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 guess" because I have zero recollection of booking the show, but a year later, I ran into Dan when he was opening for Beehive and the Barracudas, and he said hi and bought me a beer. It was that kind of time in my life.
Click here to download.
Now, there's no listing this on Discogs, although maybe I got the CD-R from the folks at Skybucket Records. Shoot, I'm not even sure I have it still; I'm pretty anal about entering my collection on Discogs, and I don't have an entry for it. Vesper. has a strong "2002 indie vibe" present in their three songs. Having not been able to find out anything else about them surprises me; the songs sound pretty good. The three Dan Sartain songs here all appeared on his 2003 Swami record, "Dan Sartain V.s The Serpientes", but these demo versions predate the John Reis/Gar Wood sessions. I hadn't listened to these in years, but upon relistening, I remembered why I liked 'em. It recalls a lot of what I like in early rock 'n' roll: tuneful, energetic, sexy, and a little dangerous.
It pleases me to no end that Mr. Sartain not only has a new record coming out soon ("Fall 2020", says ye olde Bandcampe), but that it's all interpretations of 50s and 60s music from American westerns. "Western Hills" has been out digitally since April, but there's a limited-to-500-copies vinyl version headed our way. I'd be remiss to not note that the man is doing a cover of "The Return of Ringo" by Ennio Morricone here; in my mind, that's reason enough to buy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment