Acute Records is proud to announce the release of our 10th CD, Memory Span by The Lines. A few years in the making, Memory Span compiles all of the singles and EPs The Lines released. We’ve also included 2 bonus unreleased tracks and a fancy color booklet with photos, flyers, sleeve scans and a band history. What more can you ask for? Their two LPs? Those are coming next! Let’s focus on the matter at hand, which is the incredible run of singles and EPs The Lines recorded between 1978 and 1981. Songs like this one…

Two Split Seconds
[audio:http://acuterecords.com/sounds/ACU010/TheLines_TwoSplitSeconds.mp3]
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and this one…

Nerve Pylon
[audio:http://acuterecords.com/sounds/ACU010/TheLines_NervePylon.mp3]
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The Lines’ music was unique in it’s subtle charm. Many reviewers didn’t give them a chance the first time around, leaving them and their releases to develop the smallest but most rabid cult audience. It’s the kind of music that will work it’s way under your skin and into your brain and stay there, for good, if you give it time. In all my years as a music fan, I can think of very few acts who managed to release so much consistently great music while achieving so little notice. At this point in time, with many fans and critics sure that the post-punk era has been so thoroughly mined for hidden gems that there can’t be anything left, The Lines stands as the ultimate challenge (of course I think there’s always more great stuff to find of any era!). Here’s a band who’s history shares much of the growth of their peers, as the punk rock impulse underpinning post-punk gave voice to more experimental leanings. Music ranging from 60s inspired rock, angular and taut post-punk, krautrock, dub and disco influences and underneath all of this, solid and catchy song-writing.

You can learn more about the release on Memory Span’s web page which includes even more web-exclusive unreleased tracks, such as…

Cat Bug Jeep
[audio:http://acuterecords.com/sounds/ACU010/TheLines_CatBugJeep.mp3]
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and photos, flyers and other goodies. I figured I’d take this “blogging” oppurtunity to dig a bit deeper into my personal thoughts on the band, as well as some thanks. Back again in the background…

The law of diminishing returns…the first few times I posted about my Viva Radio shows, I included a picture of the record’s sleeve and a paragraph or 4 about each selection. The last time, I skipped the artwork. This time, I’m skipping the descriptions completely. I have more important things to do, including writing about Acute’s latest release, Memory Span by The Lines. However I thought I’d share the playlists to the last three shows, all of which can be streamed from my Viva Radio show page, Pyjamarama. Maybe if I have time I’ll come back and rant about each track, for the two of you that would care.

O.K. Let’s Go
This was a return to my UK DIY roots. Not that I was listening to the Scrotum Poles while in middle school, but during the period when I was first discovering tape trading on the internet and making my first internet radio playlists (on Supersphere, which I think is gone). I think I stopped making mixes of this stuff because eventually I could just say, “go buy some Hyped2Death CDs” Some of these tracks are on the Hyped2Death Messthetics CDs, some I discovered from the 2 volume Instant Pop Classics bootlegs, some I got turned onto by Steve at Low Down Kids, a few songs care of fellow fans Michael Train and Joshua Gabriel and the rest here and there. These are mostly DIY, lo-fi, low-budget UK post-punk pop gems. The music ranges from twee and quaint to arty and avant-garde, but it’s all quite catchy.

1. I Jog & The Tracksuits – Redbox
2. The Funboy Five – Life After Death
3. Bathroom Renovations – Intensely Henna’d
4. Thin Yoghurts – Girl on the Bus
5. Scrotum Poles – Pick the Cat’s Eyes Out
6. The Farmer’s Boys – Drinking and Dressing Up
7. IQ Zero – I Must Obey
8. Grow Up – Missing
9. Steve Miro – Smiling in Reverse
10. Slight Seconds – New Me
11. One Gang Logic – Who Killed Sex?
12. Metropak – O.K. Let’s Go
13. Desperate Bicycles – (I Make the) Product
14. Mud Hutters – Water Torture
15. Club Tango – FTN
16. Beach Bullies – Windowshopping
17. To The Finland Station – Betray
18. Happy Refugees – This is Cold
19. Beyond the Implode – This Atmosphere
20. Tronics – Baby’s In a Coma
21. Versatile Newts – Blimp
22. Graph – Drowning

The Crunch
This is more post-punk, mostly, and of a decidedly more “funky” style. I wasn’t trying to do a strict “post-punk funk” dance mix or anything, just picking some more of my favorite post-punk type tracks that you could possibly dance to, depending on level of inebriation most likely. Or angst. These aren’t floor-fillers or anything, though Carl Craig did steal one of these, but they’ll definitely get you shaking in your seat. I know all over people say they play “post-punk” at their dance parties, which usually means Bloc Party and the occasional Gang of 4 selection. This is one version of a post-punk dance party.

1. The Nightingales – The Crunch
2. Boots for Dancing – Hesitate
3. Manicured Noise – Metronome
4. The Tea Set – Tri-X Pan
5. Funkapolitan – As Time Goes By
6. Au Pairs – It’s Obvious (Peel Session)
7. The Raincoats – Balloon
8. Dislocation Dance – Roof is Leaking
9. Gist – Clean Bridges
10. Design for Living – Red Ribbon Day
11. Family Fodder – Silence
12. Flying Lizards – Steam Away
13. Camberwell Now – Speculative Fiction
14. Scritti Politti – P.A.S

Transparent Radiation
This was describes as “kinda 80s, kinda psychedelic”. Not the most specific theme, just some slightly spacey stuff, 60s influenced post-punk type stuff. Some not that 60s or psychedelic, but just stuff I thought would fit nicely. I think I did an OK job.

1. The Tea Set – The Preacher
2. The Stranglers – Let’s Tango in Paris
3. Psychic TV – Just Like Arcadia
4. Echo & the Bunnymen – I’ve Read it in Books
5. The Teardrop Explodes – Camera Camera
6. Clinical Noise – Venus Comes
7. Schleimer K – She’s Gone
8. The Servants – Transparent
9. Sun City Girls – Soft Fragile Eggshell Minds
10. Meat Puppets – We’re Here
11. Robyn Hitchcock – Acid Bird
12. Opal – Happy Nightmare Baby
13. Sonic Youth – Tom Violence
14. Swans – The Other Side of the World
15. Live Skull – Demon Rail
16. Spacemen 3 – Ecstasy Symphony/Transparent Radiation (Flashback)

I don’t remember how I learned about Arthur Russell or when I made the connection that the guy who did Is It All Over My Face? was the guy who did Go Bang! who was the guy who did that cello track on the Crepuscule comp who was that Arthur Russell who wrote World of Echo. I do know around the time the first Disco Not Disco comp came out, I was fully obsessed. Here was somebody who effortlessly sailed his boat through disparate oceans of sound, combining them at will, adding fair amounts of dub and art to his pop, great degrees of art and noise to his disco and cello to all of it. I hunted high and low for both 12″s of Dinosaur’s Kiss Me Again, and almost cried when Lee Douglas gave me a copy of Let’s Go Swimming for free. And even now after several years of digging in the tapes and crates, with a series of great archival releases on Audika records, there’s still wonderful music to discover. I’m excited to see Matt Wolf’s movie Wild Combination, and thrilled to be hosting the after-party at this rare Thursday edition of Dazzle Ships. We’re gonna hear some great music. Come on down thursday night, I want to see all my friends at once.

POSTSCRIPT/RECAP, THE FOLLOWING DAY
Where do I start? We arrived at the Kitchen for the first showing and found ourselves in the row directly behind most of the cast of the movie…Arthur’s partner Tom Lee, Steve Knutson from Audika, Ernie Brooks, Steve Hall, Bob Blank, Peter Zummo among others. In front of them sat my old Oberlin classmates Nick Hallett and Alex Waterman who are both involved in the Kitchen’s Arthur Russell performances this weekend, fellow Obie Peter Hess is performing as well, but I didn’t see him. The crowd was a who’s who of DJs, musicians, journalists, bloggers, downtown art types etc etc.

Anyway, the movie was absolutely fantastic. Just amazing. Beautiful, touching, really great. Lots of wonderful old footage, and a bit of newly shot footage excellently capturing and setting the mood. Director Matt Wolf picked a limited amount of people to interview, so you get in depth memories from people that knew Arthur best instead of the vague and irrellevant celebrity talking heads you get in so many documentaries. In addition to the names listed above, Arthur’s parents are interviewed, giving the film some of it’s funniest, and most touching moments, Will Socolov from Sleeping Bag and a few others appear.

The only real “outside” perspective is from David Toop, which is appropriate as it was an article he wrote in the 90s, perhaps for the Wire(?), that turned a lot of people onto Arthur’s music and for many years was the only resource available that I could find. Tim Lawrence, author of Love Saves the Day, mentions what I think was a later Toop article that was from the time of the first Audika and Soul Jazz reissues here, but I think there was an article he wrote more specifically about the World of Echo material and it’s relation to dub earlier on, I remember reading it around the time of the Disco Not Disco compilation.

The movie was followed initially by what was probably the longest round of applause I’ve heard this side of a Bruce Springsteen concert, then a great Q+A session, after which Jeremy, myself and friends shot over to Heather’s to start our first thursday Dazzle Ships. The bar was crowded already and just got moreso. At some point I was reaching for the most difficult Russell records I could find in the hopes of driving away the east village “little friday” drinkers and making more room for the after-party. Sure enough as the night progressed and the second screening finished, more and more people from the film, both filmmakers and filmgoers began to show up. Jeremy came up to me while I was DJing to tell me he just got beers for Peter Gordon and Ned Sublette. Tom Lee joined us a moment after and I reminded him that we had met 5+ years before, the last time I did an all Arthur Russell night, which he remembered. That felt appropriate, some kind of cyclical feeling, the wheel of life and all that. So come join us again in 2013 for another all Arthur Russell DJ night!

POSTSCRIPT POSTSCRIPT!
The question this post was started with was answered last night by Ryan Chowdhury. We were reminiscing over first hearing various bits of Arthur’s music…talking about the release of the Strut compiltion Disco Not Disco, which I bought right away and brought to Plant Bar and played Kiss Me Again (edit) by Dinosaur probably 3 times, having never heard that particular song before despite already loving Arthur’s better known disco songs as well as the World of Echo and Another Thought albums. He mentioned remembering somehow the July 4th at the house on Ryerson in Brooklyn where I first met Mark Morgan of the band Sightings. His friend Brian, from Mouthus, was subletting a room from one of the girls I went to school with. This was the house where Oneida would play acoustic sets…the Oberlin mafia in full effect. Mark and I discussed our shared love of DIY post-punk type stuff, though his tastes ran more toward the I Hate the Pop Group style aggressive/noise side of things and mine towards the twee scottish poppy funky side of things. I mentioned how it combined with my love of disco and how I was really into disco and Mark said the only disco he was really into was this guy Arthur Russell who made all these disco records and weird noisy records and ethereal pop records and etc etc. I remember thinking “what does this guy know about disco?” but it had to be some point after that that I put it all together. So thanks Ryan for reminding me and thanks Mark for kicking that off. Mark also made me a mix of crazy diy keyboard no wave skronk punk stuff and turned me onto Red Transistor and the Four Plugs but that’s another story…