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there are 2 titles featuring ace farren ford in stock.
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new to stock as of
january 25th, 2008


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lafms
modern-psych

poo-bah (usa) #psb 818 cd

the mystery bandwood” compact disc

  • katydid
  • gulag archipelago
  • jesus on the radio
  • the storm
  • piano interlude: opus 1
  • guitar gritt'n
  • one man's trash
  • the hoopty man
  • black and blue
  • got to have her
  • field recording: pollard street
  • highland park
  • 1971
  • mistreatin' mama
  • trapped
  • update
  • after mary's fall
  • piano interlude: opus 2
  • old man mose
poo-bah press release...
the mystery band
"wood"
poobah pbs-818 (cd)

limited to 1,000
out now!

the mystery band was started as a conspiracy between ace farren ford, richard snyder, gary riley & pierre dupuy in 1987. originally a quintet including maurice jones (who left in 1996 for an illustrious solo career) the group debuted at the legendary and now defunct palomino club in north hollywood in march of 1988.

their first release was a 7 inch single entitled "tasting the smell of light" on sympathy for the record industry in 1989, followed several years later by their first cd, the now out-of-print "insert title here" on the birdcage label in 1996 (during the interim they managed to back the notorious british artist savage pencil on an abstract cd called "ether hogg", also on sympathy for the record industry, 1994).

in 1996 they contributed a track on the unlikely compilation "merry maladies" on cleopatra (backing founder ace farren ford on a "solo" track called "scurvy") and closed the millennium by signing with the aim recording company, who have released the 12 inch lp "leo, gemini, capricorns and jones, ltd." and the 7 inch ep "rebels without applause" from the original first album sessions, and will shortly be reissuing the out-of-print debut cd as "resume (reinsert title here)." naturally all releases contain previously un-issued tracks so that die-hard mystery band fans will have to have them all.

the band was joined by the legendary larry mister e. easter, (veteran of such history making outings as harvey mandel's cristo redentor and 3 linn county lps) on horns and woodwinds in 2001.

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$15.54

back in stock as of
march 31st, 2010

first in stock on
may 17th, 2007


threads:
lafms
art-punk
sound-art
lo-fi
field-recordings
electro-acoustic-composition
plunder-phonic

 best of 2007 !!! 
paradigm (uk) #pd 23 cd

i.d. art #2” compact disc

  • mac mccloud / mac mccloud (2:19)
  • harold schroeder “silent rituals” (3:32)
  • greg neutra / j.d. elliot “grieg fatigue” (2:01)
  • smegma “rrose selavy will wait for my washing, machine, even” / “the andalusian dog often digs into the furniture with onyx fingers.” (2:02)
  • smegma “potatoe war” (0:59)
  • fredrik nilsen “you can’t hide from aldehyde” (1:40)
  • miles forst “art, art, art” (0:41)
  • smegma “one moment” (1:30)
  • smegma “pig face blues” (0:24)
  • doug henry “view this command as a verbal enactment of a command” (0:15)
  • josie roth “heal, and another little time” (1:01)
  • joe potts “i don’t want to go to the farm” (0:21)
  • otto fick (0:48)
  • smegma “excerpt from: i’ll have julie nixon-eisenhower, for my appetizer (sour lungs to my surprise)” (3:01)
  • karen kato “xmas 1952” (0:35)
  • j.j. allen vargas “victim of racism” (1:25)
  • dennis guy mehaffey “busta nosa” (1:47)
  • m/r/zuniga “vulnerability: rape, male vs. female” (1:31)
  • mike green “martin heiddeger revisited” (dedicated to molly) (0:15)
  • mehaffey a. (introduction by buckminster fuller. “i stumble/you laugh” (4:01)
  • jules lemelle(1:03).
  • maureen abbott (0:14).
  • smegma “take one” (3:29).
  • dan weiss/p. hamilton ross “a bicentennial tribute to america’s freight trains” (0:56).
  • mr. foon “timeless #1” (5:50)
  • bertil petersson “monologue to henry viii” (2:05)
  • amrein & stoll (1:04)
  • ace & duce “dogs are barking" (0:37)
  • irene dogmatic/rose tatoo (0:36)
  • gordon shields “cotton duck, up and back” (0:59)
  • gary beydler “record stick” (0:16).
  • tom kemp “pasadena subway station poetry stills” (3:39)
  • donald spaulding “i don’t want this to happen” (0:32)
  • janice felger / joan hugo “one minute of art news update in 30 seconds” (1:04)
  • sue farthing (0:22)
  • waynna kato “white/noise” (0:29)
  • jim abuan / peter muzzey “why does love have to be so sad?” (0:20)
  • juan gomez “this is my country” (2:47)
  • p.j. campbell (1:01).
  • kathe schreyer “don’t make me laugh” (0:15)
  • mary dana chodzko “patty smith by mary dana chodzko” (1:42).
  • gary laskin “have sex with rex” (1:25)
  • jean koller “dream” (3:20).
  • le forte four “discarded portion of the soundtrack for rick’s film burger madness” / “the origin of largie schrapnel” / “i haven’t heard you for a long time...” / “fat ape” (1:17)
reissue of lafms 002, the 1976 “i.d. art #2” compilation lp - 44 short pieces (between 0:15 and 4:19) by smegma (five tracks actually), le forte four , ace & duce, frederik nilsen, and various agglomerates of lafms perennials chip chapman, ace farren ford, juan gomes, joe potts, rick potts, and tom recchion.
paradigm press release...
i.d. art #2 (pd 23)

jewel case cd with 8 page booklet

total time 65'48"

released 2007

when the los angeles free music society 10 cd set came out i eagerly flipped through the contents to see what treasures had finally been made available again. much to my surprise the early compilation i.d. art #2 was not included in this otherwise major overview of the lafms. i.d. art #2 was the second lp release on their label, coming after le forte four’s ‘bikini tennis shoes’ lp, and before the 2lp ‘live at the brand’, a split album between le 44 and the doo-dooettes. it dates from 1976. it is also probably the most difficult lp on their catalogue to find. originally released in an edition of just 200 copies, most of which were given out to the 44 artists and groups who appeared on this extraordinary lp. the deal was that each track was paid for by the contributor at a rate of $8 per minute in exchange for 4 copies of the disc. consequently very few copies were ever made available via the lafms mail order service.

with a running time of 66 minutes and the sheer variety of contributions, i.d. art #2 remained for most people a mysterious and tantalising item.

most of the contributors came from the students at otis art institute in la, and many make their only ever recordings for this disc. among the known names from the lafms scene are: le forte four, joe potts, fredrick nilsen, mr foon, ace & duce, dennis mehaffey as well as 6 tracks by smegma. other artists include the painter miles forst, violinist josie roth, film makers doug henry and gary beydler, mail artist and dog portrait painter irene dogmatic, otis librarian joan hugo, graphic designer kathe schreyer and many other creative artists and designers at the start of their careers who submitted their audio idea, be it via telephone, in subways, recontextualising old vinyl, philosophising, story telling, being abstract, joking, rehearsing and lo even playing instruments. this exhilerating journey, bursting with ideas was compiled by joe potts and waynna kato.

...

otis and i.d. art by rick potts

while chip was up at cal arts, joe was going to cal state la getting an art degree. in fall of 1975 he, along with friend and fellow artist, waynna kato, got their bfas and started grad school at otis art institute. the three schools shared a lot of faculty and guest lectures, only cal arts with its deluxe facilities cost much, much more.

the california institute of arts sits like a castle in the hills outside the city. back then, before the golf course and tract homes filled in, the hills were ala natural, which translates into weeds. the cal arts castle did a magic trick as you approached on 1-5 from the city. it appeared on a hill as you levelled out after climbing a couple thousand feet above sea level, then as you dipped down into the meadows the castle sank and disappeared. it was actually on the next hill up and dropped behind the first hill as the perspective changed.

in contrast otis sat in the heart of the city. the once nice neighborhood, where earlier on bankers and their families strolled around macarthur park (of someone-left-a-cake-out-in-the-rain fame), was slowly dissolving into a funky barrio. the neighborhood bums and druggies shared the park and streets with retirees who played chess and checkers at picnic tables and refugee families with baby strollers.

a while later, they drained macarthur park's man-made lake exposing decades of discards. years of 'offerings' had sunk to the murky bottom including plenty of handguns, knives and other weapons. an artist collected dozens and dozens of muddy shoes of all shapes and sizes, which he displayed in a neat pile on campus.

otis was on busy wilshire boulevard, a main east/west vein from the heart of downtown l.a. out to the ocean in santa monica. ironically, cal arts had sort of morphed out of another art college, chouinard, which had been only a few blocks away. now the whole neighborhood was slipping. the art world was changing with the use of many new mediums. artists were finally getting access to video and audio equipment. boundaries were being trampled for better or for worse. there was an anything goes kind of freedom that was open to anything but the same old crap. artists made music or films, too. it was all the same. ideas were more important then technique. concepts were, at times, replacing art objects. there was a rebellion against the gallery system that was parallel to the diy music scene that was growing outside of the giant record companies.

joe potts contributed a crucial tactic to the lafms in those early days. his idea was to adapt a common hippie business model of the sixties where buying in bulk brought the price down. dudes, who pitched in and bought a large amount of granola and than divided it and packaged the portions themselves, got a righteous deal on breakfast cereal by cutting out the middleman. it's called communal, man. artists of the day were cutting out the gallery middlemen by making a series of small multiples and mailing them out to each other. joe and his production partner waynna twisted these concepts and created several editions of i.d. art. originally, the idea was a way for the new students to meet and get to know their fellow students and teachers. instead of going around the room doing the 'say a little something about yourselves' routine, they proposed a book of narcissistic self-portraits by fellow students as a way of everyone introducing themselves ... faculty and some friends were given flyers that invited them to participate and explained their scheme. the deal was each person had to print their own standard sized pages, fifty of them, for an edition of fifty. these pages would be collated and bound into a book. most of the pages were just straight from the xerox machine or p.i.p, a printing chain that was kinko's before kinko's. there were exceptions, including some sewn in fabric on one page and most notably chip's contribution which inclulded a firecracker taped to the paper with 'baby, you're a rich man, too' written across the page.

after a funny session of running around the kato family's dining room table making stacks with the pile of stuff people submitted, it was waynna's task to find a place that would bind them. explaining the eccentricities over the phone, she found reluctant businesses giving prices that were adding up to hundreds of dollars. back then you had to rely on the yellow pages and word of mouth to do your research. for a day or so there was no solution until finally waynna tracked down another shop to try. she gave her spiel again only this time the person on the phone thought it was funny. the firecracker was hilarious. they could spiral bind them for a buck fifty each.

like the 'bikini tennis shoes' lp (lafms 001), the covers were scavenged by chip from his job at cunningham press. off-register postcard sheets with messed up versions of stodgy portraits from the huntington library worked great as covers for this book of narcissistic self-portraits. the spiral bound books came out great. everyone in the book received a copy and the extras were sold to recoop some of their costs. waynna and joe wondered 'what next?'

after the success of i.d. art the next project connected the i.d. art concept with the bikini tennis shoes breakthrough. i.d. art #2 was a record.

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... this page was last updated on wednesday, may 16th, 2012 @ 4:51 pm