SRC / Milestones (Capitol/EMI, 1969)

I wrote a sweet post for this record while sitting at a bar last weekend and it seems to have disappeared. Now I'm not sure I have the energy to reconstruct it. Bear with me.

The short of it is: I found SRC when I was futzing around on music blogs about 4-5 years ago. Someone had posted "Black Sheep," the first track on their self-titled debut record, and I couldn't help but notice the screaming guitar tone, super hot. I listened to the whole record of psych-prog fuzz a few times, liked it a lot, and promptly forgot about the band for the next half-decade, as tends to happen when you have unlimited access to all the music ever made in the world.

All that by way of saying it took me a minute to remember why their name sounded familiar when this record appeared on the wall at Academy. Milestones is their follow up, and I think I actually like it better than that first record. Side 2 is especially well-written and well sequenced, and if the spoken intro to "The Angel's Song" dates this record in a way that will never not be embarassing, it hardly takes away from the fuzz-fest that follows. Take a look, though, at the lyrics printed on the verso in the photo below and tell me if it doesn't sound like something you might have had to sing at your middle school graduation.

Record blogs and CD reissues can probably convince you that there were a million bands like SRC out there between 1967 and 1972, probably at least a thousand in Detroit area alone, from where these guys hail. But this is a better than solid example of the genre, and I love the guitar sound courtesy of Gary Quackenbush; it's still my favorite thing about the band. It's very, very trebly, to the point where I have to turn down the treble knob on my receiver to avoid feeling like it's blasting the enamel off my teeth. But I do have the feeling I'll come back to this record every few years.

Beck / Mutations (Geffen / Bong Load, 1998)

Bong Load Records scored a major coup in 1992 when cofounders Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf independently discovered Beck Hansen at L.A. clubs and signed him to release the 12" of "Loser." A year later, though, the excitement generated by the single led to a bidding war, won by Geffen, for Beck's debut full length, which appeared two years later. For Bong Load, the consolation prize was twofold: Beck's contract with Geffen allowed him to release side projects on the label, and BL got to keep his vinyl issue, which hardly interested the majors this deep into the 90s.

Things went smoothly through Mellow Gold, but after the smashing critical and commercial success of Odelay vaulted Beck to the top tier of rock artists, Geffen got itchy. Beck had recorded an album with producer Nigel Godrich that he didn't intend as a proper follow-up to Odelay, but Geffen went ahead and released it anyway, prompting a round robin of mostly collegial lawsuits between them, Beck, and Bong Load that took a year or two to iron out.

That album was Mutations, and Bong Load's LP issue is an excellent specimen, both as listening experience and object. For starters, it's pressed on heavy vinyl, and well mastered. Even better, it includes a supercool bonus 7" with three tracks not included on the CD release. The packaging for the 7" is an accordion- folded insert that's essentially the liner notes and lyric sheet for the album proper. I'll let the photos speak for themselves, but the performances sound excellent, and I've come to think that closing track "Static" is one of Beck's underrated best.

This is just a cool record to own. I actually hadn't thought it was ever pressed, but lo and behold, it turned up on Jonny's list of Record Store Day wall gems and I fought my way through scrappy Williamsburg trust-funders to snag it just moments after the store opened. My short take on Beck is that he's the closest thing any subsequent generation has had to a Dylan, and I think his work from the 90s remains underappreciated. When you have a moment, go back and listen to this record; it's remarkable how it feels simultaneously constructed and spontaneous, loose but assured. This kind of risk-taking has long since gone out of fashion.