The Death of the Musical Holy Grail?

Since the rise of the internet, with its file sharing, blogspot, torrents, rar, zip, rapidshare, mediafire, etc, etc, are there any musical holy grails (that album that you've been looking for forever, that you comb the racks for, that you search ebay for, that leaves you unable to rest or think properly until you ingest it aurally) left?

i guess this kind of ignores the collector mentality a bit, but i can't really think of too many albums/singles/songs i've been searching for forever anymore. they're all there. if i really, really want something, and it's so damn rare that i haven't run across it in all my years of music-loving, someone out there has made it available. i kinda miss it. the thrill is gone and can never return. then again, the crushing disappointment of a shitty grail, the letdown of wanting something so bad and finally getting what you want... that's all gone too.

does the availability of music on the internet satisfy, or does it offer empty instant gratification?

discuss, and if you have a holy grail, maybe your search can be satisfied here (although that might be a bad thing).

The holy grail just sold on ebay for 10K

wait, what

Want but don't have: Game Theory - Big Shot Chronicles and Lolita Nation. (I have several individual tracks, and I have a set of demo versions that some generous stranger sent me once upon a time.) I still believe these will be reissued someday, but maybe I'm kidding myself.

Well, there's always still the music you heard and loved but didn't catch the name of and can't find on Google from the lyrics you remember.

You just reminded to add Lolita Nation back to my wishlist.

Just found Lolita Nation. Search over.

The only Grails left are really expensive. I'm doing well if I cross a handful off the wantlist in a year. But I have gotten the chance to hear some of them online and realized they weren't worth it. So I've saved some money, though you can usually resell such things, of course.

I would have thought that someone would have posted all the Game Theory and Alternate Learning in protest against the situation, but maybe not.

still looking for 'TeeVees - fatman crossing' on any media.

Well, there's always still the music you heard and loved but didn't catch the name of and can't find on Google from the lyrics you remember.

― Pete Scholtes, Thursday, March 25, 2010 10:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Like the musical equivalent of Tuomas's magic typewriter movie.

wanna hear b-side of fennesz' first single

http://www.discogs.com/Fennesz-5-6/release/169114

'5' was incl as an extra track on hotel paral.lel reissue and is pretty boss

The only thing I've REALLY longed for and could never find I recently purchased on ebay: original test pressing of 1975 Orchestra Luna album (one of my desert island discs for 35 years!) It has three songs that were taken off the commercial release at the last minute, in favor of two different tracks. I've had the deleted tracks for a while on CD-R, burned for me by the songwriter/bandleader Rick Berlin, but have always wanted the official artifact. Got outbid for one last year at $150, nailed this one for about 25 bucks. Pretty inexpensive grail after all that!

Holy Grails are all very well, but up to now they've been the preserve of either very fortunate people who happened to be 'there', wherever there was at the time, or madly rich people.

Of course the heavy irony of Robert Johnson's 78 rpm singles originally sold to the poorest folk, now are the most expensive records to buy. All in the hands of the very rich people, obv.

I'm glad. I now have access to pop from all over the world so what do I care. There isn't enough time to hear every record ever.

My $1 Lolita Nation cassette found at Record Mart in 1994 ended up in the trunk of the Accord, where it's life ended when a heavy box was placed upon it. I wasn't aware it was hard to find. Something like this probably happened to real holy grail.

I tried to wrangle the alluring "Purr Snickety" by the Smashing Pumpkins for years, logging onto my slow AOL account to find someone willing to trade it on Maxell XL cassette tapes for that "rare" Buffalo show of theirs I owned (no dice), pedaling to all the record stores in Cleveland that sometimes sold import CDs, etc. Then I went to college and downloaded it in 2 minutes off of Napster. It certainly wasn't the sexiest way to obtain a rare song. But it worked.

I still find Holy Grails all the time, when I'm not even looking for them! Usually for $1 or less. Found this one for 83 cents just last week:

J. Walter Negro and The Loose Jointz "Shoot The Pump" (Zoo York 12-inch single, 1981 -- been looking for a copy for approx. 29 years)

Still haven't found this one:

Christgau's article on Jonathan Lethem mix CD

If you dig around you can find the track listing, but really it's all about the liner notes.

xp Uh, kinda contradicted myself there -- meant "when I'm not looking specifically for them." I'm always looking, to see what's out there.

This thread makes me think about how much time I put into tracking down a CD copies of OOP Too Much Joy albums. I think it took me like 5 years of checking the T section every week at area used CD stores and then somehow I magically found them all within a couple of weeks of each other.

It's weird to think that there probably isn't much musically that I could just want and want and want like that anymore. Now it's just like do I have 9 bucks for itunes this week or should I try googling up a blog?

My only outstanding item is some sort of electro mix from the mid-90s that a friend gave me on an unlabelled blank tape. I've kinda wanted to know what the hell that was for a while. But not knowing what something is isn't the same as knowing what something is and not being able to find it.

VU acetate

That's exactly it. It comes down to the artifact rather than the music stored within.

My buddy who tracks down xgau p&j singles has not found these:

P.B.S.: "Mr. Rogers"/"Girl of My Own" (Troubled Youth)
Althea & the Donazz: "Virgin Style" (Circle import 12-inch)
Estrellas Ubou: "Jalagua Guero"/"Moudibey Cielo" (EUR)
Amazon Two: "Big Booyaa" (Aphrodite import)
Abdullah Roueshid: "Alla Homma La Ertarag" (Sono Cairo import)

We speculate the P.B.S. one doesn't exit. Anyone who knows differently speak up!

I could not find Squirrel Ashcraft mp3s on the Internet, or slsk. Some things you just have to pick up on tape or lp, because no one's ripped them yet, or they have and haven't uploaded it. Some obscure stuff I've found, but ripped badly and at a low level. But I've also found really obscure stuff after a having slsk search it out for a few weeks.

plenty of old stuff I can't find on the internet, esp things that were never issued on CD

Yeah the Holy Grail isn't dead, it's just quite ill.

There are still plenty of things I've been looking for for over 10 years that aren't on blogs or Slsk. OK they're mostly cassette-only releases from the 80s, but still.

having a hard time finding Linton Kewsi Johnson's "Times an' Tings"

To the extent this is true, it's a really good thing.

Sometimes I pull out a record and think how hard I worked to find it, to hear it; how I thought I'd achieved some next level of music genius just by owning it; how totally awesome it was to just find it one day and for a normal used price, cz I've not paid real collector prices for anything - all ideas which are probably pretty alien to people even 4 years younger than me.

Because even though there is still a tiny amount of stuff which is that hard to find, there's also so much else to listen to with no effort that it hardly seems to matter any more. Stick it on the slsk wishlist, maybe it'll be a pleasant surprise on morning, and you can forget about it until then.

(Last year, a 7" I'd been looking for for 12 years and had wishlisted since slsk first had wishlists turned out - unexpectedly to me - to have involved someone in a current band I like when a message appeared on their website: found a bunch of these, selling them off. Twenty seconds with paypal, a week in the post, and it was mine.

I still haven't listened to it. Too many unheard mp3s to bother setting up the record deck.)

Since the rise of the internet, with its file sharing, blogspot, torrents, rar, zip, rapidshare, mediafire, etc, etc, are there any musical holy grails (that album that you've been looking for forever, that you comb the racks for, that you search ebay for, that leaves you unable to rest or think properly until you ingest it aurally) left?

For those of us who are from small non-English language countries, there will always be lots. There a myriad of great Norwegian albums that have yet to be released on CD. And, as such, they are also very hard to find on the net in filesharing apps etc.

if i really, really want something, and it's so damn rare that i haven't run across it in all my years of music-loving, someone out there has made it available. i kinda miss it. the thrill is gone and can never return.

Short answer: have some self-control, maaaaan.

I really enjoy this feeling and it's the main reason I limit myself to not downloading anything, for free or otherwise. I love the anticipation of waiting years to hear something; whether it's good or not, the thrill and payoff when I actually find stuff I have been waiting for at reasonable prices is satisfying beyond belief. I've no interest in the instant gratification that's omnipresent in today's culture, musically and otherwise. I like taking my time. I have a whole lifetime to find some of the things I'm waiting for, and given that CD prices continue to drop, and people are continually liquidating their entire collections, there is bound to always be more good stuff right around the corner. And I'll continue flipping through it and paying cash for it and taking it home and putting it on the stereo, settling into the couch with a glass of wine and an hour to just sit and enjoy whatever happens to be the latest thing I've come across.

Yeah, I agree -- if downloading takes the excitement out of finding hard-to-find stuff, the obvious solution is: Don't Download. (And if finding Holy Grails on the Internet and paying lots of money for them takes the fun out of it too, don't do that, either. Which is one reason I limit myself to dollar bins, where you never know what you'll find, except that it will probably be something cool. Another reason: They're cheaper.)

I mean, the idea of I NEED TO GET THIS NOW NO MATTER WHAT is something I don't really identify with, at all. If I really need to hear it, for research reasons, I can usually find a way to stream it somewhere. But if I have to wait another ten years to find a copy of my own, that's just fine.

I mean, the idea of I NEED TO GET THIS NOW NO MATTER WHAT is something I don't really identify with, at all.

Agree with this. Can't say I limit myself to dollar bins, but with the exception of select new releases, I limit myself to used bins and think, before buying each CD, "Is there any chance (assuming this is readily available) that I'll find this for a lower price in the next few months? Or is this the best bargain I'm going to find?"

xhuxk and ilxor OTM altho in my case I mostly just restrict my downloading to old/rare/stuff I already own on vinyl/cassette. if I come across something rare on vinyl I will totally get it and prefer it to the download, records are just nicer and I'm a commodity fetishist that way.

seconding the OTM for xhuxk and ilxor

xp Well, when it comes to new releases, I admittedly have a couple huge advantages that the vast majority of people don't, in that I get mail from record companies every day, and I have a Rhapsody account I don't have to pay for since I write for them. Impossible to say how much my habits would be different if I didn't have those things. Still, everybody else has the same access to used record stores and thrift stores that I do. (Geography permitting I guess, but I've never lived anywhere that didn't have them, and I've lived lots of different places.)

I just won't download free new stuff, it seems wrong. I prefer to pay musicians.

(if you're old/dead and already rich its another matter altogether)

seconding the OTM for xhuxk and ilxor

Wait, ksh... didn't you just sell off yr entire physical music collection (HOOM excepted)?

for people who don't want instant access to everything, or for people who are bemoaning the loss of having to search for records, i think what you & xhuxk wrote is OTM

for me, i don't mind so much having instant access to things. also, i've started buying CDs again already. can't help it! cheap metal records are grate

I just won't download free new stuff, it seems wrong. I prefer to pay musicians.

What if the band is the one posting it for free? A good way to get people to come to your show and spend money is to let them hear what you sound like before.

yeah but I don't really go to shows much these days, apart from local bands

I have only ever successfully located one King Cry Cry side.

I'm confused. Game Theory: Lolita Nation is really that hard to find? I used to see tons of cheap vinyl copies.

I have a CD of Too Much Joy: Cereal Killers. Should I insure it?

i never see game theory stuff in vinyl stores.

it's weird though, lots of stuff that i always thought would just be...around...is going for lots on ebay now.

even just normal prices of, say, beatles albums have really gone up

"Lolita Nation" doesn't turn up in used bins in shops much, in my experience, but yeah, it shouldn't set you back more than 15 bucks on the 'bay.

i finally got a nice vinyl copy of be glad for the song has no ending by the incredible string band. that was the only isb album i needed and didn't have. not exactly a holy grail, but i was happy.

for the most part though, i collect randomly. i don't have a big wish-list. or, to put it another way, my wish-list is kinda infinite. i mean, there are thousands of records i wish i could own.

I would like some nice vinyl copies of all Miles Davis' electric period stuff for ex. - which shouldn't really be all that rare and yet I pretty much never see any in stores

i've had a copy of lolita nation sitting in my store for months for five bucks. cover isn't in great shape, but the vinyl is. its waiting for that one person who really needs it. i wish it would get a job or at least help me out around the store a little. freeloader.

Also hearing something in mp3 format doesn't decrease the desire to own a record if I really love it. I've had mp3s of Sam Dees - The Show Must Go On, but I still will pay whatever it cost when I come across it on the self, One day.......

Kevin, have you tried getting in touch with Janet Housden about the Disposals? Probably, but never hurts to ask...

http://www.myspace.com/theshakes

Along those lines, the unreleased tapes for the 2nd Dyan Diamond album would be nice to find...

yeah there are TONS of unreleased/lost holy grails out there, like the first unreleased Subway Sect album.

As far as released stuff, I still can't even find MP3s of Tymon Dogg, or some of the most obscure Jazz Butcher tracks. There's easily a dozen things that I'm still looking for that I've never even been able to hear.

Oh, just thought of another. Apparently there was some great Ophelias stuff that never came out.

FWIW, I remember sitting in a room w/a member of DNA who was playing cassette tape after cassette tape (all unlabled) of various live shows they'd done. I'm sure that for any band you can name, there's a similar box of tapes or the like gathering dust in someone's basement, and enough legwork could probably unearth them. And I just don't have the time for said legwork anymore.

So yeah, downloading hasn't killed this concept in the slightest.

it's pretty hard to find PM Dawn's "Fucked Music" from 2000

This thread makes me think about how much time I put into tracking down a CD copies of OOP Too Much Joy albums. I think it took me like 5 years of checking the T section every week at area used CD stores and then somehow I magically found them all within a couple of weeks of each other.

I'll have to let Tim Q know that, he's on my panel at EMP.

Which is one reason I limit myself to dollar bins, where you never know what you'll find, except that it will probably be something cool. Another reason: They're cheaper.

I cannot second this enough. Just did another scrounge through that very bin at Amoeba here in SF the other day, turned up all sorts of random goodness.

Heard bits of the subway sect album as its been on comps but would love to hear the whole thing one day.

Since I've been downloading (coming up seven years), I don't know that there are any Holy Grails left for me--I've found everything. #1 on my list was Colonel Jubilation B. Johnston and His Mystic Knights Band and Street Singers' Moldy Goldies, the one in Marcus's Stranded discography--I'm forcing myself to avoid a pun that's just waiting there--and I found that fairly quickly. David Lindley's first two Kaleidoscope albums, too, although I think they'd been reissued on CD; I'd been searching for vinyl copies for years. Actually, there's one thing I'm having a lot of trouble getting right now: Everybody Knows This Is Norway, a compilation of Neil Young covers by Norwegian bands. I've been in touch with two guys from Norway via the Discogs site, and I'm going to try to talk one of them into trading.

Well, there's always still the music you heard and loved but didn't catch the name of and can't find on Google from the lyrics you remember.

Speaking of: there's a tune I saw on TV once that I've spent seven years or so trying to ID: the video starts off with a band playing a big live gig, and indulging in all the clichés - leather pants, Marshall stacks, jumping around. Then it cuts to backstage, and you realise the band are miming, and the music's being played by these rigid, buttoned-down, session musicians. Ring a bell with anyone? This could haunt me til the day I die.

I've pretty much managed to find ripped copies of nearly all ongoing wishlist rarities, but I would still be filled w/ glee & a bit of the old hunter's glory if I randomly happened across any of them in a shop.

tbh I think the advent of Ebay took much of the thrill out of the pursuit before P2P etc. had a chance to seal the deal.

Since the mid-90s or so, the first thing I've looked for any time I entered a store w/ a half-decent used selection is an original Rough Trade issue (pref. vinyl, but CD ok too) of Opal's Early Recordings. Even though I've long since had the mp3s (& dubbed cassettes/burned CDs before that), sometime I will chance upon it & no internets could possibly alloy the pure ecstasy I will feel on that day.

liking music really isn't as fun anymore, and i say that will all seriousness

still pretty fun, though, right?

Whiney, what do you mean?

Sincerely curious

Amazon Two: "Big Booyaa" (Aphrodite import)

Ok after sniffing around the interwebs upon failing to locate my mp3, it seems as if this song is actually called Amazon II: "Beat Booya!" (also similarly misidentified by others including Simon Reynolds in Generation Ecstasy). Et voila:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qBJy7V3QIQ

According to Discogs, "Beat Booya!" is a remix of Amazon II: "Booyaaa! (Open Your Mind)" et voila encore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vts6rqJHMK8

Original is bosser sez I but there you have it. A search for "Beat Booya!" turns up many mp3 options.

Kevin, have you tried getting in touch with Janet Housden about the Disposals?

No. Never knew she was potentially emailable. Thanx!!!!

Now it's rare that I have a strong desire to hear an artist's entire readily accessible back catalogue. Very different from say twelve years ago when my m.o. was to discover an artist and steadily acquire each album in succession.

In the age o' downloading I'm still exactly like this when I get excited about an artist! I mean, the gathering up of the oeuvre is much much faster, but then I make my way through it at leisure, a bit at a time, and I love that.

as i have said elsewhere on ilm, my holy grail continues to be the cd version of CA$H by Nasty Rox Inc.
I have the cassette, and a decent vinyl copy - but the cd version continues to eludes me.
all the more painful due to the fact i saw a copy in Our Price in leeds after its release but thought, no point as i already have the tape.
now of course, its existence on cd has become stuff of legend.
of the 2 copies listed on discogs one is owned by CJ Macintosh himself.
oh, and marcello once implied he too had a cd copy.
one day though i suspect ZTT will sort out a reissue (i have seen photos of the ZTT archive and the boxes in which the original masters for the album are stored so i know its possible).

GYBE - All Lights Fucked..., their first, basically mythical, cassette.

I think the loss of any Holy Grails is offset by easy access to so many amazing things that surface from nowhere and have been all but forgotten. And if you find a holy grail in physical form it's still special if you're into that sort of thing.

Now it's rare that I have a strong desire to hear an artist's entire readily accessible back catalogue. Very different from say twelve years ago when my m.o. was to discover an artist and steadily acquire each album in succession.

In the age o' downloading I'm still exactly like this when I get excited about an artist! I mean, the gathering up of the oeuvre is much much faster, but then I make my way through it at leisure, a bit at a time, and I love that.

Jon - I hear what you're saying, but these days if I discover an artist who has more than 4 albums in their catalog I'm just not as enthusiastic to dive into them all. I'd rather have a well-chosen compilation to start with. I guess instant access has made me lazy, or enhanced my sloth-like qualities.

http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/the-10-grossest-indiana-jones-moments-where-does-crystal-skull-rank218023536.jpg

Hey I found a musical holy grail thanks to Dan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5iOIa4EZuQ

I just transpose holy grail status onto even more obscure stuff - outtakes, particular live versions, etc. Or occasionally bands that are ungoogleable, like can. I do try not to, though I guess by temperament there's a tendency, no matter how long the tail, to want to go just beyond the tip of it.

I take my hat off to whoever's looking for that Jonathan Lethem/Barrett Rude comp though - getting obsessive about an arbitrary list of songs is some next-level stuff.

re sleeve: see email (for Tymon Dogg recordings).

the thrill of finding a clean hard copy of whatever will never die

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/o/oasis/album-whatever.jpg

yay, lost my grail

The Tee Vees - fatman crossing

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

Also, for the record, Omnivore is reissuing all the Game Theory albums now!

my main holy grail right now is not particularly rare and would not be as expensive as some other (especially Brazilian) items on my wants list IF there were a copy for sale. won't tell you which one but it's a Biosphere LP. I do have it on CD and some day someone will sell their vinyl copy.

some older holy grails successfully acquired include: Sass - "Much Too Much" 12", Tim Maia - Tim Maia (the mostly english language one that starts with "With No One Else Around"), Trace Of Smoke - "Treasure Mind" and 9th Creation - Love Crime EP.

some guy e-mailed me about a list of 50 stoner rock albums i did in Db magazine and he's trying to find every one of them and it has taken him years because he's trying to find them all in stores and then he asked me if i would want to take part in a documentary about the list. i didn't respond to that. i did thank him for reading my article though. and i do understand the impulse. it's fun to have a quest.

there are definitely things i wish i had, but sometimes i just like thinking about them. i remember hearing concrete blonde's "still in hollywood" on the local college radio station and then i saw the video for the song on MTV and i LOVED it so much and i ran out and bought their debut album and i loved the album a ton and played it over and over. then i went to go see them in NYC at i think the beacon theatre. i was really drunk and i got on stage with two other people because johnette said they needed help with the chorus of my favorite song except i was so drunk i sang all the words along with her! my friends said she looked over at me and laughed and kinda couldn't believe it. my face would have been red if i hadn't been so drunk. (i wrote her a letter after this and told her i was the drunk guy on stage in new york and i thanked her for the album and i asked her what she was reading and she wrote me back and thanked me and said oh god YES she remembered me at that show and she said she was reading fathers and sons by turgenev.) before the show someone was DJing up in the balcony and all of a sudden i recognized the song they were playing. it was one of my favorite let's active songs, "blue line"! except it wasn't let's active! i yelled up at the DJ - because i was drunk - and said WHO IS DOING THIS SONG???? he couldn't hear me so he beckoned me up to the balcony. i went up there and it was jack rabid. he had boxes and boxes of cool 45s. i'd never seen so many cool 45s. i raved about them and he couldn't believe that i liked so much of the stuff he liked. then he told me who did the original version of "blue line". and i promptly forgot what he told me. for the record, jack rabid is a HUGE game theory fan. (ilx's yeti mike made me buy a game theory album once because he was always raving about them in his chemical imbalance magazine and i listened to it once or twice but it wasn't my kind of thing...) anyway, i always wanted that original "blue line" single but i never tried to find it in a store or later online. i listened to it on youtube a couple of times when youtube came around. i guess i was always hoping it would come to me via magic. but mostly i just like remembering the time that jack rabid spun it in that club in new york. it was such a surprise!

Jack Rabid was the ultimate representative of something

but that's a good story (or two)

This is a big one of mine. Not the song, but the music video, which was on the first block of videos I saw when we got MTV along with No One Is To Blame by Howard Jones, Locked In by Judas Priest, and Let's Go All the Way by Sly Fox. I taped the whole thing on audio cassette, but probably recorded over it a few years later.

Anyway, the video's been missing from the searchable internet until today. There has been another version but it SUCKS because it doesn't have John Ritter in it! Someone on a Graham Nash facebook fan group pointed me in the right direction today, so I uploaded it to youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KwQORT1T6k

cool, glad you found it

the idea of not having "grails", to me that runs contrary to my understanding of how the world works. at base level there are things that, as far as anyone knows, simply do not exist anymore but which people really wished they did - occasionally one of these turns up but most of them don't. from that point there are varying levels of accessibility until you get to, i don't know, baby shark. even then, i can imagine decades on somebody saying "gee, i wish i knew what this 'baby shark' video everybody was crazy about in 2018 looked like".

re: upthread ~ I did find an LP copy of Biosphere - Cirque one month after I posted.

there are a handful of fave boogie 12”s that are particularly hard to find. at least one of them stats lists as “never sold” on discogs, but I know where to get a bootleg. won’t have the full sound though... eh, I’ll probably spring for it anyway

what are your favorite rare boogie 12"s? i've been getting into boogie lately

After thelategreat changed my life a few years ago (I still owe you something for that, man!), the idea of a "holy grail" in terms of music recordings has become even more nebulous to me.

It's possible that my favorite album ever made is still unheard by me and I just don't know about it yet.

rushomancy ~ here are some examples of what I spin/rate:

Idiater Edwards - Loving Sweet Devotion
Jagg - Take Time
Stinger J - Pretty Face
Brenda Hilliard - Give Me All Of Your Love
Jeanie Tracy - Can I Come Over And Play With You Tonight

some of these have been reissued or bootlegged

discogs (especially people's lists), rym (ditto) and youtube are my main sources for learning about boogie & italo-boogie, but I also rate the websites:
http://www.danceclassics.net and Greg Wilson's http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk

awesome, thanks for the recommendations - i already know (and love) "take time", so i have no doubt your other recommendations are great as well! this massive comp called "boogie times - the great collectors" looks promising...

that Boogie Times series is great - there are at least 18 volumes. so far I've been turned on to around 40 tracks from those comps: some directly, some elsewhere. boogie collecting (on vinyl) is ridiculously expensive now. many reissues/bootlegs just don't cut it (though the Jagg and Idiater ones are strong) - the magic is usually in the original pressings.

Idiater Edwards - Loving Sweet Devotion

this is a jam

buncha stuff on oska tapes, a few japanese things i may never hear or encounter online. old enough to be resigned to that & feel no unquenchable thirst.
Mr Spock: "After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but is often true.”

I suppose my holy grail would be the Lilys 'Send in the Subs' CD-R, I can barely get a decent quality rip of it never mind an actual hard copy.

Oska!!! <3 fond memories there. I have the Mellow Fuzz tape if that happens to be one of them, at least I think I still have it

das ist fisch more than anything else!

I knew, in 1994, that the day would come when I would regret not ordering more of the Oska catalog from Jon

that day is today

*Jod

Just ordered one of my Holy Grails from Discogs.

The Bad Brains' second album, Rock For Light, is their greatest achievement on record, to my ear. I think it's even better than the "yellow tape." It was only in print on CD for a couple of years in 1986/7 on the tiny PVC label in the US and on the Line label in Germany. It was reissued by Caroline in 1991, but it was re-sequenced and sped up, so the songs were faster but HR's vocals were chipmunky and embarrassing. I've been trying to get a copy of either the PVC or the Line CD with the original mix for years, but have never had the money when one popped up.

Well, I just bought a very rare 2CD set from Line (again, I didn't even know this edition existed until about a week ago) that has the original mix of Rock For Light on Disc 1 and I Against I on Disc 2. $55 and worth every penny as far as I'm concerned.

v cool—if only there was some kind of "fix" for I Against I