Gene Clark & today's trip to the record store

[TheWarmth]

Rant ... I drove down to Reckless today to look for Gene Clark's No Other and White Light albums, as well as the Coltrane that $26 suggested (My Favorite Things). I noticed a nice vinyl import of the new Libertines album (which I'm aware many of you despise), priced at $29.99. I fully intend to purchase this record, as I already downloaded it illegally, but $29.99???? Is vinyl really this expensive to press these days? The Coltrane album was nowhere to be found on either cd or vinyl. Luckily they had both Clark albums I was looking for ... both priced at $15.99 (still too much for a cd), so I went for White Light. It's pleasant, but so far I'm not finding it to be the spectacular masterpiece that it's been talked up to be. AMG calls it, "one of the greatest singer/songwriter albums ever made." I can't really see how it's any better than Gram Parsons GP/Grevious Angel. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. Hopefully I'll enjoy No Other when I get around to it.

[twentysixdollars]

It's not better than the Parsons LPs, either one of them really. The one truly great Clark LP is With the Gosdin Brothers. A lot of people love No Other, but Byrds fans generally don't like it, and White Light is very difficult even by comparison, because it's so abstract and haunted, rather than immediate. Gene Clark's solo LPs are more 'consistent' than they are 'astonishing' though.

Best of luck!

[will this do?]

I've had a pop at the Libertines myself, but more at the whole soap opera surrounding them, and the NME arselicky stuff which has been going on.

Now I don't get the NME anymore, and no longer feel afraid of being mocked in the playgroud for...well, anything...I feel perfectly free to like their records. I have "Up the Bracket", and enjoy it. Having heard that the new one is more or less exactly the same, I think I'll probably save my money, ta v. much. But there's no great political (small P) motive behind the boycott.

I guess they were after the 'sad sack' market with the $30 record...how much was the cd, and how long till it's released properly Stateside?

PS, obviously you went to the shops on a Gene Trypp!!!

ahhhhahahahaha.

[twentysixdollars]

PS, obviously you went to the shops on a Gene Trypp!!!

One of the saddest, least objective things I ever did as a scribbler was interview Roger McGuinn primarily to work out how said opera could be reconstructed from the finished numbers. He said they hadn't finished it (evidentally Jacques Levy was all busy with Oh Calcutta) and anyway he couldn't remember, and besides "Chestnut Mare" which he likes he's embarassed about the whole thing, especially, apparently, the title, which I thought was quasi-clever, although the country-pop musical extravaganza version of Peer Gynt admittedly sounds like a strained idea in retrospect, despite the strength of the tunes.

[will this do?]

...meanwhile I think 'Lover of the Bayou' is one of the best songs they did.

Can't say I'm disappotinted they never finished the project, but then what do I know?

[TheWarmth]

I'm not sure if they even had a cd copy of the new Libertines album ... seems that most import vinyl is about $30 these days. That's just insane. Maybe it has to do with the the cost of shipping boxes of vinyl across the ocean, but I find it hard to believe that shipping can justify a $30 pricetag. It's so frustrating ... sometimes it's hard to enjoy record shopping for reasons such as these.

[twentysixdollars]

...meanwhile I think 'Lover of the Bayou' is one of the best songs they did.

Can't say I'm disappotinted they never finished the project, but then what do I know?

No, you're right: the tunes individually are all good, presumably because the duller ones were either never finished or at the very least never recorded. And it's a good thing, too, that McGuinn was never completely distracted by Tryp, because the whole enterprise was a little silly, and the songs it produced often proved the highlights of the later albums. Odd that McGuinn is rarely rated as a songwriter yet on those last five albums he reigned in that department.

[TheWarmth]

Surprised I'm not aware of this yet, but what the hell are you guys talking about? Tryp? I take it it's a Smile-esque project that never got completed. Please elaborate. Thanks.

[twentysixdollars]

Ha! "Smile-type project".

Not even close. It is (and I kid you not) a country-rock opera adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, which Roger McGuinn was writing in 1969 with a small-time psychiatrist, smaller-time playwright, and smallest-time director of an off-off-off-Broadway version of Oh! Calcutta, named Jacques Levy. (The name may ring a bell: six years later he wrote most of the longer numbers on Dylan's Desire). The project was never finished, and thankfully so, because the result produced McGuinn's strongest sustained bout of songwriting, and the songs in questions quite livened up the latter four Byrds LPs. He continued to work with Levy until about 1977, which a short break in which Levy traded down and worked with a much lesser luminary, one Bob Dylan.

[spzretent]

Warmth:

You are not just getting killed on shipping. You are getting killed much worse by the exchange rate. Nearing $1.90 to the Pound or $1.30 to the Euro. I sell a lot on ebay and most of the cds and vinyl are going overseas to Europe.
The USA must look like a giant flea market to Europeans right now.

[TheWarmth]

Warmth:

You are not just getting killed on shipping. You are getting killed much worse by the exchange rate. Nearing $1.90 to the Pound or $1.30 to the Euro. I sell a lot on ebay and most of the cds and vinyl are going overseas to Europe.
The USA must look like a giant flea market to Europeans right now.

I've thought about that, but it seems like import vinyl has been really expensive for the last couple of years, not just the last 6 months or so. Either way, $30 is way too much for vinyl that isn't 180 gram.

[twentysixdollars]

The USA must look like a giant flea market to Europeans right now.

Ditto Canada to Americans.