The Death of the Musical Holy Grail?

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.

xpost You could find them, probably, if you lived in a different region of the U.S.

xp Too Much Joy somewhat widely available on Rhapsdody, fwiw, considering that their singer kind of runs the company.

"which shouldn't really be all that rare and yet I pretty much never see any in stores"

they move so fast! that's why you never see them. i can't keep miles in my store. or 60's dylan. or sun ra. or any halfway decent punk record. gone in 60 seconds.

not that i want to keep them in my store...

but demand is way bigger than supply.

yeah plus it's not like those are the kinda artists that people end up being like "ah what the fuck was i on with this no age shit?", i'm sure lots of those end up in collections for life

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

lol no. But it was OOP with pretty much no chance of ever coming back into print and I only had it on a very well-worn cassette.

It's the Game Theory cds, especially Chronicles and Lolita, that fetch big prices, I think. Those aren't likely to be done again any time soon.

I think most of us here still hope to uncover obscure, mind-blowing titles. It's just that with file sharing, there's negligible lag time between hype and hearing. And I'd argue that this is healthier than being teased for years by something that's virtually impossible to find.

I still haven't found a dl for that Thomas Jefferson Kaye album.

Re: Game Theory. Real Nighttime goes for moderate $ I think. The ALRN was selling for a pretty good price last I checked...it's worth it too.

I wonder if the rise of obscure music accessibility via filesharing coincides with many of "us" (here on ILX) passing from a relatively narrow musical focus that allows for obsessiveness to a much broader but perhaps more diffuse sense of taste.

When I only really loved < 10 artists it was a lot easier to care about the possibility of some obscure b-side being amazing, b/c my entire engagement with music was proportionately much more defined by each artist.

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.

That said what holy grails I do still have are mostly drawn from 90s dance music.

I still haven't found a dl for that Thomas Jefferson Kaye album.

He's actually released a few albums (including a relatively recent CD I found in the dollar bins). But I assume you mean First Grade. I have it on vinyl but alas I'm STILL not set up for vinyl-to-mp3 conversion. One day...

P.B.S.: "Mr. Rogers"/"Girl of My Own" (Troubled Youth)

I'm convinced now this is a joke even though Joe Gross told me it was a punk cover of the Mr. Rogers theme song.

Althea & the Donazz: "Virgin Style" (Circle import 12-inch)
Amazon Two: "Big Booyaa" (Aphrodite import)

I have these, the former on vinyl, the latter on a mix CD. I'll try to dig it up and ysi it for you.

Estrellas Ubou: "Jalagua Guero"/"Moudibey Cielo" (EUR)

Haven't found this either but xgau was gracious enough to play it over the phone for me (it was groovy!) and give me the address and phone # on the label (which lead nowhere alas).

Abdullah Roueshid: "Alla Homma La Ertarag" (Sono Cairo import)

This is damn near impossible to search for give the myriad ways to spell "Abdullah Roueshid."

My holy grail is anything by The Disposals assuming anything exists. Also never found a copy of The Rapture: You Are Here ("King Biscuit Productions").

I have plenty of holy grails left. There are so many Vee Jay and Nashboro gospel singles I always look for.

hey, thanks kjb!

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.

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