The thread for discussing the amazing Life Is A Problem comp on MISSISSIPPI records

Ishilan n​-​Tenere?, yah, mississippi released it after xmas, yet to listen to it it's in the ''to listen to'' mound
best idea is to order straight from them really

^ it's great; just got it. it's like the mellower side of the Bombino lp

Artist: VA
Title: Last Time Around
Label: MISSISSIPPI RECORDS
Format: LP
Price: $14.00
Catalog #: MRP 002LP
"Part three in Mississippi Records series exploring the rawest side of gospel music (Part one being the Life Is A Problem compilation & part two being the Oh Graveyard, You Can't Hold Me Always compilation) Moving ballads sit side by side with incredibly rocking crunchy guitar workouts. The recordings span the 1950s through to the '80s, but the sound is timeless & consistently soulful like you won't believe. Artists include Precious Bryant, Isaiah Owens, The Hickory Bottom Harmoneers, Boyd Rivers, The Straight Street Holiness Group & many more. We are very proud of this one. Housed in an old school 'tip on' sleeve."

ooooooh
also a p solid 2lp willie johnson thing that i'll probably pick up

is this a mcgonigal comp? he is good at this stuff.

idk (tho i think he is a straight street group stan so maybs), you should check out his last tompkins square thing if you haven't, though, it kills

So:

Thanks for considering joining the Mississippi CSR (Community Supported Record program).

We started this website in order to answer a question I’m often asked whenever I stray from my neighborhood in Portland: "Is there a way I can sign up to some sort of subscription series and get the Mississippi releases as they come out?" After years of resistance for no good reason, we’ve decided to team up with our friend Raf, who runs the excellent website Eggy mailorder, and make this a request we can fill.

If you choose to join, you will receive every Mississippi/Change release as it comes out. You will be guaranteed copies of every release, no matter how limited the pressing. Your records will be shipped immediately upon their release, at the same time that we ship copies to stores all over the world.

temppppppting. though the fact that there's no way to pay online ensures that i won't drunkenly subscribe some night.

Hmmm....

I have always wanted to be part of something like this, except I am far too fickle.

LIFE IS A PROBLEM is still dope though

I mean, Crumb Brothers!

man their sleeves are really next level there

also:

V/A - Irene J'Taime (African acoustic performances - very beautiful)

Michael Hurley - At Home With Driftin' Woods (A full LP of unreleased
songs from his first folkways LP session. Very high quality)

oooooooh.

otm

also unreleased Dead Moon EP, 3rd Rats LP.

The African Guitar Box (5 LPs housed in a pine box with a beautiful
print affixed to it. 200 press. An optional item to your CSR records)

anyone know what's on this and how much it'll cost? if it's actual african acoustic (dry) guitar i'm all over this. kind of wish mississippi had an email contact but i actually understand why they don't. maybe i'll send them some snail mail.

if i send them a check for like $300 what's the chance they'll fuck up and i'll have poured that money down the drain?

my guess is close to zero. also, just call them on the phone. they're in the book.

what are they gonna do when they get more than 200 subscribers? just increase the pressings, I hope.

if anyone in the UK decides to do this I'd be interested to know how it works out as this would be something I would probably do when I have more money to play with

not really any way i can do this but it's great it's happening, & the 'any amount' thing seems like an awesome development, like what a neat thing to be able to control. i want like ten of the records that are forthcoming.

at a slight tangent, does anyone go to/has anyone been to/can anyone offer vague guidance about the montreal store that i forget exactly how but which is allied w/mississippi, maybe being run by the other guy who started the label? it's like a bakery or something.

The Montreal store is located at the back of an apartment that Warren (Mississippi co-founder) once lived in. It's just a little room that still operates as a record store a couple Saturdays every month (in the winter at least). Warren isn't in Montreal anymore but a couple people still man it. Camilla (ex-Sunset Rubdown) used to bring down and sell pastries every once in awhile, though I don't believe she does anymore.
The entrance to the store is in the alley between St. Urbain and Waverly and just north of Bernard (behind the elementary school).

ty for that; I knew I was mangling the details somewhat. gonna check it out, sometime. I was thinking it would generally be a plus for any town to have a local Mississippi stockist, though obviously it's cool that the record club slightly eases the pressure w/that.

Cheap Thrills and Phonopolis both deal with Warren direct and carry all the releases as well. All the shipments come to Cheap Thrills and then are divided up between Backroom, Phonopolis and Cheap Thrills. Every other record store in Montreal goes through a larger distributor.

i got that african guitar box. it is kind of ridiculous, packaging-wise. it is a handcrafted (cheaply and a bit clumsily) box made out of pine, with a little gate you open to access the 5 LPs. the box is made of more or less raw pine--there are lots of splinters and holes, etc. nothing has been sanded down, really. i got a splinter picking up the thing. there is a generic silkscreened image pasted on one side of the box. no information about the title of the collection or anything on the box. track listings are on the individual record labels.

the packaging--down to the white hands playing guitar on the silkscreened image--has nothing to do with the music "inside." it's also very clumsy as it won't fit on standard record shelves and probably would scratch up the sleeves on either side of it if it did. in other words it's not very practical. by etsy standards it's a pretty rough homemade job.

i've only listened to one LP but the music is, as expected, phenomenal. i'm not yet sure--i haven't checked--if it duplicates material elsewhere but i suspect it does. i think it draws to some extent from the hugh tracey archive.

ideally i'd like to keep the music--via MP3 or something--and sell off the package since it's just not going to fit easily anywhere in my apartment and--let's face it--it's ugly. maybe i'll wait a while until these are sold out--i'm guessing there aren't more than a few hundred of these. unless someone devoted their entire month to constructing them.

this illustrates some of the dubious aspects of the mississippi ethos (?) to the extreme. here we have a handcrafted object, nearly a hapax legomena, that deliberately makes obscure what's inside (and no liner notes to help with that). music, no doubt, about which a fair bit has been written (in fact, i know that a number of folks in germany, england, the USA, and elsewhere have written intelligently about this kind of african acoustic guitar music.) as an object it's kind of tacky and ugly. aside from it being so damned odd, the only real pleasure in owning it is just that--being one of the few to own it. but it doesn't (for me anyway) have a lot of aesthetic value in and of itself. i wish someone would just share the music on MP3 or FLAC (seeing as the musicians aren't being compensated anyway) and i can get rid of the box.

big question: how much it cost? if it's less that $75, i figure it's a fair price for a limited-run art object (supposedly just 200 pieces made), however splintery and/or aesthetically dubious. especially if the music is, as you say, phenomenal.

yeah, i don't think it was a rip off or anything... i think it was $65. for 5 LPs + weird wooden box. hey, i'll sell it to you for $500!

j/k

ok so it turns out that as predicted most of this stuff is from various LPs and CDs curated by john storm roberts on the original music label. which of course had liner notes. out of print, but they can be found online, if you know where to look.

mississippi up to their old ways, i guess.

ok these are basically straight bootlegs of the three volumes of "african acoustic" on original music label. why don't they just label them as such? this is pretty rotten.

so i basically own all this stuff.

OK it also has stuff from this on it: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Music-Of-Africa-Series-No-5-The-Guitars-Of-Africa/release/2634480

oh and one side of a record contains this EP by francis bebey: http://www.discogs.com/Francis-Bebey-Pièces-Pour-Guitare-Seule/release/2092180

ok this gets more complicated, i jumped the gun.

also a track from here: http://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2012/04/abdel-karim-el-kably-sudan-music-and.html

and stuff from here: http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=875

and stuff from this: http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=2721

(so basically it's a mix of stuff from existing LPs and some internet downloads. i guess that's OK. though wouldn't it be nice if they told you where they were from? i guess i'll do that work for you!)

also stuff from this: http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Nairobi-Sound/release/1446131

and from this: http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Music-Of-Africa-Series-Musical-Instruments-6-Guitars-1/release/3505638

i guess most people will find this exciting. i have all these records already (all except for the bebey EP, which I might have on MP3).

a track or two from this all-time classic LP: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Africa-Dances/release/2092454

another original music comp that the mississippi box draws from: http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Kampala-Sound-1960s-Ugandan-Dance-Music/release/1429009

and another one: http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Sound-Of-Kinshasa-Guitar-Classics-From-Zaire/release/1548676

a few tracks by s.e. rogie that have been compiled a few times... including on his own collection: http://www.discogs.com/SE-Rogie-Palm-Wine-Guitar-Music-The-60s-Sound/master/289054

(btw mississippi put out much of this stuff on a few LPs a number of years ago, such as "love is love.")

(which also didn't credit any of the sources.)

i think that's about it (in terms of sources for the tracks on the mississippi box). sorry for overposting but you were getting my results as i was looking through my collection... live!

so if you want an overview of african guitar music, none too imaginatively (and somewhat unethically) compiled but great great great great music nonetheless (indeed my favorite type of music really), and you also want a weird splintery pine box, i'd say go for it. or you can probably find most of the records i linked to above in the interwebs if you look hard. or i can burn you a DVDR or something.

That is hilarious! Is the splintery pine box suppose to add it it's____?

amateurist i love you but you are bringing me down. this thread is just gonna go in loops.

both topical & relevant:

I have no special affection or distaste for collectors over anyone else. I definitely do not produce records for their benefit. I am more interested in reaching out to people who are not aware of this music than the already hip collector. Ultimately, the collectors don’t really need our label. They are
curating their own world just fine without my help. I believe collectors’ frenzy comes from a real place of love for the music, but it can often go to some not-so-healthy places. (I myself have been guilty of unhealthy, obsessive collecting in the past, so I’m allowed to talk smack.)

if you were able to just sit down & google your way towards five original music comps, discover notes for everything else therein, maybe it doesn't need liner notes. like maybe they are no longer a prime function for a box set like this that aggregates material from other comps. & c'mon man should the guy not release it or fuck with his plans because your shelves are the wrong size?

i wish someone would just share the music on MP3 or FLAC (seeing as the musicians aren't being compensated anyway)

idk if you have better intel than me (/that proffered itt & elsewhere) for this but afaict it isn't accurate:

Ah—this old question. It is asked often. We take great care to find as many artists or living relatives of artists as we can, and we always pay them very well—cash in advance of release, no less. You can ask anyone who has ever worked with us. Are some of our records “bootlegs”? I suppose a case can be made that sometimes we didn’t have the absolute legal right to release certain things. Are they morally corrupt? We’ve paid everyone we could find who had anything to do with the actual production of the art, and are always open to paying others as they come on the radar.
More and more we’ve been relying on established labels and archives to license from, such as the Lomax archive, Arhoolie Records, Fat Possum, Sterns Music, Delos Productions and so on. Overall I feel the label is very morally covered, and reasonably legally covered, on all its releases. Mistakes have been made in the past and atonement has been attempted and accepted by those we may have accidentally wronged. WedoourbestandIdaresaythatwearea very stand-up operation that has put more money in artists’ and their families’ pockets than our own.

have no doubt you are gonna be able to get this comp soon on mp3, so it works out pretty good, huh. i really think some of the ethos of MSR is defined in relation to how things are now, in a world in which people's commercial and auditory experience of music has a wider context than 45 releases & LPs. there's a huge value to this stuff being in play and to the wider conversation created by releases like this, the lights they shine on specific artists, &c.

anyway i want this box like a motherfucker

if you were able to just sit down & google your way towards five original music comps, discover notes for everything else therein, maybe it doesn't need liner notes. like maybe they are no longer a prime function for a box set like this that aggregates material from other comps. & c'mon man should the guy not release it or fuck with his plans because your shelves are the wrong size?

1) the problem is that those comps are perhaps easy to google (if you can correct for some misspellings in Mississippi's labeling) but in some cases hard to find in the flesh. especially with the liner notes intact. i'm lucky that i can get some of them from my university library. the others i spent months/years looking for. some, as i indicated, are available--or were available, at least--online.
there is a lot of writing on this kind of music but most of it is tucked away in liner notes, books, and journal articles that a layperson will not have access to. that is, somebody without the kind of access to such materials being a member of a university comes with. i don't think it's a mortal sin for mississippi to put this stuff out there with no contextualizing information. it just seems kinda lazy and lame to me. we spent an entire other thread going back and forth about this. i think the gesture is kind of an insult to the artists. but others disagree. that's OK.

2) i don't think he shouldn't have released it. it's just (a) not really to my tastes in packaging and (b) stuff i already have. so i'm not the ideal audience for this particular release. but other folks may enjoy it.

3) there is no fucking way they are giving royalties to the folks on this comp, or should i say their relatives because most of the folks are dead. it would require the persistence and research acumen of a veritable genius to track this stuff down, mostly likely by talking to the folks at ILAM. also we've been over this but despite the mississippi folks' insistence that they have paid the musicians or rights holders in every possible instance, this is demonstrably not true. it is true when they are doing a straight reissue of a particular album--otherwise they'd probably get sued. i'm not going to get on my high horse about this because every single other label that has reissued african recordings made in the 20s–50s has probably not bothered with royalties either. so there's no point in singling out mississippi. but their owners do seem awfully defensive about it.

4) what is the wider conversation? do you think more people will become interested in this stuff based on a limited run of 300 LPs stuffed into pine boxes? i mean it's cool if more people listen to and respond to mwenda jean-bosco but what exactly do you imagine this box set becoming the harbinger of?

i should say that i enjoy almost every other mississippi release, occasionally with some caveats. this particular one just harked back to their aesthetics and way-of-doing-business of a number of years ago, and i found that disappointing.

We’ve paid everyone we could find who had anything to do with the actual production of the art

a key question--one that could be asked of many, many labels and by no means just mississippi--is what does "we could find" mean? how hard do they try to find the rights holders of this music (legal and/or moral rights that is).

i don't actually expect any more of them than the legions of labels that came before, from OJL to yazoo to original music, etc. but they get kind of high-horsed and defensive about it which is a little irritating.