WHERE’S MARY WEISS?
Time to resolve rock’n’roll’s enduring queries and eerie synchronicities, so sleep may come again.
Wikipedia browsing makes me wince when it reminds me about how the 2008 Universal fire destroyed so many artists’ master tapes. But who out there destroyed their music intentionally, like Brian Wilson reputedly did with the tapes?
MOJO says: The most famous example is Jean Michel Jarre, who took a stand against what he called the CD age’s “industrialisation of music” when he pressed one copy of 1983’s Musique Pour Supermarché and destroyed the master and vinyl stamper. But there are numerous other examples. When John Fogerty’s 1976 long-player Hoodoo was rejected by his Asylum label, he flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco and chopped up the tapes with razors, a few songs excepted, though an in-house cassette was later bootlegged. In 1977, Elton John’s limited edition charity football single The Goaldiggers Song had its masters junked to prevent reissuing, while a frustrated Chris Bell would have erased the master for Big Star’s 1972 debut #1 Record had producer Terry Manning not substituted another reel in its place. The tales of deliberate erasure go on, including Link Wray’s assertion that his brother and one-time manager Vernon binned numerous crucial master tapes after a falling out; the original bossa nova version of I’m Not In Love getting canned because 10cc thought it was “crap”; and Foo Fighters cutting up the analogue tapes for 2011’s Wasting Light and including a piece with initial CD copies of the album. Anyone else remember any good examples of hot-headed master tape auto-destruction?
Re Reigning Sound in MOJO 332.
I was a big fan of the record Greg Cartwright made with Mary Weiss (2007’s
Was there any word on if she was ever going to make another?
MOJO says: Sadly, Greg was not convinced that the ever-private Mary will, describing Dangerous Game as “a final love letter to an audience who wondered what had happened to her.” “I talk to Mary sometimes,” he added fondly. “Her and her husband moved to California but I saw her in New York not long ago… I was totally honoured that she wanted this guy to help her with the songs on that album. I was totally moved by that.”
WHO RAN BACKWARDS?
I heard the Norwegian single version of The Who’s Run Run Run, which suddenly plays backwards at the end. I’m presuming it’s a cock-up, and I’ve heard anecdotally of a classical album which was accidentally pressed in reverse. Any other concrete examples?
Oddly enough, Edgar Froese was involved twice: the 1979 German comp Electronic Dreams featured Maroubra Bay backwards, and there’s also a French edition of Tangerine Dream’s Zeit where the whole thing runs in reverse. Similarly back to front are early pressings of Scientist’s 1999 dub set Mach One: Beyond The Sound Barrier, whose side one plays backwards – and a reissue cassette mispress of Never Mind The Bollocks (very avant-garde). We should also mention the time that John Peel famously played a reel to reel of Fripp And Eno’s 1973 experimental (No Pussyfooting) backwards, and Eno called in to let him know – apparently the response was, “that’s what they all say”. In tribute, a 2008 CD reissue added newlycreated
The front cover of the great 1968 LP by The Byrds,
shows three-quarters of the band in what looks like a horse stable, doubtless somewhere in California. A little over one year later, a photo of Linda Ronstadt at the same location appears on the back cover of her solo debut LP, (1969). Where is that stable or shed located? As a native southern Californian, I would love to know.
MOJO says: The outbuilding still stands in Topanga, California on a property valued at around $3 million.
HELP
Re Dr E J Robinson’s question regarding live debut albums (Ask MOJO 331). On Sham 69’s first LP, side one is live. But, where was it recorded?
MOJO says: Over to you, readers. And for more live-LPs-as-debuts suggestions, thanks also to readers Fred Muller (Fat Freddy’s Drop’s Live At The Matterhorn), Michel Breuker (Peter And The Test Tube Babies’ Pissed And Proud) and Dil Longstaffe, who nominated LPs including Nine Below Zero’s Live At The Marquee, Michelle Shocked’s The Texas Campfire Tapes and Needle Time by Warsaw Pakt, which, in 1977, earned a place in the Guinness Book Of Records for being recorded, pressed and in the shops all within 24 hours.