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Sold Date:
July 23, 2014
Start Date:
July 16, 2014
Final Price:
$16.50
(USD)
Bid Count:
6
Seller Feedback:
3633
Buyer Feedback:
24
This item is not for sale. Gripsweat is an archive of past sales and auctions, none of the items are available for purchase.
VINYL: Excellent Condition - Cover: Excellent condition.
** I will be listing a lot of Jazz, Punk, New Wave, Rock, etc during the next few days. I do combine shipping so please check back and save if you purchase more than one lp. **
NOTES: This reissue of a St. Joan/Black Label release from 1989 was a project related to the late Chicago band , comprised of and . Their aim was to reissue classic criminally under-heard recordings: this, 's
Aida, Folkarabe, and others. Unfortunately, the band broke up and the
label went belly-up, leaving their distributor Drag City to unload the
remaining copies. There are a few out there so snap them up while you
can. This gig features guitarist
playing "Trouble in Mind" twice with a couple of wondrously creative
"Preludes" in between, creating a suite of the entire work. So stark is
the original, and so drawn out its phrasing, we are tempted not to hear
it as that nugget of American folk song, but as a new one offered in the
sprit of dislocation, disappearance, and the erasure of the America
that song represented. '
"Preludes," with their distant tones and slight dissonances, attest to
this as well. They carry within them the root of "Trouble in Mind," but
also of 's
"Cortez the Killer." They cross boundaries between blues, folk,
classical, and jazz musics, slow as a turtle, and as careful as a
preacher with a new bible. In fact, the music here is the word,
stretched to the breaking point where it bleeds into only sound and
resonance. When
reenters "Trouble in Mind," he plays as if from another world; his key
change is evident as a different sense of purpose. The tune is now
played as a reverie, for something erased and barely remembered for what
it was. This is the deep blues Robert Palmer wrote of, a sense of "how
did I get here and not remember where I cam from or even what I was?"
And as if on cue, the second "Prelude" prepares us for an entry into the
world of those very same blues, prepared from ether only to return
there. The absorption of atmosphere and texture inherent in every phrase
and fragmented line suggests a melody that never quite comes. "Wish
Train" becomes the ghost that rode in on the wind of 's
guitar. It has the tenderness of a lullaby and the vastness of eternal
space floating about its open tuning like a star. It calls back and
forth across musical history for an answer but all it gets is an echo.
But in that echo is all the music you could ever want to hear. Both
"Child's Blues" and "Fallen Son" are the end pieces of generational
changes in music, in sound, in culture. ,
like John Cage and Mark Rothko before him, sees and hears the value in
not ordering sounds along a particular path even if that path has been
drawn out in advance. Hence, where the 12 bars are supposed to be placed
are sparse notes and large spaces where notes, harmony, and melody once
existed. Touch, sense, and aural interrogation are the only bones left
on the skeleton of 's
blues, and even these are ghostly, spectral in their languid elegance
and deep sense of sadness and remembrance. And as if this weren't opaque
enough, wraps her voice around 's
"Blue Ghost Blues" with such an ethereal sensuality it's difficult to
hold the lyric because you are too busy listening to the way the words
drip from her mouth like honey. She's singing of being haunted by the
presence of the disappeared, but it sounds like she wants to possess the
bodiless essence of that personage within hers, no matter how
horrifying. We can only wonder if hearing this originally, of
decided she wanted to be a singer and front a rock & roll band
dedicated to playing the blues her brother had so obviously appropriated
from . But it's an old story, and the majesty and grace with which Langille and
play out this old, obscure blues points to another kind of
disappearance, of this music from the culture at large. Their emphasis
is not on how dead the music is at this juncture, but how absent we are
from our emotional and cultural heritage. This is a wondrous album of
profound implications.
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MEDIA MAIL
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2-LP'S $5.50
3-LP'S $7.00
4 LP'S AND UP WILL BE $1 PER EACH ADDITIONAL LP
PRIORITY MAIL
1-LP
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45 RPM SHIPPING PRICES
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