Thursday, March 20, 2008

You can purchase this record with no fear of its becoming obsolete in the future

I think I'm losing my focus. My intent in starting this site was to catalog all my old vinyl that I haven't listened to in years. Instead, I keep purchasing and borrowing additional records. For example, I just brought home the following:

  • Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall starring Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett. Columbia Records 1962, Monaura-OL 5840
    According to the entry at Amazon.com, a CD was released in 1989. The Amazon link shows seven for sale starting at $99.00. The 1962 LP is available at eBay for $14.99. I paid $4.00. Possible youtube clip from the TV special -- I haven't checked this.


  • LBJ Menagerie. Jubilee Records, JGM 2068. Date currently unknown.
  • The watergate Comedy Hour. Written by Jack Burns & Avery Schreiber and Ann Elder. Featuring the Watergate Seven: Jack Burns, Ann Elder, Fannie Flagg, Bo Ridgely, Jack Riley, Avery Schreiber, and Frank Welker. Hidden Records, 1972, ST-11202

  • The Begatting of the President. Orson Welles. United Artists, 1969, UAS-5521. This was also available in book form.

What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent:
During the Nixon era, Welles provoked another round of scrutiny by the IRS when he narrated a laboriously satirical record about Nixon told as a faux biblical tale, The Begatting of the President (1969). For a while that harassment drove him back overseas. Welles ran afoul of the IRS again in the early 1970s when it seized money paid to his compnay in Switzerland for an unfinished TV special he had been directing for CBS in 1968-70, Orson's Bag. He considered his company a production company, but the IRS ruled it a holding company. That tax problem led CBS to cancel the show and also caused difficulties with the funding of his feature The Other Sode of the Wind.

From Orson Welles: Rise and Fall of an American Genius:
Back in Hollywood, Welles made a phonograph record, The Begatting of the President, that ran into a storm of controversy. Brought out by Mediarts, it was banned by Metromedia stations and broadcast mainly on FM stations. The record was a bold onslaught on Richard Nixon, delivered in a quasi-biblical mode ("A little child shall be born in a grocery store in Whittier, and he shall sit upon the throne, and his administration shall be established greatly. Now the begatting of Richard Nixon was in this wise...") Welles won a Grammy for the record

The post title comes from a guarantee on the Julie and Carol album. Here's the full text:

This Columbia high fidelity recording is scientifically designed to play with the highest quality of reproduction on the phonograph of your choice, new or old. If you are the owner of a new stereophonic system, this record will play with even more brilliant true-to-life fidelity. In short, you can purchase this record with no fear of its becoming obsolete in the future.

Not sure when I'll get to these, though I'll probably work in the political stuff before the elections are over.

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