|
On the album there are homemade records, the 40's/50's equivalent of burning a CD. You bought the phonograph machine, you'd gather in a room and recorded anything you wanted in a 3-4 minute timeframe, since that's all you could record. The records were being made "on the spot", so if you said a bad word, sang a wrong note or whatever... too bad. It was never meant to be professional.
There are a number of different names for these types of records, one of which is called a Recordio:
http://thepayne.net/~dano/pics/Wilcox-Gay-recordio.jpg
http://www.collectorsquest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/portable-wilcox-gay-recordio.jpg
All you had was one microphone and the phonograph, which etched the grooves onto the blank disc, held in envelopes:
http://showcase.thebluebus.nl/SoundSeptember2009/Recordio02.jpg
They were often "audio postcards", and they're used that way on DJ Shadow's album, to not only highlight a forgotten part of vinyl history, but in many ways to reveal things that might be "private" to some. Consider the songs on DJ Shadow's album to be modern "audio postcards" or audio "private messages", diary entries if you will.
As Recordio-type machines caught on, you could go to fairs and public events and make records on the spot, similar to how people used to be able to go to the mall and make their own music videos.
===========
"Private press" also refers to records an artist could have pressed up on their own, or what I also know as a "custom pressing". If you were not on a major label and didn't think you could make an impression with an indie, you'd save up the money, go into the studio, have the engineer mix thigns properly, and you'd get it pressed. A lot of local/regional bands did this so they could do nightclub gigs and if possible, tour the region. They'd put the records in the car and hope they would sell. Sometimes if they were lucky, the artist would press up 1000 copies. Sometimes 500, sometimes 200. Everyone wanted to be a star, so everyone went into the studio to make a record so they could be on the radio and have a big hit. The majority of them did not, but many producers and DJ's like to find them as it will contain samples and "moments" that might be of interest. You had to seriously look around in order to find them, and that meant going to store to store, garage to yard sales, abandoned warehouses and crusty fish tanks, to find these records of artists whose dreams were never achieved. "Private" means they did it themselves without the use of a "public" company like Columbia, Capitol, Specialty, or Chess: you made your own record on your own label. Some of these records, because of how they're used in mixes, and DJ sets, have become "holy grail" items. Depending on how they're used, there is usually a demand for these records that a lot of people can't find or don't make the effort to find. In other words, if you want it, you have to play an active role in order to get it.
That's what THE PRIVATE PRESS is: a celebration of private press records and the effort one used to have to make in order to find music of interest.
THE HOME OF BOOK-NESS:
http://www.thisisbooksmusic.com/
http://twitter.com/thisisjohnbook
http://www.facebook.com/book1
http://i32.tinypic.com/kbewp4.gif
|
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
The Lesson 
#/media/File:Firefly.png)
