Perfect Sound Forever magazine- June/July 2023 edition is out now!

[Jason Gross]

Greetings,

In the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever <http://www.furious.com/perfect/index0623.html>, you'll find (among other things):

20TH CENTURY HARP
Susann McDonald take us to a better world, by Kurt Wildermuth
"What's a tougher sell than, say, twentieth-century flute music? It just might be twentieth-century harp music. So after celebrating the 1975 album Twentieth-Century Flute Music, I couldn't resist a thrift-shop copy of the 1972 album 20th Century Harp. These records have no connection other than their early-'70s vintage and their lack of commercial potential. But I am here to report that like the flute, the harp has far more expressive potential than most of us might give it credit for."

ASYLUM CHOIR,
Leon Russell in wild band mode, by Kurt Wildermuth
"You've liked much of what you've heard from these sources, so you've acquired a taste for early-'70s pop-rock that carried on late-'60s traditions: the power pop of Badfinger and Big Star; the glam of David Bowie and T. Rex; the folk-rock masterpieces of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and so on, and so ...Where do you go next, time traveler? Consider visiting the Asylum Choir."

CAMPER VAN BEEETHOVEN
Interview- Greg Lisher decodes their oddness, by John Wisniewski
"The unlikely story of a bunch of would-be ethno-musicologist jokesters gigging among the early ‘80’s SoCal hardcore punk scene is still kind of strange to recollect. Camper Van Beethoven was an anomaly yet found their place among the skinheads, even making a name for themselves with a song about bowling with them, not to mention covering punk songs in their own sardonic way. After their first album, guitarist Greg Lisher joined their ranks and stayed among them up to their signing to Virgin Records and break-up in 1990 and then becoming a part of their subsequent reunions starting in ’99 and continuing on for the last few decades."

DUBLIN'S POST-PUNK EXPLOSION,
Why is it happening, how & with who? by Brian Cousins
"in the last five years, the emergence of a vibrant Post-Punk movement is difficult to make sense of. This is music that is not really commercially viable in terms of reaching a mainstream audience. So why has there been such a huge resurgence of this music form in Dublin? By 2019, there was rash of quality Post-Punk Dublin bands, most noticeably, the Gilla Band (formally known as the Girl Band), Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital and M(h)aol. These bands have produced a torrent of exceptional music- all three of the Fontaines albums are excellent as well as the debut from the Murder Capital and the Gilla Band continue to produce some of the most unique and challenging music on the planet."

HONDO GUITARS
A musician's lifelong chronicle, by Wes Way
"In 1998, newly clean and sober, I bought a Hondo acoustic, H-50, for $50 from a woman who was liquidating her assets in preparation for driving across the country in a van with her boyfriend. I'd gotten in a fight while drunk and my left forefinger had been broken and had healed badly - I couldn't bend it. Owning the acoustic Hondo inspired me to do the tedious and painful work of getting my finger useful again."

RED CRAYOLA
Details of their mad debut, by Kelechi Wisdom
"April Fool’s Day, 1967. The day 50+ people walked into Walt Andrus studios on a hot Texan day to record one of the strangest albums of all time, joined by a bike rider who upon stumbling on the group waiting outside the studio. He stopped by to ask what was going on, shortly in no time he was recruited to come in and persuaded to bring his Harley Davidson too. They’d play for an hour, exhausting one master tape, take a smoke break, then repeat it all over again."

TARA REZ
The punk Patsy Cline? by Samantha Janette
"Tara was born in Iran and came to London with her family when she was 7 years old. She grew up in Camden and went to English public schools where I am sure people tried to make her eat shit from time to time because she was Iranian. A diversion of hers was to do living room impersonations of a popular Iranian TV Character for her siblings at home. While she's Iranian, Tara is also very, very Cockney. Time went by and she started to sing rock and roll and go to clubs and concerts. She became further absorbed in punk rock. She was in her early teens when a friend gave her a leather jacket. Manic panic and earrings came along soon."

DANE RUDHYAR
Ultramodernist composer/polymath, by Daniel Barbiero
"Among the ultramodern composers--the New York-based group that in the 1920s arguably constituted America's first genuine musical avant-garde--Dane Rudhyar is one of the lesser known. There are several reasons for this, chief among them his having spent a number of decades as a professional astrologer. And, the fundamental principle underlying his compositional practice, which he called "dissonant harmony," set him apart from his ultramodern colleagues' better-known dissonant counterpoint. What also set him apart was his tendency to expound his musical theories in metaphysical, rather than technical, terms."

SPIRIT
Their top 10- psych, rock, prog, by Reverend Keith Gordon
"Even in the late 1960's era of innovation and freedom in rock music, Spirit stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries. Perhaps only Arthur Lee's Love shared the same sort of expansive and adventuresome artistic vision as the five guys in Spirit whose disparate and diverse musical backgrounds led the band to explore the outer regions of rock 'n' roll as the band incorporated elements of the blues, folk, R&B, and jazz into their heady brew of psychedelia-tinted hard rock."

THE STREET SINGER
Fiction- a musical swindler, by Jim Rader
"For about a year I'd been renting a room in Gary Leeds' apartment in Jamaica Plain, any hope of staying on longer squashed by his new fiancée Trish, a frequent visitor. A bit of a pain, Trish once cheerily answered the phone, "Leeds residence." I could hear the caller's voice, a folk club manager: "What? Who? Is Jim there?" I snatched the phone away from Trish, got the gig then got into a row with her. Two days later, Gary politely asked me to move out: "There's no rush Jim, a couple more months is fine.""

BARBRA STREISAND
Her hip early '70's persona, by Robin Cook
"By the early 1970s, two paths were open to Streisand. The first would lead to the same sort of limbo where Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como would be consigned: being dubbed "old fogey" music while the boomers were confusing their parents. Perhaps movie musicals during a decade when they were out of fashion. And, of course, TV commercials for mail-order greatest-hits albums. Instead, Streisand took an off-ramp that read, "HIP SINGER-SONGWRITER MUSIC, EXIT 66."

SUPREME DICKS
Indie psych perfection, by Brett Abrahamsen
"Supreme Dicks are fondly remembered by '90's college rock enthusiasts: their meandering slacker diversions are often compared favorably to Neutral Milk Hotel and other bands of that ilk. Their song "Blue Elephant" is something of an alternative touchstone even. Nonetheless, their masterpiece/swan song The Emotional Plague is hardly ever discussed, despite being arguably the greatest album of the decade, and certainly the most cryptic, obscure, and rarefied."

THIRD WORLD
Reggae history/revolution connection, by Eric Doumerc
"Third World's "96° in the Shade," also known by its alternative title ("1865"), is one of the best-known reggae songs thanks to its catchy melody and its revolutionary message. The song was released in 1977 on the band's second album, also titled 96° in the Shade, and has been part of the band's live repertoire for many years. "96° in the Shade" is a powerful evocation of a sad episode in Jamaican history, that is the repression by the colonial authority of a peasants' revolt in 1865 (the Morant Bay Rebellion)."

VINYL ANACHRONIST
What's Under Your Turntable?, by Marc Phillips
"Your turntable needs to be level, something I first mentioned a long, long time ago. A turntable that isn't sitting perfectly flat can sound terrible. But your turntable also needs to be isolated from the room as much as possible. Most analog lovers know exactly what I'm talking about--if you've ever made a record skip by merely walking by your turntable, you need to address the surface underneath your turntable. Fortunately, a good isolation platform will do both--isolate and keep everything level."





We also have a Spotify playlist with most of the artists above here:
<https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3VkQ5rtp6KEb7XoFeUTXAO?si=aadf77e9ba48413e>

We're always looking for good writers and/or ideas so let us know if you have anything to share.

See you online,
Jason