Your opinion, please: 366-band, 411 track 1981 box set

Well, I'm quite sorry not to be able to answer that question. I DID actually go through a little phase with Popol Vuh sometime last summer. Can't recall if I heard Nosferatu theme in the process. Seems like I read about that album, though, or a lot of people liked it or something. I remember Nosferatu more as an old horror movie I saw in my childhood than anything else. Older than Popol Vuh, and no music comes to mind.

deliberate

Not to entice response, no, but to facilitate listenability/accessibility, yes, definitely. Numerous people who got the 1st Edition have told me they love the set, and yet haven't gotten around to the mp3-CD. 181 tracks on one disc is a little prohibitave. I always focused on the mixes--the 'Briefcase' was a means I came up with to allow myself to focus on making the best flowing, most listenable and cohesive mixes possible, and yet still include all the stuff that was great/good/significant but didn't flow.

Some of the "sounds" of the mixes are pretty obvious--the 'Amplifier' disc is clearly the more "rock" disc. But some of them--the 'Flame,' the 'Icicle,' the 'Brain' are a little less analogous to genre. So I'm curious how others think they hold up as individual mixes. I have found that with the exception of a couple of them, they stand as individual mixes with any others I've made, even with all the time/sound "restrictions". Maybe it's like a sonnet--you have to try harder in ways than with free verse, but sometimes it can facilitate a big payoff.

did you get my e-mail, i.m.? i sent it out last night german time and didn't get a reply.

I did indeed get your email, and I sent you a reply.

I wonder if I'm being filtered into people's spam boxes, somehow?

Sure none of you real writers want to salvage its readability with a cogent anecdote or insightful analysis?

Yes, and replied. Looks like I may have to swith email providers for this project. What a pain.

I'm using a new email address. The lycos one seemed to be giving people trouble. So now be on the lookout for a message from soundslike1981@gmail.com instead.

I will send out a mass email to those on each list (separately) so that you'll know your status with certainty. I apologise to anyone who didn't end up on the reserve list because of email problems.

You will not need to reply to the email I send, it's just FYI. If you haven't received notification by Tuesday night (U.S. CST) and you feel you should've been on one of the lists, then email me and we'll sort it out.

Thanks

Here's the updated version of my "essay," I'm very open to any suggestions or criticisms, bearing in mind that I'm far from being a writer/critic myself:

1 9 8 1

My first idea of how to introduce this set was with a pretentiously lofty-sounding question: "what do we do when we realise Pandora's box really can't be shut?" This was supposed to set me up to cogently persuade you that the music found on this set provides an answer: that when our belief in a fundamental order is broken, survivors resolve to make a beautiful mess. I wanted to argue that a lot of this music belongs to a noble lineage of "outré" and progressive popular art made by people trying to restore hope and meaning (and fun) amidst the smoking embers of classicism, modernism, and post-modernism. I wanted to say something pithy about how the shattering of the notion of discrete, monolithic cultures not only enabled this music, but made it necessary. I'd even have set the stage with Thatcher, Reagan, wasteland suburbs, post-industrial economic shifts, the dole, the rise of fundamentalism and yuppiedom and anti-disco rockism. My imaginary essay would’ve made you think you were reading a collaboration between Simon Reynolds, Brian Eno and George Orwell.

But the truth is, I was in diapers in 1981. I didn't start my daily worrying about Grandpa Reagan’s nuclear winter until '87 at the earliest. As far as underground music is concerned, I have about a decade of experience with the stuff. My parents were kindly hippies spinning Joan Baez and James Taylor records. They imbued me with a sense that music was deeply important, but didn't have much of its sonic or cultural breadth to share. Presently, I "know" about as much about music as could be expected of any musically obsessed twenty-four year old who owns only a couple hundred jazz records, a hundred hip-hop records, overuses Skip James on mixes, and only heard his first Talking Heads album as a junior in high school. The point is, I don't have any special insight enabling me to write cool, authoritative, impressively linernotish liner notes. When it comes down to it, I put this set together as a way to avoid having to put in words what is so great about this music. After all, the music puts it best.

This set inevitably reflects my biases as its curator. Indeed, I chose to emphasise certain spheres and leave others out entirely (for someone else to anthologise, hopefully). Still, I hope the set has depth and breadth enough to allow you to decide the "best," "most important," "coolest" sounds. I realise you may even disagree with me that 1981 was worth all the trouble. Personally, I think something was happening from about 1978 to 1982 that is noteworthy in the history of pop music. There was an earnest expansiveness and playfulness regarding the boundaries (or absence thereof) between genres and between "art" and "pop". And I think 1981 may have been the most diverse year of the period, if not the most intense. But nothing I can say will convince you—only the music can.

A portion of these tracks sound undeniably dated (if charmingly so,) and will probably trigger nostalgia even if you've never heard them before. Progressive (in pop terms) as these particular tracks were at the time, they established the paradigm for the infamous "sound of the 80s," and by extension the cartoonish aesthetic currently revered by college freshmen too young to actually remember the decade. However, I believe that the majority of the music comprising this set’s “sound of the 80s” would set a fire were it released today. The paradigm in which many of these musicians operated was expansive enough that a lot of today's "progressive" music is still exploring it (in just the way that many of 1981's best bands were working through Can, Kraftwerk, Sun Ra, the Velvet Underground, et al).

Investigating threads of Influence and innovation; glowing about "prescience;" and dividing the thieves from the originals are games which can arguably enhance musical enjoyment. But I hope you'll first take this music on its own terms. I came into my interest in “the post-punk period" slowly. Till I was about 17 I bought the hype that punk was the Sex Pistols, whom I didn't especially like, and therefore I skipped ahead to Yo La Tengo and the Pixies. It was only after I stumbled through a couple dozen records that I started to notice ’79, ’82, 1981. Any conscious, intellectual concept of a "movement" came only after I first felt the music without analysing it. Though I've become fascinated with the "culture" this music evinces, I'm not pained by not having "been there": the music stands on its own, even without a perfect understanding of its context.

On to the indisputable facts: 411 tracks, 366 bands, almost 21 hours of sound, touching most elements of the post-punk, art-pop, new wave, hardcore, no wave, d.i.y., new romantic, power-pop, dancepunk, art-punk and electropop spheres. Nine of the discs are audio CDs, carefully sequenced along sonic or emotional themes. The tenth disc is an mp3 "appendix" containing tracks by 130-plus bands that didn't fit the main mixes, most of whom are just as good as those on the main CDs. While it may also be a resource, I hope this set is above all a good spin.

For some of you, there is little new here. For a good many, this may be all the "post-punk" you'll ever want. I don't need to change your life, I just want to play you some music; so if you enjoy any of it, my effort has been worthwhile. My secret hope, however, is that for a few of you, this set will be a further step toward a deep, passionate addiction to music you might not have known existed. The event called music doesn’t truly occur without both passionate performance and passionate listening; you turn chaos and noise into meaningful beauty by listening well.

Thanks for the words of support. I think I will leave my intro in, if for no other reason than to maintain the DIY-ness; but it would be fun to add a few bits from those who "were there". There's some usable space in the booklet going to waste ; )

Regards.

You're on the reserve list, no worries.

Thanks

Yeah, they are partly apologetic--but they're also "clever" ways of suggesting some of the loftier things I think may be the case re: this music, without having to actually "proclaim" any of it to be so. In other words, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff to say about the music/period/atmosphere/culture, but I'm not in a position to say it properly. But usually that's what "massive box set" liner notes do--they provide a sage setting of the stage; so I thought I'd have a bit of fun with the conundrum I faced. Just some silliness to fill the space--which is why I tried my best to get a proper writer to give me something to fill it with instead ; )

I really can't. It'd be shit. It's all a sketch in my head, anyway. You've read enough of my garble over the years to know it's not self deprecation for me to say I can't write.

Even if I could say it all properly I'm not sure I'd want to--kind of why I included "links" and other suggested reading material at the back of the booklet, to let the listener decide for themselves whether "what happened" and "what it's all about" matter.

I haven't read it yet obviously (because it's not released,) but in talking with Simon Reynolds a little, it looks like my set will provide a pretty reasonable soundtrack to his upcoming post-punk tome 'Rip It Up and Start Again' (which sounds like it will be more fantastic than I'd imagined).

I'm still taking waiting list requests, at soundslike1981@gmail.com : )

If you have not received an email from me but feel you should have, drop me a line at the address below.

Thanks.

Amazing.

I mean, it will be a lot more amazing in a few months after I have a chance to listen to it all. 21 HOURS!

All to say--I'd love to hear any thoughts/criticisms/suggestions/ideas/anecdotes/etc. those of you who get this thing have. I've spent a good while with the music, and especially with the stuff on the set, and I still love it all--not burned out yet. So I'm curious what people who *haven't* spent such an intense time with it think.

I've bought materials for another 50 copies, so I guess I'm committed to at least that many. But it may still be another 2-4 weeks before I can get to all the "waiting list" people. It's just a very time-consuming process.

The first two CD's were composed of mostly stuff I already knew but there were a few stray things here and there that clearly warrant further research on my part. Currently I'm enjoying the "brain" CD quite a bit. Not only does it have a lot more stuff I hadn't heard before in comparison to the first two CD's, but it's just the KIND of music I want to hear lately. It's soo nice to hear a Birthday Party song in the context of a compilation, too, because I find whole albums of theirs a bit too much to take, even if they did do some really great songs in their career.

Wow, Eyeless In Gaza! I haven't heard them in so long! I actually remember that song, too. Great stuff.

20 copies went out last thurs/friday, and another 12 will go out tomorrow. My plan is to go to the post office every couple days, to give time for enough sets to be paid for to make it worth using my lunch break. I appreciate everyone's timely responses to my mass email.

How did I miss this thread? Wowsa. Amazing. Great work IM.

My email has been sent.

Is there more available for purchase, I would love to get my hands on a copy. It looks fantastic. I'm really impressed like everyone else.

I'm not sure what the most cost-effective method for international shipping is. Try http://ircalc.usps.gov/ with a weight of 12oz from postal code 72205.

Poortheatre, Jmeister --

Go ahead and send me an email at soundslike1981@gmail.com if you would so I can put you on the waiting list. It'll probably be several weeks before I could get to you, so that should give you time to get together the $13.

Mike O.--

Glad it reached you, hope you dig it.