- Max Richter, Sleep (disc 8)
- John Cage, Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) (disc 1)
- Okkyung Lee, Na-Reul
- To Live and Shave in L.A., God and Country Rally! (feat. Tom Smith)
- To Live and Shave in L.A., Hybrid EP 02: Chipmunks vs. Whitehouse (feat. Tom Smith)
- MX-80 Sound, Out of the Tunnel
- MX-80 Sound, Hard Attack (bonus disc)
- R.E.M., Monster
- R.E.M., Green
Once again: RIP Tom Smith.
For a while in the early 2000s Smith, who achieved a kind of beneath-the-underground fame with his project To Live and Shave in L.A., co-ran a little-known record label called The Smack Shire. The label’s other proprietor was my good friend Gerard Klauder. Gerard died in 2005 and I still miss him very much.
I took the above photo of Gerard outside the Fireside Bowl in Chicago the night of September 11, 2001. He was on tour with Phi-Phenomena, a traveling roadshow of wildly anarchic noise bands. I arrived late and missed Gerard’s performance with Dixie Prix, because I was on my back porch arguing with my friends about what had happened that day. (Later, after I left, the argument turned violent between two of them; I had stayed so long partly in an effort to calm things down.)
Anyway, The Smack Shire: all of their CD releases are available cheaply on Discogs, and they’re all worth hearing.
The collaboration of Smith with Sightings is excellent and seems to have flown under the radar even of fans of that great band.
The Rev. Lester Knox disc was culled by Smith from endless hours of Georgia broadcasts by the most unvarnished, unhinged backwoods country preacher you’ve ever heard. Sometimes he’s preaching, sometimes he’s singing with members of his congregation. The disc attracted absolutely no attention whatsoever, to my knowledge, but it’s amazing. Listen to Knox’s version of “This World Is Not My Home”; all Jesus nonsense aside, it’s one of the most moving performances I’ve ever heard. If you’ve ever felt like this world isn’t your home, then this hymn, in this version, is for you.
I said Gerard “died”; but he killed himself. This world wasn’t his home, either.
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