Brian Eno and David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Written by guest editor, John Edge.

Sire Records ■ SRK 6093

Released in February, 1981

Produced by Brian Eno and David Byrne
Engineered by Neal Teeman, Eddie Kervin, Dave Jerden, Stacy Baird, and John Potoker
Mastered by Greg Calbi

Side One:	Side Two:
American is Waiting Mea Culpa Regiment Help Me Somebody The Jezebel Spirit	Qu'ran Moonlight in Glory The Carrier A Secret Life Come With Us Mountain of Needles

Voices:

Side One:

1. Unidentified indignant radio host, San Francisco, April 1980.
2. Inflamed caller and smooth politician replying, both unidentified. Radio call-in show, New York City, July 1979.
3. Dunya Yusin, Lebanese mountain singer. (From 'The Human Voice in the World of Islam', Tangent Records TGS 131).
4. Reverend Paul Morton, broadcast sermon, New Orleans, June 1980.
5. Unidentified exorcist, New York City, September, 1980.

Side Two:

1. Algerian Muslims chanting the Qu'ran. (Same source as 3).
2. The Moving Star Hall Singers, Sea Islands, Georgia (from 'The Moving Star Hall Singers' Folkways FS 3841).
3. Dunya Yusin (See 3).
4. Samira Tewfik, Egyptian popular singer (from 'Les Plus Grandes Artistes du Monde Arabe' EMI Records.)
5. Unidentified radio evangelist, San Francisco, April 1980.

Hey, everybody!  I made it back.  Didn't drink too much scotch (mixed it up with a little gin, a Fitzgerald cocktail, to be exact).

Anyway, you may have noticed a bit more information up there than is the usual.  That's because this album is a bit different from most (rock, at least) records.  All of the vocal sounds (I dare not say vocals) are sampled from various sources.  At the time of its release, this was a radical move and, in retrospect, was a pioneering one.  This makes for an interesting contrast to my Flipper review, where the lyrics were on the spot.  My Life has no real lyrics to speak of.  In fact, nearly half of the songs (Regiment, Qu'ran, The Carrier, and A Secret Life) are in Arabic¹.  Some that are in English (Mea Culpa in particular) are so heavily edited and modified, that they may as well be in a foreign language.  But, this is a record where the voices are part of the music, rather than cutting through it or floating above it.  The spoken parts add to the mix of instruments (and quite a mix it was, Help Me Somebody featured 14 different instruments allotted their own tracks in the mix) and sustain or even lead the rhythm of the tracks.

Day Eighteen: Mike Batt and Friends - Tarot Suite

Epic Records ■  NJE 36312

Released ??, 1979
Produced, Arranged, and Conducted by Mike Batt

Engineered by John Simon and Robbie Robertson

"This album is not a statement on the Tarot or the occult. It doesn't say anything new in intellectual terms; there are many books on the subject of Tarot which go into far more detail than is possible in forty minutes of music. I have used the 22 major arcana trump cards of the pack purely as inspiration for a set of pieces of music. Of course I have stuck to the generally accepted titles and meanings of the cards, but the basis for each piece is what each card itself suggests to me, rather than a rigid, detailed musical description of each symbol." -- from the liner notes, written by Mike Batt

Side One:	Side Two:
Introduction (The Journey of a Fool) Imbecile Plainsong Lady of the Dawn The Valley of Swords	Losing Your Way in the Rain Tarota The Night of the Dead The Dead of the Night Run Like the Wind

Okay, this is the last album before I'm stuck covering, gulp, the Beach Boys. Followed by the Beatles. Curse you, alphabet.

When I talked about the Alan Parsons Project's I Robot, I mentioned the stack of doubled records (not double records, though there were some of those, too) that my dad had lying around for me to pilfer. Most of them were unknowns, with a few standout examples. There was a clutter of disco and disco singles (from Casablanca, the label that later held Kiss) from a friend of his--and a bunch of other albums that, my understandings of that friend's taste suggest also came from him. I tried going through them sort of carefully, using AllMusicGuide as a sort of starting point to determine whether I should bother with a record. There were too many--and I no longer lived at home--to listen one by one, so I wanted a quick and dirty way of getting through the stack. AMG rated this particular album 4½/5 stars, so I decided that was cause enough to drop it in my pile of takeaways. I may or may not have had a recommendation from my father on it as well (if so, he may chime in to that effect in the comments--or to correct that notion).