Thursday, April 16, 2009

deep space


LM-9802-7.

Mir |mɪə|
a Soviet space station, launched in 1986 and designed to be permanently manned.

  
Owing largely to its financial demands on an impoverished Russian government, the Mir program was terminated in March 2001, when the space station made its fiery reentry into the earth's atmosphere, splashing down in the South Pacific. 

During its 14 years in space, Mir (which means ‘world’ and ‘peace’ in Russian) housed a total of 104 astronauts from various nations.

The postman

 

rapped on the door with the officiousness of the secret police early this morning. That's alright. No foot jammed in the door, and no warrant. Not even a bill.

Instead, a large padded envelope marked "do not bend", all the way from Big B over at Art Decade, via Texas. What fortuity! 

And what an excellent way to begin the day.

This song is so good it deserves a second showing in less time than it takes a comet to orbit the earth. Or a Soviet space station. Big B first posted it less than a month ago with the very generous proposal to mail copies of this Loverly release to the first three individuals to send in their details in true late night FM radio tradition:

"Back in '98, a friend gave me a box of 45s from Memphis label Loverly Records. While the band has since vanished and the label sank somewhere in the Mississippi, I think the song still lives. For the first 3 who agree and would like to own this piece of blue vinyl for free email your pen name and address to Art Decade. Since I'm floating the postage do not expect them delivered between 5-10 working days."
 
One went out to Iowa; one to Belgium; and one here in Scotland. Not a bad geographical spread for such a star-crossed atmospheric re-entry.


There appears to be very little information out there on Jetty Webb, which is a real shame. Closer inspection of the original MP3 tag, however, reveals the a-side to be a McKay, Sikes and Easley composition.

Nice, Big B.


JETTY WEBB: MIR from "Mir b/w Cornerwalk" 45 (Loverly) 1998 (US)
OUT OF PRINT

14 comments:

Löst Jimmy said...

Hey ib, nice to get a good delivery from the postie, by the way I enjoyed your Mir Space Station trivia piece


WV = sockba

Big B said...

Cheers ib! Great back history on Mir and the relief that the vinyl did not break in transit. Nice way to begin the day, indeed.
спасибо-
Big B

ib said...

Thanks, Big B!

As Löst Jimmy rightly observed, it is especially gratifying that our postman even bothered to knock instead of simply popping a "nobody home: pick up from sorting office" card through the letterbox. Our postal service is definitely a shadow of its former self. I was in its employ briefly, and I can testify first hand - both as a casual employee and consumer - that its standards these days are crap.

More so, it is always a cause for celebration when something as intrinsically fragile as vinyl arrives intact.

I love this song. And the retro design of the label.

Glad you both enjoyed the potted history of Mir. Most of these facts took me by surprise too, in hindsight. I always preferred the Russian term "cosmonaut" to "astronaut" for some reason.

Cheers!

Löst Jimmy said...

Cosmonaut indeed is much better term, astronaut always reminded me of the like named astroturf i.e. artifical.

Have a good weekend when it finally arrives

Löst Jimmy said...

oh by the way ib, isn't this the most likeable Cosmonaut toy...

http://www.fatbuddhastore.com/cart/Product.asp?catalogid=142874504

If I could afford it there would be a place on the mantlepiece for it here in Victory Mansions.

ib said...

"Astroturf" is exactly right!

Excellent looking models.

I used to have a cosmonaut stamp collection; quite bizarely, I am fairly certain it contained several Cuban Soviet inspired editions... perhaps my memory is way off on this one, but I like to think not.

I like that the cosmonaut's helmet is detachable. Cool.

Löst Jimmy said...

The Cosmonaut stamp collections are not as bizarre as you think, I still retain a Soviet bloc collection of stamps in an album hidden up the loft. Mostly space stamps from the USSR, DDR and Cuba

It's a small world my brother!

said...

Following in the cosmo/astro-nauts vein, I highly recommend the almost universally unknown Blues Astronauts over at Digital Meltd0wn. Some really great jazz blues deconstruction wonk that is exceptional & unavailable elsewhere on the Interweb.
Hope you enjoy, I surely am grooving to Jetty Webb & would love to know more about them. I e-mailed the band but as of yet have received no response.

ib said...

Thanks for the tip. If you get a response from Jetty Webb, be sure to let me know, Nate. Men of mystery, it seems. Where on earth did you find the contact info ?

said...

Diggin' around the interweb after this post, came across an e-mail address. If I don't get a reply soon, I'm gonna try again with a more drastic subject line.

jb said...

For what it's worth, I have a bunch of un-released JW tracks I'm inclined to kind of catalog and post. I know this thread has gone kind of cold, but if there's any interest, It probably wouldn't be too hard to sort out and link them up.

We have about 3 records worth of assorted tracks from '97 to about '02. Obviously, not all of it is fit for consumption, but much of it is as good as what was on the full length cd.

ib said...

DG ?

I, for one, would be most interested. Drop me a line - ib@siblingshot.com - and let me now what your intentions are and I'll definitely link to it from here.

Alternatively, if you are so inclined, I would be keen to put together a new post outlining any salient facts; with links if you intend on posting elsewhere.

jb said...

Sorry, haven't been reading too much, but checked back today.

Jerome here.

I spoke with Brian and I think we'd be willing to go through our dats and a few sessions we did in calvert tx, put together the "keepers" so to speak, write up a little bit of a discography and get post them where everyone can grab them.

There are probaby about a dozen total players involved, so we'd want to make sure everybody gets their due.

More to come...

ib said...

Sounds good, Jerome.

Keep me posted.