Music From the West Cornwall Museum of Mechanical Music (SDLB-248) (1973)

ONE NIGHT AT THE FAIR

Ignoring the No Trespassing signs, two teenage boys furtively climb the fence surrounding the abandoned grounds of the Lynde Fun Fair on Mount Vernon, Ohio’s north  side, adjacent Route 3. They need a private place to smoke marijuana and proceed to a dilapidated bandstand in the center of the grounds. The wood on the gazebo is rotting and shifts slightly as the high school seniors take the weight off their feet.

“It’s just some old Haystacks Calhoun fartdust,” says Shaun dismissively of his stash as he slides the swivel-lid across the bowl, replaces a resin encrusted screen and begins loading Dan’s brass Proto-Pipe™ with some homegrown. The bowl packed, he lights the weed, takes a deep hit and holds the smoke in his lungs for a full 30 seconds, exhaling a virtual cumulus cloud of pungent smoke and involuntarily coughing. His friend follows.

As the two pass the pipe back and forth, reloading several times, the pleasant effects of the herbs take on a mild hallucinatory quality.

“Dude,” says Dan, all at once. “I hear the unmistakable strains of Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ as if played by a Merry-Go-Round pipe organ.”

Shaun, who’d been lost an erotic reverie involving the  Mount Vernon Senior High School girls’ shower room and cheerleading squad, comes round and listens intently.

“It’s faint, but it sounds more like ‘Gay Parisienne’ by Offenbach,” he replies. “Played in a very stilted way and ever so slightly off-key.”

“The effect, especially in this context and under the influence of pot, is quite creepy,” he adds, his now reddened eyes darting this way and that, scanning the disused amusement park for signs of any company.

“Yes, it’s turned very Scooby-Doo-’If-it-wasn’t-for-those-darn-kids’ around here,” says Dan, making to leave.

The music changes. A piano boogie by Irving Berlin wafts among the half-fallen stalls. How odd. They listen, unable to move.

“Jesus, what’s that,” calls Dan suddenly. “It’s almost as if I hear an early sampling keyboard like a Mellotron.”

“It’s reproducing a violin sound in the most uncanny way,” agrees Shaun. “Come on, let’s go, I’ve had enough of these phantom automatic musical instruments.”

As the pair clamber over the fence and on to Dan’s basement bedroom to play Dungeons & Dragons, they are watched by the unseen eyes of the Fun Fair’s old caretaker, Mr. Gillespie, standing by a Garrard turntable, just flipping over his Music From the West Cornwall Museum of Mechanical Music Lp. He is alone in the fair’s workshop where he comes to escape Mrs. Gillespie who abuses him, sometimes even striking him with coffee mugs if she’s been drinking.

Prefab Sprout – Steve McQueen (1985)

HISTORIC ENGLISH CITY “TAKEN OFF THE MAP”
Prefab Sprout Blamed
(Greenwich, London) – Cartographers working for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II have taken the ancient city of Durham, now formerly of Country Durham in northeast England, off the Royal Map. The city was famously “put on the map” in 1985 by indie-pop group Prefab Sprout and their debut album Steve McQueen.

Full of witty lyrics, wistful melodies, clever arrangements and intriguing production touches courtesy Thomas Dolby, Steve McQueen heralded the dawn of great hitmakers in the making. However, the band has been unable to sustain their initial momentum and now languishes in an adult indie-pop ghetto.

“While 80s period touches do date the Lp,” offered music writer Clifford Snoats, “Urbane songwriting and forceful performances lift Prefab Sprout above pretentious and MOR contemporaries, like the Smiths and Crowded House respectively, with whom they share many superficial similarities.”

“Steve McQueen is for people who like their music jangly and bittersweet,” he added.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has ordered mapmakers to remove Durham, legendary founded by Saint Cuthbert in the first millenium, from the map because the local band’s career subsequent to Steve McQueen, though critically lauded, has singularly failed to maintain a high level of public interest.

Clegg admitted that Steve McQueen was “pretty good,” but argued that it was “the kind of indie-pop album that the kind of indie-pop kidz [he] didn’t like back in the 80s were overly-gushy about. And now those people write for frickin’ Mojo.”

What I See When I Open the Door of the Cupboard Housing My Amplifier &tc.

Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden (PCSD 105) (1988)

One of a small handful of albums (e.g. Neu!’s first) that sounded like nothing else when first issued. Having seen them open up for Elvis Costello on the Imperial Bedroom tour in their earlier, pedestrian New-Wavy guise, I was uninterested in Talk Talk until English friends opened my eyes to their first post-pop Lp. Spirit of Eden has little to do with New Wave and more to do with In A Silent Way and Tago Mago whose cut ‘n’ paste improvisation production techniques were appropriated to make an atmospheric haunting masterpiece.

EDIT: I should mention that the vinyl issue of Spirit is somewhat less than satisfactory for two reasons: first, though my copy is relatively clean, any surface noise is a problem given the hushed nature of many the record’s passages and second, the pressing is curious in that, despite clocking in at over 40 minutes, there is a huge run out groove. Now, my limited understanding of the mechanics of record pressing leads me to believe that, due to so-called “groove cramming” there is a degradation of sound as the needle nears the center label; it’s possible then that to avoid this problem for their gossamer creation, the album was pressed with the extra space surrounding the label resulting in much tighter banding. So copies of the album which received any amount of play suffered correspondingly. As a result, I usually listen my CD copy. [There are audible gasps and calls of "You Bounder!" and "You Cad!" from the Thrifty Vinyl peanut gallery.]

Both Spirit and its like-sounding follow-up Laughing Stock have recently been re-issued on vinyl–perhaps this problem has been corrected.

Cool looking label, but dig the run-out groove more appropriate to a 5 minute 12″ single.

Nina and Frederik (Columbia SEG 7926) (1960)

OH MY GOD! THEY’RE COMING!

It’s okay. They’re going. The storm has passed.

Boxes for my singles

I paid two quid for these 7″ singles boxes and they came with 100 singles; some may even be interesting, e.g. a 1976 record by Barry Biggs on Dynamic and some original early 60s Elvis discs, as well as the Sinitta and Deee-Lite pictured, but most I will be re-charitizing to make way for  records already in the collection. You get some perpetrators trying to sell boxes like this for £10!

I Didn’t Buy It Because It Was Too Expensive For A Charity Shop

This Mickey Newbury Lp was £9 at PSDA shop in Derby yesterday (I’ve been getting around this summer!) and I wasn’t having it. Eko, Farmer, what have you seen for too much money lately and passed on? Please edit this post with your results. Anyone else, comment at will.

Jerry Silverman – The Art of the Folk-Blues Guitar (XTRA 1096)

A 1970 British re-issue of a ’64 US Folkways Lp by Transatlantic Records, Silverman intones paradoxically didactic instructions on the performance of a genre most requiring of intangible feel in a lilting Bronx/American Jewish burr all the while illustrating his points on his axe. It is both less and more interesting than it appears: there’s nothing particularly weird about this record, even taken out of context, but as my technique is pretty shite, it might come in handy as originally intended.

This cost me a quid today at the Folkestone Flea Fair on Rendevous Street where my son and I had a stall. I grossed around £30 while the boy pulled in around a C note. Harumph.

Special Guest Mix This Week…

Link

Stethoscopic Heart Record (Phillips D 999528 L)

“This record is a comprehensive study of Heart Sounds, Murmurs and Arrhythmicas.”

“The unique feature of this record is that it was produced so that it might be listened to with a stethoscope.”

“Sit comfortably with the ear pieces in place and simply hold the chest piece in your hand (one seems to hear better with one’s eyes closed).”

“Do not try to listen for too long a time.”

The liner notes of this record virtually designed for the Uncatorgorized category are full of wisdom. The record itself offers no surprises to anyone who can read the front cover. In what we call a non-regional accent, American physician George D. Geckeler identifies all manner of heartbeat defect. Pinpointing different sounds, rhythms and pitches in a dry, didactic tone, Stethoscopic Heart Record could have easily been made use of by Coldcut to spice up one of their mixes.

Having no stethoscope to hand, I listened through headphones for a good approximation.

The song (or “band”) names would not be out of place on a Ekoplekz album: “Harsh Systolic Murmur”, “Fibrulation With Premature Beats”, , “Pericardial Friction Rub”, “Another Unusual Gallop Rhythm” and my favourite, “Murmurs of Increased Intensity at Height of Inspiration”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve never seen a record this old with grooves so clean. The second 2Lp edition came out in 1972, I don’t know exactly when this one was issued.