(Cover front, back, inside, insert, CD top, CD play-side)
VA-The "Lullaby, Lullaby" Compilation CD: I Listen Close
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-Recorded by various artists at various times and places*
*The Microphones track was "Recorded to Mirah for her birthday, Sept. 1999"
-Release date: Unknown*
*I swear, so little info is out there about this CD. You'd never know it existed at all were it not for the "Song Islands" comp, or the fact that I am holding it in my hand. Based solely on my memory of when I first saw it and purchased it I would place it's release somewhere around 2001.
-Released by 80 North/This Heart Plays Records, no catalog number*
*According to the insert, which was a nice print on vellum, 80 North was in the process of changing its name to "This Heart Plays Records" at the time of this release, due to "some different people running it and others quiting". They list a web page here (www.geocities.com/thisheartplaysrecords) but, in searching for info I found it to be no longer in use. The insert also list a couple "upcoming" releases, one by The Badger King and one by Dave Longstreth, presumably pre-Dirty Projectors or at least at the very earliest of it's incarnations. I am assuming, based on the only other mentions of this label I can find (which are here http://usefulchamber.com/dirty-projectors-discography/) that this upcoming release was, in fact, the first DP release "The Graceful Fallen Mango" which was, at the time, considered to be a Dave Longstreth solo disc. And that's about all I can scrape up about this label or release timetable at this point in time.
-Here's an update to that web search, I stumbled across a new page for 80 North that seems to be more current- http://eightynorth.blogspot.com/
and the little I could find online:
http://www.answers.com/topic/lullaby-lullaby
There is a brief mention of the comp. on Dennis Driscoll's iTunes Music page:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/dennis-driscoll/id41379115
the google cache for this page shows some sort of info about the comp. but when you click on it, it's just some random guy's myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/bastardboymusic
However you will note in this picture what I'm talking about
-As far as I can tell this was only available on CD, no indication otherwise. Nor is there any indication how many were produced (I'd hazard to guess 500 or less) and there is no indication who designed to cover or packaging.*
And yes now that I'm updating this I've got a little back up on that. As you can see in the Google screencap above someone somewhere was claiming this thing had a print run of 500.
-IFPI number: 2F52
-It's worth noting that the track info is all mixed up when you put this CD into iTunes. For rhe most part the artist and track names were reversed.
-This song would appear in a slightly different form on the "Song Islands" CD
-There's a link to a zip of the entire comp. up in the downloads column.
................
And, ever onward with the "Song Islands" material. Here we have the "Lullaby, Lullaby" compilation CD from 80 North/This Heart Plays Records, circa 2000/1(?). This is another in a series of Microphones oddities I was fortunate enough to buy on a whim at the time that it came out. I remember, back in the day, at Newbury Comics, basically spending my entire paycheck on records as soon as I got it. I was the ideal employee in that way. But comps were always hard to pull the trigger on. The heartbreak of the completeist music fan, then as it is now. You know there's about a 90% chance that the songs by the couple artists you care about are not going to be anything great. But, there is the 10% of the time when you get a real lost gem (examples are escaping me at the moment) and that makes the gamble worth it. Still, it always comes down to that thing of spending ten to fifteen dollars for the sake of one song generally. Looking over the tracklist here, although it features a lot of good folks doing there steady best, it's hard for me to assume that I bought this for anything other than the Microphones track, which is strange since the time at which I would have got this was in my early, admittedly, trepid Microphones days (you know, like the time I had that copy of the "Blood" LP, limited to 300 copies, in my hand and said, eh, that's ok, I'll pass). But bought it I did, and thank God, because this seems to be one of the more impossible to find artifacts at this point in the Phil Elverum game.
To that end I am going to have to admit, once again, that I am not at all familiar with the rest of this comp, even though there are plenty of folks on it that I know to be plenty solid.
Anyway, here we have the original appearance of "I Listen Close", although, on the insert it is, in fact credited as "Listen Close", typo I guess. (Additional note on the insert, it is lovely and on vellum, which I am always a sucker for, and I have had a long history with this disc where I thought I had lost or misplaced the insert and thank God, for once, I have not. In coming to terms with my Phil thing it has become painfully clear that for me, in these cases, the artifact, the object is the thing. Usually I am only concerned about the music contained. But, for Phil, it is the whole actual recovered artifact, the entire anthropological piece.)
According to the liner notes for the "Song Islands" CD this song was recorded "to Mirah for her birthday, Sept. 1999" which makes it that much lovelier to me. And, speaking of "Song Islands", the version appearing on that CD is, though not credited, a different version than the one we get here. On "Song Islands" the track is 2:17 long and, around the :47 second mark, these pounding drums come in. The track continues on in this manner, ending in some ambient noise/wash and talking. As opposed to the version on this comp. which is only 1:28 long, features none of the pounding drums and simply comes to a close with some droning organ. I prefer this one. It's the one I came to know the song through I guess.
(--024)
Tracklist
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I Am The World Trade Center-Istambul
A Boy Named Thor-Hello Hawaii
The Player Piano-Milwaukee Mile
Dear Nora-Round n' Round
The Love Letter Band-I Knew You Knew
Jen Turrell-Pink Edged Bright
Brett Stubbs-The Cliffs Are Red
Vehicle Flips-The Encouragable Optomis's Song Book
The Intima-Song For Drones
Mirah-Special Death
The Microphones-Listen Close
Dennis Driscoll-Saturday Morning
Audio Armada-Obertin
The Album Leaf-Inbetween Lines
Drawing Number One-After A While
The Plan B-After 5 Years
Park-Red Coat Charmer
Camden-Soliterror
Maya Shore-Restless Times
The Galactic Heroes-Dale
Wolf Colonel-Fashionably Left Behind
Denniss Driscoll-Lullaby, Lullaby
xo
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