Monthly Archives: July 2013

“When I was about 12 my parents had a hi-fi area in the house, complete with an abundance of records stacked together around a small table. I used to sit there making cassette tapes for my Walkman from all the vinyl.”

“Often I would choose the bands to feature in my mix just based on the cover, sometimes I would listen before making the all important decision, and sometimes I would copy the same song every 4 tracks if I liked it enough!

Once I recorded a 15 minute version of a Kate Bush track because it took me 12 minutes to notice that the record was skipping—it was skipping in time—and of course it stayed that way on the tape. When I listen to the track now I’m always surprised when it doesn’t skip.

At around the age of 19 I inherited the very same vinyl record collection from my childhood. My Dad upgraded everything to CD and decided he was finished with vinyl. At that time my housemate had a pair of Technics 12/10s—they were of very high quality with decent needles. The sound of the vinyl through a pair of headphones was outstanding. It sounded thick like you could reach out and cut it like musical fudge.

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In 2005, Cast King released his debut album. He was 79 years old and played a style of country music that had been largely eclipsed by modernity, but King still managed to receive some positive notices for his worthwhile effort. Another album was in the works, but sadly he died of cancer before that came to pass. In a pleasant turn of events, the inspirational Portland, OR store/label Mississippi Records has returned King’s autumnal effort to print in a limited edition, so interested parties who missed Saw Mill Man the first time around shouldn’t dally in snatching it up.

In an earlier era, the rediscovery of Cast King might’ve transformed him into a legendary figure, but in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, he had to settle for critical acclaim and cult status. This sort of missed opportunity can drive some people to bitterness, but based on the no-nonsense delivery of Saw Mill Man’s dozen songs, I doubt the circumstance bothered him all that much.

Joseph D. “Cast” King was born on February 16, 1926 and as the cover of his sole LP plainly stated, hailed from Old Sand Mountain, Alabama. He was rediscovered by one Matt Downer, a musician and field recorder who while making his rounds kept getting pointed in the same direction. Upon tracking him down, a roughly two-year relationship unwound before the Chicago label Locust Music issued the four-track and MiniDisc recordings Downer made at King’s home.

Using the term rediscovery in relation to King comes with a bit of conjecture. In the mid-‘50s, he led a band called the Country Drifters that toured and even recorded at Sun Records, but the seven songs the group cut there remained unissued for decades. They eventually turned up in the ‘80s, tucked deep in the midst of the massive 11LP Bear Family box set The Sun Country Years 1950-1959 and on the Charly Records’ compiled single volume Good Ole Memphis Country.

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NY/NJ DJ Preservation has been active for two decades, and up to 2013 he’s been most notable for collaborating with Mos Def and the Wu-Tang Clan. But he also has some quite interesting additional credits in his background, and they help to shed positive illumination upon his first solo full-length Old Numbers. Released on Preservation’s own label Mon Dieu Music, the record connects as substantially out of step with current trends in hip-hop, preferring instead to expand upon the progressions of the form’s ‘90s heyday, and this sensibility works very much to its advantage.

Coincidence can occasionally bloom into something more, acquiring a deeper resonance that the novelists Thomas Wolfe and William Gaddis eloquently described in their writings as the “unswerving punctuality of chance.” Take just last week for instance. Upon opening my email to submit a review of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s very strong new album That’s It!, my inbox flooded with messages, and the subject line for one stuck out, being a notice for Old Numbers, the first solo album from the DJ known as Preservation.

Initially just a mild quirk, but after sending off my PHJB piece the happenstance grew considerably. Reading up on Preservation’s background, I discovered that he’d served as the opening DJ for, you guessed it, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Intrigued by this heightened connection, I promptly gave Old Numbers a listen, and what I found was a complimentary aesthetic strategy on the part of both.

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“I can’t claim to be as Irish as Julie, but my mum’s family is predominantly Irish and I spent almost every significant holiday just outside of Belfast for the first 15 years of my life. My grandparents lived in a pretty big house and a fair amount of my mum and her sister’s possessions still remained in the attic from that era.”

“I was probably around 3 years old when I discovered their vinyl collection. The records were a pretty decent cross section of what I would now imagine a teenaged girl in the 60s to have been into. There were your standard early Beatles albums and singles, a small collection of Monkees, through to the slightly less cool Cliff Richard 7-inch singles. I’m told I was impossible to get outside as I locked myself away in the attic systematically going through the records on an old gramophone player that they’d hooked up for me.

Very early on I can remember listening to With The Beatles. I thought the sleeve was the coolest thing ever. Over the next few years, my Dad started introducing me to slightly his more ‘proggy’ and experimental collection. I think there were at least 3 copies of Dark Side of the Moon doing the rounds at one point along with some early Genesis and even a Tangerine Dream album in their somewhere. I defy anyone not to get excited about the first 90 seconds of Dark Side. It was like nothing I’d ever heard and has to be one of the greatest starts to an album ever.

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Press Play is our Monday morning recap of the new tracks received last week—provided here to inform your vinyl purchasing power. We post, you right-click.

Holy Ghost! – Teenagers In Heat
Unkle Bob – Brother
Andrew St. James – Cassidy
TOKiMONSTA – Clean Slate (feat. Gavin Turek) [Moon Bounce Remix]
Royal Forest – Everyone Who Knows You
This Frontier Needs Heroes – Hooky
Jay Arner – Midnight On South Granville
The Hongs – Give it All
Jeff Rosenstock – Go On Get
White Hills – In Your Room

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Obits – Taste the Diff

Scott and Charlene’s Wedding – Fakin NYC
Nicos Gun – Dirty Girl (DJ Apt One Remix)
Christopher Paul Stelling – You Can Make It
Fortune Howl – Interzone Export
Potty Mouth – The Spins
Mean Lady – Lonely
The Mother Hips – Song For JB
A Grave With No Name – Aurora
Calvin Harris ft. Example – We’ll be Coming Back (Remix by KRONO)
Caravan Palace – Beatophone (Club Mix)

24 more FREE TRACKS after the jump!

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Greetings from Laurel Canyon!

As you read this, I will likely be on the good fishing vessel Shogun, heading out past Point Loma, down the Mexican coast, and out to sea. For a small band of friends, fishing has become a pastime boarding on an obsession.

Growing up on on the east coast, I spent my summers in the then unpretentious town of Sagaponack, Long Island. There was a little bridge over Sag pond where a worm on a hook could land you a small perch. I’d dig up worms for a group of old ladies with bamboo poles. The ol’ grannys taught me to fish.

Many years later, Rose—the mother of a friend from my delinquent youth—by chance came across my name in a LA magazine. A couple of rounds of phone tag later, my old pal Randy and I were reunited. Shortly after, a new pastime was formed…fishing.

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