'Russian Lover & Other Stories'

Didn't realize it was such a pain in the ass to DL tracks off eSnips; I just signed up for another service to host the mp3 files. I'll have more tracks up soon.

Biggest news around these parts is that the very first YETI imprint title, Russian Lover by Jana Martin, is in hand. We also have advance reader copies of the Luc Sante book, Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005. Both books came out really really nice, I think. We're just getting those mailed out now so interestedd reviewers should contact us ASAP for either title.

Jana's book is available pretty cheap here, and I will now quote from the jacket copy OK:

Jana Martin’s sentences have beauty and bite and a rhythm all their own. These are tough, funny stories from a writer wise enough to know that wisdom doesn’t always come with experience. Russian Lover won’t teach you much about Russia, but it will give you some exhilaratingly painful portraits of people trying to love.--Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

There’s an elegant, flaring strength to Russian Lover, a precision of language that is daring and unique in the way it touches memory. Martin’s stories are cocoons spun tightly around an elusive, idiopathic emotional core—always intriguing, they give life to the tired mind. --Lydia Millet, author of My Happy Life

Go back to Germany

CAN "Doko Daie"
CAN "Introduction"
CAN "Mushroom (Alt. version)"
CAN "Halleluwah"
CAN "Bring Me Coffee or Tea"
CAN "Mushroom"

At last night's Miniluwah (with Valet, Au, Smoke & Mirrors, and Amen, Again Amen doing a live score to Kenneth Anger's sometimes gorgeous Pleasure Dome flick) I was having a lot of fun playing with the song "Halleluwah." It was the first time I had allowed myself to be so literal as to play the actual song our little festival stole its name from. I never practice DJ, and lately my office with the stereo in it is in such disarray that I do not get to listen to my LPs as much as I'd like. So when I get fancy and play stuff at the same time ("Mind Train" by Yoko worked well with "The Creator Has A Master Plan" by Pharoah Sanders) or chop a song up into different parts or whatever, and it sounds good, then I'm extra psyched.

These tracks posted today are from a CD bootleg that came into the used book and CD shop I worked at in Oak Ridge, TN, of all places, in the mid '90s. This is where I learned about the "alternative" Christian" genre, discovered that paperback romance novels can be bought and read at an alarming rate by some people, and met one of my favorite people ever, this guy Martin Beeler who did a bang-up job on his Akron/ Family piece for the next Yeti.

That CD, Free Concert, has since been eclipsed by the Can Box in many ways -- you can view the entire concert on that VHS/ DVD, for instance -- and I know at least a few of these tracks are on the CD component of that set, and that they sound better on there. I do not think the entirety of the 28-minute track "Doko Daie" was ever officially released, however. I am not sure I'm even spelling it right. Anyway, "Doko E." appears on Unlimited Edition. I think it's safe to assume here that "E" is for Extract or Excerpt. My years as a private detective come in handy some time...

The first track is a lower res mp3 -- had to make it smaller so I could upload it via eSnips. The other tracks are lossless mp4s. Hope that's cool, that people do not have a problem listening to/ playing those files. Please lemme know if so, OK.

PUMICE "Eyebath"

Here's the first track off of Pebbles by Pumice. Pumice is the AKA of one Auckland, NZ chap named Stefan Geoffrey Neville, which is such a great name I want to bestow it upon a pet of some kind. Maybe tomorrow I'll run out and get a pet. I was woefully ignorant of the supreme excellence of Mr. Stefan Geoffrey Neville's music until this week, when I was lucky enough to receive this not-yet-released disk in the mail.

I have been in one of the most embarrasingly extreme don't listen to any new stuff at all phases in my life here lately. That does make some sense, in that I'm working on a book centering largely on music made in the '20s and '30s. But between this and the new-ish R. Kelly and Diddy singles -- both of which rule, of course -- I'm slowly being brought back to the music of today's youth, to the now sounds that are currently happening. Yay, Pumice!!!

They muuuuurdeeerrrrrrrrrrred himmmmmm

NANCY DUPREE & HER ROCHESTER SCHOOLCHILDREN “Docta King”

TONY SCHWARTZ “Religion (Street Preacher, Jewish Prayer)”

NANCY DUPREE & HER ROCHESTER SCHOOLCHILDREN “James Brown”

TONY SCHWARTZ “Imagination & Music”

OK, so things seem a bit less harried and crazy and nuts and busy around here today so I aim to post with regularity -- we'll see!

The EMP Pop Conference remains the best thing happening in music criticism (as Christgau has claimed I believe? -- don't want to misquote him, especially now that I finally really like the guy and his work).

I was honored to be included, and the presentations I saw by Scott Seward, Michaelangelo Matos, Erik Davis, Ned Sublette, Simon Reynolds, RJ Smith, and this guy whose name I forget who had super interesting things to say about the ways Hawaiian culture interpreted / appropriated minstrelsy, he was awesome too. I missed as much great stuff as I saw, too. My brain's still processing stuff from then, and it was two weeks ago now (also just getting over a cold I picked up on the trip, yay).

One of my outlets, eMusic, has recently uploaded hundreds of Folkways titles. Hundreds!

There's music from the rarely recorded Tuareg people of the Sahara and cool looking weirdo classical people I've never heard of and a great Fugs record and some weird guru chanting recordings and Tim Leary telling you how to get high and a recording of the way a Manhattan street sounded in the early '50s. I know it's been said dozens of times, but if Folkways is not the most judiciously interesting label that's ever been launched, what is? They should have just sent the entire Folkways catalog up in the Voyager -- or sent an extra one along with it, crammed with a nice hi-fi and a robot eager to cue up every Folkways disc.

Even more obscure titles from the Folkways catalog remain un-digitized, though presumably it’s only a matter of time before everything is released—hopefully including archival recordings that never got put on LPs or CDs in the first place, going back to acetate 78s and early wire recordings! I personally can’t wait for the release of Elder Charles Beck’s awesome and super rare recording Urban Holiness Service, though it looks like it's digitzed elsewhere. The Blind Willie Johnson LP that Sam Charters did in the '50s which has his second wife taking credit for stuff his first wife did; I have it on vinyl but it would be nice to easily have it in bits, too.

The two things that have me really freaking out are the near-complete recordings of the genial, New York City-based musique concrete/ collage artist/ contemporary sound ethnographer dude Tony Schwartz, which just got added (you may know him for his Moondog recordings.)

Also just added is Nancy Dupree’s brilliant 1969 album Ghetto Reality, essentially an inner city version of the Langley Project with the kids writing their own songs. Holy fuck, it's so good!!! Hope you like these samples. I urge you to check out more at your earliest convenience.