From Publishers Weekly
Skip the editors' gee-whiz introduction that justifies their mania for kitschy LP records of the '50s, '60s and '70s, and go right into the 14 amusing interviews with collectors and practitioners of the music. Many of the sounds talked about here really aren't "incredibly strange" but simply of their time: Martin Denny's faux-Hawaiian exotica, Gershon Kingsley's Moog synthesizer hits, and surf and stripper music. It's not the artistry (a suspect word to the Re/Search people) that went into making these records but rather the collector's enthusiasm for the object and its meaning that is the leitmotif here. No matter whether it's Mickey McGowan, proprietor of the Unknown Museum in Mill Valley, Calif., getting hot about bird recordings or women's studies academic Lynn Peril speaking with cautious avidity about her sexploitation-music collection, these people transmit heat and light about a hunk of American ephemera which nonetheless retains cosmic significance for them. It's hard to guess why Eartha Kitt is one of the 14, but otherwise Re/Search editors Vale and Juno pick the perfect cross-section representatives of the dying vinyl culture. Volume 2 available in early 1994.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Re/Search publishers/editors Vale and Juno here add the finishing touches for anyone attempting to document the dangers and foreboding symbolism attendant in the replacement of records with CDs. In a series of entertaining, informative, and sometimes moving interviews, the volume's various contributors lead collectors of strange recordings from quaint musings about various recording acts to deeper speculations about society and what we can learn about it by examining "strange music." Certainly, one can say that the collection seems to capture our fascination with putting on a record just about anything--from seashore sounds to Muhammad Ali speaking out against tooth decay to cab drivers talking about New York City. Perhaps the book's deeper message hints at the landscape of ever-slipping innocence of our culture, reflected here in its recording art. Libraries will do well to carry this valuable study, since it not only lists odd music but any and everything producers saw fit to record.
- Michael Tierno, New YorkCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
