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

This is the best I could find. David Keenan says it better than I could anyway. Forgive the hyperbole, folks, but this album is really THAT good!

http://www.volcanictongue.com/?cat=1

Various Artists
Life Is A Problem
Mississippi Records
LP + 7″
OUT OF STOCK!

Totally *wailing* collection of raw, primitive electric guitar testifying from a bunch of obscure/seldom-compiled blues preachers including Utah Smith, Rev. Lonnie Farris, Sister O.M. Terrell, Straight Street Group, Rev. A. Johnson, Elder Charles Beck, Crumb Brothers, Bishop Perry Tills, Willanette Singers, Professor Johnson, Tom Dutson and Oakland?s Famous One Man Band with a bonus 7? single featuring George ?Bongo Joe? Coleman performing ?This Old World Is In A Terrible Condition.? Some of the electric guitar playing here is so ragged and iconoclastic that it ends up sounding somewhere between Sonny Sharrock and Fred ?Sonic? Smith and a track like Elder Charles Beck?s anti-rock rant ?Rock & Roll Sermon, Pt. 1 & Pt. 2? feels as Luciferian and high-energy as anything from the amps of the MC5. Besides all of the ripping and revelating there are a few slow-burning spirituals that lend the comp a particularly numinous depth, with Sister O.M. Terrell?s reading of the title track a hypnotic stand-out. But played back to back it?s the most punkinest comp of olde-time gospel shakedown to have made it to vinyl in years. Highly recommended.

Oops moderator plz fix title, sorry, thanks

Super blushing/ psyched people like this! I think it's sold out already, actually.

I did the liner notes and compiled about 80% of the thing along with Eric from Mississippi Records.

It gives me hope that my gospel blues book/ CD might 'Buked & Scorned' (which I'll hopefully finish this year/ get published late Fall) have an audience. We didn't make it explicit anywhere, but the "point" of this LP was to show that "sanctified blues" never went away it just was sort of hiding, even after the market for race records dried up. Also just to turn people on to this stuff.

Working on a sequel to this which will also likely be out this year -- and I can't recommend everything Eric's doing with Mississippi Records enough.

NOTE: The first person to correctly identify the two (intentionally) mislabeled artists will get a special prize from me.

Ha, I was going to say -- "This is totally Mike's bag, surely..."

Oh wow, didn't know this was yours Mike! The shop I work at has sold several dozen copies. Did you have anything to do with the other comps on Mississippi?

Which shop is that? Great to hear that it's like done so well, wow.

This is really Eric's bag, his label -- his partner Warren (guy who found the VU acetate) helped curate a few of the comp.s thus far, and Warren is going to be more involved in the future.

All I've done is maybe talk to Eric about like which Anglin Bros. song to use, or which Gospel Keys track -- nothing more than that and the LIAP comp. thus far.

However, I am overseeing a few reissue projects that I'm super psyched about -- too early to say anything about 'em here on the public internets, though.

Ah, you're the guy behind my spoken word reissues! I should have known.

hah -- i wish, ned!

seeing as the lp is already out of print (though plenty copies should be sitting ins tores, it just came out like 6 weeks ago), and mississippi records will never ever issue music digitally, you could download a rip of the album here if you were so inclined:

http://metaphysiques.blogspot.com/2007/12/various-artists-life-is-problembut.html

Ohhh -- and for the dude up top who's so into the charles beck anti-rock sermon, here's a column i wrote that's mostly about it alone:

http://www.emusic.com/features/spotlight/290_200707.html

and not long after i wrote that column his rare folkways album from the '50s was digitalized, and it's really worth hearing:
http://www.emusic.com/album/Elder-Charles-D-Beck-Urban-Holiness-Service-MP3-Download/11072759.html

Which shop is that? Great to hear that it's like done so well, wow.

Academy Records in Brooklyn, NY.
The other Mississippi stuff has sold very well too; in the future we've decided to order product direct through Eric rather than a distributor yet to be named.

Mike - awesome, man! You've done a public service - it's my favorite record in a long, long while. Please keep up updated (especially about a sequel!) via this forum if you don't mind. Thanks!

PS any other Crumb Brothers stuff hanging around?

ian -- that's my favorite shop in nyc; when i was last there i was talking to this guy caleb who seems very rad and i guess i hooked them up? so, yay. i hope when i'm back in a month that i have some spending $$ for that shop.

and as to the person with the manitoba 12" for a name -- for more crumb brothers info. pls. email me a'ight.

also if you like the record i strongly suggest checking out the records we listed in the liner notes.

(intentionally) mislabeled

why you do this?

i shouldn't have said anything at all 'cause this is such a public forum, and everything. but it just was the only way we could include two of the songs.

anyone who'd dig just a little bit, like do an internet search with some of the info. provided and the song title, would easily access that information -- understand? that aspect of the thing wasn't my call, but it's not like i've never done anything that's not "boot leg ish" (i speak here solely for myself in that regard).

Any chance of a second pressing? raging I missed this.

there are still copies around, man -- sitting all over record shops. i saw a few tonight in portland at everyday music.

and yeah there will be a second printing, but not for awhile.

there better be, dude, cause that shit did not hit stores around here at all (or just flew right out the door the first day).

oh god that crumb brothers song is so satisfying

where is there?

i could be wrong, but it looks to me that copies are available here:

http://www.bompstore.com/servlet/Detail?no=8044

and here:

http://new.honestjons.com/shop.php?pid=32386

and here:

http://www.deecoo.de/product_info.php?info=p130803_various---life-is-a-problem--lp-7-----LP-UK.html

Mike:

Yes, Caleb is an ultimate bro. One of my tightest pals for real.
Anyway, good work to all involved. Maybe Caleb & I will play somethin' from the comp on our radio show this week.

And to speak to God Punch To Hawkwind, whose actual name I can't remember right now: It probably made it to the shops (you're in Philly?) but there were definite problems, at least for us, in keeping it in stock. We'd order ten copies, sell them in two days, then not be able to restock from F0rc3d Exp0sure until THEY re-stocked from Mississippi, I guess. Part of our decision to order direct.

Saw Eric today and we spoke of repressing it this year just with a different color scheme to the cover (and w/o the Bongo Joe 7" sorry).

We also talked about what the sequel's gonna be like. Basically, where the first one was hard and intense the second one will be spooky and strange -- the same kind of intensity but a really different vibe.

Best news I've heard all day

Mississippi can do no wrong! I'd like to see a repress of the early blues comp they put out which disappeared at precisely the same time that I discovered the label.

There are still copies at Honest Jon's (London). I ordered mine one week ago.

Kid from the Crumb Brothers has an incredible voice.

Professor Johnson's way of pronouncing "zone" is quite remarkable.

Zo-an

beautiful lps, folks. thanks. btw the lonnie farris stuff on a document cd is amazing, but document does a bad job keeping their stuff in print. i should post that to a blog some day -- it's not like anyone's getting royalties off of it anyway. the guy who wrote the liner notes isn't even sure when lonnie farris died.

if you like the stuff on the "life is a problem" comp id' recommend two cds on american odeon, both are reissues of long o.o.p. lps. the guy behind this label produced sony's defunct roots 'n' blues series (i forget his name); he founded a new label a few years back with lots of ambitious plans but i don't know that much has come of them.

anyway, the two cds are:

- a night with daddy grace
http://www.amazon.com/Night-Daddy-Grace/dp/B000AA4GI2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200191022&sr=1-2

and

- harlem congregation
http://www.amazon.com/Harlem-Congregation-Live/dp/B000BKUX6A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200191017&sr=8-2

...two of the most-slept-on reissues of the past few years. get to it!

also see

http://50milesofelbowroom.com/new.html

AWESOME NEWS, Miss. Records fans -- Eric just met with Warren this past weekend and they're going to try to get all the back stuff in print again -- the Wash Phillips, Thai Orchestra, Love is Love, and then our Life is a Problem LP, everything -- all in the next few months! Eric also has some super great projects in the works. I'm not sure what I can say and what I can't at this point, but rest assured it's all going to be awesomeness.

As to the liner note writer not knowing Rev. Lonnie Farris's exact DOD -- it can be really hard to find out the particulars of some people's lives, and I mean look at what Harry Smith wrote in the notes to the anthology (excuse me The Anthology) re: Blind Willie Johnson -- 50 years ago he wrote that there was nothing known about him. Then Sam charters tracked down one of his ex wives and got a lot of info. Then people realized that it was likely his other wife who sang on the tracks, and etc.

This stuff takes so much time and hard work -- and there's been so little research into this particular field for various (weird to me) reasons. And as we've seen with Corcoran's work on Wash Phillipps, the little bits of info. we all know may be totally wrong, to boot. This is something I'm highly concerned with in working on my book on sanctified blues/ gritty gospel -- in order to exactly fact check everything I'd need a huge trust fund and a shit-ton of time to go digging through records in muddy basements across the country. Since for so many artists this was never done in the first place, that's what would be ideal, but fuck it -- my list of Crucial Artists keeps growing weekly; it's up to 7 dozen or so now.

Anyway, I'll look into those other records -- I have one CD in that "series" 'cause Opal Nations did the notes and sent me a copy, never thought to look into it more for some reason. I love when people re-use old, early record label names that went away (ie Am Odeon, Perfect) -- it's about time for someone to resurrect Herwyn, no?

But I do stand by our little list that was included in the liner notes as being the records that I think most jibe with the raucous tone and post-ww2 content of the 'LIAP' comp.

In very much the same vein of course will be the next Case Quarter releases, the book/ CD about/ by Rev. Utah Smith -- that's gonna be AMAZING.

:-)

revenant was set to release a lot more stuff in this vein but it seems like dean blackwood slowed their release schedule to a crawl within a few years (around when fahey died), so i don't expect anything from them...

revenant's list of future projects was always great, yes -- among them was a rev. lonnie farris reissue that they were going to call "a night at the house of prayer" after the track of the same name. since they did everything so beautifully i'm def. bummed that never happened, in particular.

but the vinyl versions of their reissues that came out a few years ago were a swell treat -- reminds me i think i slept on a few of those -- they're probably out of print already?!

American Primitive is def. OOP on vinyl.
exciting news about these reissues, maybe I can go up to Portland and get a copy this time!

The only Revenant vinyl that's still around is the Stanley Bros. LP, I believe.

I thought I was pretty complete on my Mississippi discog, but I must have missed "Love is Love." What's that one all 'bout?

'Love is Love' is one of the African comp.s -- As the first one it relies the heaviest on Original Music material, but all the O.M. LPs are crazy hard to find these days and it really is an amazing comp. in and of itself.

This is amazing.

man, will need to pick up that repress. the only african one i got was lipa kodiya city council.

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...

also the irma thomas KILLS. in the top five MS releases so far!

Everyone better do yourself a favor and run out and buy the Bongo Joe LP on Mississippi RIGHT NOW. Fucking unbelievable record.

If Curmudgeon is still looking for those MS recordss listed above, shoot me and e-mail. We have the Irma Thomas, Life Is A Problem and Washington Phillips in stock.

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.

Have you got test pressings yet??

ian, sent you an email, let me know if it doesn't get through.

hey john. replied to your email. let me know the address to ship to and i can give u a total! thx.

Tell me about this 'Bongo Joe'.

Texan street singer in the sixties playing an oil drum and singing fairly moralistic songs about dogs & the ways humans treat one another. In a voice that at times recalls the weirdest tom waits but never comes across as forced or phony.

originally released on Arhoolie, and fully licensed!

latest:
Artist: ANIMALS + MEN
Title: Never Bought Never Sold: Singles + Demos 1979-83
Label: MISSISSIPPI RECORDS
Format: LP
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: MR 024LP
"Animals + Men -- named after a song by Adam and the Ants -- started life around the winter of 1978-1979 when Susan Wells took over vocal duties in what was a three piece called Psychotic Reaction. Based in Frome Somerset, their first release Don't Misbehave in the New Age (1980) was an indie hit. When the band split in '81, Susan and Ralph formed the Terraplanes. A & M/Terraplanes released three vinyl 45s. A few years ago, demos by the band surfaced on the Messthetics/Hyped 2 Death label. Recently, the band have reformed and performed the odd gig and are releasing an EP of new songs soon on Convulsive Records. Mississippi Records is proud to be the first to release an entire LP containing the three 45s and early demos, all recorded between 1979-1983. For fans of early UK DIY."

i kinda skipped some of the other louder mississippi stuff - dog faced hermans &c.

Dog Faced Hermans record is absolutely fantastic, FYI. Maybe still available at Forced Exposure.

I was gonna bump this thread cuz I went to Mississippi (the store) last weekend, bought the Washington Phillips record (SO GOOD) but passed on that Animals & Men. They have all of their agonizingly out of print releases up there on the wall, laughing at you.

i thought i was the only one that heard that laughter!

gonna pick this up tomorrow. sounds like they've taken it way back to pre war stuff/last kind words era stuff--

Artist: VA
Title: Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long
Label: MISSISSIPPI RECORDS
Format: LP
Price: $13.00
Catalog #: MR 025LP
"Compilation of sanctified blues recorded between 1927-1934. This is our sequel to the popular Life Is A Problem LP. Twelve songs of pure guitar-driven gospel. This slab is as melodic as it is rockin'. Features songs by Bukka White, Willie Mae Morris, Bo Weevil Jackson, Kid Prince Moore and more. This is packaged in the old-fashioned tip-on sleeve."

i still think they messed up by not numbering things one mississippi, two mississippi &c

i still think they messed up by not numbering things one mississippi, two mississippi &c

ha ha! yes, a totally missed opportunity.

not dour enough.
jus kiddin i love the MS records. i think my favorite is "i don't feel at home in this world anymore" but they're all pretty essential.

yeah ok scratch what i said earlier. "fight on..." is fucking great.

it's great, huh. some of it's really other worldly. and no-one writes songs like or plays guitar like sign of judgement anymore.

was going to bump this yesterday to note two new mississippi releases: the first rats lp and another portland seven inch (by sad horse: what a name). apparently the single "Comes with an incomplete Mississippi Records catalog.", which sounds interesting.

i've been chasing up a couple of singers from the earlier comps recently - everything i've heard by lulu jackson from last kind words is great, in the same vein as careless love.

ive started tracking down as many of the original music LP's, earlier compilations of the african stuff on love is love and lipa kodi ya

as many as i can, that is

Hey Pete oh buddy oh pal

ive started tracking down as many of the original music LP's, earlier compilations of the african stuff on love is love and lipa kodi ya

wow i would like to do this. i was pretty surprised how much of love is love is culled from africa dances. ieven though some of the other hugh tracey stuff on there's amongst the best. is that the case with lipi kodi ya? & have you found anything good? i'm kind of clueless digging through stuff like folkways and original records because they all sound so good, like bavarian folk tales are automatically going to be pretty and gentle feeling.

control your boners, dude. im up to ONE so far.

on ebay right now from the UK, theres a copy of lipa kodi ya with a weird printed label. mine is plain white! can anyone else share about this?

can we also change this thread name to MISSISSIPPI RECORDS or do we want to keep it to only a few elite posters who can electronically talk about this stuff

there's a nice comp on Rounder called "ju ju roots" that isn't terribly hard to find that is similar in feel to Lipa Kodiya. My copy of said LP also has a plain white label.

you know what? i just noticed that misspelling in this thread title for the first time.

It can be a pain to find this thread. Who's got the ilx power to correct the spelling in the title and add "Mississippi Records" to it?

I haven't been able to get anyone to change my spelling error in the Chitlin Circuit soul thread title. Of course, I only requested a change on that thread (and I am the only one who posts on it!). It should be Theotis Ealey's not "Easley's". Chitlin Circuit Double-entendre -filled Soul 2004 (and onward) Theodis Easley's "Stand Up In It" is a song of the year

Picked up Bongo Joe and Fight On the other day, but haven't listened to the latter yet. Awful, horrible packaging for Fight On though, and I like to pretend I don't care, but then it turns out I DO CARE. Make it look better. Anyways, Rats LP is fantastic. Song for song, maybe the best Dead Moon (not Dead Moon) album ever. Amazing how long Fred and Toody have been working that mine. Missed out on Irma Thomas. Sads.

It can be a pain to find this thread.

i'm sure i've seen irma thomas around recently. soundfix maybe? will liveblog every trip to a record store in this thread and tell you if it's around somewhere.

irma thomas is here

CHANGE records (and LITTLE AXE) are MS records gag-labels

Anyways, Rats LP is fantastic.

yeah! it's a noisy pressing, though, don't know if that's to do with the original or what, but killer. are there plans to rerelease their other albums, anyone know?

Just posted a request on the moderator thread to have them correct the spelling and add Mississippi Records to the title of this thread

Thank you moderator for the quick thread title corrections

yeah! it's a noisy pressing, though...

-- GOTT PUNCH II

True. Sounds like it was mastered off an old LP. Noticed the same thing on that Sub-Pop comp from a couple years back. Lots of crackle. Artistic decision or just a side-effect of the Tombstone/Mississippi process? Dunno, both maybe. Anyway, yeah, I'd love to see the other 2 LPs repressed.

has anyone heard that why are we building such a big ship record? i might be getting the name off slightly. i think it's tangentially mississippi released.

has anyone heard that why are we building such a big ship record? i might be getting the name off slightly. i think it's tangentially mississippi released.

― schlump, Monday, December 29, 2008 9:36 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

distributed through MS, but the matrix number is not like MR-XXX, which all the MS ones are, even the irma thomas ("change records") or the clean comp ("little axe records"). if you like gogol bordello, you might like it, but i think its wack.

OH GRAVEYARD is out, FYI. It's the debut release on Social Music, and is the sequel to 'Life is a Problem.' I think it came out OK.

Keep finding so much amazing music in this vein -- in fact we'll probably get a third comp. out soon that's also like it. I used to be worried that I didn't have enough material for this three CD box set (which will be called, as of today FIRE IN MY BONES) of post-war sanctified/ ethereal/ intense gospel I'm doing for Tompkins Square but now I'm not sure 320 minutes is enough.

Future Social Music titles: June Brides best-of comp., a Straight Street Group LP, a Jamaican gospel comp. (first time this stuff's ever been collected as far as I know), the first-ever album dedicated solely to the great bluesy gospel musician Boyd Rivers, the solo project of Frankie Rose which I do not yet know the name of, a killer white gospel comp., some other things.

Ohhh, and I did have a peek at that other Miss. Records thread on here, which was just stuffed with quite a lot of mis-information and then based on all of these crazy assumptions about other labels (i.e. show me ONE artist on Stern's that sees royalties), so I couldn't look at much of it. I'd much rather watch a 'House' rerun if I'm gonna listen to some asshole's opinion. But, in response to that there thread, I'll say that all titles on Social Music will be fully licensed, unless it's impossible to track an artist down in which case we'll hold stuff in escrow and cross our fingers.

Personally, I want to track down artists/ relatives, not only to give them $$ they fully deserve, but what if they have some other stuff lying around? For instance, the upcoming ABNER JAY release totally benefits from those guys having tracked down one of his kids.

Ohhhh, and not only has Mississippi started a tape-only label -- I think they're only available in the shop -- but I'm starting my own tape and CD-R label this month, too. Because I'm a no-good copy-cat, and because I found a professional dupe machine for super cheap.

yeah so any more RATS or what

distributed through MS, but the matrix number is not like MR-XXX, which all the MS ones are, even the irma thomas ("change records") or the clean comp ("little axe records"). if you like gogol bordello, you might like it, but i think its wack.

yeah, i know it's a whole mississippi multi-label franchise and all; i think there was some talk on here about something else coming out on domino, i forget what. i heard some samples and thought it sounded like the glut of gulag bands that beirut headed and drag city signed one of, like nice instruments but kind of a twenty first century pat boone thing.

since there was talk on this and the other thread about people buying up original music lps - i never thought that lipi kodi ya was culled from one, but what do i know. all the talk of the mysterious packaging made me wonder if anyone knew anything about the standout choral thing at the end of side one, by the notre-dame singing group. did anyone hear this before, or elsewhere, or anything?

social music stuff all looks exciting. post about anything coming out!, tapes and all.

hey mike, i was thinking after i messaged you the other day--do you have the rev. mcgee/rev. rice LP on Eden Records? if not i have a few copies.

i.e. show me ONE artist on Stern's that sees royalties)-Mike M

I was curious about this and found a Robert Christgau article on Sterns and the Tabu Ley Rochereau comp in the NY Times that suggest that the artists get some money (although in this case a flat fee and not royalties) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/arts/music/18chri.html?n=Top/News/World/Countries%20and%20Territories/Ghana&pagewanted=all

To break even Sterns needed to sell 6,000 physical copies of the package, which is available for $25.49 on amazon.com. Sales are now around 9,000, with money from downloads also trickling in. For a label like Sterns, “The Voice of Lightness” is a hit.
According to Mr. Urbanus, Mr. Rochereau wanted a flat advance fee rather than royalties on the “Voice of Lightness” compilation, so strong sales won’t benefit him financially. (Mr. Rochereau did not respond to requests for comment.) But Modero Mekansi, the singer’s music director from 1977 to 1997, said money wasn’t Mr. Rochereau’s only object. ”Even when you’re well known, you still want to be known by people who didn’t know who you were before,” Mr. Mekansi said. “You want to be better known.” He added that with so many European-based African labels going into bankruptcy, “it’s only Sterns that can do something good to keep people in touch with this music.”

Super glad to see Stern's pays royalties -- apparently I'm now talking out my ass as well. Yippe/ sorry about that.

Why Are We Building a Big Ship is the first release via the great New Orleans-based DOMINO RECORD SHOP, not got anything to do w/ the Domino label. It's a great shop, kind of a "sister store" to MS -- and, truth be told, the best place to find out of print Miss. Records for non-eBay prices in the world.

Dude also has his own little tape label which RULES.

Why Are We Building are clearly taking off from the second line tradition rather than all of this fake Aeroplane/ Bordello bullshit of the last few years. They're not the Hot 8, but they're not trying to be either -- I don't love that LP but I like ti a lot and can't wait to see what's next from them (including a song on the next YETI CD).

a Straight Street Group LP

HELL YES

p.s. Mike if u could email me about yr label it would be much appreciated.

What's the guy's tape label? I'm looking for some tapes!

The Miss. tapes are just crappy looking + cheap little comp.s of soul, gospel, etc. There are 5 or 6 thus far. I believe a batch is about to hit eBay (not via me).

my portland friend has been buying me the tapes! i got the first four over new year's, and they are so so good.

in addition to oh graveyard, MS records affiliate CHANGE records (still has MR on the matrix) repressed pandit pran nath's earth groove, and it is really really great. listening to it now, oh graveyard is next!

hey mike, thanks so much for your involvement in like half of the releases i was most excited about in 2008. you rule.

wonder if anyone knew anything about the standout choral thing at the end of side one, by the notre-dame singing group. did anyone hear this before, or elsewhere, or anything?

seconded!!! among my fave songs on the african comps!

whoa shit. towards the end of side two of earth groove, PPN straight up COUGHS. then he just gets right back to his raga. what a bro. maybe youve all heard this record before a thousand times, but its new to meeeee

man, i want the tapes. maybe it's in response to the records having become so internationally lusted after.

the traveling echoes song on oh graveyard is beautiful!

i don't think it's made it to ny yet, but i used to hear the traveling echoes on sinner's crossroads: such a great, apposite group name.

the host of sinner's crossroads is credited (along with mike m) with "providing tracks and education"

still waiting on our box of graveyard :(

d'you know if you're getting the earth groove lp too?

we've got Earth grooveeeee. which we kinda were stupid for getting from Forced Exposure, but whatever. other stuff coming soon? come by soon, schlump

for sure. you can be my official PREFERRED RETAILER of msx stuff. i tried to see if you had the animal collective record a couple of nights ago but it was late + you were closed. if you wanna bump this thread when oh graveyard's in, i'll come pick up.

the host of sinner's crossroads is credited (along with mike m) with "providing tracks and education"

i have a big bag of post-it notes i used to scrawl things down on when i started listening to fmu, and i know there's a url on one for a site kevin nutt used to mention - it's raregospelsides.com or something, and was the source of bunches of stuff he used to play i think. will post it up if i can find it. it is an INSPIRATIONAL show and i am a DEVOTIONAL listener.

http://www.rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=840

This is only tangentially related to this thread, but recently I've been listening to the Rev Rice/Rev McGee LP on Eden records, which is a lot of really good material packaged in a sort-of lazy way. Thorough in one way, in that it cites all musicians & recording dates but doesn't provide any context or analysis in liner notes. This is an issue that amtst brought up on the more challenging ms records thread, and I don't take it as seriously as him, but I'm pretty much always of the sentiment that the more info the better. But anyway, that Rev. D.C. Rice & Rev. F.W. McGee record is really good.

I need --need-- a copy of the Eden Records comp "Early Country Gospel" (or something similar?) with lots of Two Gospel Keys material.

i think some of it's the register of the notes; fahey was mentioned in some light in the other thread, and his notes for american primitive strike a balance of being super informative but totally enthusiastic, ie on the rhythm track for 'woke up this morning with my mind on jesus'.

mississippi tape above is fantastic, by the way - great martin luther king lament, lovely quartet stuff, surprise lightnin hopkins blues. whether or not they surface in the same way, what are the others like?

fahey is far and away just a plain better writer than most of the folks who have written liner notes for the various 78 reissues of the seventies.

great great great mississippi tape....but what's the song between "Jericho" and "All Things Are Possible"?

in some cases with document releases (e.g. the lonnie farris thing) there just isn't very much info to go around!

but yes document is supremely lazy.

not as lazy as jsp can be; their "legends of the country blues" thing is actually a carbon (digital) copy of CDs from other labels (e.g. document's complete recordings of bukka white); pop in one of the CDs from that collection and itunes will think it is something else.

i guess "lazy" isn't the word for a label that aimed to (and nearly did) release the full brunt of af-am vernacular music pre-WWII on CD (and much country music besides). but they did cut corners with liner notes and mastering to achieve their goal. granted, their (nominal) market was different than mississippi's: they saw themselves as producing "reference copies" of historical material for libraries.

btw back when arhoolie was distributing document CDs (and before the file-sharing era), if you were at a radio station you could get any document CD for $9 and any arhoolie CD for $3. a fucking bonanza.

you can get any document LP that arhoolie still has kicking around for $5 apiece. the prices of their LP stock vary by number of copies remaining.

(that's how i got the aforementioned Rev. Rice/Rev. McGee record, as well as a nice Roosevelt Sykes comp, a few comps of obscure female blues singers, a Charlie McCoy LP etc.)

do you just email arhoolie or is it through the down home record store?

Crumb Bros killing me today

You can get a catalog by emailing them. It's not up to date, but I got some great stuff that way.

btw new yorkers we got the new MS comp in today. sleeve, send me a regular e-mail at dr.carl.sagan at gmail, i couldn't respond to your webmail.

i bought the ms comp a couple of weeks back and left it round someone's house. this serves me right for abandoning ilx championed retailers :/
i'm still in the state of mind where if i see them i assume they're about to sell out, but maybe this isn't the case anymore.

another tape here http://www.rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=897
popular soul music

thx ian!

i visited the shop in portland today - so great.

picked up the "i woke up one morning in may" comp and a few tapes - "cumbia discos fuentes", "ibi na bo 60 africa 70" and "chaabi music from al-maghrib". now i need to get a tape player!

what is that new comp? i dont have that one yet!

yeah woah what?
tapes sound enticing too.

oh wait look:
January 15, 2009 - The "I Woke Up One Morning In May" LP is the final release that I will receive from Mississippi Records before I close the distro. The folks over at Mississippi Records are going to start doing mail-order for their upcoming releases (starting with their next release which is due out in mid/late February). They will be setting up an email update list for mail-order customers. I will post more info as soon as they are ready to start compiling the email update list.

Sequel to our Last Kind Words compilation. All country blues
recorded between 1927-1934. Features favorites such as Memphis
Minnie， Lottie Kimbrough & Robert Wilkins. This slab also has a few of our favorite obscurities like Little Hat Jones and Louie Lasky. Fourteen
songs- All Classics!!! Full color beautiful cover in the stylish
Tip-On sleeve.

the lottie kimbrough side on last kind words is something else, the guitar playing.

The folks over at Mississippi Records are going to start doing mail-order for their upcoming releases (starting with their next release which is due out in mid/late February). They will be setting up an email update list for mail-order customers.

Thank God, about time, etc.

they could pretty much have my card details to do with as they please right now, like a subscription.

seems like the tapes are popping up online; i'm most curious about the really exotic ones (though like anyone could listen to funnel of love all day)

LOL: http://cgi.ebay.com/V-A-SET-OF-8-COMP-CASSETTES-ON-MISSISSIPPI-RECORDS_W0QQitemZ380097037349QQcmdZViewItemQQptZMusic_Cassettes?hash=item380097037349

gimme a break

Cheap!

blame p***p and a***g!

spiritual singers LP out on forced exposure!

i didn't realise the spiritual singers was a mississippi release. it is super excellent (and a little bit insane).

well that sounds perfect

Tapes 1 + 2 here: http://bigstates.blogspot.com/2009/01/mississippi-records-cassette-series-vol.html

3+ 4: http://bigstates.blogspot.com/2009/01/mississippi-records-cassette-series-vol_22.html

Other stuff (lipa kodi, liap, spiritual singers, etc.) on the blog too.

http://bigstates.blogspot.com

downloaded the spiritual singers stuff - excellent! now i'm going to go buy the LP.

well, i'm going to go buy it when new jersey isn't covered in six inches of ice.

whoa spiritual singers LP is not what i expected! much more band-y than i expected...

i just wanted to mention that i have the comp listed in the title of this thread and it's outta sight

lookin forward to hearding more!

i just ordered Fight On, Yr Time Ain't Long cuz I couldn't find Life Is A Problem

have i made a mistake

xxp about spiritual singers -- also the guitars sound super-clean like the music i hear in salvadorean restaurants

i think life is a problem is better, but you wont be disappointed. fight on is so goddamn tight.

you'll be totally pleased i think, gbx. it's from a slightly earlier era than Life Is A Problem, but really nice.
(though honestly it might be my least favorite sleeve design they've done so far?)

another thought about the spiritual singers LP. i read the shaggs reference in the blurb on the internet, but its more like an african RAINCOATS to me

oh excellent

its more like an african RAINCOATS to me

SOLD

btw i sent those mixtape links to my mom and she LOVES them

i love the mississippi records i have, but wtf at "funnel of love" being on that first mixtape?! (which is totally in print and wanda is, last i checked, still alive and collecting royalties) i mean up until now i haven't had a ton of issues with their loosy goosy business model but that is kind of bullshit IMHO.

i know i shouldnt be that flipped out by it, but it just popped up on that girl sounds lost and found box so it isn't like it's a hard to find OOP gem or anything.

Ummm, are people really upset about what's on a 90 minute cassette tape, only for sale at one record shop, that costs THREE DOLLARS at the store (shhhhhhhh no one tell the people who spent $80 apiece or whatever on eBay)???

It really matters whether that song is out of print or not?

well yeah, it kind of does. also, kind of an invitation for an illegal distribution lawsuit from dudes that seem to be smarter than that to me.

i mean, why the fuck pick one of the only wanda jackson songs to get a recent high profile re-release? it just seems like really poor judgement to me. (admittedly, this would be less problematic without ebay auctions and blog downloads making it way more visible than it just sitting on the counter in a store somewhere).

i mean, i'm with you sorta, JJ, but it doesn't seem like that big a deal

besides my mom loves wanda jackson, and is digging the mixtapes, which means maybe i can trick her into taking me out to dinner or something

i am in favor of you getting free dinner, FWIW. (btw mr gbx, i have "life is a problem" and "i dont feel at home in this world anymore" if you want to hear them some time.)

Coming Soon:
Michael Hurley - Armchair Boogie
Abner Jay - True Story
Bishop Perry Tillis
Rats - Intermittent Signals

the abner jay sleeve is BONKERS

abner jay is bonkers. his intros are like a badmouthed bo diddley. is it a social music thing?

those four look great (& where'd you see the sleeve, 69?).

ps attention ian, i am totally going to cave and hit up other for new mississippi unless you toast the new fruits of your store here asap

i just googled -- not sure what is social music, what is change records, etc etc
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/aleit/IMG_2087.jpg

Rats - Intermittent Signals

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!

yeah i hear thats the best of the three!

abner jay is not social music, nope -- but it is great, and will come with a 7"! i think the cover might be a little different, and the decision was made actually to not have any intros; my understanding is the intent is to showcase how great his music is as he's often miscast as a sort of novelty act.

i personally love the dixie cup joke intros -- "what do you give a elephant with diarrhea?" "plenty of rooooom!" etc. -- but i understand that decision and it's gonna be a great one. really hard to find any abner jay albums, though my least favorite, the stephen foster one, is not so hard to come by.

are these feb releases, mike?

yeah, i think so! i believe they'll all be back in 2-3 weeks.

next 2-3 social musics out by end of march, it looks like -- probably june brides, jamaican gospel, and either straight str. group or liap pt. 3...

i'm still waiting on lipi kodi/love is love pt 3. it's been forever. mississippi records doesn't care about black people. is LIAP 3 like future-gospel or something?

i wanted to play i'm so depressed by abner jay out somewhere soon and was dithering over cutting out the intro ... i can see where they're coming from.

liap 3 is... well we'll see. there is some debate at the moment as to what exactly will wind up on there but i think it'll be pretty good.

i wouldn't hold my breath for any more african comp.'s -- just track down the original bootlegs of the stuff, john storm roberts's african comp.s on original music. man those are soooo good.

man, i haven't heard that abner jay, but i love "swaunee water and cocaine blues." it's true that he's often miscast as a novelty act by Irwin Chusid voyeur types, but the music is awesome. Way more exciting than most one-man-band acts imho.

anyway, we got the new MS records in yesterday. I was expecting something very different from Spiritual Singers, but it's great. and of course morning in may is too. that robert wilkins track is great. he's one of my favorite country blues guitarists, and his voice is so mellow. and "rope stretchin blues" is surely thee standout blind blake track.

Mike- do/will you have a web presence for Social Music? Through Yeti maybe?

Those of us who don't live in Portland anymore need to know! Keep up the good work-

----

http://bigstates.blogspot.com

John Storm Roberts wrote his own album review on AMG. Gave himself 4 1/2 stars.

Sometime this year not only will YETI have a real website but I'll def. get a site together for the tape/CD-R and LPs I'm doing, yes. Just restarted the 'Buked blog today and I'm sure I'll mention goings-on there, as well.

I'm not in general a CD guy but I have to say right now I'm so psyched about this FIRE IN MY BONES 3 disc set I'm doing of raw/ weird/ blues/ lovely and strange gospel for Tompkins Square that I'm sure I mentioned upthread. Just so nice to have a large canvas like that!

And I checked your blog, which is great but FYI: In my mind, 'Fight On' is *not* a companion to 'LIAP' -- in that I came up with much of the material for LIAP where FIGHT ON was completely put together by Eric and Warren, the two owners of Mississippi. I like FIGHT ON a lot but if I were to try to come up with a predecessor to it I'd pick different songs. Then again, so much of that stuff is available, widely -- from dozens of Document discs to 'Am Primitive' and the Dust to Digital 'Babylon' set. This is why 'LIAP' was fairly novel, I think -- postwar gospel of that sort, stuff that carries on in the sanctified/ more raw type tradition, has not been collected as much. Or is not as well known, anyway.

I'll have to look for that JSR review, that's hilarious. I wish his book were better. Damn, he had a great label though. I want to do an indie rock reissue series that looks just like those covers...

Thanks for the info. I gathered you weren't really involved in Fight On... I'll make a note on the Blog.

Last time I was at Mississippi (three weeks ago), Eric mentioned that Warren may be putting together a mail-order operation for them. Do you know anything about the time-line/potential reality of this? Knowing Eric, it seems a little unlikely to me. At this point, I'm either getting records from the 'net or calling the shop on weekends and having Eric set aside any new releases so that my brother can come in, buy them, then mail them to me. A less circuitous endeavor would be welcome.

Ohh yeah I should get this info. out to everyone!

It's not a website just an old fashioned email list which will announce all Miss. releases and you'll be able to order them directly using Paypal as they come out. A def. step forward!!! I'll make sure I have the right email address then post it once this does get going -- I think it'll be starting real soon.

you dudes are insane! its been like 3-4 records a month for a while now!

The email list sounds cool -- I'd love to just subscribe to Mississipi Records ...

it'd be great if they had a postman, like one of those guys on bikes in bresson films who cycles around leaving loaves of bread in everyone's mailbox. the mississippi man is here! new records from the mississippi man!

"rope stretchin blues" is surely thee standout blind blake track.

― ian, Friday, January 30, 2009 6:01 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

this song is sooooooo good

twelve days with no new MS records??? this is horrible.

although one of the holes in my collection, the evolutionary jass band LP, just went for $57 yesterday on eebs. jeez.

^ let the hole remain

yeah?

downer-indie "jazz band" version of GSYBE!, if that floats yr. boat. mine sank.

you mean jackie-o motherfucker?

i like JOMF

oh i

oh

??? maybe i'm missing something here. get that jefrey & michael came from from the one band to the other.

only JOMF i really know = flat fixed, change and the magic fire music/wow! comp. all seem much wilder, weirder than EJB. plus more emotionally affecting when that's the intent, as on change

EJB have yet to approximate their unbelievable live performances on a record. They probably put on one of the best shows I've seen in the last five years at Halleluwah I, but I just can't get into the CD or tour LP (is that what's supposedly on MS? I had no idea).

oh i

oh

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ

just got what was going on here

ha: listening to oh graveyard for the first time: i will never be able to listen to the sensational happy travelers theme without expecting a kevin nutt voiceover.

wow this spiritual singers record is pretty great.

any news on the mississippi e-mail list mentioned above?

'last kind words' just got reissued

abner jay LP is amazing & the michael hurley "armchair boogie" LP should be out v v soon.

which side of the 7" do you like better ian

oh sorry i did not respond to your msg last night
i think i like the uptempto kinda rockin one more, but i forget which one it is. depression?

me too i like that one better

um so does anyone have a decent rip of the spiritual singers lp? (i have the lp but would like to have it for portable use as well.) found one online but it's poor quality and all the songs cut off early.

got my armchair boogie today, and no comic book! wasnt there supposed to be one??

hoping armchair shows up in the next few days.
don't you have an original already pete? with a comic??

ok so they nixed the comic book for cost reasons

and yes yes i do have an orig w comic BRAGGIN

the reish looks awesome btw, with new michael hurley labels, and maybe a whole new painting for the back cover?

just got 'i woke up one morning in may'

haven't listened to it yet but the abner jay is really something, all the print outs etc. i have royally decided that it is way uncool for them to have taken the intros out, but that's based on over thinking rather than listening. i don't think regenerating his image or recontextualising him or whatever is worth the judgement call of actually bowdlerising what he created.

can't wait for armchair boogie anyhow.

"um so does anyone have a decent rip of the spiritual singers lp?"

Look in the Jan. archives here: http://bigstates.blogspot.com/

i think i like the abner jay LP about 25% as much as i like the 7"

xp thanks a lot! i'll check it out when i get home.

coming soon:
the rats -- intermittent signals
bishop perry tillis - in times like these

abner jay record is grand. i'd only heard his stuff patchily before but hearing vietnam etc on record makes me like it. i still want the seven inch (and missed out on that second portland seven inch way back, i guess forever: bummer) but haven't seen it anywhere.

i think this is michael hurley props rather than ms props, but armchair boogie's lovely. so nice having penguins to play whenever i please.

ARMCHAIR BOOGIE POLL

abner jay is not social music, nope -- but it is great, and will come with a 7"

did this come with a 7"? mine doesn't have one.

goner is selling LP+7", but thats the only place ive seen... i got my 7" online from exiled, and my LP direct from MS records

anyone know if the perry tillis LP duplicates the material on the CD, "too close" (released by birdman)?

DOES NOBODY KNOW THE ANSWER?

It does not -- entirely different material. The Mississippi record is a much rougher recording than what was used on the Birdman cd.

AND AMATEURIST, THERE ARE PLENTY OF LINER NOTES SO YOU WILL NOT FEEL THE MATERIAL IS BEING TREATED POORLY (I HOPE.)

xoxo
Ian Johnson, official MS records stan

sweet, thanx y'all and sorry for being a bitch on that other thread.

hey not mississippi records but in a similar vein: did you guys check out that "JUNIOR KIMBROUGH" EARLY RECORDINGS thing?

ooooh, no i hadn't seen that. now i will order some copies for the shop. thanks for the tip, am.

this three-week lag between new sets of releases is INFURIATING

where is your record shop ian?

some of my favourite junior stuff's totally different from the elasticated blues stuff. would love to hear him playing alone a little more, what's it like?

saw mississippi alumni tara jane o'neil play a couple of nights ago with a guy playing the abner jay record between sets: made me wish i had that lone seven inch that came out.

ELASTICATED?

our store is in brooklyn. it is not really mine, i don't own it.

which one in brooklyn?

Academy Record Annex, 96 North 6th Street, Williamsburg. Near the Bedford avenue L train stop.
www.academyannex.com

what is a "tip-on" sleeve and why is it worth mentioning in every album description?

it means oldstyle heavy cardboard.

schlump was that the Fontanelle gallery show?

i always thought tip on meant the effect of having been stickered, so was totally disappointed when abner/fight on came in JUST PLAIN OL HEAVY BOARD. looking forward to perry tillis.

- ELASTICATED?

elasticated is 1000% the correct word to describe junior kimbrough/tav falco style electrified blues guitar wriggling.

- Fontanelle gallery show?

ahh, i don't think so; is that one of the ones she's just played? this was market hotel ny. have seen her a bunch of times lately; it was nice. first play of the new record seemed kinda underwhelming but i think it's nice now, hazy and sleepy, like a bleary eyed morning or nighttime record. have you just caught her somewhere?

Yeah. Portland show a few nights back. Nice.

Academy Record Annex, 96 North 6th Street, Williamsburg. Near the Bedford avenue L train stop.
www.academyannex.com

― ian, Tuesday, May 5, 2009 7:15 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

-----------------------------------------

Best record shop in the NY area, methinks! One that helped me greatly directly/ indirectly in compiling the new YETI CD too, so -- yay!

I'm finally readying a handful of proper SOCIAL MUSIC releases, by the way -- one of them will just be 200 copies, others in runs of between 300 and a thousand. Miss. Records will be distro'ing. Man, everything takes longer than you think it will!

Also, I just finished my first draft of the Tompkins Square CD box set all in the vein of LIFE IS A PROBLEM -- as it stands it's 4 hours, 3 CDs, 80 songs. We'll see hwo it goes after we finish with licensing, clearing, etc. everything. It'll still probably be called FIRE IN MY BONES.

stoked

That Irma Thomas one mentioned way upthread is great and I still like her live. Just saw her in DC outdoors at a free fest.

I have Last Kind Words LP now it is great

The Anglin Brothers

this should be a postcard

Cecil Barfield?

Is he the king of "mush-mouth country blues"? And is the Mississippi release available?

The MS release is available, and he is certainly the king of post-war mush-mouth country blues.

i picked it up a couple of days back but haven't listened yet. also the drawing on the front looks a little too much like a police sketch. i haven't played perry tillis much since buying it so am a little curious to see how this holds up. i wonder if there are any more comps on the way?

ian n@goski's first MS project, STRING OF PEARLS, a comp of international 78's, is coming next week!

that's awesome-

i dug up some info-
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=158524239&blogId=485860193

and this great discography which really makes me wish i was keeping up with the tapes. can't wait for string of pearls-

also: how is the spooky dance band record from way back?

just got "don't feel at home in this world", which is fantastic, and was excited to see caresser's "edward the viii" -- one of my favorite calypso songs. folks who like should check-out rounder's "roosevelt in trinidad" comp. it also includes a bunch of the songs that van dyke parks covered on discover america (originals kill vdp's versions) and the great "m.c.c vs west indies" which is essentially the play by play of a cricket match.

what ever happened to that string of pearls thing -- i can't find it anywhere. and what about the 'Mortika: Music of the Greek Underworld " thing?

String of Pearls was delayed, but my shop got our copies in this week so it should be more widely available soon...

(Am, if you can't find it locally & want to order a copy from us e-mail academymailor✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧; i forget the exact price, but pretty cheap.)

uh, make that-- academymailorder at gmail dot com

hmm, maybe i'll do that -- my local record shop has a bad track record with getting stuff special order. do you guys have a catalogue online so i can order other stuff?

we have a very badly organized (blame the blogging software) catalog at academyannex.com.

also you could e-mail me directly if you want. we have a bunch of old stock of County Records stuff that's not on the interwebz that you might be interested in--fiddle stuff mostly.

i'm visiting the store in a few days which i'm super psyched about, but THIS is even better

yeah sheesh i saw that. pretty amazing stuff tbh!!

the guy is wearing a hat. it is like the labcoat of graphic packaging enterprises.

made my second visit of the year to the store. so great. thanks for that link.

there's a couple of punk reissues out with the new comp too i believe. i wanna load up on tapes!

that String of Pearls comp looks good -- anyone heard it?

yeah it's fantastic, and unlike most of the previous MS releases it contains a really informative insert.

also really like the Mata La Pena comp of course.
And excited for the forthcoming Hurley "Parsnip Snips" reish.

All I can listen to lately are my Hurley records and I NEED MORE!!!
Will keep my eyes peeled for this reissue you are speaking of.

trip maker did you get the last one? "Ancestral Swamp"? It's really great.

We have it at the community radio station, I believe. I think. I hope? Well, shouldn't be hard to get if not. I'm a total believer in Hurley now.

the one w/ ida isn't so great, i think. i also think the down in dublin album is sort of dull. but otherwise you can't go wrong w/ hurley.

what's up next for mississip' anyway?

i think the new one with Ida is great!

I think the next project from MS is a double LP box set of rebetikos.

there's a new shelley stone lp just out ... more hurley i thought?, maybe. mata la pena is rad (sisters yodelling especially) so more trad stuff would be nice.

doesn't really belong here but in the cluster of mississippi related/distro'd labels, etc: whatever the name of the new release on domino is, mainly instrumental organ drum and vocal chanting tracks - is giving me a lot of pleasure

I missed out on Mata La Pena

really loving the Dog Faced Hermans LPs these days.

haven't heard the Snock Con Ida but I think it is on hold at the record store for me.

hurley/ida isn't mississippi, no?

yeah, it's not. it's on gnomonsong.

ah yeah i looked it up, excited to hear hog of the forsaken again. the rebetika box is up on forced exposure just so yalls know. & the shelley stone record came out real nice. mata la pena still spinning favourably in my house

illustrated & annotated discography

http://toto.lib.unca.edu/sounds/miss_records/

anybody seen a copy of that Madagascar box? I sure haven't. I did buy (another) copy of Hi Fi Snock Uptown though. Would love to have The Ex/Tom Cora on vinyl but I already have the CD...

The Madagascar box is not actually a box, it's three LPs in a heavy-plastic jacket... it's a long listen but there are some great moments. if i had a camera i'd take a picture for you.

Some scans (+ download) here: http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=3163

those mississippi soul and rocksteady mixtapes are manna if you need to fix up your house or paint walls or put up drywall or something like that.

i'm really curious to see a tracklisting of the kinks ones.

fihavanaha thing was super rare, no? think it got some discussion in the rolling vinyl thread. i don't think i'll ever see one. i managed to wean myself offa buying these thinking that overstreet and clara weren't essential, and then i heard them and realised that yeah i'm going to have to buy them. the tapes just KEEP ON GIVING, too.

the Clara Rockmore is so outside of the usual Mississippi world, but it's SO BEAUTIFUL.

i hate to harp on this but while these guys have superb taste and i don't begrudge anyone for liking these LPs or buying them, almost all this stuff is otherwise easily available in more legit fashion.

maybe not the fihavanaha. i should have picked that up, but honestly i don't expect that i'd be listening to it much. the greek 2 lp thing is great though the graphic design of the box is horrid (looks like they used chicago font on a dot matrix printer or something, ugh).

i enjoy downloading their cassette mixes, some of them (like the "classical music for normal people" or whatever it is) are just astonishingly good.

to some degree I agree with you, but their reissues of Dog Faced Hermans and The Ex and The Rats and such (which probably aren't really your thing) are fully band-sanctioned, remastered, and not available anywhere else. Same with all the Michael Hurley records. So ymmv I guess.

also that rocksteady tape is solid gold

i think we all agreed to raise the legitimacy issue every six months and then beat each other into the ground with details of arcane licensing agreements and scholarly fall out from the orchestra regional de keyes lp, no?

the samba tape's my favourite; volume forty looks promising too. and they put out something with this poster recently: what's not to like. this stuff still makes up like 25% of what i listen to, and informs belated digressions into dead moon and other stuff afterwards.

the Clara Rockmore is so outside of the usual Mississippi world, but it's SO BEAUTIFUL.

yeah. i actually downloaded and let it play through once, having just heard kind of 'incidental theremin score music' whenever it had been on in the background; it sounds lovely. fortunately the single artist lps seem to last a little longer now, so i'll pick them up.

how do i shot the rocksteady tape?

http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=1483

almost all this stuff is otherwise easily available in more legit fashion.

But yer not a format fetishist like a lot of the MS records devotees I assume. An original of that Fred McDowell record is expensive! And that Joseph Spence too! etc.

This might be as good as music gets.

hey ppl - what are yr fav missippi records tapes? i love the fuck out of these btw

Beautiful Dynamite
Samba Triste
Time Is Longer Than Rope
Everything Crash
In A Crowded Station

favorite:
http://www.rootstrata.com/rootblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/mrc_12_cover.jpg

runners up:

http://www.rootstrata.com/rootblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/mrc-003_cover.jpg
http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/mrc_vol5_cover_art1.jpg

Samba Triste

^^^^^
the more recent samba one also, but not so much

also
too much needs doing here
classical music for and by the people
who has seen the wind

i hear there's a jim dickinson one, that i can't find online anywhere, that i'd love to hear

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-2259278-1272865900.jpeg
hmmm yeah, i'd love to hear this one too!

someone told me it was his music?, though it seems like it consisting of his productions would be more likely

http://www.discogs.com/Jim-Dickinson-The-Early-Years-63-84/release/2259278
looks like it's both

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=2532723, huh

meant to add this to the list of must-have tapes, also

vol. 56, holy christ.

for me it was one of those where i feel like i have not previously had access to this kind of music

holy shit @ that Hurley 8-track... really hope that gets a proper LP reissue

Limited to 50 copies :(

Not sure if I answered the person about "web presence" -- mine is very 1998 but here you go -- 6 releases out just now -- first 4 from the record club plus a budget white gospel rarities comp + a licensed june brides best-of:

http://socialmusicrecords.com

you can still sign up for the sub series and get the holidays 7" before the holidays are over.

Nice!

jazzed about this comin up:
http://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2010/12/va-ishlihan-n-tenere-mississippi.html

^^^ does not disappoint

Yeah, I really like it as well. And the Marisa Anderson LP is really nice too.

oh really? i thought i might try to listen through before picking it up; the tjo on mississippi is one of my faves, but shelley short i can pretty much live without. will keep a lookout. is instrumental iirc?

Instrumental and electric!

x-post-

Does that Sahelsounds release explain where the songs are from--are they taken from existing cassette releases, or are they previously unreleased stuff?

these guys are apparently putting out a pretty excellent new album by marisa anderson: http://marisaanderson.bandcamp.com/
electrified, raw bluesy instrumentals.

it's out and i really enjoy it. (the Marisa Anderson that is.)

curmudgeon, i believe the sahel sounds recordings are previously unreleased recordings by some fellow whose name i can't remember because i don't have the booklet in front of me. good notes on each song giving context, nice photos etc.

I'm listening to the Irma Thomas comp and fuck me this is just great songs all the way through. This is just on mp3 sorry guys but I will buy this if I see it.

Kleenex/Liliput box set!!!

I already have the 2CD so no way am I buying this, but still very cool.

Washington Phillips might be re-issued later on in the year, according to Warren of Mississippi.but don't hold me to it.
does anybody know if Life Is a Problem or OH GRAVEYARD will ever be re-issued so that the record buying elite aren't the only ones to own copies?
plus, i don't know if there is a topic for this, but why don't Yazoo and Document labels release records?, they only release worthless cds, this is a problem,
It's as though the elite owners of rare 78s don't want the little people to have their share on vinyl, how is it there were tonnes of labels in the past who released beautiful quality product (origin label, arhoolie and so on) and little or no now??
it's not as though these sold in their millions in the first place anyway,
I mean just as many people now would've bought a washington phillips lp, or blind willie johnson!
why can't more labels take a chance to sell vinyl again, who wants a bloody cd of washington phillips? i know key to the kingdom is a great set but imagine that on vinyl, like owning treaure! something has to be done,
Mississippi, despite any flaws or unprofessionalism are the only label to earn my praise, even sublime frequencies with their great roster still release pap cds, worthy of the rubbish bin,
is anybody here with me? oh the kleenx set looks great, i'm not a huge new wave fan but it's great to see more quality

Hi Doggie diner!
You may be interested to learn that up to 20 Yazoo title will be reissued on LP this year.. the original LP collections reproduced without addition or deletion. These have been unavailable on CD now for a while, their tracks being split into various 'new' compilations. So far "The Early Blind Willie McTell" and "Frank Stokes' Dream" have been reissued on affordable LPs by a company called Scorpio. Also, someone has been issuing the Secret Museum of Mankind series on Yazoo on double LPs; they're up to number three.

if you contact arhoolie they do have some LPs still for sale in their catalog, including some document, wolf, earl, rst etc.

also heard rumblings that Sublime Frequencies will be issuing their earlier CD releases on vinyl, as most of their new releases have been. Not sure how accurate that is, but I think they must know they can sell vinyl by this point. Their releases fly out of stores and out of print very quickly, in general. I'm not a Sublime Frequencies completist--I don't like all of it--but I am glad to have the option.

First volume I'd unhesitatingly pick up on LP is the first Folk & Pop Sounds of Sumatra. The Samsimar tracks on there are unbelievably gorgeous.

Also, someone has been issuing the Secret Museum of Mankind series on Yazoo on double LPs; they're up to number three.

think the first one of these was reissued on mississippi?, iirc

wanted to bump this to see if anyone had the new brass pins mississippi; i only go back to a coupla things on string of pearls, so am waiting for some enthusiasm before tracking it down. it kinda veered more into ethnomusicology territory, i thought.

is mcgonigal around still? someone said he was writing a book about mississippi records, of all things. true?

i have brass pins (unlistened to) and the latest abner jay 10 inch which is good blare,
thank you campfire ian, i really didn't know arhoolie would entertain me and it's great news about the yazoo label, everything that was great about those releases were contained in having the lp, yazoo even released some rather drab stuff, like the hokum style blues, but the sleeves are still works of art,
i remeber when people told me vinyl is back, i never believed them, but with groups like Mississippi there is hope, do document and wolf still release vinyl??!
i have some but i was unaware,it'd be a treat to have utah smith or raw gospel like him on lp, i'll have to pester these labels, thanks for the info,peace

schlump, i think the first Secret Museum was being distributed by MS, but not actually released by them. I think they're now exclusively available through forced exposure in the US..

I do enjoy the brass pins collection, but if yer not into ethnic 78s it's not gonna do much for you. I've only listened a few times so far.

Document & Wolf aren't pressing new vinyl, but Arhoolie has or had a lot of their old stock for sale.

thanks for the tip nonetheles,those museum of man sets look dead good, though pricey sums
i've seen the wolf page, they have a section of 53 records for sale with little or no info or pics, i'll have to chase them up, has anyone the group inerane records?, i'm a new poster so i'm unsure how to navigate here, group inernae are a top group

hi there

here's a couple of links to get you started

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/SiteNewAnswersControllerServlet
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/index.jsp
Introduce Yourselves!

I like group Inerane but my favorite of those is the Bombino one... is that Sahel Sounds comp out yet?

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.

i mean i'm holding in my hands right now a francis bebey record released on his own label in the mid 1970s. the label no longer exists (and hasn't for many a year), bebey is dead.... what do i do?

a little googling around finds the centre culturel francis bebey, who presumably have some connection to the man. do i email them? in french? in english? what will they say? who has the "rights" to his music in america, where most of his material was never released?

mwenda jean-bosco died in the early 1990s in zaire. he probably still has family. are they still in the eastern congo? have they moved? where? to kenya? france? belgium? how would i find out? and which relatives can legitimately claim the "rights" to his music? or do i contact and pay ILAM, the archive established by hugh tracey, the ethnomusicologist who originally recorded mwenda? ILAM has a digital distribution deal with smithsonian folkways. do i then have to negotiate with folkways?

etc. etc.

i can ask people at folkways if mississippi contacted them about the tracks from the "music of liberia" LP that are on this african guitar box. but i doubt that folkways paid the performers either. they were recorded by one packard okie, about whom i can find little information in a quick search (there's a chance he was a minister in liberia with a side interest in traditional music).

this is not to say that mississippi needs to make a superhuman effort to track down all these performers or their descendants. it's just that it would be more honest to admit to these complexities and gray areas rather than simply to vociferously claim that all steps were taken.

ty for your response amateurist; you're right about a bunch of stuff, & that we've done a lot of this to death on the other threads, so I'm skipping over a couple of your points.

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 think i remember, around the time that the mississippi tapes started coming out, someone on here being outraged that one featured funnel of love by wanda jackson - that if they had wanted to pick a wanda jackson song they should have picked something less canonical, that if you were going to include a wanda jackson song on a mixtape you couldn't then sell it for $5, trading on her work without reimbursing her. & i just don't think that's true anymore; i think you are, obviously, infringing on copyright but i think you're doing it in a way that has the potential for a bigger net plus, which is people getting to hear wanda jackson. radio style. the filter of couldn't they have at least picked one of her gospel jams is kinda a complicated thing to factor in - the same thing that makes the african box less useful to you but a gift to me - but to me i think the 'moment' of record purchasing has kinda diffused and the currency of music is a little different. the early Mississippi African comps came with notes on saying that music should be taped, reproduced and circulated: I think it was just an approach that the music should be out there, & that this could be done economically enough so that availability was a priority instead of profit.

when I talk about the wider context of this stuff, I can't point to some concrete step 3: profit stage of success that justifies the model, but I think circulation & appreciation is enough of a justification on its own. some of this is just my lazy disinterest in copyright law, my consumer-privilege, or fetishisation of the public domain. but i think, if there were a perfect model that circulated art for appreciation, circumventing the whole royalties thing in a situation where the complexity of royalties meant that it was otherwise just not gonna happen*, i'd be into it. i am just reluctant to press for conditions so strict that they would prevent the thing from actually existing. of the two extremes i end up on the side of stealing music from the musicians who made it, which is pretty bad but which my inner puritan art-nourishes-the-soul impulse assuages.

* the parallel here, to me, is downloading obscure-ish/ubuweb-wave films online - things for which there's not necessarily the apparatus or interest to circulate otherwise.

for me the defensive thing, re: the owners, is just that they're defending themselves, because it's been the main thing that's been charged at the label, rather than something they're wearing as a badge of authenticity. & at least in a bunch of visible instances it was a pretty shallow, erroneous charge, right? but you're right. your point about acknowledging the grey area is otm. i am lucky to have more of an obliviousness to this stuff than you. but i am still kinda taking them at their word. ie that single artist comps are licensed. & obviously tried as hard as we could is gonna be a nebulous thing. i could deal with the idea that single songs appearing on comps aren't, & that no-one on the other side was making money seems like an okay model to me.

also fwiw there's a killer new f bebey reissue just out:
http://boomkat.com/vinyl/519205-francis-bebey-african-electronic-music-1975-1982

as an aside i think there's an oral history on Mississippi coming out on Yeti, sometime. maybe it'll delve into some of this. Eric posted on this or the other thread, too, a while back, you should quiz him a lil.

btw i don't think that if they can't locate or contact rights holders they shouldn't release it. that's not at all what i'm saying. after all i enjoy those original music CDs and yazoo etc. etc. i just think that in being defensive the mississippi dude fails to just own up to the complexities surrounding this stuff, and admit that he's working in a gray area.

anyway some other thoughts i have, maybe we are going in circles but oh well...:

i feel like there's a lack of modesty in the lack of transparency in this release.

here you have five LPs of music by a big bunch of african artists from the mid-20th century. some of whom are quite famous and important and well-known, like bebey and mwenda. others made a living selling records and giving performances in africa, but the information that might be out there about them hasn't been efficiently collected and compiled. others are truly obscure, known--in the mediatized sense--only to those who recorded him, some of whom, like hugh tracey, are dead now and we are largely limited to their field notes.

all the different styles and influences and historical events and places represented in all of these musical recordings--it's fascinating. and there's so much more to be learned, to be written.

and how is this all packaged, how is it delivered to the curious? in a big, rough-hewn pine box with paste-on artwork that, in its spareness and obscurantist design, seems to cast a spell of obscurity, of mystical revelation over the whole thing. the generic "chains" motif that adorns the record labels and the "cover" is literally unfathomable. it could mean any of a million things, or nothing.

because of the nature of the exchange--you have to know about misssissippi, really, to even know this thing exists--what's foremost in my mind as i look at this object is mississippi records. some guy in portland assembled this box, sequenced the records, ordered them pressed at a plant, etc. the handiwork of that person--whether it's isaacson or somebody else--is what this object speaks of, and is to a great extent the basis of its cult value. otherwise why bother with the odd packaging at all? it doesn't contribute anything to the music--doesn't help us to appreciate it, understand it, find more of it--except, again, to present it as this unknowable, mysterious thing, something sufficiently remote in time and space that we oughtn't speculate about the lives of its creators.

i recognize the whole idea that with the interwebs you can just, you know, google your way to some of the contextualizing info. but not really, not with this music. at least, it's not terribly easy. and it's also distinctly ungenerous. why not give us a few leads? why not acknowledge your sources, tell us how _you_ heard this music, who was doing the curation and recording that you are relying upon.

frankly the whole thing strikes me as tacky. the pine box (and other gambits that mississippi and other labels have tried), devoid of any connection to the music, feels like ham-fisted way of infusing the set with the "aura" of a distinct (rather than mass-produced) object. but the very wilfullness (sp?) of it, and the clumsiness of the conception and execution, makes that aura feel cheap. and at a moment in time when you have blogs where people share music they love as well as tons of smart ideas and information, the whole "mystique" aspect seems like a cover for laziness or lack of knowledge.

sorry we're not going to agree on this. it just seems that of all possible ways of getting this music out there to a new audience (which is an INCREDIBLY worthy goal), this is one of the lamest and most self-regarding i can think of.

i mean if you just want the music "out there," start a blog. post those original music comps, with liner notes. john storm roberts won't care; he's dead. i mean, people do this already. the blogs holywarbles (RIP) and ghostcapital for one.

or what the hell, just reissue those original music comps. why the fuck not. they look cool, they are immaculately conceived, etc.

my point is just to say that despite your defense and despite isaacson's claims there is clearly a lot more to the "mississippi aesthetic" than simply sharing good music with good folks. i'm not saying it's sinister or anything, just that there is a level of investment in a mystique that the dude refuses to acknowledge. we've talked about this too.

because of the nature of the exchange--you have to know about misssissippi, really, to even know this thing exists--what's foremost in my mind as i look at this object is mississippi records. some guy in portland assembled this box, sequenced the records, ordered them pressed at a plant, etc. the handiwork of that person--whether it's isaacson or somebody else--is what this object speaks of, and is to a great extent the basis of its cult value. otherwise why bother with the odd packaging at all? it doesn't contribute anything to the music--doesn't help us to appreciate it, understand it, find more of it--except, again, to present it as this unknowable, mysterious thing, something sufficiently remote in time and space that we oughtn't speculate about the lives of its creators.

i recognize the whole idea that with the interwebs you can just, you know, google your way to some of the contextualizing info. but not really, not with this music. at least, it's not terribly easy. and it's also distinctly ungenerous. why not give us a few leads? why not acknowledge your sources, tell us how _you_ heard this music, who was doing the curation and recording that you are relying upon.

man you totally get me here, & this is so lovely to read, the idea of the text as some kind of alluring gateway to wider discovery. & yet i still do disagree, because i think part of recontextualising it or decontextualising it is valuable in itself, & is an alternative to the comprehensive, didactic thing - partly for dragging it into a different sphere, so that it exists outside of the context it started in, but partly just to pitch it in isolation, as, yes-i-know-fetishistically-but-fuck-it, a weird musical object. when i'm saying "why write liner notes if you can google them", "why worry about a single song when people could buy albums" it's just because that's what i see buying a record as - some initial step. maybe you prime someone contextually with everything they need to for the next step & maybe you don't, but that totally fits with both sides of my experience as a consumer. either hearing something totally out of place & being hooked - a song at the end of a tape & you don't know what it is or how you would even find out, its very peculiarity fascinating - or alternatively having the trail of breadcrumbs & so having a next step ready to follow.

" weird musical object"

there's really nothing "weird" about it and that's something that i admit kind of freaks me out a bit about the often undifferentiated mix of "outsider art" and just "stuff you haven't heard". i mean, i often find the music pretty damned compelling in both instances. but the flattening out that occurs when the common denominator is allowed to be "weird" is problematic. it's an act of othering is what it is.

i dunno, compare the mississippi box to this guy's work: http://www.elijahwald.com/afcds.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxW-E7CzT0k

compare the sort of morbid mississippi box with the living multivalent presence of the music in this video and the notes below it. people who listened to this music growing up, who are related to the musicians, who are seeking or writing books on the subject, who have stories to tell about meeting the performers, who want to know what the performers are singing about and how it related to their lives and the society in which they lived.

i bought a bunch of those CDRs from wald. i would highly recommend them.

if i had time i'd start a blog myself and share some of this stuff.

also when you're done w/ that youtube you can chose to listen to all kinds of stuff: contemporary kenyan pop, video footage of mwenda, more songs performed by wald, etc etc. more "random" and intriguing and genuinely serendipitous than the kind of psuedo-serendipity for which you can choose to pay $65.

by "choose to listen" i mean those are the "suggested" videos that show up when you're done.

there's really nothing "weird" about it and that's something that i admit kind of freaks me out a bit about the often undifferentiated mix of "outsider art" and just "stuff you haven't heard". i mean, i often find the music pretty damned compelling in both instances. but the flattening out that occurs when the common denominator is allowed to be "weird" is problematic. it's an act of othering is what it is.

yeah i just don't agree; one of yr previous posts inched towards the potential ethnocentrism of implying a mysticality to a product, but i just don't think that's what it is. there's something auditory about s.e. rogie or william onyeabor records that makes me feel okay about "weird" - it's a relative term, sure, but i don't think i'm getting too culturally bogged down. i think it's a production thing, or at worst it's maybe an appreciation for the thing's obscurity in our canon/hierarchy/w/e.

gonna check out yr wald thing, but again - these are two approaches, right? & the one run by the guy in north Portland who just jives to this stuff in his living room is gonna be different and have different priorities.

also when you're done w/ that youtube you can chose to listen to all kinds of stuff: contemporary kenyan pop, video footage of mwenda, more songs performed by wald, etc etc. more "random" and intriguing and genuinely serendipitous than the kind of psuedo-serendipity for which you can choose to pay $65.

this is a weird analogy! again because one man's funnel of love is another man's yesterday, but otherwise because youtube is probably not a preferable mode of commercial distribution upon close inspection

frankly the whole thing strikes me as tacky. the pine box (and other gambits that mississippi and other labels have tried), devoid of any connection to the music, feels like ham-fisted way of infusing the set with the "aura" of a distinct (rather than mass-produced) object. but the very wilfullness (sp?) of it, and the clumsiness of the conception and execution, makes that aura feel cheap. and at a moment in time when you have blogs where people share music they love as well as tons of smart ideas and information, the whole "mystique" aspect seems like a cover for laziness or lack of knowledge.

...my point is just to say that despite your defense and despite isaacson's claims there is clearly a lot more to the "mississippi aesthetic" than simply sharing good music with good folks. i'm not saying it's sinister or anything, just that there is a level of investment in a mystique that the dude refuses to acknowledge. we've talked about this too.

oh, piffle. this whole thing, the brace words you've expended on this, amounts to a trivial aesthetic objection. no one is being harmed here. literally no one, not even the consumer, as the mississippi releases are generally quite affordable. you wish the dude were less defensive. okay, maybe he's too defensive. big deal. and you wish there were liner notes. me too, but i can live without them, as i'm more interested in the music as music than in reading about it. and you wish there weren't an aura of "mystique" and object-fetishism attached to certain mississippi releases. as far as i'm concerned, neither is a sin, but if you're repelled, you're welcome to tune out.

your willingness to attack harshly bothers me. you accuse mississippi of bootlegging, but then admit that other, ostensibly more respectable compilers are equally limited in their ability to find and pay the proper rights-holders. you're almost comically eager to accuse mississippi of ripping off a single source, but then have to amend yourself to admit that they've cast a very wide net. you suggest that anyone who was interested could go to other sources for this material, but then admit that you've spend dedicated years tracking it down yourself. that sucks. it suggests that your hostility here is not a product of the way this particular product has been assembled and presented, but rather a preexisting condition that you're seeking any available outlet to vent.

you're welcome to tune out.

is this a variant of the old thumper saying, "if you can't say anything nice..."? i have nice stuff to say about other mississippi releases, usually the ones worked on by other folks like the lomax archive (nathan salsburg) or ian nagoski etc.

i don't see it as a trivial aesthetic objection. it's an aesthetic objection tout court. it doesn't matter much in the scheme of things, but then neither do your or i. people have expended far more verbiage complaining about other things (like a single pitchfork review, say) on ILM. hell, "trivial aesthetic objections" are our bread and butter. beyond that though, i feel--though i haven't made clear in yesterday's posts--that something of the "mississippi aesthetic" (that is, trying to clumsily re-inject a mystique where such a thing is redundant, just a general desire to mystify) is evident in other things, other approaches within what might be called the record-buying public or something. but i'm not nabisco so it's hard for me to find handy ways of explaining this without offending people.

i noted above that this release simply isn't for me, but might interest other people. i also noted that i could work on providing links to DL most of the stuff on this box, which would render the box and the $65 or so it costs redundant for those who don't need the object. i dunno, i don't personally see the point of paying for something that you can get for free otherwise. obviously if you and other folks feel that the presence of the music on a particular format (vinyl) and in a handmade pine box constitutes value added, by all means go for it. i don't care.

and i almost feel like a jerk pointing this out, but they didn't really cast a wide net. the vast majority of the music in the box is from three or four comps, all released in the same series on the same label in the 1980s and 1990s. much of the other stuff is from sources that are currently available, either as LPs or as downloads from the folkways website. the two bebey tracks may constitute the true rarities. at what point does this become kind of weird? if i download the entire "music of liberia" comp from the folkways website, make my own LP out of it, put it in a white sleeve with my own corny art brut drawings on it, and then sell 500 copies for $15, is that not a little lame? (this is almost literally what that "monk" record label does btw.)

but you're right. who cares? nobody. the same however could be said of almost every ILM thread. so i guess i touched a nerve.

at what point does this become kind of weird? if i download the entire "music of liberia" comp from the folkways website, make my own LP out of it, put it in a white sleeve with my own corny art brut drawings on it, and then sell 500 copies for $15, is that not a little lame?

i guess there's a fulcrum point for everyone where the production of interesting objects tips over into lame object fetishism. sure, mississippi records are providing collectible, LP-format product for people who are specifically interests in collectible, LP-format product on the mississippi records label. that's weird to the extent that it strikes you as weird, but i'm okay with it because value-priced and aesthetically appealing mississippi comps have introduced me to a lot of music i'd likely never have heard otherwise. beyond that, they're fun to have and look at and arrange on shelves in order to satisfy a hoarding itch - i won't deny that.

if "the vast majority of the music on the box" really is drawn from a single source, then i agree: that's kind of lame. and it's bullshit if they didn't even think to credit their obvious source. then again, perhaps they secured permission from the original compilers, i dunno. in any event, it's hard to work up any real objection over an obvious fetish object with a print run of only 200. basically nobody's ever gonna hear the damn thing.

for the most part, i don't judge introductory compilations on the basis of whether or not they include "true rarities", material unavailable elsewhere. i love the nuggets series and the rhino power pop comps that have been discussed recently around here because at one time they presented me with a convenient, well-curated introduction to songs, artists, eras and genres with which i was unfamiliar but about which i was curious. of course, most of what they contain is available elsewhere. little was rescued from vanishing obscurity, but didn't bother me much. i'm not a genre expert and certainly wasn't when i first heard them, so rounding up the usual suspects did me a great service. i enjoy them even today because i simply like the music and track sequencing. the same is true of many of the mississippi records compilations i own.

i've come to see mississippi as a reliable guide to a world of wonderful music with which i'm largely unfamiliar and who reward me with cheap yet hoard-worthy objects for the attention i pay. that strikes me as a fair exchange. the album-objects they manufacture are almost like cereal box prizes in that regard. the music is point, but the allure of a shiny new toy can't be denied. it's clear that you don't really require the kind of introductory guidance they provide, anyway.

paragraph 1: "...specifically interests in collectible..." = "...specifically interested in collectible..."

paragraph 3: "...but didn't bother me much." = "...but that didn't bother me much."

paragraph 4: "...unfamiliar and who reward me with..." = "...unfamiliar, and they reward me with..."

it's hard to work up any real objection over an obvious fetish object with a print run of only 200.

Imho, if it's wrong, it's wrong, no matter how few or many copies. Can't Mississippi ever listen to anyone else's (arguably the consensus) pov re how to re-release music re crediting people and liner notes and such?

too many "re"'s

eh, many of their releases have extensive liner notes and accreditation. this one's apparently an exception. and i don't yet know that there's anything really wrong with it. would have to know a bit more about the sourcing on a track-by-track basis and whether or not the original compilers were consulted.

bottom line, though: no. i think that if you're producing goods in ridiculously small quantities and selling them basically at cost, then there is no way to do wrong. jack led zeppelin II for all i care. no harm done. there's a single-sided total control LP that has a side of early beatles tunes on the flip, clearly "mastered" off an old vinyl copy. i don't see this as wrong. i see it as value-added.

many of their releases have extensive liner notes and accreditation.

Not the few I have

i've got more than 20, and i'd say it's about 50/50. the comps almost never cite sources. can see why this might rankle some, but as long as they're doing as good a job of paying the rights-holders as the original compilers, it doesn't bother me.

And you believe they are paying the rights-holders, or have even made efforts to do so ?

i don't have any reason not to believe that they haven't made a good-faith effort. they're described their policies in this regard, and they seem satisfactory to me. as amateurist said upthread, it's often all but impossible to contact or even identify the rights-holders where these sorts of recordings are concerned, and this has been as much a problem for the "respectable" anthologists from whom mississippi seem to source much of their material as it is for mississippi themselves.

also, i don't believe they've made much money (if any) selling handmade LPs in extremely limited runs for $12 a pop, so it's not as if they're some kind of rapacious vampire organization profiting off obscurity. and, yes, that is an important distinction afaic.

lol

"i don't have any reason not to believe that they've made a good-faith effort."

so many typos and such...

paragraph 1: "...specifically interests in collectible..." = "...specifically interested in collectible..."

paragraph 3: "...but didn't bother me much." = "...but that didn't bother me much."

paragraph 4: "...unfamiliar and who reward me with..." = "...unfamiliar, and they reward me with..."

― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Tuesday, June 5, 2012 2:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i seriously admire you for proofreading your own post. that is after my own heart.

it's often all but impossible to contact or even identify the rights-holders

sometimes, but not always. often it just requires more effort than most people are willing to put in. the soundway dude goes to pretty impressive lengths to figure this stuff out.

as i noted above, it seems like the mississippi releases curated by other folks, like ian nagoski, nathan salsburg, etc. are much more responsible in providing info and context on the music. isaacson just doesn't seem interested in that, though to his credit he hasn't tried to suppress it in the releases he doesn't initiate. it's really those alan lomax, nagoski, etc. releases (and the stuff licensed from big legal mess) that i really love of mississippi's recent releases. when they go it alone, as in this african guitar box, the results are kind of tacky. but i repeat myself.

i also love their michael hurley, dead moon, etc. stuff too, but that's a different hill of beans.

yeah, a lot of my affection for mississippi is a product of their LP reissues: dead moon, dog faced hermans, the ex, michael hurley, clara rockmore, "bongo joe" coleman, abner jay, bruce haack, washington phillips, etc.

"i don't have any reason not to believe that they've made a good-faith effort."

C'mon, the label's whole history as has been documented here and elsewhere is reason NOT to believe they make any effort at all

i don't think that's the case at all. early on, they had the idea that they were operating at such a low, "off the grid" and "among friends" level that they didn't need to worry about that sort of thing. when it became clear to them that their circle of friends was spanning the globe and that people were becoming upset by their indifference to copyright and proper remuneration, they tried to make reasonable amends. tbh, i respect both the position from which they started and the accommodations they would up making. they just aren't pheonix/radioactive or whatever.

i mean, that's as i understand it, and perhaps i've been misinformed.

by "off the grid" do you mean "placing bootlegs of LPs by african musicians in every significant indie record store in the USA?" b/c that's what happened (i think it was the orchestre regional de kayes LP). they apparently corrected that error eventually (or so i recall reading), but i just wanted to point that out.

yeah, but that's the point at which the rubber hit the road, right? in their early days, they'd been operating out of their portland shop exclusively, making records for in-store customers and a fairly small network of friends. then they spread out to a clutch of west coast indie shops, and after that to the rest of america and the world.

i forgive them for failing to adjust their practices ahead of their growth curve because they've been responsive to criticism, they don't seem ever to have done anything for profit, and they were never printing particularly large quantities. they still produce some of the cheapest LPs out there, and it's not like the quality is poor. i pay twelve to fifteen bucks for a mississippi record, and the chances are good its gonna come with a bunch of inserts, a bonus 7", a handmade cover, special printing, maybe even a gatefold or some such. that speaks to me of a fundamentally ethical, "in it for the music" mindset. were i buying a cutthroat, money grubbing boot, i'd be paying $25-30 for the same.

yeah i'm not hating over it i just wanted to point out that they managed to get a bootleg (or two or three) into stores before public shame caused them to alter their business practices.

that speaks to me of a fundamentally ethical, "in it for the music" mindset. were i buying a cutthroat, money grubbing boot, i'd be paying $25-30 for the same.

yeah, this is true. those LPs on the monk label, which seems to have jumped on the bandwagon once mississippi became a big thing, are more what you're describing insofar as they are really tackily packaged comps of old blues stuff that's been reissued (on every conceivable format) a million times, and they charge real import prices--$18 minimum, often i see them for $30.

and they are mastered, like most of mississippi's comps, from other LPs or CDs (or even MP3s) rather than from original elements or even selectively-sourced 78s.

i should say most of mississippi's comps not curated by salsburg, nagoski, etc.

yeah, those monk albums are crazy overpriced and boring besides. no sensibility of their own, just a record mill.

i mean, i recently bought an LP reissue of ali farka toure's ni foli, a cassette originally issued in 1984. it's on "social music", a portland-based record-club label specializing in tiny print runs that's clearly modeled on mississippi records. the music is wonderful, but the album is minimally (and rather crudely) packaged, with no explanatory information. just a record in a sleeve, basically. i can't imagine that the estate of AFT was paid what they might have asked for a legit reprint, given his international celebrity, but i'm happy to have it as it's not easily available elsewhere and came quite cheap. and because i'm a nerdy vinyl geek. if there's harm being done here to anyone but hoarders of the original cassette, i can't see it.

htttps://rapid-----.com/files/3655039306/AFT.rar

delete extra t and s

cool, thanks, i hadn't gotten around to digitizing it :)

and yeah, it's everywhere now that the LP's out

and maybe before, but i'm a fan, and i'd never come across it

more killer stuff comin:
https://sites.google.com/site/mississippicsr/

super old hurley lp accompanied by an all-new home recording blue hills-y one

Land Of Lo-Fi was an old (90's?) Hurley tape release. This could be different though. So psyched for the Folkways sessions one.

oh huh, no kidding. i didn't know there were tapes, actually; was just listening to him enthusing about eight tracks on this, tangentially; he plays the slurf song about ten minutes through & then o my stars just before the end. o my stars makes me ache.

written up as new, anyhow: Michael Hurley - Land Of Lo-Fi (New home recordings)

hey woah! http://www.landoflofi.com/

woah! will buy!

there are some great tapes from the 80's and 90's that he reissued on hand-burned CDR... Growlin' Bobo, Woodbill Bros., a double called Land Of Lo-Fi/Redbirds were all CDR. Excrusiasion '86 is tape-only and I still don't have it.

i admit i like that this stuff is coming out in a kind of steady trickle rather than in some massive box set or whatever. gives you time to appreciate each drop.

the hurley stuff i mean. that movie looks great and what a fantastic website!

yeah i love that you can read the bios for both protein monster AND jolie holland. can't quite work out the relevance of the performances that are listed, & which you can sponsor, but i hope there's some good live hurls in the film.

my guess is those performances will be in the film and/or bonus features on DVD?

I know it is old news, but I was lucky enough to finally get the True Story of Abner Jay today, wow made my whole week

oh man... so much of that record is so amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kajvEslcEPM

ugh, just gonna bump this thread whenever something new's forthcoming - even though it's been a while since i picked up a mississippi record!, i'm outta the loop - but:

V/A - Hasabe (Ethiopian R&B compilation)
& tsegue maryam gebrou, alemayehu eshete & mahmoud ahmed reissues. the gebrou piano stuff is just the bomb.

i have only spun hasabe once but it sounds great, btw. i am enjoying this, too; a mix of ethiopian 45s, starting with this super-sweet astatke-arranged slow take on tezeta. the guitar playing's consistently so beautiful, the music has its own pace.

hey anyway so here is a super vague question. there is a gospel jam in my head that i can't place - i felt like it was on one of the 3cd tompkins square post-war gospel comps, neither of which i have to hand, & then wondered if it was maybe on a mississippi comp. it's sung like a duet, over a very minimal electric guitar backing, with a woman singing falsetto and a guy singing a lower part, but still kinda high, & i feel like it ends with the main line being something like "do you nee-ed pow-err", kinda straining, repeated, very slow, the voices in and out of sync. i'm skimming tracklists & can't find anything: does anyone know what i'm talking about? post your phone number & i'll call you & sing the gospel to demonstrate.

is hasabe available anywhere except vinyl?

it's all sourced from the ethiopiques series but the comp's just vinyl

Did they get permission from the Ethiopiques folks and will the artists ever see any money

i would be mega surprised if they didn't, bc i think that's their MO, now, but really if you wanna know i guess write eric, or bump the other thread & let's avalanche into five hundred posts of reflexive suspicion

btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayA4Qb23eQk

Life is a problem/I'm gonna whine it/All night long

All the new Ethiopian releases of Eric's Mississippi are licensed through Ethiopiques, and will finally reach some the artists he's releasing. I was really upset though to see that the last comp Hasabe was spelt Halale in Amharic, and the frontcover with a photo of Mulluqen Mellese has absolutely nothing to do with record as he has no songs on it. Afraid that he's way too much in a rush creating these albums..

Thanks for the update.

So Mississippi finally got a website going:

https://sites.google.com/site/mississippicsr/

Didn't know if I should post here or the Tompkins Square / Takoma thread, but I've really been enjoying the new Marisa Anderson. Not sure I dig it as much as The Golden Hour quite yet - it seems this time the brevity of the tunes doesn't always work in her favor, which I guess means I wish all of these songs were twelve minutes long. Anyway, shes terrific. What do you guys think? Anyone seen her live? She was here a while back but I was out of town, unfortunately.

oh i'm gonna pick that one up. i didn't buy the golden hour but dipped into this one on bandcamp & really liked it. i'm glad mississippi have her, & that killer tjo release, it's a nice angle in their catalogue.

dying to pick up a ton of new MR releases in general. did anyone hear the michael hurley 7"?

I have it sitting in front of me, gimme an hour or so

beautiful cover on the Hurley single... do we really need another version of "Wildgeeses"? I guess so, this one is good. B-side has a nice guitar sound, gonna come back to that one again.

i went to this tonight - http://qujunktions.com/artists/i-dont-feel-at-home-in-this-world-anymore-film-stories-images-from-the-mississippi-records-and-alan-lomax-archive

it was a fantastically entertaining 90 minutes and highly recommended if it comes your way. my already big respect for eric isaacson has sky rocketed.

yeah seconded (saw it a few weeks ago). much of the archive footage is :O and I like how he is candid abt Lomax being kind of a dick in many ways

Here's the Crumb Brothers recording. Just incredible. 10 years old, really?
However, one of the YouTube comments says this is actually by The Hightower Brothers. And sure enough, the song is listed on one of their compilations at AMG. Can anyone shed any light on this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZGduzdOi1Q

been listening to the life is a problem comp a lot lately

what an incredible song! thank you

Just got the DeZurik Sisters LP on Mississippi and it's crazy fun if you like old 78s of sisters who sing like birds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNYDyXn6qso

*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