The Music CrackÕd
Vanity pressings are not a crime
Enjoy the Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992
| Sinecure Books / Now-Again Records
Hardcover, 512 pages, removable OBI ribbon, comes with download card for dozens of tracks; simultaneous release of both a 2-disc vinyl and a 2-CD music compilation
Inquire within: A sticker on the front of this book bears a proclamation from filmmaker Larry Clark:
ÒThe greatest coffee table book ever made.Ó And dang me if he isnÕt right about that. Enjoy the Experience is spectacular; better yet, itÕs inspiring. I will explain:
This is the largest collection of American vinyl albums ever collected, in a weighty (approx. five pounds) old-fashioned
BOOK chock-fulla beauteous color photo reproductions of album cover images and accompanying essays/texts by a slew of wonderfully unclichŽd, fanatical, expert
obscure-record collectors. Edited by Johan Kugelberg, Michael P. Daley & Paul Major, Enjoy the Experience offers a time and place where recording ÒartistsÓ who just
really wanted to make a record and get it heard were for the most part shut out or hindered owing to the music industryÕs big-bossy biz-structure domination, where
access to recording studios and even less to label deals and distribution were the near-exclusive purview of these towering corporate entities and, well, not to people
who, again, just wanted to make a record album.
Undeterred, or at least a bit na•ve, these rock, soul, jazz, funk, lounge, singer-songwriter-leaning individuals pursued their
dreams. As writer/co-editor Eothan Alapatt puts it, they were ÒWorking privately, indulging fantasy and creating the fantastic.Ó Their recorded output, as you might
recall, used to be termed Òvanity pressings,Ó which, given the heartbreaking earnestness of their endeavors, seems way off the mark. In fact, these yearning soulsÕ
industrious and completely uncynical going-for-it joy in what they did is in part what makes their resulting, well, art ÐÐ including the Òbad tasteÓ album cover graphics
ÐÐ thought-provoking, and genuinely moving. (The other part is the eternally fascinating potential of music and visual art that comes about admixturing sincere desire, real
or imagined technical skills and utter tone-deafness to nattering nabobs of naysaying vis a vis concept and execution Ð i.e., happily accidental art.)
Generously devoting tons of space for lengthy, detailed biographies on the obscure folks who made this music,
Enjoy the ExperienceÕs writers/editors for the most part understand and make clear that their amazement at these "amateur" musicians' stories isnÕt
necessarily related to irony or mere cheap scornful laffs. As Kugelberg emphasizes in his supremely resonant introduction, weÕve all been programmed to patronize
about music and art that hasnÕt been buffed shiny clean and free of uncommodifiable deformities. And in describing this musicÕs effect, several of the notes writers
refer to something similar ÐÐ a feeling ÐÐ that places the seeking listener in the crack between musics, a warm, vibrating chasm located somewhere between these
recordingsÕ deeply motivated artistsÕ ambitions, intents and actual results.
How and why do we listen to music at all, then? Here we have an excellent opportunity to fall into beautiful (in their
very own way) cracks in our humdrum, handed-down-wisdom realities, and to immerse in thrilling creativity itself. Equally exciting, once youÕve enjoyed this
experience, is the thought that thereÕs probably even loads more of this ÒgreatÓ (and it is fact great) music out there in the hinterlands, gathering dust Ôneath
someoneÕs bed, in the kitchen cabinet behind the pickled onions.
For more info & how to buy: http://sinecurebooks.com/enjoy-the-experience
ÐÐ John Payne
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