Timothy Leary's colleague)

howlin wolf - the back door wolf
country greats (3 lp comp of random country shit)
african scream contest

I haven't been vinyl shopping much lately, but did a wee tidy up today and noticed that I have bought a few in the past couple weeks without really noticing. Some ok stuff too, I though

Paul Simon - Still Crazy After All These Years (i had the title song stuck in my head all day one day - with the image of Larry David pathetically singing it - and thankfully its one of those records you can pretty much pick up in most record shops. Its real nice too, a lovely, understated record, though I wonder if you might have been a bit disappointed when it came it as its all a bit 'more of the same')

Beach Boys - Carl & The Passions - So Tough (only one listen so far, didn't sound as good as I expected, but could take a few listens)

Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd - The Moon & The Melodies (I only own Treasure outside of this, and whilst I love Liz Frasers voice, I think it works brilliantly here when its not on every song)

Fields of the Nephilim - Moonchild & Psychonaut 12" singles (to be honest, I haven't given these more than a single play, the mood really has to take you I think. Out of interest, did they release albums? I see singles quite often, but never an lp, and I'm not much of a singles buyer)

Godfather OST
Once Upon A Time In America OST (both absolutely lovely soundtracks)

Rickie Lee Jones - Pop Pop (seems ok, but it's no Magazine or Pirates)

Stant Kenton - Greatest Hits
Benny Goodman - Best of vol 2
Artie Shaw - Recreates His Great 38 Band (didn't notice the "recreates", don't have high hopes for this)
Tommy Dorsey - Golden Hour
Larry Clinton & His Orchestra - Radio Years
Tommy Dorsey - One Night Stand (the last handful are me trying to get some records similar to one of my favourite radio shows, Malcolm Laycock at 10pm on a Sunday on BBC radio 2. I find the music so relaxing, and I wanted to start owning some of this stuff, though I am worried it will lose its charm once I actually have knowledge of the subject. I hope I don't ruin it for myself. But if anyone has any pointers - out of these I love the more gentle Tommy Dorsey stuff most - then I'd be very appreciative)

John Cale - Fear
Linus Pauling Quartet - All Things Are Light
Bedhead - What Fun Life Was
Talking Heads - Little Creatures

sold all three? charles lloyd records i owned last month
couldnt hear it anymore and dude chaps my ass

Thickest vinyl I've ever owned: McLaughlin's Devotion, on Douglas. Great music, great sound, great cover (warm lava-type lighting on back cover pix, a set-up for beautifully nauseating gatefold). What else was on Douglas? I think there was a Jodorowsky soundtrack, by the Shades Of Joy, busted by a certain mogul who put out his own hirelings' version on another label. Wasn't there a Lenny Bruce collection, the Last Poets too? Any more jazz rock? Best shrink wrap I've ever owned: on Joni Mitchell's debut, another all-around fine presentation (how long did I own it before realizing the gulls were spelling out Song To A Seagull, the title). Deep warm sound, you've got to crawl way up and way into her treehouse, her twelve strings, her vocal range, her imagery, her stories.

Oh yeah, and the shrink wrap is still on it, without warping it, hangs thick and loose, like a garment.

So, does anyone have a copy of the Rex Holman "Here In The Land of Victory" LP they'd like to sell or trade?
I just saw an episode of Star Trek that he was in, and now I want the LP like 10x more.

no but it's a great album. "red is the apple" is like the lounge-doom masterpiece.

Last Poets were indeed on Douglas (xpost)

picked up a buncha stuff in Louisville and environs last month... Inzekt LP on Schimpfluch, 1st Laibach 12" ("Boji"), 1st Smog LP (Sewn To The Sky, the only one I think is truly great), cool 1-sided Pantaleimon 7" on Bluesanct, Om/Six Organs split 7", and Fat's Plays For You LP.

more recently, a Bags LP with all of their studio recordings plus live stuff that looks and sounds like a bootleg (although it has a ton of good liner notes). And the Vanguard twofer of John Fahey which is Yellow Princess plus Requiem, nice cuz my copy of Requiem has a skip in side 1.

oh yah and Nurse With Wound's Bacteria Magnet EP which rocks my world.

david bowie - young americans
pink floyd - meddle
zz top - tres hombres

it has been a long time since i posted on this thread, and i will invariably miss a ton of things i got and can't remember right now off the top of my head but i'm pretty bored at work so here is what i have gotten lately and been listening to:

son of earth - pet
dewey redman - tarik
john phillips - wolfking of LA
bobby dylan - highway 61 (2nd copy, nicer shape)
peter green - the end of the game WLP
art blakey/jazz messengers - meet you at jazz corner of the world vol. 1
flying saucer attack/roy montgomery LP
ed askew - little eyes
the tower recordings - futuristic folk of the tower recordings, vol 1 (someone trade me a vol. 2)
robert wilkins - the original rolling stone
ashtray navigations LP on siltbreeze
ghost - lama rabi rabi
karen wolf LP (private femme country)

god there has to be more than that, but i can't remember them right now.

oh, a suni mcgrath 7"

mike at the record store asked me to price the vinyl so i brought a box home and did that last night. it was fun! cleaned them up, bagged them, and priced them.

and today at the dump - where everything is free - i found some good stuff to sell at the store, so i took that stuff home and did the same! i kept the classical boxed-sets i found at the dump though. including a great box of archival budapest quartet recordings from the 30's. and i kept the folkways woodie guthrie album of sacco & vanzetti songs. but the rest i figured the store could sell and i didn't need any of it: prince, roches, lauri anderson, robert fripp, an afrika bambaattaa album from 1988 that sounds pretty clunky despite having cool people on it. um, some other stuff. a double album for peter gabriel's womad thing on PVC that is actually kinda cool considering holger czukay and nusrah fatty khan are both on it.

the thing that's been blowing my mind this week though - speaking of string quartets - is my boxed-set of schubert's string quartets done by the melos quartet. it's on dgg. sounds AMAZING. from 1975. they simply ATTACK their instruments with bloody knives! AHHHHHHH! KILL! KILL!!! sorry. but i love it to death.

if you ever see it cheap somewhere, pick it up:

http://popsike.com/pix/20070909/150159617642.jpg

i'm actually still debating whether i should keep the bambaataa album or not. i never see it, but on the other hand, i tried to play it and it sounded kinda lousy to me. maybe i'll try it again. i can't even find a copy on-line for a picture. it's called *the day*. george clinton, mudbone, bootsy, yellowman, and a zillion other people are on it.

you wanna hear something funny/weird? i don't think i've EVER seen a copy of the planet rock album. or i can't remember seeing one. i know for a fact i've never heard the whole album.

Vladislav Delay's Anima 3LP came in the mail this morning, got it at firesale price from Eric Anomalous. If any record of mine could ever be described as "burbling", this is it.

pink floyd - ummagumma
makers - this is the answer 7"

Freddie Hubbard & Ilhan Mimaroglu - Sing Me a Song of Songmy
Great Plains - Colorized
The Band - Music from Big Pink
Chicken Shack - Collection 2LP
Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie

vol 1-3 of killed by death
polvo/erectus monotone split 7"
barbara manning - in NZ
billy bao - dialectics of shit
the incredible string band - the hangman's beautiful daughter
robert fripp - exposure

Capt Beefheart - Clear Spot
Caetano & Gal - Domingo
Spoon - Girls Can Tell