part three - Unfinished Business - Out Of My Hands

Two summers ago I was working three jobs - deli clerk, at a dry cleaners, and landscaping every Thursday.
It was a bitch, and ironically enough, the landscaping was the easiest due to the lack of customer interaction.
One day, instead of mowing lawns I helped my boss re-tile his bathroom and set up his stereo system in his new house. He lived about 30-40 minutes outside the city proper, so since I was in the area, I decided to rip out a page of the phonebook and find a record store. There were three options, two of which were Salvo and Goodwill. When that far from the city, neither place is usually the best place to look, so I hit up a CD shop with my favorite shit - $1 12" singles. Ever since my boy scored a copy of Symbols & Instruments - Moods on KMS I wanted to hit it up again.
I got there, got down to business sifting and sorting, selected 40 records [how much i got payed]. Out of those 40, I knew what 1 was, and that was a Kano record. The other 39 were from a private collection bought out from the store that belonged to the resident dj at a gay nightclub that shut down several years ago. I was trying to score some Patrick Crowley or Sylvester.... some high NRG shit. whatever.
I got home, and listened to all 40. I was pretty dissapointed that out of all those records, only 4 of them were good finds. I loaded the remaining 36 into the "dump off for store credit" pile, and added the 4 keepers to the "ambiguis dance/pop singles stack".
Two years later I came across those 4 records again.
Xena - On The Upside, Kano - I'm Ready, Kool Rock Steady - Power Move, and Unfinished Business - Out Of My Hands.

Initially I was pretty excited when I found it, not because I knew what it was, but because I recogonized Frankie Knuckles. Two things really lowered my spirits -1.) I was thrown off by the 1987 release date and started to think it was some form of repress, and 2.) I was listening to a lot of disco [mostly italian at the time] and I knew this was an OMNI song, so again I figured I just got something to the extent of a repress. You know how those labels do...canadian/french/german/us represses of disco records....anyways.
I thought it was a good tune, butI had no idea it was such a sought after 12". [3 wants to every owned copy according to Discogs]

Made me think...
Digging in the dollar bin isn't about trophies. Digging makes me appreciate the records use. Records should be used for playing out tunes, for exposure to new music - should be used for it's drum break, for their weird noises.
Instead, a drum break seems to be  another means of  tallying collectability. 
Record collecting threatens my ability to get a copy to use. Take drum breaks for example. I'm positive records like Lee Dorsey - Get Out My Life Woman,The Winstons - Amen Brother, any JB record, Funky Penguin etc.  were common recordsColour Him Father, the flipside to the Amen, was topped the Billboards.then about 20 years later people begin to sample them.
40 years pass, and tune that toped the charts in the begining is hard to find. 3 generations of people were after it -when it was new and two that are still after it. there's not a single person my age that hasn't heard those drums in NWA or Cypress Hill.

On the other hand, having 3-4 copies of a certain 45" really doesn't help my argument, but sometimes that's how many copies it takes to find a clean one.
getting back to Unfinished Business...
I'm putting it up for auction in hopes that somebody will use it accordingly.
Just some mid-afternoon/evening musings.
Gonna dip - try and get into somethin' on this friday night.

part two - Long Time I Don't Smoke No Herb

Again, the record spot, 12" maxi singles.

Spliff Group / Blue Boy - I Am A Rasta Man / Long Time I Don't Smoke No Herb - B&B Records
Arr. & Prod. by: Barrington Birthwaite
Side one. not interesting.








Side 2 is different


I'm sure it's not hard for you to figure out what a song called Long Time I No Smoke No Herb is about. hittin' up the "cutta man" to sell him good sensimilla,he don't smoke no bullshit, good sensi allows him to meditate fuller on Jah, herb is the healing of the nation, smoke in the morning, smoke in the evening, and how he loves Jah plusrandom tape edits [kung-fu sounds, organs, guitars, blips, voice]that echo the fuck out.


This was the first dub record I ever bought, and also the first time I noticed tight little tape edits in, simiar to what would become so popular in electro dubs and bonus beats in the 80's.

I'm no expert when it comes to dub. This record was a pleasant suprise though.

part 1 - Gravity Pirates

yunno, I told myself I wouldn't make my blog into another one of thoes "let's talk about records" blogs.

oh well.

Gravity Pirates - This Way To The Cargo Cult - Survival Records

Found this one at my record spot, in the 12" singles section [my favorite place in this world].

The Gravity Pirates were an Australian Post-Punk I'd that sound somewhere between Joy Division and The Cure maybe?, I've had a hard time tracking down much information concerning this band. Fortunately, the best source of information happened to come in the form of a bio sheet inserted into the EP. The band was formerly known as VDU or the VDU's, or the V.D. Youse [it's a bit confusing here], and according to this sheet Expossure Of My Senses was released on Thirsty Ear in the USA, "scream oz 2". I don't know what that means...but I do like tape warbled vocals.
It's a pretty good EP - I'll be a bit sad if I have to let it go.




Oh....the name Gravity Pirates comes from Flash Gordon comics.

nothing important happened today.

maan. lets see... a day or two after my last post, bought a Mackie 24x8x2 console on damn near a whim, just after picking up a lovely Korg DW-8000 from a local ebay auction. five goddamn hours in a car getting there, 35 minutes with hitchikers, three hours in Iowa searching for a record store and Red Lobster to celebrate, five hours back. Thirteen hours in a car with my ex, no drama.

got back, had less than 4 hours to sleep and pack for a festival, then worked five 12 hour godddamn shifts in a fucking row on no more than 4 hours of sleep each night. the trick is to get "so high you might die". too blowed to have a panic attack -so high you can't find shit to talk about except funnel cakes and twangin' sticks. then somebody throws on Ministry - N.W.O and you suddenly realize drum and bass sounds suspiciously like some shit you're embarrassed to admit you listened to back in high school, and you're faded something astronomical, yet still you don't care. It was actually a pretty great weekend. I've gotta devise a way to find the women I meet on shift after I get off of work, which is my only regret.




Aight. fast forward past the weekend, find out I won an S5000 and MPD32 with the money I got from selling the MPC [forgot to mention that], then, finally, after 8 long years, I got my copy of Love - Out Here LP with a jackpot of dollar techno records and $1 dollar new age records.
spent the last of what I can afford on studio monitors, racking, stands, etc. it took every cent made since the beginning of this year, but i did it, and i don't regret it.

bye.

just calling to say hi.

planet-e.net is back.

busy with rediscovery.

listening to:

Wladimir M - Sex And Lies.

itunes, beatport, amazon, juno.

more soon.

saying goodbye and unfun.

nobody has spent so much time with me as this machine has.


finally got around to the .wav's I recorded of the micron. I really should have taken more time recording, but I had roughly ten hours and was already a bit drunk. should have used some MIDI implementation. but it was fun.

time for work work work....

lost pages

missing page 30 owners

missing page 31 owners

























Page ? useful? indeed.

not so fast deah coppah....

some things i forgot to mention

"be sure to set the canceler knob to '0.5'" fucked with my head a bit. There is no canceler knob in the parts list, but anti-skate is a counterforce, right? setting the anti-skate to 0.5 puts the spring in the right place according to the diagram. flawless methodology on my part....

put everything back together and tested everything out by playing my copy of a Crystal Gale - We Should Be Together LP. why? because the distortion is noticeable on You'll Be Loved Someday when "love - what I'd give to be loved" is sung. it also happened to be the first record within sight.

multi-faceted dollar bin LP usage.
the distortion was caused by the cartridge not being properly secured, and too little tracking force.
straightened the headshell, added 1g of force.
done.

from the manual

frustration, the ultramundane, and modding your 1200.

noticed my turntable's height adjustment was way off, so I decided to fix it. you can watch youtube videos here.
I recommend tracking down the 1200MK2's service manual on the internet. The videos and the manual differ a bit.





threading a greased up three piece mechanism counter-clockwise while keeping the top two parts exactly at zero until it can't go any further, then loosening it slightly until a pin & plate device can be fit into the bottom to lock the entire measurement device at 0 while not getting lube on the pcb = super super fun. please note you do not want your height adj to stop right at 0 as it does in the picture. it will be too short. you should be able to see the red line directly under the arrow when you have the locking plate secured.






i'm not sure if it's visible, but the solder joints had some nasty looking shit on it. that's when I noticed that the thread lube in the tonearm was indeed hand lotion. that's right guy, hand lotion.

anyways.PCB+RCA cable $32 a pop.

i strongly recommend you use your own cables and solder it to the pcb. it's cheaper, the cables will be better, and the soldering is easy.

you could try grounding your 1200 while you're at this stage. you can follow the tutorials here, but if it ain't broke...

more phantoms

spending a lot of time today digging out tunes I haven't listened to in years.


emotive and melancholy.
reminds me what sparked my interest in this music.