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viewing 1 To 7 of 7 items
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LP
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SN 026LP
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"I first became aware of Josephine when I was living in Chicago and doing solo songs weekly at The Hideout. Hearing her sing for the first time is a pleasantly shocking experience for anyone, and I was an arm's length away. She seemed very nervous. At one point she had to stop the song and asked if anyone had any water. I'm sure the presence of my bandmates and crew didn't help the nerves. I handed her a bottle of water. She gave a polite thank you and carried on with her songs. Later I heard she had a band with one of her friends from Old Town School of Folk Music (I don't know how true this is, this was just the word on the street). They were called Children's Hour... I don't recall how I ended up playing drums with them but I remember how I felt: it was like putting on a gas mask and getting clean oxygen. The environment I was in was so pocked and cancerous, Papa M and Children's Hour were my only life source... It was music I could understand. I could relate with the lyrics. At any rate, I gave the songs a simple pulse that stadium audiences could easily digest... Fast forward twenty years. The hard drive with the recording is long gone -- ancient, kaput, thousands of miles away in god knows what landfill. Andy, however, still has the rough mixes. Hearing them with new ears I realize what a magical moment was captured, a moment of youth. So I tried to clean up the mono mixes, make the best of them. When, lo and behold, Paul Oldham comes to the rescue with all the individual tracks, preserved and able to be summoned on 2020 hard drives. Long story short, I buff and polish the tracks to create easy-to-digest stems for mixing -- even ducking the instruments ever so slightly when the vocals come in. Sweetening them so that mixing will be naught but a skip in the park. Josephine and Andy travel to Nashville and transfer the digititus to simmering analog goodness and serve up delicious bowls of mixes. When I listen back, the only listening experience I can compare it to is Spiderland. It sounds like some young, forward-thinking, folks who are doing what they do best without any self-awareness... It's pure music. Now, when I need pure music most." --David Pajo, 2024
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LP
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SN 025LP
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"Skam recorded this stuff between 1982 and 1983, then broke up, leaving these songs to be released... maybe never? Or more preferably, now, to race into the bloodstream of jaded, faded today with all the vigor and rigor of Skam's eternal youth. The band that became Skam was a world apart; they were posited for the first time by 8th graders Vince Forcier and Jack Anderson at a Jackson Browne concert, and their initial rehearsals in their parents' basement were highlighted by covers of Beatles, Stones, Who and Led Zeppelin songs. It wasn't until they'd been playing a bit that they discovered The Ramones, and it was then that the die was cast and pedal pressed to the metal for another frantic couple of years. The Skam recordings from '82 have an undeniably Clash-like countenance that sets them definitively apart from the 'First Four' of dischord -- in some ways, prefiguring the pop-punk sound of Green Day at the dawn of the '90s instead -- but subsequent recordings found them quickly evolving into a personal mastery of savage riffs and tempos, as well as post-punk conceptions. But even as they were verging into this new territory, their three years together had frayed their alliance and they soon broke up. Jack joined No Trend, Vince played in Racer X and then, the second version of Second Wind. The rediscovered Skam tapes make for an incredible addendum to the more well-known music of that incredible time and place. No Name is the name, grab it now!"
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2LP
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SN 016LP
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"Finally! The Smog live album everyone always wanted for years and years has finally reached the public just in time to be a Bill Callahan record instead. Doesn't make a bit of difference -- Smog classics ride alongside Callahan hits with the same unforgettable gait. Rough Travel For A Rare Thing was recorded in Melbourne, Australia on November 8, 2007, at a club called The Toff. Which I think is a slang term for snob. Like, 'that bleedin' toff is a poofta.' In fact, the club was called The Poofta in the '80s. Australia's been good to Bill. They like him and he likes the ocean that surrounds them. Oh, and he likes them too, of course. And of course, they like the ocean, too. They are water people and he's a water person. It makes for good touring and killer live show recordings, as you will soon see. The show sold out in a matter of hours, which Bill's minders delightedly reported to their star, in order to get his spirits up for the show. They needn't have bothered -- Bill loves playing live, whether in front of sold-out houses or almost sold-out houses. In any case, it was a moment to remember when the band walked into the venue for the first time. Bill was like, 'Cool! There's a bar in my dressing room. Which way to the stage?' Then he found out he was standing on the stage. The place was small, I tell ya. Small. When Bill makes his records, he has a certain sound in his head which we hope can be extracted by the time the budget is maxed. The same thing happens on tour but we pay a lot less money for it to happen. For the sold-out tour all across Australia that this recording was taken from, the line-up was: three fiddle players who also sang back up, a drummer without cymbals and a bass player who also played harmonica. The idea was to have a strong, simple foundation with a lot of space left on top to be filled by the mystical strings and voice. And that's what came to pass. Rough Travel For A Rare Thing features Kate Connor, Lara Goodridge, Pria Schwall, Tim Rogers and Lawrence Pike and an audience of probably a hundred. But they were packed in there. And there were lots more out on the sidewalk in front -- honest!"
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LP
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SN 017LP
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"In the wilds of greater outer Louisville Kentucky, there is a place called Funtown. You won't find it on any map, and you might just lose yourself in the woods out there trying to pin it down to the ground as well. Yet, Funtown is a place, as much as it is a place of mind. It was in this place, in a clearing and on the shores of a pond, that Bonny 'Prince' Billy and The Picket Line combined forces to play his music and their music and other people's music for a community of people to hear and watch and swing and step to. And they did! The songs of Bonny and The Picket Line and the others that they play are music for an afternoon, an evening, a night. Songs to echo off your head when you wake up the next morning -- but songs for a finite place, like Funtown; a place that you must leave behind you, and leave in your mind. So they left, and months went by, and a few more opportunities to play as one presented themselves. Including this one! Live in front of friends and family is the way of Funtown, so more and the same were invited when B'P'B and the TPL laid this one down for posterity. It was as fun as it sounds and more, in ways which have mostly been channeled down to the two sides of a groove, and presented to you here, wrapped twice in full-color sleeves. The Picket Line spark with their youth the picking traditions that some call bluegrass and some call music. They are comprised of Oscar Lee Riley Parsons, guitar and singing; Bob Dixon, electric guitar; Jonathan Kempf, mandolin; Cheyenne Mize, filled and singing; Danny Kiely, double bass; and of course, the Mayor of Funtown himself, Bradley Reinstedler, on banjo."
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CD
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SN 014CD
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Incredibly non-mass-market "fan club" issue, for the snow flake in all of us. Hen's teeth are like grains of sand compared to this one...Packaged in an embossed paper sleeve with an illustrious color photo of the artists pasted on the back. The material seems to be demo versions of material that ended up on The Letting Go album in 2006, but we don't want to give away all the luxurious details. "Have been watching (with Rene) some of the old videotapes I made between 1998 and 2001 of cable TV programming -- films, TV specials, whatnot. I had about 80 unlabeled tapes, so I had to fast-forward thru them to figure out what was on them. In the process, I have watched some stuff I meant to watch then -- or, maybe, watched in those days, but forgot. One of these was a two-hour A&E special tracing the history of pro-wrestling narrated by Steve Allen, probably one of the last things he did before his death. And also some movies like Million Dollar Legs with W.C. Fields and Jack Oakie. This was a film I'd wanted to see since the early '70s. In 2000 or thereabouts I taped it off TCM via the timer, while I was sleeping. Finally, a few days ago, 35 years after I first heard about it, I saw it. Just about worth the wait." --Robert Nedelkoff
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CD
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SN 011CD
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"Fans know that seeing the Bonnie 'Prince' live is an experience akin to but unlike hearing his records -- it's the same man up there, but changed, somehow. And his impulses seem to be entirely switched out. Songs get the radical retune at the drop of a hat -- and with every new collection of musicians, a different version. That's what we have here, a set of classic Bonnie songs (and the odd Palace number) affected by their players and the environment to climb new heights time and again. Rocking and raging, dropping to whisper and lilting where they once ran, the songs are part of the joyous affair between Bonnie and his fans. The energy of these shows is in the recordings along with the music -- for you to feed off of too."
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CD
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SN 008CD
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6 track CD EP on Papa M's new label, Sea Note. "This is a weird release. We really don't want to push this record on you as 'the next new Papa M record' because it doesn't really represent the way things will sound on the next new Papa M record. That's part of the reason this Papa M release has been 'officially bootlegged' on Sea Note, to'emphasize its different-ness. As well as its defiant hilarious-ness! As well as its straight-forward deviance, of course."
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