Mississippi Records (seriously, fuck them)

Was in a record store today and found a vinyl copy of the old Arhoolie LP by George Coleman, "Bongo Joe." I was about to buy it, but the tag said "new," odd for a decades-old album which, as far as I know, hasn't been pressed on vinyl for many, many years. I had a suspicion that this was another in a line of records from small labels (across the globe) that has been bootlegged by the Mississippi Records label and, it seems, distributed by some major indie distributor (based on how ubiquitous these pressings are). What makes this particularly irksome is that the music is still in print, legitimately, from Arhoolie.

Also, check this out:

Hi all,

I am sad to report that the exploitation of African musicians continues through the efforts of Mississippi Records, based in Portland Oregon, and run by Eric Isaacson and Warren Hill. Mississippi Records have recently released on vinyl a recording by the Orchestre Regional de Kayes, a group based in Mali. Mississippi Records do not have, nor did they seek to obtain, the copyright to the recordings, which were originally released by Barenreiter-Musicaphon in 1970. Mississippi Records are acting illegally by infringing the copyright of the musicians. Due to the lack of copyright, all sales and profits will benefit Mississippi Records exclusively, while the musicians of the orchestra will receive absolutely nothing and are powerless to prevent the release of their songs. Given the difficulties that many African musicians face, I find it repellent that Mississippi Records can profit from the sale of the LP without paying one cent in royalties to the original musicians.

Mississippi Records are acting in an exploitative manner, so please do not support their business or their activities.

Graeme Counsel
Radio Africa

And finally, while I admit that some of the Mississippi Records LPs look pretty nice, others are just lazy. The Washington Phillips LP that The Wire et al were raving out is just a bootleg of a compilation put out--in several iterations, the most recent of them in 2005--by Yazoo. Now granted the music is 80 years old and none of these labels are paying royalties. But at least Yazoo can boast of being run by the folks who collected the music, and they take care to use the best-available 78s and transfer them carefully (hence the reissue of the material when better sources and/or better remastering technology surfaces). As well, the Yazoo releases have detailed liner notes by Pat Conte that tell us as much as he or anyone knows about the musician. The Mississippi Records releases seem to play into hipsters' fantasies of the "old, weird America blah blah blah" by calculatedly avoiding including nearly any info on their packaging, suggesting that the music's provenance is more mysterious than it actually may be.

Do the people at The Wire really have such short memories that they don't realize that much of this stuff has been out--or in the case of the Philips stuff, is out--in other, better forms? Or does the whole fetishistic allure of limited-edition vinyl with outsider-art trappings just outweigh common sense?

Anyway. Fuck Mississippi Records and fuck whatever distributor is putting their stuff out there.

Here's the most recent Yazoo release of the Phillips stuff.

And for what it's worth, here's MR's Wikipedia page.

OK, I guess I'm overreacting. But what bugs me, aside from the ethical problem of not licensing music, is the whole ethos behind this label, which you can also find in recent reissues on Sub Rosa, Dust to Digital, Honest Jon's, etc. It's like the whole idea is to add further layers of mystification, or at least to replace those layers that had been peeled off by years of dedicated scholarship. Seems like a very dubious impulse to me, even though part of me must share it enough for some of these LP reissues to be moderately appealing.

The layers thing makes a lot of sense, but it also sounds like these guys are just casting for a quick buck.

If you'd looked closer at the Bongo Joe reissue, you'd have noticed that it's licensed from Arhoolie.

You invalidate by your own point by your admission that NONE of the labels putting this stuff out (for the most part) is paying royalties on the material. That's as far as the blues & gospel material is concerned--of course the Orhcestra Regional de Kayes LP is another story, and something I'm far less comfortable with personally. But I don't see what the problem is with issuing public domain material in a different format. None of the material they've put out is particularly easy to find on LP, and face it, Am, some people like to collect records--say what you will about the unhealthy collectors' impulse, but the people want what the people want.

And to paraphrase, "At least the guys at Yazoo have collected these 78s..." Well, that's about half true. Most compilations on ALL of those labels (Yazoo, Document, Mamlish, Herwin, County, Rounder) draw from the collections of a half dozen high-end 78 collectors. And yeah, so they know the other 78 guys and have been collecting 78s for over five decads and that's cool, but it also means that the raw material (that is, 78rpm discs) available to them in the sixties & seventies were much greater and more INFINITELY MORE AFFORDABLE, than it is today. If the MS records guys had spent a fortune on clean Washingont Phillips 78s, would that have made their project more respectable?

I do agree with you that more liner notes would be good, because I enjoy reading liner notes. However, the typical Yazoo-style dissection of a blues solo & abnormalities of its rhythm seems to be an unfashionable stylistic choice these days. OTOH, I wouldn't mind at LEAST session info (available in Rust & others.)

xp to Am's original post.

My third paragraph gets a little incoherent, but you get what I mean i think.

Uh oh, scrap my reply, please.

I think the Sub Rosa re-ish of the Burroughs LP has great liner notes, so I wouldn't include them in the same camp of obscurantist myth-builders. (a legit critique.)

and Yazoo of course, have been involved in their own levels of myth-making:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000E6UK9Q.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

And just the name "Secret Museum of Mankind" itself, for their series of ethnic music, implies a sort of mystical elitism.

I know it's unfashionable, and that seems a shame. I blame the whole late-90s "old, weird America" reissues (Revenant, etc.) that followed in the wake of the reissue of the Harry Smith Anthology. There was (is?) even an "American Primitive" (ugh) section in Other Music in NYC.

The whole attitude that seems to me exemplified by the M.R. reissues reminds me of the attitude toward "outsider" musicians, a sort of troubling patronizing--I guess that deserves several of its own threads, but it seems infinitely weird and probably distasteful to me to see music that has been the subject of much study, writing, etc. being reissued as though it was a tabula rasa just because hipsters like it better that me and don't want to get involved in the issues surrounding the music in its own cultural contexts.

Ian: I'm thinking of that Sub Rosa comp "Oh, Run Into Me" or whatever--the supposedly "rare" music by female blues singers that has mostly been reissued a few times on such "rare" labels as Sony, Document, etc.

A good thread on the issue of royalties in M.R.'s African reissues here: http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7358

Well, the "Secret Museum of Mankind" is an allusion to a series of books. But yeah it indulges in a similar sort of mythmaking I suppose, though Conte makes sure to counter that (or at least to complement it) with a great deal of scholarship, thoughtful exegesis, etc.

Good examples of thoughtful, responsible recent reissues are those on the Soundway label.

I mean, there's always the danger--inherent I suppose in the academization of the study of most anything--of making it seem the property of "experts" who tell you how to understand it, how to interpret it, etc. But the whole idea of expertise, of knowledge, of literacy in specific forms of vernacular music seems to have been banished, for the sake of a dubious aesthetics, from the sorts of reissues we're discussing.

For a corrective to all this, see the rather amazingly involved reviews of music at the Musical Traditions website. Here are some recent examples:

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/living.htm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/boggs.htm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/hammons.htm

Finally: I just don't like the idea that we've ceded the presentation of all these types of vernacular musics to the obscurantists at M.R. etc., just because the kind of stuff put out by, say, Folkways may seem hopelessly square to the beards-n-big-glasses set.

The whole attitude that seems to me exemplified by the M.R. reissues reminds me of the attitude toward "outsider" musicians, a sort of troubling patronizing--I guess that deserves several of its own threads, but it seems infinitely weird and probably distasteful to me to see music that has been the subject of much study, writing, etc. being reissued as though it was a tabula rasa just because hipsters like it better that me and don't want to get involved in the issues surrounding the music in its own cultural contexts.

It's a really good point, but would you rather have something you love & appreciate limited to academics? Even if the people buying MS records today don't know so much as you about the history of the rural south circa 1925, at least they're enjoying the music and getting exposed to it. Maybe some of the people who buy these MS reissues will feel compelled to search it out further.

Though of course labels like Yazoo & County are the gold-standard among pre-war reissue labels, mostly in part due to the great sound & liner notes, not all reissue labels have reached those heights of detail. Specifically I feel labels like Document (and their imitators) would benefit from more attention to detail, besides just the citations of recording dates. So to criticize MS for skimping on info while other, "more respectable" labels do it too is a bit picky.

more xposts of course.

similar arguments have been directed at this label
http://www.dragcity.com/catalog/catyaala.html

Do you have a problem with the fact that the material is being reissued, or just the way it's being done? I am interested in discussing this, because it's something I spend a lot of time thinking about. There was a huge discussion about similar issues regarding the Sublime Frequencies label.

lol @ "beards-n-big-glasses set"

http://www.citypaper.com/bob/story.asp?id=14537

The Yaala Yaala model is the Sun City Girls' Sublime Frequencies imprint, which releases a smorgasbord of recordings from far corners of the globe. The same ethical question has been raised regarding both enterprises: Are they capitalizing on the creative labor of obscure non-Western artists? In fact, Yoro Diallo, a fairly renown musician whose work appears on one Yaala Yaala disc, has spoken out on behalf of the Malian office of author's rights about music piracy. Usually the recorder/pirating distributor--in this case, Carneal--is assumed to be making money without the artists consent.

Carneal is quick to point out that he has tried to contact the musicians he's released so far--in fact, he has planned a trip back to Mali this December to meet with a few musicians to reach an agreement for release. He has also formed the Yaala Yaala Rural Musicians' Collective into which all profits from CD sales will go. "I'm hoping to go over with some money and give it to the artists," he says.

But he acknowledges that any profits are going to be small, as music distribution has so radically changed over the past decade. Just because Yaala Yaala is working with rural Africans doesn't mean they're automatically being shystered by a crooked businessmen with a get-rich quick scheme; more poignantly, nobody--nobody--is getting rich by selling albums in 2007.

"I will be lucky to make any money off this--any, zero," Carneal says. "We're covering mastering, manufacturing, production, and distribution. And I am totally in the hole right now. If I make my money back, fine. And if I don't, then I'll keep on doing it.

"The major world music distribution system that enriches this infinitesimal portion of the population of musicians in a country like Mali is a good thing," he continues, referring to the likes of established artists like Keita and the late Touré. But the kind of releases that Yaala Yaala and Sublime Frequencies are putting out, he contends, are part of "an admirable and inevitable movement--there is so much great music out there that needs to be heard. The internet has blown apart so many old paradigms of music distribution, and in many ways made the old paradigms seem kind of ridiculous. There's another label, called Mississippi Records, they actually have a thing on the back of their LPs that says, `Record everything you can and give it to as many people as possible.'"

Certainly Carneal found that his Malian friends were just as hungry for interesting sounds as he was. "My friends back in the United States were voracious listeners of music, and I found people in this incredibly rural town had the same attitudes of being very curious about other styles of music," he recalls. "This one friend of mine [in Mali] loved Led Zeppelin, he loved Bob Dylan, Deep Purple, and ['70s prog group] Argent. He would play a Led Zeppelin tape and then play a tape of local folk music, and to him, it was very similar--this desire to hear any kind of music that sounds good to him."

In fact, as Carneal discovered, any exploitation in this situation runs both ways. "The `commercial' Led Zeppelin tape my friend had included the sounds of the record needle dropping at the beginning and stuck in the groove during fade-out," he explains in an e-mail. "Recorded straight from a record somewhere, slapped onto a bunch of tapes with a Xeroxed photo on the front, sent to numerous West African countries, et voilà!"

Ultimately, it's a common fact of the actual global music market: People find a way to share the music they like--with money changing hands only as needed to keep music in circulation.

"I have no idea how much money Drag City makes," Carneal says. "But the people who run it are into making just enough money to continue putting out music. Isn't that what we're trying to do? Isn't that the point of being an independent label--trying to bring interesting music to people?"

Hi Ian. What follows after this paragraph is a big XPOST. I have several problems, not all of them always overlapping. There's the issue of not paying royalties to living musicians. There's the issue of irresponsibly curating the material. And there's the issue of the hipsterati only paying attention to the music if it's packaged in a certain form, which is less an ethical issue itself than an aesthetic issue which rubs up against larger ethical issues.

----

Yeah the Yaala Yaala stuff is weird---basically just field recordings, sans ethnographic detail, stuck on CD by Drag City. There's a certain honesty to that label, in a way --the guy doesn't know anything about the musicians in most cases so, y'know, here's the music. (I should note that the guy from Soundway actually does make extreme efforts to track down the original artists, but then again he reissues stuff that was originally on 7" or LP, whereas Yaala Yaala is frequently recordings off the street à la Sublime Frequencies). Whereas in the case of a lot of the stuff on Mississippi Records et al, the info is out there but they refuse to use it, or pretend it doesn't exist. They want to recreate the ambience of a Herwin Records LP from 1959 or something--one of those earliest reissues of old prewar blues stuff. Which aesthetically makes a certain sense, but seems ultimately dubious to me.

I know there's the danger--inherent I suppose in the academicization of the study of most anything--of making a kind of music seem the property of "experts" who tell you how to understand it, how to interpret it, etc. But the whole idea of expertise, of knowledge, of literacy in specific forms of vernacular music seems to have been banished, for the sake of a dubious aesthetics, from the sorts of reissues we're discussing.

For a corrective to all this, see the rather amazingly involved reviews of music at the Musical Traditions website. Here are some recent examples:

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/living.htm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/boggs.htm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/hammons.htm

Finally: I just don't like the idea that we've ceded the presentation of all these types of vernacular musics to the obscurantists at M.R. etc., just because the kind of stuff put out by, say, Folkways may seem hopelessly square to the beards-n-big-glasses set. Document--who I think are either out of business or just not bothering to put out anything but reconfigurations of stuff they're already put out--were just in a race to get everything out and cut many corners, famously. They aren't the gold standard, unless the standard is for exhaustiveness.

I don't mean to hold M.R. et al to the highest standards (though why not?) but to suggest that rather than aiming high and falling short, they are aiming precisely to recreate an aura that demands a great deal of mystification -- which I see as detrimental to our understanding and appreciation of the music and the people who made it.

xp i can't understand such vitriol being directed at mississippi, although this might be because of details that appear to be absent from your post, through misinformation or whatever:

while i can't say for sure that it's the case with the orchestre record, i know that in the case of the comps, they made efforts to track down the artists or descendents, and if unsuccessful, set aside money in case ("Part of our philosophy was that we put aside a bunch of money that the label takes in, in case anybody does come forward, and if nobody does than that money will eventually go to a charity"). i'm sure there are people who know way more than i do about the practice of making compilations, but i think it's probably more important to wait and see what happens with royalties for the (great) biennale record than to assume that because royalties weren't assigned that it's a bootleg. i don't know, who knows.

secondly, i think there's an ignorance of the mission of mississippi; there's a real emphasis on vinyl reissues. calling out the washington or bongo joe discs because they're in print in other forms seems to be phrased as you having rumbled their scheme; stuff like the thai orchestra, malcolm x concert and the above two are chances to own hard to find albums, or things only available on cd, on record. i think there's a forthcoming michael hurley reissue, which will mean that instead of either tracking down expensive lps, or buying cd-rs from michael hurley, people will easily be able to own the record as it was issued at the time, with the same artwork, etc etc. if this feeds into the desirability thing, as in people wanting to own some mystic artefact devoid of information, then whatever, but i don't think that's really the point. a few of the records have sleevenotes. mississippi seems a weird label to level these complaints at, as while i have the same issues with the limited-vinyl scene, and of the fleeting opportunities available to own stuff on vinyl, mississippi tends to keep stuff in print pretty well.

anyway. i love mississippi records, because their comps have been so educational, if nothing else in turning me onto the original lps that they're sourced from, and because instead of finding two washington phillips sides on a screening the blues comp and having a cd i didn't much like putting on, i can go buy their records. if there's some royalties issue i hope like fuck it's sorted out properly, but if it's just 'these people are just re-releasing cds onto vinyl!' then that seems to be missing the point.

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

Sorry for redundant sentences. The posts are coming fast 'n' furious and I'm finding it hard to keep up. Will bow out for a little while and see what people have to say.

Sorry BTW for the inflammatory thread title, but I guess it did get people's attention...

XPOST

Schlump, you make good points and I'll think about them. I understand that for many folks this M.R. stuff will be like a gateway that will lead them down other paths (sorry for hopelessly confused metaphor).

I have to admit I'm dubious of the fetishism that's implied by the recent (?) boom in vinyl-only releases. I grew up with vinyl, and still buy a lot of it (usually stuff that's not on CD at all), but I've never fully understood the dedication to a particular format. THough that of course is another thread.

And now I really will bow out for a spell.

I think we might differ in your feelings about a labels responsibility to curate material. In the age of the internet, anyone can plug "Blind Mamie Forehand" into google and get all the info they need, if they care enough to check it out. Like I said though, I like liner notes and wish MS made more of an effort to incorporate background information into their releases. The gospel comp "Live Is A Problem" that they put out did attempt to include at least cursory background information in the form of an insert with the LP.

And isn't it a tough to pick between one kind of obscurantism and another? I don't think the folks at MS records want to make their product seem mysterious so much as they know that most of the people reading don't want to see a chord chart for every tune. It's likely neither one nor the other of those possibilities, but something less well-defined. I wonder what kind of intent Eric & Warren have in releasing the music--it seems counterintuitive to market something you want to keep secret. xp xp xp

Life* is a problem.

Seems to me that they're just a business that knows its audience. If you make an ugly, uninteresting package, it's less likely to sell.

You could add up all the money owed to every artist in Africa and it would still be less than the Beatles' managers stole from them.

Mississippi Records is probably just trying to share obscure music that they think deserves to be heard. I don't believe for a second that it's highly profitable to do that.

http://ian.macky.net/secretmuseum/

Yeah, I think any concerns about the MS Records folk "making a quick buck" are a bit of a stretch. They sell their records very cheap. You can get the Washington Phillips LP cheaper than you can get the CD, as most Yazoo CDs are in the $15-18 price in retail shops. And I'm sure the CD was cheaper to manufacture.

If we really want to spew vitriol, I'd save it for the various creeps who charge $30+ for bad-sounding psych rock bootlegs.

also, Was in a record store today and found a vinyl copy of the old Arhoolie LP by George Coleman, "Bongo Joe." I was about to buy it, but the tag said "new," odd for a decades-old album which, as far as I know, hasn't been pressed on vinyl for many, many years.

So either it's a repress and you're sad you didn't get the O.G. real deal LP, or you're mad because it's been reissued on LP even though a CD is still in print? If it were a boot, sure, but it's a legitimate licensed release! If you have the CD but were excited to buy the LP, well, shouldn't you go back and buy it? It's being responsible to the copyright holders of the material. Not to mention the fact that it'll be cheaper than finding a used copy, and NONE of that money will ever see the 'hoolie folks (who still have tons of their own LPS as well as Document LPs available at reasonable prices fwiw.)

i would think pressing records would be at the bottom of the list of get-rich-quick schemes

I hadn't realized it was licensed; I figured it wasn't since most of the other M.R. LPs to date hadn't been licensed.

I don't presume that M.R. are making any or much money on this -- that isn't the point. That seems like a cop-out, honestly, to say that nobody's making money. It doesn't absolve anyone of their responsibilities, ethnical or otherwise.

The assumption is that this was a get-rich-quick scheme: copy "1,000" (actually 994) photos and captions verbatim from various sources with no credit, print them badly on cheap paper, sell thousands of copies for $1.98, make a bundle, then take the money and run. Yet, it was still for sale in 1942, seven years after first being released. Why wasn't it shut down by the parties who were infringed? Were they involved? It's a mystery.

I hadn't realized it was licensed; I figured it wasn't since most of the other M.R. LPs to date hadn't been licensed.

As far as I know, the majority of LPs released by MS early on were not of material that was even under copyright.
Also, it says "Licensed from Arhoolie" right on the jacket.

I wonder what your ethnical responsibilities to the material are, Amateurist. in your opinion, if I do not fully annotate the mix CD of upbeat music of the 78rpm era that i'm making for my roommate, if i package it in a plain sleeve with an inkjet tracklisting, am i shirking my responsibility?

what about if i blogged about it, or distributed the CD among friends?

i'm sorry i'm being such a devil's advocate, i just like talking about this stuff.

Do you think the Kalama's Quartet (or their families) got any money from the use of their material on an early Folklyric LP? Folkyric of course being an Arhoolie sub-label.

i would think pressing records would be at the bottom of the list of get-rich-quick schemes

― eman, Monday, December 29, 2008 2:27 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

Time-L@g & Sh@doks might have something to say about that.

I would just like to say that while I share a general suspicion of cultural fetishism I don't know that Dust to Digital really deserves to be described as such - are people not supposed to make their stuff look cool for fear of being described as fetishists?

I think amtst's main complaint is about a perceived unscrupulousness on the label's part.

Folkways Records was pretty notorious for negelcting royalty payments and had its share of licensing issues, too.

pete smith to thread to tell infamous folkways shower story.

the history of recorded music is basically also the history of people ripping each other off.

^Real talk.

this thread is spitting tangents: i was wondering where to put something i read in uhhh vice about sublime frequencies being the modern equivalent of folkways, but i guess that's for another thread.

i'd never given any thought to the absence of liner notes for mississippi stuff, but with the importance of the aesthetic - i think it is an outlet for good music, lovingly and attractively packaged, but as an end in itself rather than specifically as a money hungry sales ploy - it is a salient point.

with ian's metaphor about passing something on to a friend unannotated, it seems pretty apposite, because the label's thrust is just getting things into record buyers' hands. the two african comps come with a disclaimer that they should be copied, encoded and distributed for others to hear. while this is probably more fodder for confusing royalty discussions, i think it supports the idea of it just being music geeks putting good stuff out there.

to go back to the vinyl boom - i think recent is appropriate, as the collision of the wiring of the world and the quest for some kind of anathema to high-technology means that records of iraqi folk songs etc seem appealing now. i can't draw the line between desirable and fetishistic, but it's great that there's a drift towards being able to get stuff on vinyl again. i was arguing somewhere else on the internet about the merits of each format, etc, but on the basis of preferring it as a listening experience, it's just nice to revive some of the stuff (like early nineties hip hop) that was only ever cd.

nb "the overriding philosophy of the label would be that we want to make old music available on vinyl for an affordable price - everything's less than 10 bucks. It's really hard to find that kind of stuff on LP. That was kind of the start of it and then... we just wanted to put out records that we would have liked to find, really."

"Part of our philosophy was that we put aside a bunch of money that the label takes in, in case anybody does come forward, and if nobody does than that money will eventually go to a charity"

Maybe I'm out of my element here because I don't run in these kinds of obscurantist vinyl fetishist circles, but this smells like bullshit to me. 'We're gonna sell a stranger's music, and if they ever catch wind of it and contact us, they can come collect their cut'!? The thing is, it's never been easier to distribute and share music without pressing up records of it and selling them, and while it might be kind of crazy to just say these guys should just outright pirate the music online or post it on blogs, in a way that seems more honest than what some of these labels are doing.

'We're gonna sell a stranger's music, and if they ever catch wind of it and contact us, they can come collect their cut'!?

it's gotta be difficult though, right? what do i know but i guess. i wish this thread was about sublime frequencies rather than mississippi, because it seems a better case study.

FWIW re. Dust-to-Digital, I was thinking of that Climax Golden Twins "Victrola Favorites" thing (a bunch of 78s from all over the world, jumbled up and coupled with an elaborate booklet with snippets of reprints of vintage record-related ephemera) more than the "Goodbye Babylon" (which is its own weird fetish object) stuff.

Maybe I came on too strong earlier. Obviously you can do whatever you want in terms of sharing music with friends in terms of how you present it. I guess I shouldn't blame M.R. or the other labels for presenting music in a way that appeals to them (putting the ethics of the African stuff to one side for the moment). It does imply a whole way of appreciating music that I suppose rather than condemn I'd just like to take a kind of pointed exception to. Hope this isn't too vague.

One thought: people have pointed out that a lot of reissues (Yazoo, Folkways, etc.) have, at various times, traded in various amounts of mystification, projection, etc. with regard to musics that are distant from us in time and/or geography. Certainly John Fahey, while being an iconoclast to a great extent, was also heavily invested in mythologizing the old blues, etc. music in his own fashion. So I suppose it's a question of degree, and how much the presentation even seems to interface with a kind of folkloric expertise (not just academics but non-academic mega-aficionados like Dick Spottswood) and how much it just wants to remain gloriously recondite in terms of where the music comes from, what it means, etc. In choosing the latter approach I guess I feel that many labels seem to reify whatever half-formed notions people might have about this old music and the people that made it.

Maybe I'm just ambivalent about my own interest in cultural artifacts from the recent past. It seems useless to deny that their very past-ness (and hence strangeness) is an integral part of what draws us to them. The question seems to be whether we just sort of stop there, or whether we press on and try to, to continue a metaphor, peel through layers of confusion, mystification, or just obscurity to better reach the even more profound mysteries of the music and its making.

Sorry for confusing writing, it's late, I'm sleepy, and I need to go to bed.

Yeah the Yaala Yaala stuff is weird---basically just field recordings, sans ethnographic detail, stuck on CD by Drag City.

Actually it's a Towson University professor who went to Mali and got Drag City to issue the cds. Elsewhere me or someone else linked to interviews with him and he (and folks here I think)discussed the flack he got. He said he was going to try to funnel any money made back to the artists, and for his most recent releases he has taken additional steps in that direction including releasing cds by specific artists.

Elsewhere on ILM I think I linked to Jace DJ Rupture Clayton on this and Sublime Frequencies and others weighed in.

Drag City is an interesting example. A fairly large indie label who have seen fit to issue things of more specialized interest as well as distribute (& manufacture?) small label goods--like that Nimrod Workman LP, whose only previously available work afaik was a few tracks on a Rounder LP compilation (and who wants to guess what compensation he got for that?) At least the new LP has extensive liner notes detailing the history of the recordings (made by Mike Seeger.)

(And Mike Seeger got a large portion of the LPs pressed.)

pete smith to thread to tell infamous folkways shower story.

― ian, Monday, December 29, 2008 3:04 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark

recorded in a NYC shower

i heard some cuts from that "black mirror" dust to digital comp on dj rupture's show, and i was wondering if any of the artists were alive and/or getting royalties. it sounded like the dude did his research.

I think most of that stuff is public domain, no? But even if not, I doubt any are still alive.

for completely reasonable reasons, not alive != public domain

Let Us Avoid P & J Maddnesss Here by Discussing the Sublime Frequencies Record Label

I am currently listening to Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long and it's great. No idea who Alfred G Karnes is, but I am going to find out more.

"for completely reasonable reasons, not alive != public domain"

Well I wouldn't say completely, but yeah that's true.

that's true caek, but it would be nearly impossible to contact their living relatives no? and the companies that issued the material originally have (in many/most cases) long-since bit the dust, if you will.

xp--yeah, that thread. good times.

Not to mention none of that stuff is American and may never have been licensed here. No idea how you sort out copywrite on 100 year old Tuva throat singing 78s.

I mean, assuming you accept the premise of copyright, they are reasonable reasons, although of reasonable people can disagree about matters of degree. Sorry, I was pointlessly wandering off-topic with that post. This is a really interesting thread, by the way.

There are a couple of interesting web-only interviews with /rupture, Alan Bishop, and Andy Votel--or someone else at Finders Keepers (well interesting if you can ignore the occassionally sub-moronic questions) on Plan B's website on this subject:

http://www.planbmag.com/content/features/web-exclusives/

i believe there was murmur about MS working with SF to re-press some of that vinyl (didn't even see the Inerane LP). so now you can hate 2-for-1 on both entities.

The question seems to be whether we just sort of stop there, or whether we press on and try to, to continue a metaphor, peel through layers of confusion, mystification, or just obscurity to better reach the even more profound mysteries of the music and its making.

― amateurist

If I'm reading you right, am, you're leveling two arguments against SF, MR, YY & co. The first is economic (they're ripping people off), while the second is philosophical (they're appealing to an objectionable aesthetic). The quote I pulled encapsulates the latter argument, based on the idea that it's better to present listener with music as a comprehensively documented art-historical object lesson than as a found thing of supposedly "mysterious" provenance.

Implicit in this is secondary argument: that we must break music down into "us" and "them" camps. In the "us" camp is contemporary music distributed within the culture that created it - from like to like, so to speak. In the "them" camp is music that is estranged from the cultural context in which it was created - music made by other people in other places and times. While we may enjoy "our music" in whatever fashion we like, "their music" (the music of the other) must be approached carefully, even reverently. We must genuflect before the idea of its specialness, importance and cultural/historical context.

To tell you the truth, I think there's something a bit precious, even condescending about this implicit argument. I don't see why the distinction between us and them is necessary in the first place. I don't see why any given person can't responsibly appreciate "their" music in precisely the same casual manner as he or she appreciates "our" music.

"Implicit in this is a secondary argument..."

re: sf/mississippi represses:
that'd be great. i'm less angsty about SF now that you can at least get the stuff on cd - it seemed ridiculous to traipse to the desert, record music and then let it go out of print. but then we're back to the preferring vinyl issue.

this is from the sf thread:
The Bishops' attitude is along this lines of: If we start selling SF in Outkast quantities we will personally return to all the countries we covers and start handing out money at random. They seem sincere.

i forget how it works with compilations, things like fmu premiums, odd mixes that musicians release etc, but i am under the impression that there's usually some give regarding royalties if it's in regards to a small pressing. what qualifies as small (and whether this is even true) is debatable, but i tend to think that mississippi stuff is part justified by the publicity thing mentioned upthread - that it's worth distributing as a freebie for the interest it might instigate later on. whether they'd operate in the same way if it was on a larger scale i don't know.

Frankly the Bishops seem like dicks to me. They seem offended that anyone would even question the economics or ethics of these releases.

Whether they are completely above board or not, I think there is value in discussing these sorts of issues and I think it's clear that they think it's the height of rudeness to suggest that in any way SF releases are exploitive.

Frankly the Bishops seem like dicks to me.

That's what they WANT you to think.

its like a snake eating its own face

"That's what they WANT you to think."

Hah well they've done a good job.

further confusing case studies:
that whole alan lomax/john work/black scholars thing

Andy Beta interviewed Alan Bishop a few months ago, and Alan isn't all "how DARE you" at all. He stated that he does try to contact the original musicians, but is often impossible i.e. pretty much the M.O./rationale discussed above. You can agree or disagree with that M.O., and you don't have to like the Bishops, but you can't accuse them of acting indignant when questioned about the label practice.

Well, you can, but you can't prove you're right.

"Andy Beta interviewed Alan Bishop a few months ago, and Alan isn't all "how DARE you" at all. He stated that he does try to contact the original musicians, but is often impossible i.e. pretty much the M.O./rationale discussed above."

Well Andy Beta encountered the kinder gentler Alan, cuz the bit from Yeti seemed much more "fuck off you busybodies" than that.

not sure where I stand in this interesting thread, but this quote from schlump:

mississippi tends to keep stuff in print pretty well.

is patently untrue. Many, many Mississippi releases are OOP now, or were repressed in instantly-gone editions of 500. That is my biggest gripe with the label, in fact.

On the other hand, small, handmade one-time-only editions that sell for ten bucks or whatever tend to mitigate charges of economic exploitation.

it would be nice if they had a digital presence, or if they like pressed a 586" record to compile all the OOP stuff.

one big record

one record to rule them all

ehh, i don't know. releases that have been repressed, off the top of my head: lipi kodi ya, thai orchestra, i don't feel at home, life is a problem, love is love, washington phillips. which is pretty much all the comps. some of them need doing again, because i know it's hard to get hold of city council, for example, but i think they're trying to keep them in print rather than let them sink into ebay hell. i feel like i'm being patchy in this thread by saying that it's fine that they're bootlegging, because it's limited quantities, and also that they're not limited or exclusive, but as available as possible.

last kind words had a repress

It's true. They are willing to repress, though still in very limited quantities. I'm kind of on the other side of the fence with that. I'd feel more comfortable with the ethics if they'd strictly limit things to tiny one-time runs.

oh yeah, last kind words, i forget about that one because i got it late. it is awesome. lottie kimbrough and lulu jackson.

i think your last point kind of summarises the duality; that it makes more sense for these things to exist in limited runs, but that most of the baggage of limited pressings - it being some bullshit elusive object, being unattainable, defeating the point of the exercise etc - complicates this.

i think it's easiest to think of these as cheap, nice little starter packs that are meant to enamour and inform people of new/old music, with view to - as proffered in the life is a problem notes - go on to explore more, to share the music and so on. it's unacceptable as producers of such things to let this proviso excuse royalty paying duties. at the same time, given that its dudes cutting records in the back of their record shop, on some of their own money, it's difficult to think that their little lo-fi operation's going to be as comprehensive as everyone would hope.

Alex in SF, i'm confused, are you talking about the SF thing that appeared in Mike McGoonygal's Yeti 'zine? if so, you might be conflating Hisham Mayet with the Bishops. but then again, i may've met a kinder Bishop by not being a "busybody."

speaking of Mr. McGoonygal, i'm told that there is not only a follow-up to Life is a Problem but also some Jamaican country/gospel comp in the works on MS.

also a spiritual lady singers of the congo thing?

Isn't the follow-up to Life is a Problem, Fight On?

"Alex in SF, i'm confused, are you talking about the SF thing that appeared in Mike McGoonygal's Yeti 'zine?"

No, I'm talking about the SCG interview in Yeti.

fight on is the "prequel" to LIAP, i guess. theres a sequel called like "the grave cant no longer hold me no more can it not" or something.

Mississip's reish of the Clean's Compilation has gotta be licensed, right? Or are they ripping off obscure New Zealand outsider artists ...

"fight on is the "prequel" to LIAP, i guess."

Why?

fight on is old time, l.i.a.p is golden age, and graveyard/return of the jedi is "More mediative & well produced material than the Life is a problem LP", i think.

these forthcoming records you're all mentioning sound good. i'm still waiting on the third original/african comp. oh, and someone out of evolutionary jass band's solo thing.

""More mediative & well produced material than the Life is a problem LP", i think."

That wouldn't be hard.

Mississip's reish of the Clean's Compilation has gotta be licensed, right? Or are they ripping off obscure New Zealand outsider artists ...

― tylerw, Monday, December 29, 2008 10:10 PM (1 hour ago)

From what I've heard, they worked with the band in putting the release together but it is probably NOT licensed from Flying Nun?

in any case you can probably find a homestead copy of the clean comp for five bucks used if you iz worried about starving newzealanderz.

lol where the hell can you find that, sometime in 1998?

really? is it that hard to find? what do i know. good thing i kept my cleanchillsstraightjacketfits comps then.

all that stuff is capital-H hip right now and rarely pops up in my experience. the clean especially, but even Chills, Verlains & Go-Betweens records are reasonably desirable to a lot of people.

that's cool. it should always be hip.

i think what i really dig about the mississippi comps is what satisfying album experiences they are. the track-listings and song orders and everything make for completely enjoyable records. i'm a fan of obsessive/annotative/archival boxes and packages, but there is something to be said for a nice looking album that serves up great stuff in a less obsessive fashion. this music was made to be enjoyed, first and foremost, and too much microinspection can kill love dead. i got that field recording box last year and probably only played the whole thing once since i got it. if they had put 13 or 14 of the strongest tracks on an album and featured one of that field recording dude's paintings on the cover i'd probably still be listening to it. you know what i mean?

This thread was timely as I discovered the yaala yaala stuff in my local shop today and had to ask the owner what the story with those records was. Their presentation is a little bit silly; esp. when clearly near the spine it says "subsidiary of drag city" or whatever. But yeah, to not even have a country of origin or a tracklist kind of takes the whole aura and mystique thing too far.

I do like the MS stuff though, at least the folk/blues comps. The tracklists on those at least give you a clue about what you're getting into and in contrast to some of the price gouging i've seen on new vinyl i love that the records are only 12 bucks. The sleeve designs are cool, they're fun to look at, etc. etc.

scott otm too sometimes it's nice to just listen to music like this without getting all anthropological on it.

http://www.dust-digital.com/rosenbaum.htm is all neat and tidy. i know what you mean though. box sets are kind of slow burners anyway, maybe you'll hit on something on there one day and take to the whole disc - isn't it a harry smith style thematic collection thing? i only heard some of the sampler, with a real beautiful bert hare song.

oh & just because i can't find an art of field recording/dust to digital thread,
http://www.dust-digital.com/aofr2-audio.htm

part two, out now/january. more bert hare!

oh yeah, don't get me wrong, there is an amazing amount of great stuff on the first field recording boxed set. but i look at the mississippi dudes like friends who make you killer mix tapes of the best stuff they have around. and i could totally make my own best-of the field recording box too. it's just nice sometimes to have someone show you a good time with 12 or so fantastic songs. it's easier to digest and it makes you want to hear it again and again.

i have some old yazoo blues comps where everything ends up being TOO similar, and even though i dig them, they lack personality in some way. i mean, i'm glad they exist and that i get to hear what's on them, but i'm not a professional historian. i'm an art lover and a lover of sound. putting together a great comp or mix is an art of sorts.

agree with both points re: last two posts. also agree with boxed sets in general as pretty slow-going to crack into. but that field recording box set is incredibly accessible. i've listened to it much more than some of the comps e.g. 'goodbye babylon'

(in all fairness to the field recording box, i just don't listen to CDs that much. unless they are metal promos or single album length comps of acidfuzz.)

i found this cd at the dump a while back (3 or 4 years ago) and i've been playing it ever since. it's a good example of someone taking stuff from a bunch of different sources and making a great coherent whole out of it all on one cd. it flows really well. (course, i wouldn't mind if someone put it out as a double vinyl lp. don't think that will happen though.)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514BYOwcP7L._SS400_.jpg

"i just don't listen to CDs that much. unless they are metal promos or single album length comps of acidfuzz."
hmm, i think ILM has a new motto. but yeah, i agree with scott -- the Mississippi comps I have heard are like expert mixtapes to me --- more about mood and cohesiveness than about being historical documents.

strangely enough, what first endeared me to MS stuff was that there were always weird errors on 'em, from the wrong colors on the first Last Kind Words sleeve (a new cover pasted on top) to the sleeves of I Don't Feel at Home in This World having all the running orders scratched out and re-jiggered via ballpoint pen.
The Clean story goes something like they got permission from the band, but it's actually owned by "a major label" that doesn't know it has it.

hmm, wonder what label that is? I figured that Merge had the rights to it, but wasn't planning on a vinyl reissue ... But yeah, it is cool Mississippi put it out -- I've certainly never seen it for sale!

i would need some evidence that the mississippi dudes are nasty thugs or something to stop buying their records. truth is, i live on an island with one record store and i don't download and i don't buy stuff online (much), so, to me, they have been greatly appreciated! most of the stuff they have put out has been wonderful. the only label i actively boycott is radioactive/fallout. i steer clear of italian needledrop boots too, cuz i know they are just rip-off artists. and not just rip-off artists, but rip-off artists with really good worldwide distribution like fallout has. that might be the difference to me. are you running a business? or is it a labor of love. certainly, if sublime frequencies hadn't put out the stuff it has put out, it never would have been put out at all. i dunno. it's complicated. but if someone told me that mississippi fucked over the members of the dog faced hermans in any way shape or form i would trade back all the mississippi records i have in a heartbeat. (and buy used jazz and blues records with my credit. or maybe that ten inch of bruce springsteen doing the suicide cover if it isn't gone already. it probably is though.) i usually don't have a problem with gray area stuff though. in general, i'm no help to artists anyway. 95% of what i buy is used.

Mississippi Recotds are straight needledrop bootleggers, compliation appropriationists (sans liner notes), and repackagers of others hard work. and yet.. i waver back and forth. i own none of their releases but i'm starting to just not care. Maybe i'll even pick one up one day.

below is more evidence of their cutting corners:
(Mike McGonigal is called out on some of these threads, is he still around on ilx to answer back?)

http://terminal-boredom.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=100ec6b045e0036e5021355f3b53e05a&topic=21840.0
http://waxidermy.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=18363
http://www.fryer-mantis.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16083&start=0
http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=1360638&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1

McGonigal has answered plenty of these criticisms before, here on ILX and also iirc on the fryer-mantis board. Certainly record collectors are competitive, jealous and spiteful. There's no doubt about that. AFAIK from my conversations with Mike, his gospel compilations were almost entirely authorized by the families of the artists or the artists themselves, with the exception of people who were unable to be located, iirc. The MS folks are not trying to make a buck off what they do--their records are available at great, consumer-friendly prices and they put immense time & energy into getting all their releases out. The handmade covers for the Mata La Pena LP cost more to make than they made from the sales of the LP, after pressing & mastering costs.

I'm sure, at this point, the vast majority of their releases are legit, excepting the old-timey reissues (where the copyright issues are muddled) and the African LPs, I can't say. Everything they've reissued from Arhoolie has been above-board, the Rats reissues are legit, the Clean LP was done with the authorization of the band, the recent Mortika box set is a licensed LP issue of a CD, the Michael Hurley records are legit & authorized. I'm fairly certain the Dog Faced Hermans records are legitimate.

and Mike McGonigal is in NYC DJing all gospel tonight at the Ace Hotel for anyone local who wants to go--I'm gonna hit it after work.

"compliation appropriationists (sans liner notes)"

Mortika box set and String of Pearls comp both have great, in-depth liner notes.

all I know is that this year I ended up listening to that 'wrong time to be right' cassette compilation somewhere between one and two hundred times, it's been a while since I memorized an album like that

I owe most of my highly refined taste in punk rock, 60s garage and psych and what-have-you to bootleggers. Sorrr-eeeee.

these boards are kind of intense

(the ones sanskrit linked to i mean)

Mississippi Recotds are straight needledrop bootleggers, compliation appropriationists (sans liner notes), and repackagers of others hard work. and yet.. i waver back and forth. i own none of their releases but i'm starting to just not care. Maybe i'll even pick one up one day.

below is more evidence of their cutting corners:

Below (above) is not "evidence" of anything. It's people bitching on the internet, some of them with potentially legit grievances, but none of them presenting hard evidence of jack shit. Fucking HATE this kind of baseless, slanderous, slay-happy bullshit. Thank you.

otm.

http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/lvl.gif

But did you actually read what those people posted, contenderizer?

jk

not "evidence" of anything

lol ripping off africa dances and moving tracks around to make a new compilation is pretty poorly thought out. dunno about he cd-r sourced gospel stuff, but i'm not really interested in jumping into the fray.

hell, do they guys reissue on outers with brown cardboard on the inside? if they did that i'd pretty much excuse any and all ethical lapses and start buying em all up, that's about how little i care about licensing and rights issues.

What Mississippi Records is, is a collective of anarchist format fetishists, that also happen to be brilliant at repackaging and marketing archival recordings and selling it to an audience of pseudo-interested collector dorks that lap up anything that is dished upon them.

--good quote from terminal boredom thread.

by the way the two mississippi releases with good liner notes--save for the unlistenable perry tillis thing--were "shepherded" by ian nagoski. mississippi itself still seems allergic to contextual information.

i was being a dick in this thread, but i still have pretty mixed feelings about all this stuff. i'm not inclined to get very indignant about it, but i think mississippi will look a bit "what the hell" in a few years.

yeesh:

dude, monsieur...you do not understand this situation...this is not merely an issue with bootleg/legit license...this dude just takes mix CDs, comps OTHER people have made for just archiving, trading, "heres-a-mix-of-some-cool-records-Ive-dug-up" and then put HIS name on them and then sells them. You really feel that this is OK? What if I took one of your French Attack mixes and put MY name on them, then called them a compiliation I COMPILED and then SOLD them under the pretense that it was a compilation? You would really feel ok with this?

Im sorry for the snarkiness of my response, but EVERY person who has posted with a "its not a big deal" seem to not have read the entire post to understand the situation. This dude's other comps were just that, mix CDs other people have made and he stuck HIS name on them and sold them. On this "comp" he HAD to put license info on them because Biglegalmess owns the Designer catalog and they were hip to what he was doing. This dude does not even own the records he "reissues". He is a fraud. When you buy one of his gospel comps, you are just hearing someone else's record collection on CD-Rs that he has taken and put his name on and sells them. He is a f*cking douchebag.

from http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=1360638&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1

if I Love Vinyl ever turns into soulstrut or term-bo, please somebody pull the plug.

what is soulstrut? a forum for soul-music collectors?

Looks like

from sfrp board:

That Skip James is one of the best things ever, but...
Another example of Mississippi's unauthorized repackaging game.
At first, I thought their limited pressings and lack of web presence were merely facets of the indie image, but now I realize it's all for litigation immunity! Both the Skip James and the Washington Phillips are still in print on Yazoo, Thai Orchestra is an unmentioned (and I'm sure they didn't get permission) repressing of a cd released as Siamese Temple Ball several years ago, and Radio Africa has released statements damning Mississippi Records for not paying royalties to the Orchestre Regional De Kayes. I even once read an interview where the guys behind the label claimed to have a special bank account with money set aside should someone slap them with a lawsuit!

This Abner Jay record really gets to the heart of my mixed feelings with the label. I really love the material--what's not to love about a half-drunk former minstrel singer who has you on the brink of tears with this absurd country blues only to turn it all into a cheap joke at the last minute? But I know this record, because Subliminal Sounds put it out a few years ago and it's still in print. So Mississippi changed just enough of it to justify giving it a vinyl issue: they cut out all of the hilarious monologues. Half of what made the songs amazing was the fact that once the tune's over he can barely contain himself. Did it with Love is Love, did it with the Washington Philips, Siamese Temple Ball, Animals & Men. I can't figure out if they love the records they're re-releasing or if they just love records. Anyways, enough of that.

The fact that the store itself doesn't take plastic only adds to all this question-raising.

On one of those other threads someone asserts that in putting out the Thai Orchestra release they worked with the person who put out the earlier Siamese Temple Ball release; but of course they never said that in any liner notes or anything, they are just saying it third hand now.

I think about half the songs are different. Plus, lots of liner notes, even though they seem to be xeroxed from another source.

What's up with Brandie Records, though? The Mississippi record says that Mississippi is a division of Brandie, and then there's at least one old Brandie LP:
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/9283/abnerjay1.jpg

Although it seems that some of the recent True Story of Abner Jay songs come from the 1968 Poison Apple LP ("I'm So Depressed" and "Vietnam").

As for playing "into hipsters' fantasies of the 'old, weird America blah blah blah' " and mystification:
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/5148/abnerjay2.jpg

Maybe they are a division of Brandie? The handwriting and aesthetic between the records are identical or nearly identical. Anyway, that older record looks sort of like a private pressing from the eighties, or the seventies. That'd mean that the Mississippi people . . . I don't know, at least have the original records in this case (and they aren't just copying someone's CDr), and if they put out a record of Abner Jay singing live at the Stephen Foster Center in Whitesprings, Florida, then maybe someone running the label has intersected with A.J.?

This biography insert in my The True Story of Abner Jay record definitely comes from Brandie (same old address and phone number).

xpost to sleeve

The Wikipedia article doesn't really confirm any of my speculation. But Abner Jay's says that Brandie was his label. So shooting my mouth off. Seems a little grave-robbery.

Dude, they ripped-off every part (idea, music transfer, cover art) of our Cali-Tex reissue of the Cavaliers Unlimited 45 for their "Portland Music Series" release. Shit is just beyond weak at this point. Just make sure that Shangri-La and the other local shops refuse to carry this tripe. They won't make more records if they can't sell them to anyone, trust me.

I think it's important to draw some distinctions from record to record though. Ian Nagoski's "String of Pearls" (on Canary, a sub-imprint of MR) goes out of its way to try to track down information where available and to flesh out the reissue with some knowledge, and it's clearly curated by him and the result of his own passion and interest and expertise and not a ripoff of some other curator or collector(s). I would hate for people to ignore Ian's hard work and scholarship because of a beef like this about MR.

yeah I think it's a good thing to take the catalog on a case by case basis since different people are involved with different releases. ian outlined a lot of the ones done directly with artists etc upthread. the problem is that there continue to be weird bootleg-type moves, which calls into question the "oh they stopped doing that and are totally legit now" argument.

for what it's worth, I am generally in favor of bootlegging music that is not otherwise available (or is forthcoming on some label).

kind of annoying to have to buy records on a "case by case basis" though. you need a handbook. oh that one's okay but for that one they never contacted ol' pruneface's widow and i happen to know that she's alive and well and living in peoria, blah, blah...

it's odd, to me, that peeps can get up in arms about the Skip James & Washington Phillips releases particularly--it's not as though Yazoo is paying the James family any money, nor any money to lolParamount--the James material has been put out by dozens of different labels over the years. The Phillips material as well has been put on assorted comps over the years, it's not like Yazoo "owns" the material in any real sense imo.

I'm unclear about the legitimacy of the Abner Jay release. the OG Abner records were private pressings, and goodness knows if Subliminal Sounds release was any more "legit" than the MS one. I really don't know.

I'll readily agree that the Orchestre Regional de Keyes release may have been a mis-step, same with re-packaging the Original Music LPs, but at the same time I'm really glad to be able to hear that material.

Next can we have a thread trashing Rubble, Pebbles, Killed by Death, Bloodstains, Strummin Mental and every other bootleg comp series ever?

Although the difference is between one song on an 16-18 track comp and a whole release. I guess if they tried to contact heirs over rights to the Abner Jay release but were unable to find any, maybe they wouldn't want to admit this in the liner notes for some legal reason I'm not aware of?

I see how they did the cover - they put a black bar down and left the original "Abner" in there. Are they being ironical when they say "A division of Brandie Records"? Is it just a tribute, or both?

Next can we have a thread trashing Rubble, Pebbles, Killed by Death, Bloodstains, Strummin Mental and every other bootleg comp series ever?

yeah I really want to draw the distinction here between A: repackaging for vinyl with dubious rights and B: Radioactive-style preemptively putting out stuff that other people had curated and planned. The latter concerns me more - although the "gospel comp" that people were complaining about (and never named as far as I saw) on the other boards looks like it was one of the tape releases, which seems silly to complain about (same with Bo Diddley, Wanda Jackson, etc, also on the tapes). That leaves the Cavaliers 7" (if allegations are true) as the only really problematic example in a large catalog.

oh and the Mali thing.

well, i'm pretty sure the Pandit Pran Nath LP was a boot as well, not that it's readily available anywhere.

it's a tribute, imo. xp to bam.

I got that. I didn't realize it was related until today.

The Earth Groove, I mean.

Which, honestly, seems kind of off-the-cuff and ephemeral.

yazoo is run by record collectors who made transfers of the 78s they found.

honestly i'm not terribly bothered by mississippi taking those transfers and using them for a vinyl LP with an ugly, "outsider art"-style cover as in the washington phillips lp. although it's pretty f'ed up to make a practice of never crediting the original, or even the proximate source--whatever that source may be. there's a deliberate pattern of obfuscation here, which i think owes to (a) creating a mystique, (b) avoiding legal trouble--in different proportions depending upon the release.

this obfuscation relates to larger patterns of consumption and appreciation, which is what i was trying to get at upthread. there's a weird kind of "leveling" going on where all this music is valued in the marketplace, largely by virtue of its connection to the hip "mississippi" tag, for its difference from the mainstream--even if, for the sort of people who buy these records, that "mainstream" is really the sort of indie stuff that is itself an alternative to the "mainstream" for other folks. (so, a margin to a margin.) so a calypso record by wilmouth houdini becomes equivalent in strangeness or otherness to a s.e. rogie record to a set of unlistenable perry tillis cassettes.

that leveling can be liberating in some ways--falling under a catholic "it's all sound" approach, for example, like ian nagoski and others who are equally interested in musique concrete, various forms of electroacoustic music, _and_ ethnic-music '78s. in this sense the mississippi aesthetic dovetails (and not just in terms of shared milieu) with the more "curated" stuff on dust to digital, etc. (so it's no surprise nagoski, etc. hooked up w/ mississippi.)

it can also be frustrating in ways that i'm still trying to explain and name. partly just that so many people have done so much work illuminating so many aspects of these various forms of music. some in liner notes, some in articles and books that--contra ian upthread--AREN'T available online. and yet the misssissippi stuff seems to go out of its way to erase any contextual information, any sense of situatedness, that all that work has helped to produce. it just seems a shame.

the narcissism of small differences, self hatred, etc. are all mixed into these threads, i think, also in ways i can't begin to explain yet.

Although you shouldn't read too much into the motives for the listeners. For instance, the dude at the record shop I go to doesn't seem like the sort of guy who listens to a lot of country blues or much of any blues or whatever, and so the profile and maybe even the packaging and design of the Mississippi stuff maybe attracted his attention to listen to it, but he's definitely not trying to distinguish himself from the kinds of folks who listen to stuff on Yazoo or Document or County or Arhoolie or whatever - he just might not know any better. And on top of that I have to say that probably one of the only reasons he listened to at all is that he bought it for his store banking on it going out of print and him being able to sell it to someone in the U.S. or Europe or Japan for $15 plus shipping through his online store.

Self-hatred? Whose?

I don't have strong feelings about bootlegging, either. Maybe you can tell from my few comments on this thread?

Not mistaking Abner Jay for country blues, by the way.

Self-hatred? Whose?

Mine. Others'. Record collectors'.

"yazoo is run by record collectors who made transfers of the 78s they found. "

I totally understand this, but just cuz yer friends with Joe Bussard and Richard Nevins I don't think you should have a monopoly on publishing music that's not even "yours" anyway--it's Victor's, or Paramounts, or Okeh's if it's anyone's iirc.

i know people used to rail against sublime frequencies for many of the same reasons. i dunno, i figure some of these records have questionable methods in how they license the music, if at all, or how well they compensate the musicians, if at all, but i figure it's part and parcel of the music business across the board and i wouldn't know who to boycott (if i were the boycotting type) and who to not.

isn't this why we have the leonardo thread, so we don't have to pay for this shit ;)

;-)

I totally understand this, but just cuz yer friends with Joe Bussard and Richard Nevins I don't think you should have a monopoly on publishing music that's not even "yours" anyway--it's Victor's, or Paramounts, or Okeh's if it's anyone's iirc.

i agree, but what i was saying is that it's somewhat shitty of mississippi to simply use other folks' transfers and not even mention it.

Hello,
Eric - involved in the label & the subject of this far out thread here.
Just got my first ever computer & thought I'd celebrate by attempting to clear up a few misconceptions -

1. Our low profile in the media & on the internet is not due to us fearing legal repercusions of any kind. We stay away from the media & the internet because it's not that fun or interesting to deal with. we are very acessable people with our physical address & sometimes even oour phone number very clearly posted on many of our releases. I have worked at the Mississippi Records store every Saturday & Sunday going on seven years now. I spend all day on these days talking to people & I like them very much.

2. Most of the LPs we release are completely & utterly legally legit. (A few are grey area) Artists or their family's have been payed for their work & our payment rates are very high per unit compared to industry standard. Ask respected musicians, labels, & archives such as Fred & Toody Cole, Michael Hurley, The Ex, Abner Jays' family, Philip Cohran, Delos productions, Fat Possum, Arhoolie Records, The Alan Lomax archive, Sterns music, & a bunch of others.

3. We've never mastered anything off a CDR or MP3 file that I can remember.

4. So far we have made very little money off this venture.

5. Mike McGonigal is a very nice & enthusiastic guy who is very generous with his knowledge & resources. He foolishly assumes that everyone else is the same way he is - that all of us obsessive music fans are playing for the same team. He has educated us about much music & we are thankful to those he "stole" some of this information from & apologize if they feel burned by us capitalizing on their hard work digging without giving them direct credit. (We would be happy to hook them up with some records or just appreciation if they wish to contact us) I hope they have great rewards awaiting them in heaven.

6. We can appreciate that a lot of hardcore diggers may think we are pikers who do not deserve the amount of attention we get for supposedly unearthing rare gems that they've known about all along. Our goal is to release music that moves us deeply & has changed our lives regardless of rarity or availability. We claim no special expertise & realize that our approach may seem sloppy or artless to some. We try to acknowledge in our own way that we are standing on the shoulders of giants such as Chris Stachwitz, John Storm Roberts, Pete Welan, ect who dedicated their lives to preserving music. We are well aware that we are just rehashing work they pioneered.

Thanks for your time & interest in our label. I hope this posting serves to clear up a few misconceptions & relaxes a few shoulders. Please remember - the best critique is to do the same thing better than us ....& I honestly believe that many of the heads on this board are capable of doing so. Show us how it should be done by doing.

Someday we'll all be dignified & old,
Peace & love,
Eric isaacson at Mississippi Records

Thanks for your time & interest in our label.

i would like to thank you, eric, and all you run with, for immeasurably improving the quality of my life over the past few years. love your label, your store, your city, etc. thank you for selling me that weird billy childish record at a reasonable price, for instance. and the cathedral cassettes. and thank you for putting out the clara rockmore lp, among a bunch of others. you are good people.

Hi Eric! I finally visited your store 2 weeks ago. It was my first ever visit ever to Portland. Portland rocks. I came out to see Jandek, with Thurston. Really rad show at the Hollywood. Vinyl Resting Place is your best store. St Johns is rad. I dug Mississippi district too. You guys had one of those Soundway things on LP that I needed, that is already out of print. Other than that, I enjoyed the preview of the Range Rats LP that I heard while I was browsing the store....

actually, the next night, I went and saw Pierced Arrows at Rotture, really rad show -- Pierced Arrows rocked. plus i got strip club and KoiPDX food truck food and PDX just rocks.

so don't be defensive

we like u

i had yetimike as a part time guide which was nice, but in general i couldn't be more psyched abt the PDX. keep fighting the good fight...

oh, other thing is, I wanted the Ska tapes and dude took the last one off the shelf like minutes before i checked out!!! so funny. you guys did have any left. oh well, I got MS-001 and the second Ska/Rock-stedady one

i would add that i am bummed abt punk rock hippie cash-only policy, because, man, i walked up and down your street for too long and found only one atm and it was in a weird quickymart that would only let me take out $40 at a time, charging me like $3 a pop. and it's not like i needed to buy that slayer record, it's true, but i find that the man is often trying to hassle me in this regard. you are the best anyway.

Fascinating thread. I fall all over the map, and find the arguments on every "side" compelling--I guess as an "illegal bootlegger" or "I just love music so much, you gotta hear this proselytizer" myself, I guess I just try not to get too caught up in my geek ephemera tendencies one way or another, toward academic precision or mythologization; toward feeling there's a "right way" to hear sounds, or to becoming completely disconnected with the context and history and individual stories that produce music; etc.

Probably whatever path we choose, those of us buying any of this sort of stuff or thinking about these issues at all make up .0000001% of the world's music-consuming (not to say "buying") population--so maybe it's best to not take it all too seriously, to try to support artists however we can, and ultimately to be glad we live in an age where we even have the opportunity to debate these sorts of things and, more importantly, hear the music all the fuss is about.

Fascinating thread.

i get scared when i see it get bumped because it just goes around in circles.

i love mississippi; it's like 40% of what i listen to now, the samba tapes and the african lps and a new dead moon fixation. i visited the store once and was treated like a king. keep on keepin on eric.

yeah, i've loved the Mississippi stuff I've heard. nice to have someone chime in from the label/store. when I make it out to Portland, y'all are on the top of my list. Sorry, Uncle Bill, you're #2.

i walked up and down your street for too long and found only one atm and it was in a weird quickymart that would only let me take out $40 at a time,

haha I have totally done this

thanks for the clarifications and input eric, I come up to your store pretty regularly and am especially grateful for that recent Ex/Getatchew pressing.

i <3 mississippi records

so embarrassed by this thread! sorry dudes.

but wait

We try to acknowledge in our own way that we are standing on the shoulders of giants such as Chris Stachwitz, John Storm Roberts, Pete Welan, ect who dedicated their lives to preserving music

then why not credit roberts on the LP compilation that was basically an unacknowledged repackaging of stuff from his african acoustic series?

by the way the "classical music by and for the people" cassette is one of my favorite things. although i could do without the klaus nomi track, i suppose.

in our own way

come again?

actually i'm not TOO embarrassed by this read, looking over it again. i made some misjudgements, got a few facts wrong, engaged in some hyperbole (starting with the thread title), and was probably ungenerous. but i think a lot of my critiques stand.

one thing the post above doesn't acknowledge is the way mississippi has deliberately created a mystique.

mississippi will never own up to consciously creating a mystique because the whole innocent "we're just guys who like music, we want to share our experiences with you, we don't have any other motives or thoughts, in fact we don't even own computers" line is _part_ of that mystique.

there's nothing wrong with a mystique (hey, i like rakim too, and scott walker) but i think it's handy to remind folks that this whole operation is more self-conscious than it lets on.

will be the first to own up to thinking these guys have IMPECCABLE taste, sometimes profoundly so.

He fails to answer any of the specific allegations and then casually throws in a parenthical (A few are grey area) without saying whether the Skip James or the Irma Thomas or numerous others are legit.

"in our own way" seems to translate to "occasionally we'll sort out rights issues," otherwise we'll let people figure it out on the internets. unless i'm missing something.

on another note: anyone seen those (italian?) LPs on the "monk" label, which have horrible packaging and tacky titles that seem to be apeing (sp?) the mississippi aesthetic? hope nobody's been suckered into buying that shit.

this might be a dumb question -- but what constitutes a "legit" reissue of Skip James' 1931 recordings? Does James' family get royalties off of that stuff? When Skip was alive did he see royalties from reissues of those recordings? I sort of imagined he got paid for that stuff once and that was it. I honestly don't know how that stuff works.

no, i doubt skip saw any money from those early recordings after the initial fee. what label were those on?

Paramount

the question though is whether james was eventually able to assert copyright over his songs. if so, then publishing royalties would be owed to his estate. though i have no doubt that yazoo doesn't pay any such things, and neither does mississippi.

paramount... as far as i know paramount recordings are orphans. that is, when the company went under, nobody bought the catalogue, so the recordings are in the public domain. unlike some of the stuff that's now under the sony/bmg umbrella.

imo you're fighting the good fight, dude, this shit seems mad shady to me, and all the people saying "hey i like the music this label puts out" don't seem to realize that that in no way addresses or invalidates these questions.

googled around and found something saying Skip James got royalties for Cream's cover of "I'm So Glad" so he must've had the publishing rights?

I just took a Copyright final and I still cannot properly answer this question because my professor decided not to spend time on the way pre- 1976 Act copyrights worked (even though it's probably one of the harder and more important things to learn). But I know that there were ways an author could regain copyright even if he gave away the rights - it was either an automatic reversion after a term or something you could apply for after a term. So he probably did that (assuming he didn't retain the copyrights to begin with).

yes one of the things the "managers" of the "rediscovered" blues artists did in the 60s was try to get the publishing rights to songs back in the hands of the artists (with the manager often taking a percentage as the publisher, naturally).

this led to some weird-but-inevitable stuff like mississippi john hurt asserting copyright on songs that were obviously well-traveled "folk" material.

the thing is, i'm not sure "publishing rights" were always or even mostly given away. it may be that skip james earned a small amount on each record sold (in theory), on the basis of those rights. but often the recordings (with the songwriter info in parentheses) were so obscure that other folks would come along and either claim copyright or just assume the songs were PD. and then folks would have to re-claim rights that they had never sold away.

one thing that does bug me, which most labels seem guilty of, is assuming that for prewar recordings there isn't anyone to whom they might owe royalties. there was some son house thread on amazon where people were complaining that some son house recordings on a yazoo CD were "bootlegged." a chorus of folks defending them rose up, saying that son house was long dead and the material was recorded before copyright was sorted etc. etc. but it hardly occurred to anyone that, you know, son house's widow was still alive, in philadelphia i believe, as of the mid-late 1990s. and if someone sold even 1,000 copies of CD containing son's "walking blues," that perhaps that old lady might be owed something. it's like the fantasy of this "old, weird" music (or whatever the greil marcus-addled folks were calling it) seemed to remove the possibility that people might still be alive who were connected to the folks who made it. that's one key difference, i think, between the curatorial approach taken by e.g. folkways and the extreme mysterioso/obfuscatory approach taken by most mississippi releases. rant over.

and yeah on a day or two's thought the post above doesn't really make me more sympathetic to mississippi, if anything it makes me a little irritated at their (real or faux) naivete. like their enthusiasm and supposed selflessness (="not making any money on this") just sort of clears up everything.

yeah "it's not like we're getting rich or anything" is always a poor way to shrug off accountability for the way you do business, in my experience

It seems you have two main beefs, one ethical and one aesthetic - and that these are entwined:

a) People should get paid for what they create. People should not be ripped off, even by groovy people who cater to other groovy people.

b) Mississippi Records employs a mysterioso/obfuscatory curatorial approach.

I think a) is totally valid and worthy.

I also understand that b) can be used as a rationale/tool for avoiding a).

BUT

I enjoy the mysterioso/obfuscatory curatorial approach. It does have value.

There's a place for annotated box sets and liner notes and family trees - there's a place for Nuggets. But there's also a place for Pebbles.

There is very little mysterioso and obfuscatory about music anymore. Even if it's a bit contrived in Mississippi shit, I like it.

It's just straight-ahead crate-digger shit. Finding an old Northern Soul comp or a Swell Maps single or a Funkmaster Wizard Wiz 12-inch has always been more fun than some obvious thing, right? Mysteriousness, genuine weirdness and obscurity are great, rare qualities. They are part of what makes being a music obsessive fun and rewarding. I don't know what Greil Marcus said in some book I never read. I don't give a fuck about "Old Weird America"... but I know I like old, weird, American records. Jamaican and African and Greek ones too.

You can find everything you need to know about anything in 2 clicks now - can a record just be a little mysterious for a minute? Maybe I'm a sucker, but I can't get get mad about them having a mystique - self-consciously or not.

Ripping people off is something else entirely. Don't do that, Mississippi Records! I wanna love ya.

(sorrt if you've already been over this stuff - i couldn't read the whole thread)

i'm not mad about them having a mystique (though i find it tacky some of the time). it's just that this mystique gives the lie, i think, to their whole 'we're just trying to share music, we don't know anything about business' etc. naivete.

Brio massively otm - the idea that mystique is something entirely to be gotten over makes me sad. Mystique played a large role in me being drawn to popular music. Mystique has a place at the table, too.

fuck that one atm imo

Mystique and romanticism are where it's at and I don't get you as a person if you disagree.

i am pro-mystique for current acts, but all the old dead ppl whose tracks make their way onto mississippi comps deserve more tbqh

http://fandangogroovers.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/mystique.jpg?w=142&h=216

i am pro-mystique for current acts, but all the old dead ppl whose tracks make their way onto mississippi comps deserve more tbqh

mystique is that quality which contains "more" and always contains "more"! I'm just arguing this generally tho, I agree in re: most reissued stuff -- notes/histories/conjectures-from-available-data makes for good stuff. but I'm happiest when the amount of available data is small, or contains conflicting information that can't be reconciled, stuff like that.

^^ real talk

it's really easy to not learn too much about the stuff you're listening to if it helps you preserve some sense of mystery -- asking that the people making that music accessible to you skimp on information possibly to the point of sketchy business practices just to help you indulge in that preference is maybe unnecessary.

it's really easy to not learn too much about the stuff you're listening to if it helps you preserve some sense of mystery -- asking that the people making that music accessible to you skimp on information possibly to the point of sketchy business practices just to help you indulge in that preference is maybe unnecessary.

naw man that doesn't work. artificially preserving a sense of mystery by, like, not looking at liner notes that came with the record, that is not a workable way of infusing an object with mystique, because you're the one putting that mystique there. I'm not asking anything of anybody, just talking in generalities about stuff - not paying people/crediting people is obviously bullshit. but positing scholarly presentation as the best default is fraught with complications, the most pernicious of which is the tendency of any history that's presented to freeze its subject in amber ("reify" used to be a much-used term for what I'm talking about, I think).

but c'mon, "you don't have to look," get out w/that man

Yeah I want other people to create that sense of mystery. Creating it myself by just like throwing away the packaging would be crazy.

alex otm. the willing ignorance of the listener who DOES have access to info but chooses not to avail him/herself = weird bullshit, but as a curator, you can control the positioning of the veil, and that's not a bad thing. it's part of the fun, the art of it. plus, i have yet to see any real, clear, convincing evidence that mississippi are or have ripped anybody off. so i kinda wish people would quit pretending that this is some kind of given.

...are ripping or have ripped...

Actually I was making fun of you weirdos. Sorry to have to ruin that mystery.

not addressing the point at hand but: new abner jay and a george mitchell sides comp from these guys soon

I didn't know that George Mitchell, Special Envoy to the Middle East, made records (refusing to google to preserve thought of George Mitchell album now.)

tuomas must enjoy music more than anybody on earth

and the 2010 award for "farthest reach attempted in order to land a Tuomas joke" goes to some dude

sorry, operating at reduced brain capacity because you blew my mind with your totally bewildering 'logic' upthread. didn't realize what kind of special record nerds i was dealing w/ here, gonna try to duck out of the thread gracefully now.

asking that the people making that music accessible to you skimp on information possibly to the point of sketchy business practices

I don't think anyone is asking for this, or saying sketchy business practices are cool.

The only point I meant to make was that "special record nerds" can find a bit of mystery appealing and I think it can be kind of a cool strategy for a label to employ. Mississppi certainly isn't the first label to realize this.

Anyway, Amateurist has clarified that it's not the mystique that bugs him (though he thinks it can be tacky) but the possibility that this is used to obscure their business dealings. Which makes sense.

The only point I meant to make was that "special record nerds" can find a bit of mystery appealing and I think it can be kind of a cool strategy for a label to employ. Mississppi certainly isn't the first label to realize this.

what's happening FACTORY RECORDS and practically every other great label ever, excepting classical labels

wasn't factory records putting out new releases by contemporary bands who probably told them 'hey don't put our faces on the cover, we wanna be kind of an enigma' etc.? pretty apples/oranges dude.

i just contrast mississippi releases with something like the goodbye, babylon box where they just compiled fucktons of background and interesting facts and stories and stuff and i know which one i prefer.

I can't think of too many above board reissue labels who operated this way. More Sublime Frequencies than Factory if you ask me.

most Factory records were sparsely annotated - pretty sure it was part of the aesthetic, not "these are famous people so we gotta keep it low." there was this sense of letting the visual aesthetic speak largely for itself - even when Saville went typography-heavy as on some Section 25 sleeves, there was what appears to be this "the sleeve, as part of the overall presentation, should show rather than tell."

I dont think the "new releases by contemporary bands wanting anonymity" thing applies in more than one or two cases throughout the label's long history tbh

OTOH Alex otm, it's a little different with a reissues label than with a label that's signing acts (and LOL not paying them often as in the case of Factory)

you blew my mind with your totally bewildering 'logic'

gonna be a thread title in a month or so

fyi the brand new comp on mississippi of george mitchell field recordings is well annotated with two inserts.

the rembetika thing has a big booklet too, doesn't it?

i dig the stuff they put out, but for some reason i still like this thread title a lot.

it makes me think someone is suggesting i make sweet love to my "life is a problem" record

ws

So many ways I could reply based on personal knowledge but, fuck it -- I'll just let the haters hate. I know from personal experience that is often so much more fun, anyway.

And speaking of hate, if you hated Mississippi, then you'll REALLY hate Social Music! Only six weeks left to sign up for the subscription series. (Time it takes to speculate about the label's ethics? You can take forever, my friend).

http://socialmusicrecords.com/

I've been reading and enjoying your writing since fanzine days Mike, but just dismissing complaints as "hate" while hinting you know more is not a very effective response.

"haters gonna hate" always comes in handy when u don't feel like addressing legit thought-out negative criticism

Eek - I have "Life is a Problem". Have the rights holders on this LP not been paid?????

bootleggers gonna boot

i just wrote about a record i really like for my column in decibel and then told everyone not to buy it cuz it was put out on cd by a scummy thief. i told people they should download it instead and wait for an authorized release.

that's my bootlegging anecdote for the day.

haha

That's a valid criticism, yes, so I'll answer as much as I can. There are things I cannot say outright on a public forum, out of respect and because it's not too much of my business anyway.

When I personally was criticized on a few boards late last year for the way that I put three different gospel comp.s together, I decided to not respond in public and I'm mostly glad I made that choice. Weirdly, I feel more compelled to "clear" the names of my friends.

In my experience, the way Mississippi Records does business is one of the most ethical ways that I have seen a label of any sort run. It is possible that I personally delivered funds to people who were "bootlegged" who were then flabbergasted they were being paid so much, and were very happy with the experience.

Anyway, any gray area stuff's well in the past -- if you look on the back of a Mississippi release today you can see where and how the records were licensed.

isn't there an element of player hating though when it comes to mississippi? it seems like it. their diy approach rankles the archival purists and hepcat record collectors are...maybe a little jealous? or pissed that the people buying the stuff aren't troo jugband warriors? i dunno.

i'll admit to being a little irritated when Aquarius Records does their "MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!!!" thing in their new releases email. Love those guys, but it is kind of obnoxious.

I also imagine that many of these amazing musicians were ripped off by labels in their prime so it feels a little ironic - and sad - if even now they continue to be denied what they earned. I don't know any of the details though and I'm not accusing anybody of anything.

So you paid Irma Thomas, Mike?

Oops, that's in the past under the old Mississippi way of doing business. Now they are doing things differently.

now i just wanna find some troo jugband warriors on 78

It is possible that I personally delivered funds to people who were "bootlegged" who were then flabbergasted they were being paid so much, and were very happy with the experience.

It certainly is. Now did that happen or not?

lol

reissuers gonna reissue

been here all my days is killin me right now

LOL @ social music releasing music on vinyl and cassette. too hip to breathe.

jamaican gospel comp looks interesting. i have a studio one gospel LP called 'man from galilee." it's good, but by no means great.

Curmudgeon -- Not me but I was thrilled about that one, actually. The way that went down made me very proud to just be pals with this label.

Hawkwindz -- Yep that happened.

Amateurist -- Please, do not hyperventilate on my account. Personally -- I am 42 years old so I can never be hip, no matter what I do. This is kind of exhilarating, except for those times when I find myself hitting on disinterested twentysomething and then I just feel a sad sorry cliche of a man afterwards [/ emo]. Kids like tapes, at least here in Kidville (Portland, OR). People have signed up for the tape version steadily, much not to my surprise. The Jamaican gospel comp. is going to be killer but it's very strange stuff -- really wonky. Took me half a dozen listens to admit I liked this material then a dozen more later I loved it. Unsure as to whether other people will feel similarly...

Not me but I was thrilled about that one, actually. The way that went down made me very proud to just be pals with this label. -Mike

As I recall there was no information on the Irma Thomas album sleeve indicating that it was an authorized re-release. I guess you are implying that Irma knew of this release though, and somehow got paid if it made any money. Interesting that the Mississippi Records guy who posted once upthread is not spelling out the specifics.

he's like, too busy ignoring the internet, cause it's boring, man

Curmudgeon -- Please understand -- this is just me saying that. I personally know it to be true. But I am not the label nor am I in any way a representative, just trying to back up my friends who I know to be doing very, very awesome work in a way that I know to be as ethical as possible (barring a few minor, "youthful" early mistakes).

Also I didn't even realize that Eric had posted when I wrote that; I didn't read back to then even though it was just a few days ago.

Destroyer -- Personally I respect that Eric isn't online and on chat rooms and Internet message boards hardly ever. I would like to be on Facebook less but it's like where a lot of my friends are. I basically live inside the Internet, and I like ILM, and I can barely keep track of a few threads on here at a time -- how folks can find so much time to post here is really something (and I have a lot of friends/ people I respect on here -- Brian, Ian, Ned, Matos, etc.).

So can everybody chill out now and start directing their ire back at Radioactive or somebody like that? I mean seriously, the dude gives folks his phone number, address, and hours that he's there. Any artists or lawyers that still have beef can take it from there.

for future reference:

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

jamaican gospel comp looks interesting. i have a studio one gospel LP called 'man from galilee." it's good, but by no means great.

The Jamaican gospel comp. is going to be killer but it's very strange stuff -- really wonky. Took me half a dozen listens to admit I liked this material then a dozen more later I loved it. Unsure as to whether other people will feel similarly...

WANT this but don't think i can spring for record club and shipping fees. guess this is like those ten cd country classics box sets that are NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES.

No, it's like a record club -- one that's not for people who only like one kind of thing. So if you like Jamaican gospel or think you might -- go and find it yourself, maybe?

i like grouper, and abner, and trust your taste plenty mike; had just wondered if it might be available without a fullscale pledge of allegiance on my part. not hassling you - it sounds fun.

this solitary jam is all i know of jamaican gospel, fwiw.

yeah, the social music thang looks awesome, mike, but I'm in the same boat -- not sure if I can afford it this year ...

I can understand people being broke -- just trying to do this kind of thing as cheaply as possible (one reason it's inexpensive is we're sending out three main batches to save on post and mailers).

Wow, thanks for that link -- never heard that song before it's AWESOME. Jamaican gospel is from fucking Mars, man.

Schlump -- Just bought that 7" + almost thirty more like it from a British Jamaican specialty website I'd never heard of before. Thanks again! Also, curses -- this money was supposed to go elsewhere (do I *really* need brakes on my pickup?)

webmailin you mike.

the rise of record clubs is a neat thing; i'm bummed to be missing out on new christina carter and islaja stuff courtesy of rootstrata, but it's still better that it's getting released with good homes to go to. some of the forthcoming social music stuff sounds great anyhow-

WAIT 'TIL I PUT ON MY ROBE: More Rare, Raw + Otherworldly African-American Gospel Double LP (basically the sequel to the Fire In My Bones comp.)

Jamaican gospel is from fucking Mars, man.

and in seven words you've neatly summarized the attitude that irritates me about mississippi releases.

seven words that shook the world

http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/25/12125-004-D7ADE904.jpg

i just wanted to post that.

And then you went ahead, and did.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3057/2367515373_515ff7a325.jpg

Amateurist -- I'm only tangentially related to the label, and that was definitely an offhanded comment that's not my finest moment but the music is very ... whatever. Yes that was not the smartest thing to say I can see that. I love this music and can't wait to find out more about it and for other people to hear it.

Mike what you said was fine .. it's the kind of offhanded talk among friends that people on ILM use all the time, and of course you just meant to convey enthusiasm ... amateurist just has something up his ass for whatever reason

ultmately i feel like:

http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/WestCoastAllStars.jpg

up against the wall, motherfuckers

a British Jamaican specialty website I'd never heard of before

any chance you could reveal which website?

scott give it ten years and that cover will be xeroxed

and in seven words you've neatly summarized the attitude that irritates me about mississippi releases.

― by another name (amateurist)

are we supposed to be so erudite and cosmopolitan that nothing ever takes us by surprise? or so ashamed of actually belonging to a culture that we fear voicing our sense distance from another?

Don't have much to add to this discussion, but I noticed Mississippi have done a joint reissue with Slumberland of a lost C86-era indiepoppunk classic Chin Chin - The Sound Of The Westway RIYL Shop Assistants etc.

Stirmonster -- Reggae.co.uk: still a bunch of Jamaican gospel 7"s listed with scans, info + sound samples on there now. Also a lot of other great blue beat/ dub/ what you'd expect stuff, but prices a bit beyond me.

Jamaican gospel is alive and well in Pentecostal churches all over Jamaica, Britain and America - every Sunday morning!

thanks mike!

Jamaican gospel is alive and well in Pentecostal churches all over Jamaica, Britain and America - every Sunday morning! - on Mars!

― The Clegg Effect (Tracer Hand), Monday, May 24, 2010 6:20 AM

fixed

Oh, fucking hell.

Perhaps Mike meant that gospel is an area in which Jamaicans excel, or 'come from Mars'

:)

Mike was doing a take on a line from the movie doc Heavy Metal Parking Lot, but I think he meant it in a more endearing way than the zebra-striped shirt Judas Priest loving guy who proclaimed his dislike of Madonna, by saying she "comes from Mars."

Or maybe he was quoting that Jamaican parking lot attendant in that movie short who is amazed at the metal folks wild antics. I forget.

wish we had a less negative MISSISSIPPI thread

'whiskey, you're the devil' is fuckin rad

We do, dude.

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

test

$17 for Staples Singers vinyl (does Mavis or sister see any of it?)

they better!
finally got michael hurley's fatboy spring last month and man, it is really good.

I don't think it worked xxp

fatboy spring's so much fun

Firebombed!

No one was hurt, but there is significant damage and mess at Mississippi Records as a result of the arson attempt yesterday.

I'll be by to help clean up later this evening, and I'm sure they would appreciate anybody else's help as well. 💖 pic.twitter.com/N3ipsYB8nd

— Just Some Fucker (@just_somefucker) September 30, 2023

Was this random or part of a string of arsons in the area or anything?

seemingly random afaik (I live 2 hours south)

I wish this misbegotten thread was locked and this was used fwiw:

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