winchester chorale - music of the west

First up in the current twitch of activity for this blog, a nice companion piece to the sea chanties record posted previously, only this time it's The West, right up there with The Sea as a setting for the twisty little imaginings of the human spirit... for anyone infected with the slightest hint of Americana in childhood, that is. I can only imagine the brutally absurd impression it would make in any other case... as far as I can tell this hasn't popped up on any sharity blogs yet, so...

...as the back cover blurb concludes:

"Listen. And drink deeply."

[go to download]

reboot.

Lately been grinding the gritty vinyl grooves again, have a few new things to post, and improved recordings of some of the earlier posts (found a box of my old records while visiting the hometown recently).

So... if anybody's still checking the feed - stay tuned. Otherwise... posterity, this is for you!

NOTE: I'll be listing the new uploads of previously posted stuff in the comments to this post as I go, for anyone interested in upgrading.

don thompson - fireworks

Ok, it's another organ record, sorry. The next upload will be something else, I promise. I'm posting this one because of it's fun assortment of classical "fireworks", as outlined in the track listing below, all given the theater organ treatment. I dunno, It seemed like there was something to it... keep in mind that this is from the foul year of our lord 1972, before the era of MIDI workstations, and it sounds fresher. Also, don't be put off by the dumb cover - they seem to be a staple of this series, but don't really convey the essence of the contents. Enjoy!

01 - Thunder and Lightning Polka (Strauss)
02 - Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin (Wagner)
03 - Overture - Orpheus in the Underworld (Offenbach)
04 - Czardas (Monti)
05 - Grand March From 'Things to Come' (Arthur Bliss)
06 - The Ride of the Valkyries (Wagner)
07 - Tone Poem - Finlandia (Sibelius)
08 - Waltz from 'Masquerade' (Khachaturian)

[go to download]

byron melcher - happiness is...

The good news is that I have some new records that may be worth posting, thanks to my logistical agent who took me crate diving at a far-flung thrift store while seeking to expand her collection of dubious and arcane food-prep lore... the bad news is that almost all of them are recordings of theater organs from the Concert Recordings label, which I so far know very little about (throw me a bone, all you angels of information!). There are a few other things... this, however, is not one of them. It's not a boring theater organ record, though - it's the exception in the bunch, performed on a Thomas home organ as sort of a vulgar display of capability... and being the sucker than I am for early attempts at musical automation, I fell for it instantly. It has an absurdly up-beat take on Perfidia (love those) and a very quantized Sweet Georgia Brown, plus various nice loopy breaks... and a very ugly cover which isn't included in the post (yet) because blogger is being evil and trying to make me sign up for a google account. Anyway, as far as I can tell, this is the only record in the series to feature any kind of monotony-busting percussion, so I may or may not be posting any of the others after I listen to them... if anyone is particularly interested, post to that effect to sway the judges; there are at least forty, enough for a blog of their own, really.

[go to download]

no new uploads yet... sorry!

After a week without electricity I found that some of my hardware is dead, so I'll be in the process of fixing that for a little while, then hopefully upload some things, probably starting with the requested re-ups... in theory, I should be able to do it with what I'm typing on right now, but the modem won't quite chug through a ~40MB transfer without dropping the connection, sadly. Meanwhile, I would like to introduce you to this nice vintage commercial art personality: The Moisture Monster! I blame him for everything.