International Sad Hits

My book was recently translated and published in Spain, so the Madrid paper El Pais asked me for a list of albums best heard on LP. I had to rephrase the question a bit, but here’s my answer:

I have written a book called The New Analog, so It might surprise you that sound quality is not usually the main issue for me, in choosing an analog or digital format for music. But actually my book never takes up that old question of which is better, LP or CD… in fact I deliberately avoided it, because it doesn’t seem to lead anywhere very interesting! Some say one; some say the other; some (I would be in this camp) say it depends – could there be a duller answer? However, I am very interested in other, perhaps more fundamental aspects about the changes we are experiencing in the ways we share music. Here are a few LPs I am listening to now – as LPs – that might help illustrate some of those issues.

Morio Agata, Otome no hakana yume (Japan, 1972)

I just got home from a tour of Japan, where there are still a lot of great record and CD stores. And I brought this album back on LP because that is how I found it – the owner of a psychedelic specialty shop in Osaka, Forever Records, talked to me about what kind of music I am interested in, pulled a stack of used LPs for me to hear, and this one hit the mark. The musician, Morio Agata, is quite famous in Japan but was unknown to me. And this album – among his earliest – is gorgeous, emotional singer-songwriter recordings, on piano and guitar; I have played it nonstop since I got home. I am sure I will now hunt down more of Agata’s work – on LP or CD or even download, I might not care! But I would never have found any of it were it not the way a record store owner can share old LPs with an interested customer.

Jimmy Noone, That Amazing Soft World of (Italian compilation, date unknown; original US recordings 1928-1937)

One of my favorite shops in the town where I live, Cambridge Massachusetts, specializes in jazz. It is so specialized, in fact, that the owner is a collector of rare 78s, and isn’t very interested in later compilations of those recordings on LP – as a result, he puts albums like this one in the $1 bin. (This one is actually a double LP, and I see from the sticker still on it that I paid $1.99, accordingly.) I have made many discoveries of older music I love by taking chances on these cheap LPs – I might never have discovered how deeply Jimmy Noone’s playing could effect me, had I not had the opportunity to find it on such a cheap format! Favorite track: Sweet Lorraine. (I guess that would be the 78 I would own, were I collector…)

Pearls Before Swine, One Nation Underground (mono reissue on Drag City, 2017; original release on ESP, 1967)

Here is a favorite artist of mine, the American singer-songwriter Tom Rapp, on his first LP originally released by the great New York label ESP in 1967. I already have all of Tom’s records – but this one has a checkered release history which makes me grateful for a new LP reissue on Drag City. ESP was a brilliant but erratic record company, not very careful with their master tapes or formats (or contracts). In the case of this one, although the original was mixed by the band and its producer in mono, the record company altered the mix to make it a stereo release. And later CD reissues added insult to injury, swapping left and right channels from the original LP. So this is a case where I am very happy to hear a new reissue LP (and it’s only available on LP, as is often Drag City’s practice), even though I have the ESP original (and, yes, the CD). Is it about sound quality? In a way – but it’s really about wanting to hear the music the way the band intended. Which, in this case, was mono!

Milton Nascimento, Milagre dos Peixes (Brazil, 1973)

This is another instance where the intention of the artist feels tied to a particular version of the release – but here it is less about the audio than the fantastic packaging and presentation of the original LP. This album was recorded under a military dictatorship in Brazil, at a time when all lyrics had to be submitted to the government for approval. As I understand it, Milton Nascimento’s response to the situation was to make this largely wordless album – but such a lush, gorgeous one, lacking nothing but its notably absent lyrics. Milton is one of my favorite singers, and so I have sought out a copy of the original LP both to try and better understand this album, and for the pleasure of its presentation. And it really must be seen to be believed – the cover folds out into a giant, poster-sized photo of Milton as a child. The LP itself is housed inside a separate, beautifully colored set of pages, with a single page devoted to each song. These pages – nearly all of which lack lyrics, and are therefore largely blank – seem like Milton’s deliberate presentation of missing words. And… there is a 7” EP tucked inside, with three more songs. Because they didn’t fit on the LP? Because these have lyrics on them? Puzzles for the listener/critic. But how else to begin to solve them, without this LP package in hand?