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the notes and tones but I'm not certain what place music like this has in my life. At the moment, it mostly makes me wanna listen to Mimi and Richard Farina's "Pack Up Your Sorrows" from Celebrations For a Grey Day and that's not a bad thing.

Beneath the underground and sometimes even better are the twined muses of Austin heroes Christina and Tom Carter, the duo otherwise known as Charlambides. They were a trio (with Jason Bill) based in Houston at the time of their earliest recordings and while I might have been hanging out in Sound Exchange (RIP) one time they came in there to drop off some cassettes, I never met them nor heard their music; now I wish I had. Among the records of theirs I've been able to find, my favorites are the heavily psyche-damaged ones such as Our Bed Is Green (a self-released cassette, later on cd) and the massive Historic 6th Ward, but their half (split with the wonderful, Sandy Bull-inspired Six Organs of Admittance) of a recent Popul Vuh tribute, Songs From the Entropic Garden, is nothing less than lovely too. For the sake of late night reverie and Whitmanesque effusion and, let me say that Historic 6th Ward in its vinyl form (it too was originally released only on cassette) is one of the great double albums of all-motherfucking-Texas-all-the-time. I hear crickets and lizards, feel the swamps, stars over cedar in tape gunk and oscillations, Lightnin' Hopkins' electric guitar, Washington Phillips' dulceola, the ghost of Desert Shore Nico and this drone, that drone, the 13th Floor Elevators go on forever, banjos too.

brian berger, south brooklyn, 11 march 2003

PACKING UP FOR PARADISE

1. Bonnie Prince Billy Master and Everyone (Drag City cd, 2003): good enough for some sorta followup to McCabe and Mrs. Miller, I swear it. I ignored Will Oldham after an exercrable live show in Iowa City c. winter 1994 but this is pretty brilliant, "Hard Life" especially.
2. John Fahey Red Cross (Revenant cd, 2003): Requiem aeternum dona eis Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis.
3. Dirty Three She has No Strings Apollo (Touch and Go lp, 2003): More reasons I wish Robert Altman or someone (anyone) could still make a great western.
4. Texas Instruments (Rabid Cat lp, 1987): their only inconsistent album but still at least half superb ("No Wonder I'm Confused" stands tall next to one of the best ever Dylan covers, "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.") in case you don't remember or, uh, accidentally ditched your record player. Someone please rediscover David Woody and buy if you see Ron, Steve and Clay anywhere, buy 'em a beer.

30 Geek Weekly Fanzine

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