A Mi*She*Beir*Ach
It was a truly full and complicated past week, with the massacre in Israel ramping up my work life at Reboot while simultaneously preparing for my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah this past weekend (and how to keep a supremely joyous life event full of joy given the darkness caused by the utter terror of Hamas’ actions). The Signal newsletter was created to focus on arts and culture (and other) stories that are not already being highlighted in the press, and therefore given that there is so much being said about the slaughter of lives in Israel and the resultant multitudes of innocent people who have died and are in harm’s way (I would suggest checking out Peter Beinart’s column, Rabbi Sharon Brous’ sermon, and Reverend William Barber’s Guardian piece just to name a few), I will to stick to the program. But the rise of antisemitism infuriates and scares the hell out of me, and the crazed responses (or lack thereof) from organizations (and there are many) like the Democratic Socialists of America to the initial atrocities are unexpected and deeply disturbing. And there are still children…young children…that are hostages in undisclosed places. I cannot imagine the fear shocking their system every second of every day.
With true bravery, my thirteen year old daughter decided to start her Bat Mitzvah off by addressing the 200+ people who were in attendance to celebrate her:
To all of us in the room, I offer a Mi Shebeirach as we end a week no one was prepared to have, a week where so many innocent people lost their lives and so many are still in harm’s way. We are holding them in our hearts.
Amen
For those of you who follow this newsletter, you might be aware of two reissue projects I have been working on for quite some time: the Roy Head Backbeat Singles LP and the Derrick Morgan 1972 record Development.
The former was the easier of the two projects to produce, albeit a surprise that I was given the rights to do it. Universal Records has over time given fewer and fewer green-lights to outside labels requesting permission to work with their older catalog recordings. One late night about four years ago I had filled out and sent in a request to release an LP collecting Roy Head’s Back Beat sides. I could not believe such a collection had not been released before on vinyl, given who Roy Head was (a Texas legend of 1960’s Blue Eyed Soul) and given that his Back Beat singles contained his biggest hits (the biggest being Treat Her Right) and best recordings in general. I filled out the request, sent it into the void, and forgot about it. One-and-a-half years later, I got a response from Universal…agreeing to letting me do the project! I had actually forgotten that I had submitted the request. What project? Oh…THAT PROJECT? And to add to my shock, the company sent me wave files of the direct-from-tape transfers they had done (before the fire destroyed them): I had the best available source to work off of! Very unusual in a licensing deal. Crazy.
All I had to do was sequence it so it rocked from side to side, get legendary mastering engineer Gary Hobish to work his wonder…and I was sitting pretty. With fellow Texan Bill Bentley locked in to do the liner notes and Half-Japanese frontman Jad Fair agreeing to draw-and-cut the cover, the release shaped up very nicely.
The Development project was a lot trickier. It was yet another late night music deep dive, when I discovered on discogs a Derrick Morgan record that not only had I never seen before, but looked to be rarer than any other in his catalog. Development was initially released on the Jamaican Jaguar label…but what did that release really look like? Unlike the Roy Head record, there was no master tape to be worked with. The few copies that were being sold on-line were without covers and horrendously scratched (and still selling for close to $100).
After months of tracking down a “good” copy….in Holland…which was actually a test pressing done for Virgin Records (another strange addition to the mystery)…it was truly a bummer to find out that even that copy sounded horrible…with a warbling sound mastered throughout. The cover the owner scanned for me was in horrid condition, ripped and mangled. It was over a year in my search to source a good copy that Derrick Morgan’s son Merrick turned up with one from his father’s collection (oh, he had it all the time???). Although frustrated, it seemed like I was on the path to finally finding a good copy to needle-drop a master from…until it arrived: ripped cover, scratches everywhere, and that weird fuzzy warble underneath the music. We ended up Frankensteining a master together, sourcing a few songs from the record that were on b-sides of other Morgan singles, finding a few others on comps…with Gary Hobish having to take bits of part of a song from one vinyl source and connecting it with the best part of the song from another vinyl source.
Three years after signing the deal with Morgan, the master was finished..and it only cost me 3x the usual amount I spend on mastering a record (that can also read….damn…it cost 3x the amount!). When I called Merrick to ask for digital rights for a year in order to make back some of the money spent (these reissues are a small money game unless you sell thousands), he hard lined me. No, sorry. And instead, to add insult to injury, a few months later, he had taken my restored master and put it up on streaming services with the restored cover that Barb spend days cleaning up (it looks fantastic) adding a ton of modern recording bonus tracks—months before the manufacturing of my record was done; he pulled a total jerk move. That being said, the record is done…and it looks and sounds pretty great (with a few songs that have a slight rougher edge due to the oh so crappy quality of the vinyl sources). It is a fantastic record, some of Derrick Morgan’s best songs, actually: a fantastic example of early Reggae, soon after it morphed from rocksteady, with a great band and great production from Morgan himself.
No one has ever said that the record business is easy. These two releases have been in the work for 4 years…and that does not even begin to compare to the 15+ years I have spent working on my Specialty boxset! But the saving grace part of this story is that the records look and sound great. Both releases are killers. If you would like to buy one, you can get the Derrick Morgan record here and the Roy Head record here! You will not be disappointed (and if you will write about it in a news rag or substack…and I could use the ink…e-mail me privately!).
***Regarding future Signals: I am editing interviews with Bill Million from The Feelies (about their new Velvet Underground covers record they released this week) and Argentinian writer Cesar Aira. Be on the look out for both of these as well as later in the month with the Halloween edition of the Signal focused on the greatest horror films from 1973….
Top 25 Most Expensive Items Sold on Discogs in September 2023
An Olivia Newton-John limited edition 10-inch copy of Xanadu for $5,319…that is what I am talking about. If you have any money left over you can get an ultra-rare copy of Journey’s Escape record for $2,400 (YEEEEEE-UCK). There are some interesting things on the list: two OG psych records: Pussy Plays Pussy and The Truth by D.R. Hooker.
A fantastic interview from the crazed soul hero of mystery….
If you know where and when to look as you are driving through the Presidio towards Sea Cliff, you can see the house that Ansel Adams grew up in. People are always surprised when I point it out…he is from San Francisco? He lived there? It is not the biggest, but it is very sweet. Especially great if you have money left over after buying the Matamp Orange that Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac used in the late 60s!
“Obviously there is no classification of the universe that is not arbitrary and conjectural. The reason is very simple: we do not know what the universe is. We must suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense inherent in that ambitious word.”
What Killed the Memphis Country Blues Festival? New Doc Exhumes a Forgotten Fest
“The Blues Society, which premieres at the Indie Memphis film festival October 29th, marks the first documentary on the entire lifespan of the festival, held at a bandshell in Memphis. (Right before the first of the festivals, in 1966, the Ku Klux Klan had a rally in the same spot.) Palmer has a deep connection to the topic. Her father, the late Robert Palmer, was one of the organizers, as well as a music critic and blues historian (for Rolling Stone and later The New York Times).”
The Best Sandwich Spots In San Francisco
The best sub in San Francisco…West Portal’s Sub Center…is referred to but not ranked. So this is not a perfect list…but it is an interesting one for those in SF…
To the Harbormaster
By: Frank O'Hara
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
We were attending services via Zoom. Kaya did a wonderful job, David - yasher koach to her and Mazel Tov to the whole family, I'm sure you're very proud. A beautiful voice that transcended such difficult times.
Please suggest somewhere I can donate $180 in honor of your B’nai mitzvah…