It's hard to say what was more startling: receiving an honest-to-goodness vinyl record for review or being unable to figure whether I had a crackly stereo switch when the first track of Unknown Brain Vol. 1 kicked in. I was concerned for the switch in part because the turntable hadn't revolved since spring 2009, when I plopped onto its rubber mat the LP containing Chet Atkins' "Glow Worm" to hear the delicious tones of the 1950s Gretsch hollowbody I covet.
But the switch was fine—the distortion blaring out of the speakers was a pristine replication of the original, just as it was recorded in 1971 by drummer Tom Ardolino two years before he joined NRBQ. It sounded like what I imagined Captain Beefheart might have recorded on the way down had he plummeted into the ocean aboard a biplane. (That's a compliment.)
But about that vinyl. It's hardly a commonplace medium these days, though DJs, audiophiles and hipsters, bless them all, have seen to it that those ungainly disks don't go away forever. The LP came from Mystra Records, the imprint managed by the owner of Amherst's Mystery Train Records, Joshua Burkett. It's a source of puzzlement and delight that Mystery Train submits, for the Top 5 CDs part of our Local Spins feature, rundowns of all sorts of half-dead media. Cassettes and LPs seem to mingle with pedestrian CDs in that far hipper land. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they have a secret back room where the even cooler kids can peruse eight-tracks and wax cylinders.
I asked Burkett why Mystra puts out vinyl, and he said, "We love records. They sound better than CDs (if you have a good stereo), look better, and have all sorts of totemic and historical significance… plus, now that CDs are no longer of interest to a lot of the public (with downloading and CD-R burning, et cetera), people are actually returning to vinyl in a major way."
There indeed exists a lively trade in retro media even now, in large part courtesy of a rarefied end of the musical world, where musicians practice the esoteric arts of noise and sound rather than mere verse-chorus songwriting. Fans of other genres are certainly getting in on the act, too—according to Rolling Stone, vinyl sales increased from 988,000 in 2007 to 1.88 million in 2008. It seems the rise of MP3s instead of CDs has led to a revival few might have expected.
It may also be true that one's musicianly hipness exists primarily in inverse proportion to the level of advancement of one's chosen medium. Play a crappy guitar solo with a busted fuzz pedal and nobody cares. Play a crappy guitar solo with a busted fuzz pedal on purpose and record it to cassette? That is a cartridge of a different era, an application for entry into the land of cool where free jazz meets the staticky whirl of a blender motor recorded in lo-fi. Intention really can be everything.
Tom Ardolino wasn't concerned with the hipness of vinyl, of course, having recorded the material on this LP so long ago that even the laser video disc was a mere gleam in someone's eye. These are the efforts of a 17-year-old recording with the "sound on sound" setting on a reel-to-reel, and the result is a wildly diverse collection of short, strange, and sometimes brilliant outpourings. From the liner notes: "I never thought these tapes would be heard by anyone except for a few friends. WARNING: If out-of-tuneness bothers you, do not listen."
Some of it possesses that weird reverb only obtainable by recording with a cheap mic or two in a small room, and much of it features Ardolino taking turns at the drum set that show why his talents were in demand even at 17. He also plays every other instrument here, laying down guitar tracks of a particularly late '60s and early '70s bombast on some tracks, taking clearly played and compelling turns on others with a host of instruments. There's plenty of sound experimentation, from distracted organ droning to heavily distorted noise-making.
This crazyquilt collection ought to appeal mightily to musicians who likewise have young efforts locked away in vaults somewhere. Ardolino had more going on musically, perhaps, than many 17-year-olds, but it's still particularly cool of him to embrace these old sounds. The recording exists on CD in a Japanese release, but it's even cooler of Ardolino to put it out in this most venerable of media, one which could have been slapped onto the turntable to equal effect in 1971 or 2010. The vinyl version is a numbered release of 500, so you'll want to get a copy quickly. If, that is, you own a turntable. And if you don't, you should—sounds like you're going to need it.
