Word: lp
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...rereading a Lester Bangs' essay from "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung" - some "Creem" column from perhaps 10 or 12 years before - and decide I had to have the Iggy Pop/James Williamson " I Got A Right," and I had to have it RIGHT NOW. And not the LP version, either (if there was one), or the CD (right, not invented yet) - it had to be the 45, the only version with that raw, hyper-compressed, grooves-carved-in-your-flesh sound...
...SHORTLY AFTER MY EXPOSURE TO THE GENIUS of Phil Spector - the producer of "Be My Baby" - Warner Brothers Records released the double-LP "Phil Spector's Greatest Hits." I picked it up. Great record: the surreal "Wall of Sound," Spector's trademark, meaning maybe three guys playing the same bass line, four or five rhythm guitarists strumming away, two pianists playing the same chords in different registers, percussionists plugging away on maracas and castanets, a full symphony string section, and underneath it all the drums of Hal Blaine ("my five favorite drummers", according to Max Weinberg) piped through the galactic...
...About the same time as the American release of "Greatest Hits," Spector (who controlled all the rights to his catalog) set up a distribution arrangement with Polydor for a label called Phil Spector International, whose first and only release was a five-LP series called "The Phil Spector Wall of Sound." Featured were greatest hits collections from The Ronettes, The Crystals, Bobb B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and Phil himself. (I wasn't interested in the last one since all the tunes on it were drawn from the other three LPs or the Warner Brothers collection...
...What did interest me, however, was LP number 5: "The Phil Spector Wall of Sound Vol. 5: Rare Masters." To an obsessive, of course, the words "rare master" are Pavlovian triggers like "never released", "obscure B-side" and "the Beatles butcher-cover." That it turned out to be a great record was irrelevant - I had no choice. I was Ahab, the white whale was off the starboard. Somehow I got the money (probably around six or seven dollars) and "Rare Masters" was in my hands...
...peak experience, the ecstatic moment - whatever it is, "Rare Masters" had it happening all over the place. I'm not even going to begin talking about "He's a Quiet Guy," the other masterpiece, a Darlene Love tune on the B side of the LP. That one's still a little too personal...