it was 50 years ago today...

on the 50th anniversary of gagarin's space flight, here are 2 different souvenir 7" records of gagarin's transmission from space... you can listen to the recording by clicking here.

when new things are actually old...

recently noticed an article on the great music blog disquiet about an advertising promo piece in the form of a record player made out of cardboard... you can see it in the top image, and also take a peek at with more info here

i wasn't quite sure if i should bash the thing for its faux "new invention" or give it props since it involves a vinyl record, but everything about it seemed too familiar to ignore, and after a few minutes of scouring the archives, i was able to locate the precendent...

pictured is a phonograph, coloring book and record contraption made by the barker greeting card company in 1955. this thing was quite an invention - a simple cardboard covered book with a tiny "needle" (that seems like a nail), and a rivet to hold a 7"record that could freely spin upon it. the record also has a tiny hole in it so you can turn it with a pencil... replicating the cranking activity of an old gramophone. its ingenuity and simple materials is worthy of tim hawkinson's work.

if you look at the picture of the new version, you will see that even the pencil turning mechanism has been cribbed from the 1955 version - not to mention the inclusion in the new version of a kid's record as well... so it seems hardly a coincidence of the design minded.

what this little story shows us is that all "new" ideas aren't necessarily new at all, and if you think you got there first, you probably got there third or fourth... or maybe it is that if you arrive third or fourth but you are quiet about precedent and wait long enough for the first to be forgotten, people will re-discover your old as new...

when music was made by solid rock...

many people have commented regarding a post i made last week about some folks in a cave listening to a radio, in relation to the luray caverns. i posted something about luray a long while ago, but have been unable to find that post through google's mysteriously unhelpful "search this blog" function.

so i set about looking for something in the real mess, and lo and behold i was able to put my hands on the 7" souvenir record from luray that not only has a beautiful cover, but some mysteriously wonderful music.(and i do believe it came into my possession from the collection of mr. bloggs, who runs the gregory ain park planned home blog)

here a bit of the liner notes:

the music on this record is made by solid rock. it comes from the great stalacpipe organ, only one of its kind inf the world, in the beautiful caverns of luray, luray virginia. deep in the caverns, in the walls of a large catherdral like chamber, stalactites are played like the pipes of an organ, producing musical tones that you hear on your record. stalactite after stalactite - those stony icicles and draperies hanging from the ceiling, have been turned by a grinding process to concert pitch. each one is equipped with a striking mechanism, a rubber tipped plunger that, fired by the impulse of an electric discharge, strikes the stalactite and brings forth a musical tone...making the recording was in itself something of an engineering feat. the microphone, like the listening audience, was centrally located and the music came from all sides. natural sounds, such as the splash of water dripping from the stalactites are an inevitable and interesting part of the record.

thanks to jeremey of ampersand etc. for reminding me and my feeble memory, that we dedicated a section of the book "site of sound" to the luray caverns organ, particularly deciding to include it because of its peculiar approach to site specific sound (and sounding). it is nice that the luray folks mentioned the natural dripping sounds in this recording on the sleeve, because it is a rare breed of instrument that can only be recorded as a field recording, not because of social reasons such as with rural or ethnographic recordings, but because the instrument itself exists in the world and is built of the world, and can only be heard within its natural soundscape.

click here to listen to the entirety of this little record.

when samy elhar ibi becomes sliman el magribi becomes samy elmaghribi...

one of the craziest and most confusing transactions i've ever had on ebay involved some 7" records of Moroccan Sephardic music purchased from a guy in new york about a year ago. i initially won 5 records, and when they arrived the covers and the records didn't match. so i went back onto ebay to see images of the discs he hadn't sold, mined the photos of all the auctions for clues, and ended up buying 5 more, thinking i could match the 10 records to the 10 covers; but that didn't work for various reasons...

as i started to try to put right covers with right records i realized the dealer wasn't as stupid as i originally thought. as you can see from the three covers above, a single artist such as samy elmaghribi has not only at least three spellings of his name, but also three different record labels - zakiphon, samyphone, and eliephon (i also had some records on "pianophon" and "brotherphone"). i figured i could at least match the record labels to the right covers, but in most cases the index numbers did not match up. also, since some of the discs were pressed in Israel and some in France, the titles, etc. are sometimes in one language on the cover and another on the disc label. sure, with french i can at least match similar words, but with hebrew it's more like trying to find matching ink blots... my favorite, of course, is the cover at the top, where someone took a marker and changed the artist's name, and spelled it differently than on any of the discs or covers in the lot...

fortunately, not only are most of the covers graphic gems, but the recordings are absolutely stellar. the two standout artists are albert suissa (whom i will try to do a post on later) and samy or sliman, el magribi or elmaghribi... who i'm posting a few tracks from here.

from a bit of web snooping it seems these are moroccan artists singing sephardic songs, which were sold in france and israel, but the web was not much help either, so i would suggest simply enjoying the music and if anyone wants to shed some light on these artists, please feel free to drop me a note or add to the comments. i believe samy/sliman was pretty popular as there seem to be a number of cd compilations available.

click here to listen to chraa alah ya lahbab

click here to listen to el mra elqebiha