Jan Johansson

Have you ever heard of “Jazz på Svenska”, “Jazz på Ryska, “Musik genom Fyra Sekler”, “Spelar Musik På Sitt Eget Vis”, or maybe “Den Korta Fristen”?

No? Well, join the club of several million other people who haven’t either.

Jan Johansson, that elusive musician from Sweden who recorded these and many other LPs before his death in November of 1968 at the age of 37, has not been forgotten, but he’s still largely unknown in most parts of the world and if one didn’t know better, one could call him one of the world’s best-kept secrets. Looking at a site like “Last.FM” though, you don’t need long to see that he’s around, more so than ever perhaps.

I do have to admit that I have no recollection of when Johansson entered my music collection. I have absolutely no idea if I bought the first of his recording myself or if someone gave it to me as a present. All I do know is that it took me some years to actually discover the sheer beauty of the music. For reasons unknown, the music slumbered in my collection, somewhere in the back of some long shelf, and for years I don’t think I heard any of it. With some degree of certainty I can say though that I probably got the first LP and put it away without listening to it (no idea why). That’s the only explanation. Got it, put it away. Had it been different, I would have remembered the first time I heard it. Continue Reading →

The Demise of the Record Store

I’ve often said around these parts that collecting music also incorporates something of a haptic experience. Collectors that I know don’t only go for the music, although it is certainly the central aspect of their endeavors. Some collectors get off on special packaging and exclusive collectors boxes, others are wild about cover design, label discographies and liner notes. No matter what, there’s more to it than the music itself.

Because, in retrospect, I have really been collecting music more or less from the time I first came into contact with it, I also know that actually touching the object of desire, turning it around in your hands and analyzing its various parts used to be an important part of the purchasing process. Many of the LPs and CDs I have were also not planned purchases, but spontaneous purchase decisions that were influenced by the object itself rather than a mere description of it.

All of that has changed. Continue Reading →

Organissimo

To be quite honest, I used to hate the organ. When I was a kid, we had this neighbour who liked to open up his windows in the summer and blast out this insanely irritating organ muzak for hours, scaring away just about any approaching summer breeze that had managed to survive its journey across the German-French border. It was one of those German guys, 150 kilos and all, who played one of those entertainment organ thingies, noodling through a trillion standards that he managed to reduce to the most nerve-wrecking basics. The only thing missing – and he got none of that in our neighborhood – were a large number of sufficiently drunk Germans in “Lederhosen”, clapping along as offbeat(edly) as possible. If you’ve ever been to the Oktoberfest, you know what kind of people I mean. Continue Reading →

Muzak …

It was Marc Laidlaw who in 1986 published a horror story entitled “Muzak for Torso Murders” in Dennis Etchison’s landmark anthology, “Cutting Edge”. That title stuck with me all throughout the years and it instantly resurfaces whenever I’m confronted with music that hurts my ears.

“Muzak”, as you all probably know, is basically a synonym for “background music”, “elevator music”, or worse. The way I understand the term, it describes that endless stream of noise pollution we are confronted with everyday in supermarkets, shopping malls, elevators, holiday resorts and God knows where else. If one wanted to be a cynic, one could also define it to be basically any music that is streamed to living rooms and offices across the globe via today’s radio stations, but we don’t want to be cynical today. Not at all. Continue Reading →

German Shelf System ‘max’

Note: This product is no longer available. Ther company now produces a rack system called “Rio”, which I will post about in the near future.

Continue Reading →

I Remember Ella

Ella Fitzgeral Live

I fell in love with Ella Fitzgerald the first time I heard her sing. It’s as simple as that. I didn’t want to marry her or anything like that, and I was also far too young at the time to consider anything of the kind, but when I heard her sing “Honeysuckle Rose” on Ella and Basie decades ago, I knew that her voice would be accompanying much of my life. And it has.

Of the great singers, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Anita O’Day, June Christy and the many others, Ella Fitzgerald always held a special place in my heart. Throughout my entire life, I always made sure to catch as many of her appearances as possible, both on stage and on television, and although it seems impossible, I at least tried to track down just about every one of her recordings. Continue Reading →

Gothic Cabinet Craft: LP Rack

Sometimes I think I should have kept most of my LPs, which I didn’t, but when that thought crosses my mind, I always remember how much space my old record collection took up. When I had LPs only, many years ago, I ended up with a really cheap metal basement shelf system that I could afford but which was also butt-ugly (brown and beige), and it took up an entire wall of my first rather spacious one-room student apartment. I just didn’t have the cash that time to get anything else, and just like today, I favoured investing my money into the music on the shelves instead of the shelf units themselves.

Today I don’t have many LPs left (some I have in storage to be sold one day) and they are housed in my old rock-solid IVAR cupboards. Whenver I come across some interesting posts on music forums discussing LP shelving units though, I always check them out and when I do, I always feel a tinge of regret about having sold or given away such a large part of my old vinyl collection. Continue Reading →

A Love Supreme

I don’t know about you, but I’m a stubborn listener. If you have as much music as I have, you sometimes buy a recording because someone you trust or many other people have recommended it … and, upon listening to it for the first time, you actually wonder about some people’s sanity. You sit in front of your speakers, dumbfounded, trying to figure out why anyone on this planet would rave about this particular recording. You hate the singer’s voice, you think whatever is pouring from your speakers sounds like industrial noise pollution or, worse, it just doesn’t touch you at all. Nada. Zip. No emotional response.

This happens to me again and again and my reaction is usually the simplest of all: I file the recording away for later perusal. Usually, recordings I just dislike upon first hearing them get about half a year of shelf life before they see the light of day again. Continue Reading →