Monthly Archives: July 2011

Machines 1980 Electronic Music Compilation Virgin Records

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Machines is a Virgin Records compilation album featuring a lot of great 80s electronic groups including Tubeway Army, OMD, John Foxx and Fad Gadget. It was released on vinyl in 1980 and has some absolutely classic tracks.

But the real payoff on this album–for me, anyway–was the discovery of the Thomas Leer track, Private Plane.

This little gem makes the entire album worth getting. It has that early, hesitant sound a lot of those 1980 releases did, the early, gritty textures of Human League (Being Boiled is still one of my favorites) and those slightly warbly analog synth tones can’t be beat.

And speaking of analog synths, Machines features the Gary Numan track Aircrash Bureau AND the Tubeway Army version of Down In The Park. XTC turns in The Somnambulist, and Fad Gadget gets happy-go-lucky with Ricky’s Hand. All classics, to be sure, but Dalek I and Thomas Leer are the wildcards here–a great investment.

Want to know why I am so enthusiastic about Thomas Leer? Here you go…check the vid below, totally safe for work, I might add. (I have a copy of the Machines LP on Virgin Records for sale at Discogs.com. If the vinyl is sold out by the time you click, try having a look at my other vinyl for sale, as I carry a lot of this sort of thing.)





–by Joe Wallace

Better An Old Demon Than A New God

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by Joe Wallace

I like strange experiences. Weirdness. So the title of this vinyl record promised me a great deal and it DOES NOT DISAPPOINT. Jim Carroll’s  “A Peculiar-Looking Girl” is worth the price of the record alone, and I’ll buy just about anything with William Burroughs reading on it.

Better An Old Demon Than A New God has fascinating backstory–it’s the one result of John Giorno’s Dial-A-Poem, which started in 1968 after a great deal of audio experimentation and recording with Beats and other artists.

Giorno recorded a lot of these sessions over the years and this album is only one result. You can also check out the Dial-A-Poem 15 Year Anniversary Album You’re A Hook for more of this sort of thing–You’re A Hook features Burroughs, Ginsberg, Phillip Glass, and Frank Zappa among other luminaries.

But what was REALLY creepy and fun to do was to put this record on along with a simultaneously-spinning Coil disc, Unreleased Themes From Hellraiser.

Hearing Jim Carroll doing “An Unusual Looking Girl” while the Coil tracks for the main titles and the Hellraiser Box theme played was absolutely priceless. Mash-ups are great fun, and it was an experience to be had–I strongly recommend it.

While flailing around to find an audio excerpt from Better An Old Demon Than A New God, I found the most excellent Chromaphobia blog, which has the Jim Carroll cut in its entirety. So check out that, but also, I thought, why not try to share my Coil/Carroll mashup experience?

Here’s what you can do–open one browser window with the Chromaphobia blog page for Better An Old Demon Than a New God, then open this page on Discogs.com for the Coil Unreleased Themes For Hellraiser 10″ disc. Start playing the Jim Carroll track first, then start the Hellraiser Box Theme clip so helpfully provided and you’ll get about the same experience I did when I did my version of this…I enjoyed it so much, I did it again using the method just decribed–great spooky fun.

(Transparency alert: I also have a copy of Better An Old Demon Than A New God available for sale on Discogs.com. Just sayin’.)

Al Jazeera on Vinyl Records

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by Joe Wallace

I was pleasantly startled to find this video clip posted by Al Jazeera on vinyl records. Having never seen anything of the network at all, I don’t know what I was expecting, but since the majority of the exposure to Al Jazeera in the USA has a lot to do with political, war, and terrorism coverage, I suppose I had an impression that Al Jazeera is more of a breaking news service along the lines of HLN.

But they do features, too. This one is pretty interesting but it’s a bummer that it’s all from an American perspective. I’d love to get a glimpse at the record industries of other countries and what its like to buy or sell vinyl in places Al Jazeera bureaus call home.

The central conceit of this 2011 clip is a bit misguided–it’s really late in the game to say vinyl is making a “comeback”–but overall this is pretty interesting and well-done.



My one question–who is the Jeanne Moos of Al Jazeera? I’d love to see some of those quirky culture style pieces in a completely different cultural context.

WTF Album Covers: Swinging Singles In the Enchanted Forest?

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Double entendres are one thing (or would that be TWO things?). Unintentional kink is quite another–it’s much more amusing when you know this guy did NOT want us to think about a bunch of naked guys playing spin the bottle in an enchanted forest.

Yet, for some STRANGE reason that cannot be understood without the aid of special scientific apparatus, that is EXACTLY the picture I get in my head when looking at this album cover by Dennis Faron. Drop trou, oil it down, and GET FREAKY!


–Joe Wallace