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

Forced Exposure has more copies of the Washington Phillips LP.

Still blowing minds in this home.

What exactly is the legality of these Mississippi records? Mike up there talked about having to change names of songs and I was wondering if all of these records are being done on the downlow because some of these recordings have been on other cds, like the Professor Johnson stuff on Document and the Washington Phillips cd Yazoo, which make no mentions. And specifically with the Phillips record, things like missing all the tracks (most of us would probably have spent the extra on a 2xlp) or the recent uncovering of new info about his life, etc. Great stuff, either way, just wondering how certain parties are getting compensated.

Listen to this and the I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore comp all the time all the time all the time. Haven't migrated to the stacks since I bought 'em. Missed Love is Love and Washington Phillips - need to get digging, I guess.

New Orch. Regional de Kayes is good - maybe less than mind-blowing.

x-post: My understanding with music from this era, from the 20s and 30s and often even later, it is incredibly difficult to track people down. If you wanted to pay for Washington Phillips royalties, I don't even know how you could. If you notice, Miss. LPs are very inexpensive, and they always attempt to license songs.

The two songs that were changed are the only instance of this happening, and I do not think is something that will happen again.

All the LPs will soon enough be in print. Or if they go out of print they'll be back if you're just a little patient.

The sequel to 'Life iss a Problem' is just starting production now, FYI -- I didn't compile nearly as much of this one but then again I have a 3 CD set to get together for Tompkins Square next fall, as well as the CD that will accompany my gospel book, so I am not bummed about that.

People in NYC who do not have LIAP: It's on sale for only $10 at Kims right now -- they have a chart and it's listed as their #2 best seller for the week? Or it was when I dropped by there the otehr day. That totally made my week.

ps: to th ebest of my knowledge, a number of mississippi records have been either officially "cleared" of the need for royalties -- as w/ the latest african disc, that one was fully public domain, or have a very high percentage of royalties going to the artists, as with the philip cohran album.

yaow! there's an article here that namedrops an imminent reissue of michael hurley's armchair boogie on mississippi. i actually sat around yesterday wondering why people haven't reissued this.

i think the tjo to trace a raveling ep/s is as good as anything on mississippi.

unfortunately I have heard, off the record from an employee, that lawyers are preventing that reissue. which sucks.

f'kin jerks. I hate those guys.

aw. i saw michael hurley a couple of weeks ago and was asking the merch guy if you could get any of his stuff on lp, which seemed as if it was so dumb a question as to be funny, they're long gone. gnomonsong? have just put out his last record, so that's something.

a skip james record?, and represses of love is love & thai orchestra are happening/have happened, apparently, but i've no idea where one would ascertain such things outside of forced exposure or honest jon's, and there's nothing there yet.

"it's about time for someone to resurrect Herwyn, no?"

didn't Matt Valentine & Erika Elder do a take-off on this, Heroin, for one of their CDR imprints?

as i emailed Mike this, J. Spaceman rrecently did a two-page spread in Vice about MS Records, with Life is a Problem getting a half-page gush on it.

and along the same lines, Spring Fed Records recently put out the John Work Tapes, Recording Black Culture, which includes the crucial recordings of Frazier and Patterson. no one seems to be talking about this disc, but it was originally slated to come out on Revenant. or at least when i interviewed Dean Blackwood back in the late '90's, he put it on a short list alongside The Anthology Vol. 4 and their pre-war gospel second volume comp.

i have a couple of boring mississippi recs qs:

on love is love, the second song's by s.e. rogie, who also pops up on city council. he's written down as s.e. rogers, which i think he's also credited as on the comp the track's from, africa dances. is there anything behind this?

and, also, there's another blues comp, apart from life is a problem and not i don't feel at home ..., called something like everything is o k. has anyone got it/can you get it, etc? what's it like?

i missed that love is love comp. is it worth buying (ie i can get it for $45)?

yaow, well, it's really good?, and all. it was just reissued and then apparently stopped through an injunction, so it's around but not for sale. volcanic tongue in glasgow had some this week, for sure. it's really great, more straightahead juju & highlife than the city council comp, which was all over the place. it's really nice.

i wonder whether i'm confused about the other comp. there's a little discography here. the only thing i know of that isn't there's something that popped up on forced exposure a while ago; a comp of a late musician and friend of the mississippi dudes that they had a few spares of. i can't remember ... any details about it.

oh wait:

SPOOKY DANCE BAND Scary Reality Nightmare Fantasy: A Retrospective (Mississippi Records & Friends) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT.
The Spooky Dance Band were an offshoot of Belligham's legendary funereal garage folk blues outift The Reeks And The Wrecks. The tragic death of Reeks guitarist Orion Satushek ended several brief but gloriously productive musical collaborations. The Reeks were gone, leaving a recently finished album, released earlier this year on Andee's tUMULt label, as well as a record by the Spooky Dance Band a group that featured Orion, his Reeks bandmate Jason Sands and his good friend Caroline Buchalter. (...)

from aquarius, who've also got love is love for cheap x

volcanic tongue in glasgow had some this week

thanks for that! going to head down there right now.

man, i love ilm! i was just about to order this from the states and now i find i can get it five minutes from my house at half the price. they do have it in stock. yay! thanks schlump.

ha ha. i almost didn't say because i saw you were writing in dollars. it is pretty useful. it was worth the money for the volcanic tongue bag, which i now leave draped around my room as a conversation piece, and to imply that i am knowledgeable enough to buy records from there. they've pretty much got all the available mississippi stuff in stock. monorail are good for ordering in mississippi stuff too, so you know.

yup, i usually get the mississippi stuff in monorail. i have no idea why it didn't cross my mind to try volcanic tongue. in fact, i have no idea why i don't go in there more period.

i know. i did the same thing, it was only one of team monorail that pointed me in the right direction. my enduring memory of vt is going in there and actually not recognising any of the records whatsoever, so getting that shelf inspector feeling i get when i stumble into dance music shops full of anonymous white labels by accident. but it looked pretty great, a few rows dedicated to vaguely mississippi archival kind of things, and new charalambides-y stuff as well.

In the past two weeks I've basically stumbled into copies of Life is a Problem and the Thai Orchestra LP. This shit rules. Thanks, this thread.

get yourself a copies of "I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore" and "Last Kind Words" PRONTO.

yeh. the african comps too, lipi kodi ya city council particularly - it's all over the place & really beautiful.

i'm going to keep bumping this thread until mississippi put out something else to enthuse about: has anyone heard the other side of the straight street group forty-five that's on life is a problem? the song on there's incredible: like the standard trundling gospel guitar chug but played ten times faster, like a gospel ramones. also, any other o.m. terrell stuff?

straight street group has proven to be one of kevin nutt's greatest finds in a few years, yes. more about that when i can say more.

just finished up the tracklist for the sequel to 'life is a problem' -- was one third compiled dby myself, a third by mr. nutt and a third by warren and eric the two label heads of mississippi.

it's going to be the launch of my new label with mississippi, social music! am so psyched. yay. lots of cool new and old stuff in the works.

officially excited here.

for real. the trundling, jamming first side of life is a problem's such a great sequence of music. good news about the label.

i meant to nip in here and post the other day: there's a new seven inch on mississippi, at forced exposure and honest jons; it's one of a series of singles they're putting out of stuff recorded in portland with a social twist, with a sign on the back saying it's going to be four singles a year.

oh & i'm totally expecting straight street group LIVE FROM FMU any day now. i seriously can't believe some musician hasn't totally ripped them off, that style of fast-chugging guitar playing.

that single is out of print already, so i suggest buying it right up! can't wait to hear more of those 7"s.

i guess the rats lp is finally mastered and okay'ed and about to happen soon so it's mentionable now? that's the first album by the pre dead moon band, the rats -- supposedly awesome and i don't doubt it.

eric is responsible for the sequencing of 'life is a problem,' fyi -- he's great at that stuff...

nice ... I think there were actually three Rats lps? I have to check my archives ... I think that I have at least two if not three of those Rats LPs .. just can't recall which ones without digging out my crates

Obv the Zipper Lp is the one that all us Dead Moon heads want .. I have the original CD ...

one of those Rats lps ( again there were either two or three ... I am pretty sure there were three) .. was originally on blood-red vinyl ... rock that, MS!

i think it's the first rats record but am not sure. i'm playing catch up with my dead moonology.

thankfully eric is pals with those guys and regularly turns up tombstone records dead stock (no pun intended) -- just yesterday there were two lp and one 7" sized boxes sent from them to the shop. could be pierced arrows stuff but maybe not?

soooo glad i live near miss. records -- such a great shop.

LIAP pt 2, first release on Social Music, has a name now:

Oh Graveyard, You Can't Hold Me Always.

It will be pretty good, I think!

We hope also in collaboration with Kevin Nutt to release a Straight Street Group LP -- there is one known copy of a Straight Street Group LP that's just surfaced -- Kevin has that plus the two singles and what I've heard is all very very good. Now we're all just working on getting in touch with the performers or their family to make this happen on the up and up.

Nice. :-)

That's all exciting news Mike!

so great. i thought the straight street group thing was a one-single deal. most of the stuff on the first side of liap i figured just existed by the grace of someone schlepping a tape recorder along to church.

Ummmmm, am confused why you'd think that? Recorded sermons and spirituals were some of the earliest best-selling cylinders/ 78s. When gospel as we know it got started in the 20s/ 30s it was well recorded and remains to this day. Raw bluesy gospel was marginalized the same way that hillbilly and blues recordings were once the Depression hit.

Sanct. blues didn't die in the '30s it just ceased to be recorded as much and unlike the juke joint circuit you didn't have so many small labels around to help it stay healthy. It continued to be recorded, and that's the un-stated "point" of LIAP all of which is post WW2, '50s and after -- maybe we should have made that more clear.

Some recordings of this ilk are done in the church, but usually by the musicians themselves -- with a handful of notable exceptions of course. There has been a lot of good fieldwork done umm, but for instance Rev. Charlie Jackson -- those were all just records made in small studios for a small local label, Booker.

Does that answer your question? For the origins of sanct. blues I gighly recommend "Songsters and Saints" by Paul Oliver.

Ohh and did I mention the Hurley LP is back on? It'll take a while but that's great news too...

Resultant fame and fortune for everyone. (Hey, I can dream.) Oh yeah Mike that friend of yours dropped me a line, thanks!

awesome, thanx (xpost to Mike)

do people think it's time for a catchall Mississippi Recs S/D thread?

Search: All
Destroy: None

Mike: Are they gonna do both Raccoon LPs or just Armchair?

Some recordings of this ilk are done in the church, but usually by the musicians themselves -- with a handful of notable exceptions of course. There has been a lot of good fieldwork done umm, but for instance Rev. Charlie Jackson -- those were all just records made in small studios for a small local label, Booker.

yeah, i think i was maybe basing that on charlie jackson - aren't there a couple of tracks that aren't on the comp that are labelled as "boombox" recordings? i maybe thought that's how it worked. like with some of lonnie farris's slower more sermon-y stuff, no matter how great they are i didn't really see them as 78s to release. thanks for clearing it up though. i've read some of oliver's history of the blues, and i understand the LIAP emphasis on post-war -> golden age gospel stuff.

is really good news about michael hurley. i love penguins.

crumb bros track is amazing
I was really wondering where I heard it before
and then I realized that richard hell track I'm Your Man was it

Forced Exposure was out of most of these so I tried another place and got the below response. Hopefully they will be able to get them

PHILLIPS, WASHINGTON What Are They Doing In Heaven Today? lp
> THOMAS, IRMA The New Orleans Series lp
> V/A Life Is A Problem lp
> V/A Love Is Love lp

hey ,
we're out of all four of those. but we're about to get another big order from mississippi so we'll keep you posted when we get those back in. should be in the next week or so. thanks so much.

stuff wil get reprinted -- not sure how soon. irma thomas is recent enough you should still be able to find copies man.

bongo joe reissue via arhoolie license will be NICE -- will be so great to have that on vinyl.

Aquarius mailorder says they can get me the Irma Thomas now, but still can't get me V/A Life Is A Problem lp, V/A Love Is Love lp, and the Washington Phillips. Mississippi Records told 'em that Love is Love won't be reissued for a year.

I wonder if any stores in the DC/Baltimore area have this stuff?

try true vine in baltimore, man -- ian's pals with eric and even working on a few releases, i believe...

Thanks.

Eric said last night that Ian is actually starting his own label, which will be distro'ed solely via Mississippi.

That's three new labels to be distro'ed by Miss. all starting up real soon -- Domino out of New Orleans, True Vine out of Baltimore, and Social Music also out of PDX...

Was super sweet last night seeing Jason Spaceman thank Eric for his label super profusely after the Spiritualized set.

try true vine in baltimore, man -- ian's pals with eric and even working on a few releases, i believe...

― Mike McGooney-gal, Tuesday, September 16, 2008 4:56 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

ian just abdicated his share in true vine last week, but im sure jason will still carry the titles, esp if ian is gonna start releasing stuff through MS.

also, red onion books and records at 18th & T NW in DC has all the MS stuff as it comes out...

i got lipa kodi ya at true vine last year, love is love at harvest records in asheville, and like every other MS release at red onion...

*PLEASE KEEP AN EYE OUT!* Eric Isaacson from Mississippi Records had a break in at his home today and had about 100 really rare blues and folk records stolen. A-M of his collection. Stuff like Cat Irons, rare Skip James, Fred McDowell, One String Jones, cannons jug stompers, etc. If you have any info, please call him at 503-954-2686. Thank you!

maybe it's the underprivileged reappropriating their culture?

where'd you see that, sleeve?

Hey that's a good way to get people calling you with rare records they find.

https://katu.com/news/local/community-rallies-to-clean-up-portland-oregon-beloved-mississippi-records-music-store-after-suspected-arson

https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/16wcpb6/mississippi_records_arson_fire/

bizarre

https://www.mississippirecords.net/csr

They're still cranking out records and have some sort of community support plan. I still have concerns about the label's ethics that folks spelled out on the other Mississippi thread. Is the label more trustworthy now?

well keep in mind the label has new owners and is now Chicago-based, the shop in Portland OR is different. I believe they kept the rights to Michael Hurley and Dead Moon but sold everything else to the Chicago people.

the new label was selling straight bootleg Arthur Russell tapes on Bandcamp so I think the attitude is the same

Did they release any Arthur Russell music? The tapes I saw were were collections of singles that he owned, 1 disco and 1 Italian pop (of course, unlikely to be licensed).

Can't speak for all their main label releases (vs. the tape series), but their newsletters discuss working with musicians and/or their families. Most recently, how they came in contact with Bizimungu Dieudonne's daughter after a reissue had stalled. C. who's running the label now seems like good people and they continue to put out great stuff.

ah ok I stand corrected! I just saw the title

I assumed it was like Loose Joints 12"s and such

yeah the current owners are good people & concerned with keeping things above board ime