Man, I really don’t own a lot of 10″ records. There was a time when I thought them novel enough to purchase some in a whim, but those days are long over. I’ve sold off at least half of my collection. Titles and artists I would describe as ancillary, not necessary. Here Comes That Weird Chill by Mark Lanegan… Clifford Brown featuring Zoot Sims on Pacific Jazz… At this point the collection has been pared to the bare minimum. Mostly like what I’ve posted so far this week. If I want to own every Danielson release I need the original Tell Another Joke… and if I want everything by Mogwai I need that split with Bardo Pond. Rarely is there an artist represented in my 10″ collection that isn’t well represented in my LP/12″/7″ collection. One of the biggest exceptions to that rule is Christian Marclay.
Talk about a guy whose albums are hard to track down. Christian Marclay really only has a couple legitimate vinyl releases. I’ll probably never be able to track down a copy of Record Without A Groove (yes, it is what you think it is — a grooveless record you can’t play) as it was limited to 50 copies. The Footsteps box comes up for sale sometimes but it typically fetches a few hundred dollars, which seems an odd amount for an album that’s been affixed to the floor of a gallery and walked over by countless visitors. Guitar Drag has been on my radar for a while and it doesn’t fetch a fortune. Beyond that, I don’t know how many more titles he’s even released on vinyl. Except, of course, for More Encores. Which, thankfully, I do own.
My introduction to Marclay came via my pal Jet in Chicago, the same friend who introduced me to the Danielson Famile. During that same visit coinciding with my sister’s college graduation, Jet showed me a VHS tape (ah, formats that time forgot) performance culled from some TV broadcast. It might have been this same clip from Night Music, or some similar show. Time makes memory-less pre-senile wretches of us all, I suppose. I was absolutely transfixed by what I saw. It took me some time but I found Records on Napster or SoulSeek or one of those file-sharing websites that was popular during my college years. Soon after I found More Encores, but it took me a long, long time to track down the vinyl. Pretty much any hope of obtaining his recorded output faded through the years. After I moved to LA and started my current job I fell out of the habit of buying albums on eBay. My logic has always been, if it exists, I’ll see it eventually. So you can imagine my shock and disbelief when I saw More Encores sitting on my boss’s desk one morning. I think it was in a pile of records one of his friends was selling. There were no other Marclay titles in an amongst the pile, but the 10″ was sitting on top. I asked him to price it for me to which he responded, “It’s not in the best condition.” I didn’t care. So one corner is a little bent and it’s a very good-plus copy. I’ll take it. For $35, I’d take it. July 2nd, 2012 was the date. I’m pretty sure the first time I played it my roommate thought there was something wrong with my stereo system. Ah, the sweet naïveté of kids who aren’t nerdy, pretentious music obsessed assholes like me. Sometimes I admire them.
Christian Marclay
More Encores
(No Man’s Land – NML 8816, 1987)
A1. Johan Strauss
A2. John Zorn
A3. Martin Denny [MP3]
A4. Frederic Chopin
A5. Fred Frith
A6. Louis Armstrong
B1. Arthur Ferrante & Louis Teicher
B2. John Cage
B3. Maria Callas
B4. Jimi Hendrix
B5. Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg
B6. Christian Marclay
