The Death of the Musical Holy Grail?

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.

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".

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