Private Caress

A microblog exploring the jewels and throwaways of private press vinyl records, starting with the book "Enjoy the Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992."

[romantictimes]

The Muzzy Band - How Was It (1975)

It's 3 a.m. and you haven’t slept a wink, so you turn on the radio and spin the dial.

A saxophone imitating a loon. "Hey Yeti, is the tape on?" The sandpapery croon of a lost disc jockey warbles over the air waves. He's urging you, but to do what you're not quite sure.

I can't find anything else by The Muzzy Band besides this one song. If anyone has the full recording, I hope you'll reach out.

[romantictimes]

The White Brothers and Sister D - First Take (1981)

You've left behind a day of empty, soul-sucking work in a windowless corporate office. As you savor that first sip of whiskey and your muscles unspool, a man in a white suit triggers a siren of feedback from the microphone some thirty feet from the bar. Who's that keyboardist, and how did he end up playing stale r&b jazz fusion for some corny band in the middle of Knoxville, Tennessee?

[romantictimes]

Catalina - Live at the Chi Chi Club (Year Unknown)

I'm picky about my jazz fusion. For me, this misses the mark.

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Jody Aliesan - You'll Be Hearing More From Me (1972)

It's that girl who lived in your college dorm who played tolerable folk songs at every open mic event on campus.

[romantictimes]

Joel Andrews - Locrian Invocation/Harpist (1975)

I love the harp. It's not always easy to find harpists who use the instrument in a way that pushes beyond conventional expectations of what harp music "can" be. Alice Coltrane, Dorothy Ashby, Joanna Newsom, and Madison Calley are a few examples of harpists who have proven the harp’s versatility across many genres. (The fact that so many classical harpists are not only women, but often black women, is not lost on me; I would not be surprised that racism may explain why music critics don't take the instrument more seriously.)

Joel Andrews went on to have a significant career as a harpist, composing and performing music for transcendental meditation. I'm charmed by this pensive, meandering record, which straddles the line betwixt that which stimulates and that which relaxes. It's been stripped bare of the more eye-rolling harp clichés. Recommended for evenings spent alone in a house somewhere remote.

[romantictimes]

Shawn-Daniel Foreman - Transistor-Jet Strikes Back (1980)

The first thing that came to mind for me when I heard the first track of Shawn-Daniel Foreman’s Transistor-Jet Strikes Back wasn’t Kraftwerk or even Queen, although the influences of both couldn't be more evident. It was the homegrown ethos of Sonic Youth’s similarly titled Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.

Shawn-Daniel was, like many of these unknown and almost-forgotten musicians who went the private press route, ahead of his time. His musical talents were nurtured by his pianist mother while he grew up attending Catholic school in Kentucky, but his high school rock band had already broken up at least a decade before he released this remarkable electronic-trance record.

Highlights include the robotic voice work on the third track "Master of the Universe." It makes me smile, just like the album title's obvious reference to The Empire Strikes Back. I'm not sure what led to his untimely death at the age of 38, but I'm grateful that he left behind this gift.

[romantictimes]

Lori Longmire & Crown Of Creation – A Day In The Sun (1974)

Lori can't sing (she also sounds like she had a sore throat on the day she booked the studio), but does that really matter?

She sure does choose all the right songs to cover. We've got the Reverend Al Green ("How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?") and Roberta Flack ("The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face").

Then all of a sudden it's The Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace"? And it's not even Lori who's singing the song?

Either Lori and her friends don't understand what it means to record an album - although I'd love to hear why they decided to shoehorn a '50s teeny bopper pop song between jazz and r&b standards - or the Crown of Creation told her that the price for recording with her was that they could pick and record a song or two of their choosing. No matter how genre inappropriate.

It's a charming record. Check it out.

[romantictimes]

Larry Voltz - The Last Rainbow (1981)

Young, long-haired dudes who seem hardwired beyond all reason to produce their own vision of a movie or album (Larry Voltz recorded everything here on a Tascam 8 track in his bedroom, by himself) always remind me of Chris Smith of American Movie documentary fame. So, I'm going to head cannon that twenty-year-old Voltz walked so that Chris Smith could run.

The Last Rainbow is a confident synthwave easter egg that, at one point, skyrockets into a kind of Johnny Cash and the Carter family play the rings of Saturn affair. There are several pleasant surprises. If you don't dig the first minute and a half of this record — keep listening.

You'll find plaintive, gospel longing, chilled yacht rock, and eager guitar solos. Many of the songs are as much a love letter to Todd Rundgren as they are a response to the looming end of the late 1970s glam rock era.

Recommended.

[romantictimes]

Happy Sounds - Live at the Caribe Hilton (1974)

At least the keyboardist of this Doors-esque cover band (Santana, Carole King, etc.) is competent. Maybe more than competent. To be fair, I've never cared for cover bands. I'd be curious to hear an original track from Happy Sounds but this mostly left me underwhelmed.

[romantictimes]

Lance Hayward at the Half Moon Hotel (1959)

A collision of peppy, lightweight piano exotica and dreamy cabana jazz. You can taste the grapefruit of the Paloma in your hand.