Rubaiyat Album

[Líbera Oehlenschlage]

Rubiytis a compilation album, released in 1990 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Elektra record label. The concept was to feature present-day Elektra artists covering songs from the historic catalogue of recordings of Elektra Records and its sister label Asylum Records.[2]

A promotional version was also released featuring not only the commercially released version of the album, but also a second version featuring each recording in its original incarnation. Another promotional release was a five-song EP consisting of songs from the album redone by John Oswald using his Plunderphonics techniques. The EP's first track, "O'Hell", combined snippets of the original version of "Hello, I Love You", the cover by the Cure contained on this release, plus 17 other songs by the Doors.

The double album was produced by Lenny Kaye, guitarist of the Patti Smith group, who also wrote the liner notes. Group Leaders of the New School, which included future hip hop star Busta Rhymes, was the lone rap act to be included on the compilation.[2]

In those simpler days a curious but socially bemused adolescent had few avenues to investigate the female form and the ink drawings in the Rubiyt were a whole lot more engaging than the How & Why Wonder Book of The Human Body. Though the snaky hair was worrying.

The album itself is archetypal Grateful Dead. Recorded live, mostly on the east coast of the USA in April 1971, this self-titled album (not to be confused with the first Grateful Dead album called The Grateful Dead) covers the major Dead bases over four sprawling sides.

Interesting that our parents found the Rubiyt interesting. (Maybe that does not bear too much thinking about). The quatrains still make for engaging reading today and I enjoyed the way you wove your story. I agree that Edmund J Sullivan was a prince among illustrators.

Rubaiyat was Elektra's 40th anniversary album, featuring Elektra artists covering other Elektra artists. A rare four-disc version of the compilation was also released, with the extra two discs containing the song recordings by the original artists.

Originally, Elektra requested that TMBG cover Queen's "We Will Rock You" for the compilation, but Metallica ultimately ended up covering a Queen song for the compilation instead (which later made it onto Metallica's 1999 compilation Garage Inc.). It's been stated that They Might Be Giants had the "We Will Rock You" cover ready to go, but had to change course due to the Metallica conflict.[1] TMBG's alleged 1990 recording of "We Will Rock You" may have been bound for the later canceled Superfueled Freaksicle compilation at one point, as well.[2] Flansburgh elaborated in a 2020 Tumblr post:

By the time she entered Ter-Mar Studios to record her third and final album for Cadet in late 1969, Dorothy Ashby had spent the better part of two decades convincing the world that she was a jazz harpist. But if The Rubiyt of Dorothy Ashby makes anything clear, it is this: The harp was but one of her many means, and jazz was far from her only end.

The other day (confided Reginald), when I was killing time in the bathroom and making bad resolutions for the New Year, it occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand, is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score, and then I got to work on a Hymn to the New Year, which struck me as having possibilities. It suggested extremely unusual things to absolutely unlikely people, which I believe is the art of first-class catering in any department. Quite the best verse in it went something like this -

It was quite improbable that anyone had, you know, and that's where it stimulated the imagination and took people out of their narrow, humdrum selves. No one has ever called me narrow or humdrum, but even I felt worked up now and then at the thought of that house with the stricken wombats in it. It simply wasn't nice. But the editors were unanimous in leaving it alone; they said the thing had been done before and done worse, and that the market for that sort of work was extremely limited.

It was just on the top of that discouragement that the Duchess wanted me to write something in her album--something Persian, you know, and just a little bit decadent--and I thought a quatrain on an unwholesome egg would meet the requirements of the case. So I started in with -

The Duchess objected to the Amen, which I thought gave an air of forgiveness and chose jugee to the whole thing; also she said it wasn't Persian enough, as though I were trying to sell her a kitten whose mother had married for love rather than pedigree. So I recast it entirely, and the new version read -

I thought there was enough suggestion of decay in that to satisfy a jackal, and to me there was something infinitely pathetic and appealing in the idea of the egg having a sort of St. Luke's summer of commercial usefulness. But the Duchess begged me to leave out any political allusions; she's the president of a Women's Something or other, and she said it might be taken as an endorsement of deplorable, methods. I never can remember which Party Irene discourages with her support, but I shan't forget an occasion when I was staying at her place and she gave me a pamphlet to leave at the house of a doubtful voter, and some grapes and things for a woman who was suffering from a chill on the top of a patent medicine. I thought it much cleverer to give the grapes to the former and the political literature to the sick woman, and the Duchess was quite absurdly annoyed about it afterwards. It seems the leaflet was addressed "To those about to wobble"--I wasn't responsible for the silly title of the thing--and the woman never recovered; anyway, the voter was completely won over by the grapes and jellies, and I think that should have balanced matters. The Duchess called it bribery, and said it might have compromised the candidate she was supporting; he was expected to subscribe to church funds and chapel funds, and football and cricket clubs and regattas, and bazaars and beanfeasts and bellringers, and poultry shows and ploughing matches, and reading-rooms and choir outings, and shooting trophies and testimonials, and anything of that sort; but bribery would not have been tolerated.

I fancy I have perhaps more talent for electioneering than for poetry, and I was really getting extended over this quatrain business. The egg began to be unmanageable, and the Duchess suggested something with a French literary ring about it. I hunted back in my mind for the most familiar French classic that I could take liberties with, and after a little exercise of memory I turned out the following:-

Even that didn't altogether satisfy Irene; I fancy the geography of it puzzled her. She probably thought Kaikobad was an unfashionable German spa, where you'd meet matrimonial bargain-hunters and emergency Servian kings. My temper was beginning to slip its moorings by that time I look rather nice when I lose my temper. (I hoped you would say I lose it very often. I mustn't monopolise the conversation.)

I said I didn't believe Agatha had a quick, and we got quite heated in arguing the matter. Finally, the Duchess declared I shouldn't write anything nasty in her book, and I said I wouldn't write anything in her nasty book, so there wasn't a very wide point of difference between us. For the rest of the afternoon I pretended to be sulking, but I was really working back to that quatrain, like a fox-terrier that's buried a deferred lunch in a private flower-bed. When I got an opportunity I hunted up Agatha's autograph, which had the front page all to itself, and, copying her prim handwriting as well as I could, I inserted above it the following Thibetan fragment:-

"With Thee, oh, my Beloved, to do a dak (a dak I believe is a sort of uncomfortable post-journey) On the pack-saddle of a grunting yak, With never room for chilling chaperone, 'Twere better than a Panhard in the Park."

That Agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lover even in the comparative seclusion of Thibet is unthinkable. I very much doubt if she'd do it with her own husband in the privacy of the Simplon tunnel. But poetry, as I've remarked before, should always stimulate the imagination.

This ones for the Dead Heads out there, and what really kick started my foray into public domain imagery. I was introduced to the Dead by my uncle with the Skull and Roses album (and a copy of American Beauty) and one of his old t-shirts of the skull and roses album art he has had since well before I was born. So this image has some sentimental value for me. When I found out that the image originally was from a book of poems from the late 19th century I immediately jumped at the opportunity to try my hand at engraving it. As it was only the second project back into wood engraving after a solid two months of tile work. It felt like a very good way to test myself and see if I still had my material chops down. I made a couple copies, and one is going to the uncle with some new tunes for him, as we still swap music a full decade after the initial plunge.

3a8082e126