NBB1346

Page 28

NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN | NOVEMBER 13–19, 2013 | BOHEMIAN.COM

28

THE LEGENDARY RHYTHM & BLUES REVUE featuring Tommy Castro & the Painkillers

Monday ~ Open Mic Night with Austin DeLone 7:30pm :HG 1RY ĂŁ SP James Moseley Band with Nick Lopez

Music

7KXU 1RY ĂŁ SP

The Meat Puppets with The World Takes‌ )UL 6DW 1RY ã SP

Reverend Horton Heat with Larry and His Flask

& Deke Dickerson 7XHV 1RY ĂŁ SP

Jason Crosby & friends feat Stu Allen Robin Sylvester, Jay Lane and special guest Shana Morrison :HG 1RY ĂŁ SP

Freestone Peaches

Deanna Bogart

A Tribute to Duane Allman Duane’s Birthday Celebration )UL 1RY ã SP

Beso Negro with This Old Earthquake 6DW 1RY ĂŁ SP

Paul Barrere & Fred Tacket of Little Feat www.sweetwatermusichall.com 19 Corte Madera Ave Mill Valley CafĂŠ 415.388.1700 | Box Office 415.388.3850

Coco Montoya

NUMBER 9 Chang’s record is made

from 100 copies of the White Album.

Beatles x 100

How much White Album is too much? BY GABE MELINE

T Tasha Taylor

A42>A38=6 B4AE824B

<0BC4A8=6 ?A>3D2C8>=

& & ' ! " $ " %

Friday, Nov 15 $35 (ages 21+). Get tickets at: Â? Last Record Store in Santa Rosa cash/check only

Â? CopperďŹ eld's in Healdsburg cash/check only

Â? Online at raventheater.org Sponsored in part by Bear Republic Brewing Company

Raven Performing Arts Theater 115 North Street, Healdsburg www.raventheater.org

Free Gift Boxes

here are your average stupid records— Having Fun With Elvis on Stage, most of Seals & Crofts’ catalog—and then there are your really stupid records, musical artifacts utterly bereft of any reason to exist other than to showcase their own uselessness.

These are the cacophonous curios that get played for a full 20 seconds before your theretofore pleasant company turns sour and pleads: “For the love of Peter Dinklage, turn it off.� I am drawn to these records. On my shelves is a record of hundreds of malfunctioning Pachinko machines; a record of compact discs smashed with hammers, glued back together and played, skipping, in a CD player; and a record with 1,000 separate lock grooves that repeat 1,000 different sound loops, depending on where you drop the needle.

Rutherford Chang has just created my new favorite stupid record, and ironically, it’s made from what is many peoples’ favorite record of all time: The Beatles’ White Album. Chang owns an art gallery in SoHo called We Buy White Albums. He sells nothing, and buys only ďŹ rst-edition copies of the White Album. His gallery is set up like a record store, stocked with hundreds of copies of the White Album, arranged by the chronological number stamped on the front cover. Chang doesn’t want pristine collector’s copies, instead preferring the many drawings, poetry and other errata that young Beatlemania-afflicted baby boomers opted to scrawl onto the blank canvas of the album’s cover while listening to “Revolution 9â€? in the Nixon era. Early this year, Chang posted online an mp3 of 100 copies of the White Album played simultaneously. At the ďŹ rst chords of “Back in the U.S.S.R.,â€? the sound echoes boldly, covered in a patina of pops and scratches from 100 old records. But because of the uctuations in pressing, and variations in turntable speed, the records slowly, over the course of Side A, play slightly off from each other. “Dear Prudenceâ€? sounds like it’s sung by a chorus of ghosts. “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Daâ€? is a total mess. “Wild Honey Pieâ€? is barely recognizable, awash in noise. And yet Chang has recorded all four sides of the White Album this way, following in the footsteps of other musicians who’ve presented intentionally faulty playback as art, such as Stefan Wolpe, John Cage, Jim Kirby and William Basinski. Just this week, he has put up for sale professionally manufactured copies of his experiment as its own standalone record: 100 copies of the Beatles’ White Album, condensed into one. The cover is a composite of 100 albums from his collection, complete with names, drawings and tape on the edges. He’s selling it for $20 at 100whitealbums.tumblr.com, and you might want to buy it before it gets shut down—that is, if you love stupid records as much as me.

Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.