Primitive Offerings

May all your Sundays be mellow and exotic and slightly boozy. Here's a nice starter pack of Arthur Lyman, the creator of Exotica and the soundtrack to many a night at Trader Vic's. This collection is 30 years old, the songs are twice that old, and it's up there with "Music For Airports" in terms of background jams for me. Discogs Click here to download.

Note, 24 March 2021: It wasn't via Facebook or News app or Instagram or BBS that I found out Dan Sartain had passed away recently. It was during my nightly scroll through Wikipedia's "Recent deaths" section. It's macabre and a bit weird to discover someone you knew, albeit not well, via such an impersonal method. Dan's family has set up a GoFundMe to fund his memorial. If this recording means anything to you, and you have a few bucks to kick up, I'd suggest sending it their way to honor a musician who died far too you. This is easily the weirdest, rarest (?) thing in my collection. I got this unsolicited in the mail when I was splitting time booking at the Talking Head and Charm City Art Space. It had a Alabama return address, and went into the stack of "I'll listen to later". I guess the stack wasn't that big, because I got to it, liked what I heard, and I guess I booked Dan Sartain and Vesper. a show in Baltimore. I say "I gues

Now here's a record that I was completely smitten with when it came out, and somehow managed to set aside for nearly 20 years afterwards. Like most collectors in 2021, I have a list of wants on Discogs. Nothing too fancy (excepting some Septic Death releases that'll cost me my stimulus check), but a lot of $5 to $50 records, CDs, and tapes that I want to own a copy of. Every few weeks, when the ol' Paypal account grows thick, or I've paid all the home bills and have a few shekels left over, I'll go through the list looking for deals. So it was that I ended up a seller's list that had a couple of items from said wantlist for sale. They were asking a price too dear for the specific Devo reissue I wanted, but they also had a couple of Lookout! releases for cheap that caught my eye. I also saw this here 5" aluminum slab, cried foul that it didn't even live on my hard drive, much less that I still owned a hard copy, and plunked down a mere $4 for a pre-owned

A roundup of your usual early 90s Columbus-area suspects makes up this second volume of Datapanik's greatest hits. There are tracks from TJSA, New Bomb Turks, and Gaunt. Girly Machine, Pica Huss, Greenhorn, and Monster Truck Five had all appeared on both early Datapanik 7" releases and the lovely "Shave The Baby" comp (you can download it here ). But there are a number of shooting stars making an appearance here, with names like The Boy Scout Love Triangle, G-Spot Tornados, Stupid Fucking Hippie, and Appalachian Death Ride. Folks made some unfortunate choices when naming their bands in the late 80s and early 90s. Kyle Ryan is not impressed. What's cool about this release? It's almost completely cuts exclusive to this record. The Turks' songs all appeared on "Destroy Oh Boy", although my untrained ear thinks these may be different recordings from that classic record. The Apartments offer a trio of recordings that were only available on a Datapan

Uggh. It's been a tough week to sit down and write. An eff ton of admin will really dampen your desire to hop on a computer. But here I am; sitting up in the middle of the night, ready to kick you some jams. "Binky Griptite's GhettoFunkPowerHour" made its way to me via my copy of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings' "100 Days, 100 Nights" . I wasn't expecting an extra dose of soul, but far be it for me to turn down 58 minutes and 2 seconds of mixtape goodness taken from the Daptone Records catalog. Slapped together by Dap-King/Antibalas/Amy Winehouse guitarist Binky Griptite , this is the sort of thing that I'll always welcome as a bonus. Or, hell, just post one up once a year on Bandcamp or something. Discogs Click here to download.

'Twas a fun day at the ol' thrift store today. I came home with a Sergio Leone boxset, a copy of Abel Ferrera's "The Driller Killer", "The Queen Is Dead" and "Nigeria Afrobeat Special" and Grant Green's "Standards" and THIS slice of JA nostalgia. It's super early Lee Perry...the Upsetter, Pipecock Jackson, King Scratch, y'all. And I'm a fuggin' sucker for anything involving the Master of the Black Ark. This here represents a sampling of singles released on C And N Records, Coxsone Records, Rolando & Powie, Mu-Zik City Records, Worldisc, and Supreme Records in the mid 60s. The credits list reads like a Hall of Fame of Jamaican music. Coxsone Dodd and Graeme Goodall engineered the tracks. The Soulettes and the Wailers provided backing harmonies. The likes of Jackie Mittoo, Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Knibbs, and Tommy McCook, whether under the Skatalites band name or ungrouped, make up portions of the backing band. Th