The Grateful Dead - The Workingman’s Dead 💫

 

Not only is this probably the rarest pressing I have of this quintessential album, but it’s one of the best sounding too. 

During the late 60s and early 70s the Japanese spared no expense with their excellent pressings and overall materials, including detailed inserts. 

As per above Discogs, prices are steep!

The Grateful Dead  - The Workingman’s Dead 

Warner Seven Arts W7 

1970 Japanese promo white label/red wax with OBI and insert.

Thanks for Brian Flegel for sharing and congratulations

💫🍀💫🖖

Gotorama 2.0 “Das Alte Werk” 💫

 

The stereo kichigai’s dream system and my wife’s nightmare as WAF is quite on the low side.

😉🙃🤭☺️

Yet, it’s gigantic but still manageable, as you can move the whole thing with just a finger, despite the imposing weight.

In the very next hours will mount the (mild) bass wooden horns - after making two cork gaskets - will wire-up the drivers to the crossovers and will listen to some music, two years after I dismantled and crated the Gotorama on June 2024.

Ready to be punched…

The mono crossover 💫

Handling these 50 kg Goto SG146LD is quite demanding

 😳

Thanks to Luigi for the helping hand, to Arnaldo for his handmade bass-horn, to Gaetano for the solid aluminum arrays, to Enrico for the birch plywood bass driver shelf & bass-horn painting and to Marco for the Goto’s bass drivers… and to everybody who empathized and encouraged and pushed me to complete this installation.

🖖🙏💫

Flea-market gems 💫

 

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I’m a soft person 💫

 

"I'm not a rock star. I'm a soft person. I'm not a rock." - Don Van Vliet

The mystery of Master Wilburn Burchette 💫

 

Did you know one of the strangest guitar records of the 1970s wasn’t made in a studio—but conjured like a ritual?

I only heard about Master Wilburn Burchette and his quite elusive, rare and expensive records in early Eighties from one of my discs-pusher, Franco Zanetti… this music wasn’t to be found in records shops but only mail-ordered to the artist himself..

Knowing my deep and sincere interest for the likes of John Fahey and Robbie Basho, he insisted ‘til I bought a couple of the Master’s himself and it was an epiphany.

California mail-order mystic turned self-taught guitarist, Master Wilburn Burchette spent the early ’70s translating the unseen into sound. Obsessed with both music theory and parapsychology from a young age, he built his own instruments, studied harmony like a system of equations, and began shaping what he called “tonal pictures.” Between 1971 and 1977, he released seven albums in seven years. Records like Guitar Grimoire framed music as something closer to ritual than entertainment, each track mapping out a kind of inner vision.

Burchette placed cryptic ads in the back pages of obscure magazines, offering a Psychic Meditation Course that taught people not just how to hear music, but how to actually listen to it. His albums came with dense instructions and philosophical notes, guiding listeners to engage with sound as a tool for awareness. To him, music wasn’t passive, it was a way to interact with consciousness itself, driven by intention, emotion, and what he saw as a kind of everyday “magic.”

Listen to this (it’s on Spotify) and you’ll find yourself in some California Mount Tamalpais’ stargate.

This music, which - as I told you - I discovered in early ‘80s, deeply inspired and influenced my way of playing and improvising.

At the core of his thinking was a stripped-down view of the occult. He didn’t believe in witches or magic the way religion or horror stories describe them. Instead, he saw “magic” as intuition, hunches, pattern recognition, the mind working ahead of explanation.

At the height of it, he walked away. He burned his materials, stopped making music, and reinvented himself as a psychic under another name, publishing newsletters and making a living on predictions. Decades later, still elusive and wary of attention, he stuck to one guiding principle that defined both his work and his disappearance: preserve the mystery.

The ongoing reissue series is rooted in that same principle. Since 2015, we’ve worked to preserve and reintroduce Burchette’s recordings as they were meant to be experienced, carefully archiving original materials and faithfully reproducing the texts, inserts, and ephemera that accompanied each release, restoring the complete context of his work for a new audience while honoring the strange, deliberate world he created.

~~~~~~~~

Master Wilburn Burchette was an American musician (guitar, synthesizer) and "mail order mystic". Born in 1939 in California (USA). Found dead in 2023 (aged 84) in the home he shared with his brother Kenneth (also found dead, aged 76) in El Cajon near San Diego (USA). 

Burchette was a largely selt-taught guitarist and self-taught mystic, whose fascination with the occult began around the age of 12 when he "had been transfixed by the parapsychological, spending as much time reading books on Tibetan mysticism fundamentals as he did practicing guitar, the vibrations of which he used to create tonal pictures and patterns." 

After time spent teaching classical guitar, he constructed an Impro guitar with 6 different woods, with mahogany for the base, soft pine, elder, and rosewood. The neck was inlaid with abalone shells. 

Then, in the 7 years between 1971 and 1977, he released 7 albums of guitar and synthesizer music, mostly via his Burchette Brothers label (run jointly with his brother Kenneth, a chemist). He advertised these albums via mail order ads, hidden in the back pages of Fate Magazine, Beyond Reality, and Gnostica News. 

On offer: Burchett's seven-part, block-printed "Psychic Meditation Course," designed to teach people how to listen to music. To go along with his lessons: his instrumental guitar and electronic records featuring ornate hand-drawn cover designs, complete with listening instructions from the master himself. After 1977, he abruptly burnt and discarded everything related to his musical explorations.

Anthony Braxton’s notation 💫

 

Tonight was my third experience with Anthony Braxton's music - this time at Only Connect Festival at Oslo. Soloists were the fantastic POING trio and Susana Santos Silva. Great to work again with the  Norwegian Radio Orchestra here - the KORK orchestra.

I selected basically the same pieces that I used at the Proms gig in 2024- the large orchestra work from the early 70's Composition no.27. In addition several large ensemble works - Compositions 46(10 winds and brass),59,63(both of which have 2 soloists) and 151( a stunning piece for 25 players from the 80's I believe).Susana was also conducting(when she wasn't playing trumpet). Both of us could switch to Language Music which means we can at will ask players to play long notes or trills for example(and add dynamics if we want). Poing and Susana did solos,duos,trios and quartet independently of what I(or Susana) was doing.

The only decision about the order of pieces was starting with the opening of 27 with the full orchestra.

I will share the recording when its broadcast on Norwegian Radio.This music is so inventive and demands so much from players and listeners.In the best sense! So inspiring. I hope more conductors and orchestras will start playing this uniqe and mind blowing music!

Thanks to Ilan Volkov for sharing above interesting stuffs.

🖖

 

The Drummer

 

Details (who knows, knows) 💫

 

A Tim de Paravicini’s EAR microphone 💫

 

Here is a rare Esoteric Audio Research microphone made by Tim de Paravicini! 

A one of a kind mike, indeed… almost like the ultimate, larger version Kavi Alexander used in most of his Water Lily’s masterpieces.

This is a true collector’s item…  here are some well informed words from Haden Boardman:

 “When I worked with Tim, he was explaining the difficulty in making this microphone, the amount of pure engineering that went in to the machined grill slots.  

He only found one engineer who could make all the parts to a standard he wanted.  Sadly this engineer passed away, and Tim never found anyone to replace it with.  The last of these made around 35 years ago now.  

Beyond rare, shame there is not a pair, I might decide selling the car to get them!”

The mic comes with the original multi pin microphone cable and pattern selector/power box.

The mic uses the Milab 2700 rectangular capsule and has a hand wound output transformer made by Tim himself.