Circle Of Fifths

Getting boxes and boxes of used CDs from other stores to prepare our used room, while frustratingly time-consuming, has its share of perks. Like taking a box-cutter to a fresh package of used product, the instrument quivering in your hand with the infinite potential of what could lay inside. Most times, it's merely enough Jaime Foxx albums to top off a land fill in the Arizona desert. Then in other times, you get three out-of-print sparkling little jewel cases of this...

New Model Army's Radio Sessions 83-84. Tracks 1-4 of this anthemic Yorkshire post-punk trio were first broadcast on the David Jensen Show on July 17, 1983, with tracks 5-8 on the John Peel Show December 14, 1983. Track 9 is an unreleased demo and tracks 10-12 were first broadcast on the Janice Long Show December 30, 1984. Hard to resist the lure. Hard to steer from that distinctive sound that takes me back to college in the 80's. Hard to keep moving one step forward when my current mindset keep tugging me twenty years back.

Notice Me by New Model Army

(m4a file, available for 7 days)

Although some 80's can be too much, er, 80's. As much as I have loved what I have heard of the earlier work from Portland punkers The Wipers, their 1996 album The Herd has the kind of mid-tempo samey-ness that reminds me of one of those 80's bands in the 90's still unable to evolve their sound beyond well-treaded territory by everyone else from that era. Not that it's not good, but the fact that it was hard to pick a track to sample for this blog entry might give some indication of the lukewarm niceness that flows through every song, making each one sound as if they are bleeding into another. I chose the last track, "Insane", for it being the most uptempo and most likely to snap me awake after a run-through from the album at least twice in a row. Kind of a reminder that the album is over, perhaps.

Insane by The Wipers

(m4a file, available for 7 days)

And most deliciously, the long sought-after Holy Ghost box set from the short-lived career of free jazz king Albert Ayler (even more deliciously, with my discount and trade-in value, bought for little more than $12!). Ayler's work, though rarely discussed, was still heavily influential in the free jazz scene, inspiring many, most notably my beloved German saxophonist/clarinetist Peter Brötzmann. This set features rare and unreleased tracks from 1962 through 1970,

which includes a grainy sepia-toned childhood photo of Ayler with saxophone, a photostat of a handwritten note from a Copenhagen hotel, a Slugs flyer reprint including Ayler's quintet listing, a 1965 pamphlet (reprint) by the late poet Paul Haines entitled "Ayler-Peacock-Murray-You and the Night and the Music" as well as a reprinted newsletter from 1969 by Jihad Productions with excerpts about Ayler, a bonus CD of two army band rehearsals from 1960 (in a mini-sleeve that recreates the original reel box), and strangely enough a dried yellowish-white flower in a little plastic baggy.

Best of all, a 208-page book that serves as a guild and yearbook to Ayler's life and career, with lovely little photos and such. Man, you really can't beat a box set like this. And the music? Well, the first two or three disks or so left me a little eh, and the last disk of studio chatter would be gold for anyone that interested in the minutiae of such things. But the free jazz work is phenomenal. It can't be stressed enough. I wish I could put a longer track on yousendit with the whole bloody thing crashing so here is a shorter clip "D.C." which builds into a whirlwind of emotion, then dips and dives into waves that almost wash completely over you. Best music purchase I've made in awhile, and with nine disks to explore, I think I'm gonna sit and stay awhile.

D.C. by Albert Ayler Quintet

(m4a file, available for 7 days)