Along with the resurgence in new albums being issued on LP, there's been a significant upswing in vintage titles again seeing the light of day on vinyl. Here's three recent pickups.
Home Sweet Home has many bizarre, fuzzed out delights that will entertain both casual listeners and serious music fans who know the source material. Big Star fans take note: Chris Bell plays lead guitar on three songs. One downside with this LP, though; I had to return the first copy, and the replacement is also defective (though not as bad as the first one). It's pressed off center, and has some non-fill issues, causing intermittent loud static throughout two-thirds of one side. Buyers who are bothered by pressing issues may want to avoid this unless the label owns up to it and does a corrected pressing. The pressing defects are a real shame, because the sound on this reissue is top notch otherwise. (M.O.T.O.: E Pluribus M.O.T.O.
The gradual reissue wave of Paul Caporino's originally cassette-only albums as M.O.T.O. (or Masters of the Obvious) has taken a welcome detour stateside. Rerun Records of St. Louis gets into the game for summer 2012 with issues of both BOLT and E Pluribus M.O.T.O. For those who have been collecting these, it means they should be much easier to find than the various overseas issues of the last several years. The best way to get those was when Caporino came to Madison for shows, and that doesn't happen as often since he left the Chicago area a few years back. Though many of the cassette releases have been available as CD-Rs at one time or another -- and, given that cassette 4-track recordings are pretty lo-fi anyway -- it's nice to have them available in a more permanent format.
Pluribus is one of the few which was actually available on LP in a somewhat edited version in the '90s, but I've never seen a copy. In a catalog with quite a few detours, it's perhaps one of Caporino's stranger collections, his patented garage pop rave-ups cohabiting with spoken word pieces and sound collage-ish tracks. Rude and sweet, catchy and silly, it includes the fan favorite "It Tastes Just Like a Milkshake" and the inimitable "Cancer in My Dick." ( Listeners who are not hardcore fans of smooth '70s sounds will want to avoid this one like the plague, frankly. But out of fairness, isn't it neat that someone finally made an archival-style album for fans of yacht rock? Brian Steele, if you're out there, you can have my copy. (
