Setting Up Setting The World On Fire
“Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.”― Irving Stone
We have two bats who fly back and forth across our window shortly after sunset. It seems they have a flight pattern every night, only straying from it when playfully flying into each other; they seem to be close pals. We have a small bridge from our house to what we call the crow’s nest, an octagonal room sitting atop three stories worth of stilts. Once in a while, by standing on the bridge at that hour of the bats’ flight, they whiz inches overhead, again and again, as if to include the humans who share their space in their dance. As the night sky turns to black, as the stars dimensionally pop into view one by one, the flight of the bats adds a wistful levity to the end of the day; it has become a cherished ritual here at the house on the hill.
My wife and I have had a similar, regular flight patterns as we attempt to make the final laps around putting together the massive Specialty boxset reissue project we have been working on for over fifteen years now. For longtime Signal readers, you will know that back in 2006, I had the idea of doing a deep dive into Specialty Records, one of the most important record labels of the midcentury that significantly helped usher in the era of Rock ‘n’ Roll, focusing on the early years of the label that featured so many songs from both the secular and gospel worlds that were big hits then, not as celebrated now.
While Specialty would eventually sign Little Richard, Larry Williams, Lloyd Price, John Lee Hooker and so many other game-changing world-rocking artists, our project would focus on those artists whose shoulders the next wave would stand on, artists like Roy Milton, Joe Liggins, Jimmy Liggins (whose single Cadillac Boogie influenced Ike Turner when he produced one of the first rock ‘n’ roll tracks, Rocket 88), The Pilgrims Travelers, the overlooked and so very incredible Sister Wynona Carr (SOOO GOOD), Brother Joe May (The Thunderbolt of the West) and so many others: artists who filled the clubs and churches of America, many whose recordings are the artifacts that keep their names and careers from being completely forgotten (have you heard of Eddie Smith? Jim Wynn? The Southern Harmonizers? If you are not a problematic record collector…and this is a good test to see if you are…you probably have not).
Our project, which is titled SET THE WORLD ON FIRE: The Early Years of Specialty Records, has had several stops and starts over the years. Thanks to Mason Williams at Concord Music (which owns the Specialty catalog), a few years ago we got the green light to proceed with finishing the project. Easier said than done: my big eyes (and over-ambitious brain) had set my sights on digging deep into the first 125 singles the label had released. That is a lot. A lot of research, a lot of sound restoration, a lot of commissioned essays, a lot of ephemera gathering and curation (the box set will include 7 LPs taken from those early years as well as a download card with all of the 250ish songs). It has been a huge task.
My wife, my co-producer in life and on the project, is deep in design mode, having already (brilliantly) created the idea of what the look of the project will be, now deeply in the weeds of putting together the 160+ page book that will accompany the music…creating space for each of the 125 singles to showcase all the information about them with images we have gathered over the years (images that I have collected and images that we have licensed from crazed collectors from around the world). Meanwhile, I am working with Concord in-house engineers to make sure the recordings sound as good as they possibly can. A few of the Specialty releases are so rare that there are not great sound sources to work off (over the last decade I have tracked down some of the rarest ones, recordings Concord did not even have, including one by the Southern Harmonizers that is one of the rarest gospel records in the world).
It is all coming together and with any luck in 2024 the world will get a look at a project that is older than my kids…my marriage…the time I have been at my last two places of living and places of employment. I have had the jump blues/R&B/proto-rock’n’roll/gospel sounds of the late 1940s and early 1950s populating my ear passages for a long long time and it is all coming together.
I put together a Specialty playlist to offer a small taste of what is to come.
Have a great weekend. If you are a Bay Area groover, note that tonight in San Anselmo, the free music stages (that I have been helping out with) will feature two winners: The Zydeco Flames and one of the newest combos from jazzbo drummer Scott Amendola, The SticklerPhonics (information about the whens and wheres of the live series can be found here) and on Sunday the majestic Angelique Kidjo will be at the equally majestic Stern Grove Festival. All free. Oh yeah.
Shabbes!
Ellen Hovde, ‘Grey Gardens’ Documentarian, Dies at 97
My friend Trev Huxley’s mom passed away a few months ago after dealing with Alzheimers for years. But before that infliction robbed her of her memories and herself, she had an insanely interesting and inspired life (as related in this phenom article about her)
Leslie Medford | Interview | ‘Leslie’s Dream’
Leslie Medford of the Ophelias is back…following up the phenom Bare Bodkin retrospective from last year with…yes…a new recording, first in years. The song is Leslie’s Dream and it finds our sonic hero in full psychedelic dominance with a guitar/drum driven heavy groover. Musically, I hear the drive of The Fall (with a sprinkle of Ultimate Spinach) with Medford twistedly talking blues atop. A great interview with It’s Psychedelic Baby music blog and a hope that there is more music to come.
Thank you Matt Hollis for sending this to me (from Greece!). Fantastic investigative journalism laying out the impact of San Francisco’s drug sales on a community in Honduras. Vince Gilligan wishes he had written this story!
‘The Battle of Blythe Road’: When William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley Had a Magic Duel
According to Yeats biographer Richard Ellman, a determined Crowley attempted to ascend a flight of stairs while Yeats and other members of the Golden Dawn confronted him, each shouting spells at the other. Despite their claimed mastery of their craft, the “battle” ended when, according to Ellman, Yeats resorted to simple assault and cast his foot on Crowley’s person:“…When Crowley came within range the forces of good struck out with their feet and kicked him downstairs.”
"Intimate Strangers" Explores the Intersection of Identity, Gender, and Family
This looks like an amazing group exhibit, where artists focus on parents and tell incredible stories about family and all that comes with family. The article about showcases many of the works…very much worth a look.
Experiment Shows Humans Really Can Hear Silence After All
"Silence, whatever it is, is not a sound – it's the absence of sound," says Rui Zhe Goh, a graduate student in philosophy and psychology from Johns Hopkins University. "Surprisingly, what our work suggests is that nothing is also something you can hear."
In the Small Hours
by Wole Soyinka
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.
Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The hovering notes caress the night
Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.
Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.
This music's plaint forgives, redeems
The deafness of the world. Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats
The broken silence of the heart.
“Instead of shunning the darkness, we can face straight into it with an open mind. When we do that, the unknown changes. Fearful things become understandable and a truth is suggested: the enigmatic presence of the human mind winks back from the dark.”
― Whitley Strieber
Jim Wynn- Worked with him as Johnny Otis' roadie. Jimmy was in the brass section.
Super-appreciated, David! Great post from opening quotation to poem (+Murnau) as always!