(Pictures taken by holding LP sleeves up to the camera in the lid of my laptop.)

So far today, while working on a Very Important Project (something I have to remind myself that I’m doing), I’ve put on Adrian Belew’s ‘Desire Caught By The Tail,’ which is one of those records that is so amazing and wonderful, and yet so undescribable that I can’t really, well, describe it. The story goes that Belew wanted to make a record that sounded like Picasso had painted it. He wanted to work in the recording studio the way a painter would work in his studio. It’s really one of the best things ever put on vinyl, just for sheer bravery alone. There was a Japan-only CD release out, and some tracks are included on the ‘Desire Of The Rhino King’ best-of CD which is considerably easier to find.

I also made it through Mkhail Ippolitov-Ivanov’s ‘Caucasian Sketches,’ which is side 1 of a record on on the Turnabout Vox label, which I think is out of Spain. It was performed by the Music For Westchester Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sigfried Landau. That is to say, this guy:

I got this album at a thrift store a while back, and I’ve never even listened to side 2, which is excerpts from Reinhold Gliere’s ‘Red Poppy’ ballet. I got the record because the very end of a film called ‘Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams’ has a beautiful scene of a flowing river, with an idyllic moment from ‘Caucasian Sketches’ playing on the soundtrack, and I wanted to hear the whole thing. But I wasn’t obsessed with it or anything, so I didn’t rush right out to get a good performance. I eventually found this record for $.50. “‘Caucasian Sketches?’ Why does that ring a bell… Oh yeah!”

It’s an abysmally poor recording, so poorly mastered that the last movement actually speeds up and slows down over and over, just a little bit. It’s like listening to a comedy routine. Let’s see what side two brings. And I’ll get to Marillion.

The mark of quality, and stretched signal-to-noise ratios:

Update regarding Reinhold Gliere’s ‘Red Poppy:’ Look, dude. There’s already a Richard Wagner, OK? And there’s already an Igor Stravinsky, and a Claude Debussy. Right? And I’m sure they love that you’re ripping them off, but I don’t.

I have three banker’s boxes full of LPs. Some don’t deserve the effort I’ve put into carting them around. But others are quite important indeed… Like the one I’m listening to right now: The Police’s ‘Ghost In The Machine,’ which was the first rock record I ever bought. It’s still darn enjoyable, and The Police just toured, so I guess everything’s OK.

What I’ve been doing, however, is something I should have done long ago. I have a stereo rack in which I keep my thrift-store, state-of-the-art-last-century stereo, and it has space for LPs on the bottom. For the past year, I’ve been meaning to get around to putting the LPs in their little slots on the stereo rack, but it hasn’t happened. And so today I decided that I’m going to listen to all of them, at random, and sort them into alphabetical order as I put them away.

Earlier today I did side 2 of ‘Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention’ (the version with ‘Porn Wars,’ featuring Al Gore, and the phrase, “What the fuck be g’wan awn?”), which I think might have alienated some neighbors. My friend Brett gave me this LP when he got the CD. There was also David Byrne’s ‘Music From The Knee Plays,’ which gives me rarity-owner status and art school cred, even if it’s not that great a record. Todd Rundgren’s ‘A Cappella‘ is a classic, in that gimmicky way Rundgren can’t seem to escape. There were two Tubes LPs: ‘Completion Backwards Principle‘ (side 1 only) and ‘Love Bomb‘ (side 2 only).

If it were 1987 and I were broadcasting, you’d listen.

Upcoming things I dread: My whole Marillion collection. Maybe it’s time to ebay some of those.

And I want to be clear: I’m listening to them while I do other things.

Kucinich kicking ass.

“Take a little trip back with father Tiresias
Listen to the old one speak of all he has lived through.
I have crossed between the poles, and for me there’s no mystery.
Once a man, like the sea I raged,
Once a woman, like the earth I gave .
There is in fact more earth than sea.”
–Genesis, ‘Cinema Show’

OK, OK, not really an answer.

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