Guide to Reissues of Obscure Regional Soul and Power Pop From the 60’s and 70’s.

Everybody’s got a habit. One of mine is listening to music. Everybody likes music, but not everybody feels involved enough in the process to consider listening to it a “hobby.” I consider it a hobby. Just a hobby. If I was more passionate about it, to the point where I could point to listening to music as being the one thing I love the most in the world, listening to music would probably be at least somewhat of a profession for me. I’d probably DJ. Or be in a band. Or write record reviews for the local dying weekly. But I don’t care that much, and if and when I do, I mostly choose to remain private about it. I also don’t have the time, money, or energy to be chronically obsessed with all things music, although I’ve always had a healthy amount of admiration for people who do. So it’s a hobby. Not a lifestyle.

Maybe there’s a lesson there about not being ruled by your interests. Maybe not. I’m not going to try to shoehorn one in if I don’t have to.

Occasionally, though, something about music spurs enough thought that it turns into a real life thing for me and not just a music-listening thing. Witness the Numero Group.

The Numero Group is a Chicago-based label that reissues regional soul, folk, and power pop/rock from all but totally extinct sources, usually defunct record labels from places you don’t typically think of when you think of a “vibrant local music scene.” Places like Columbus, Ohio, or East St. Louis, Illinois, or Dimona, Israel. Sometimes their releases are from the far fringes of well-known musical melting pots like Chicago and New York. Always they’re immaculately packaged and tell an interesting story of how these songs (usually at least decent songs, depending on one’s personal taste) were created, forgotten, and ultimately resurrected.

The stories are fairly uniform. There’s always some combination of poor funding, poor marketing, poor timing, some degree of self-defeating Axl Rose-esque megalomania, complete lack of business acumen, and/or complete lack of commercial viability in terms of the artists’ creative vision. Picture reasons for a small business to fail, and you have the basic story. It’s rags to rags to rags. Told lovingly within each Numero Group release.

But what about the songs?

They’re good. Sometimes they’re merely decent. Pretty much always the songs suffer from a variety apparent fatal flaws. Usually there’s something to it that shows why it’s been forgotten. Maybe it’s a weird flute too high in the mix, or a series of offkey notes, or a terribly written, not-at-all catchy hook, or the fact that a particular track outstays its welcome after 20 seconds but goes on for six minutes, or is a clear ripoff of a Jimi Hendrix riff, or has a ramshackle quality that I with my highly developed and somewhat irony-laden post-Velvet Underground ear for chaos appreciate now more than any local Midwest R&B DJ could be expected to in 1972, or it’s an elaborately written tune about a weirdly specific subject, or it’s by a group whose name accidentally endorses genocide, or maybe it’s just a straight-ahead, repetitive, and/or wandering mediocre pop song from its era without any particular payoff. Sometimes, depending on the consistency of the release, the only apparent fatal flaw in one of the songs is that there were recorded in Belize City, Belize in the early 70’s, and the recording is just too obscure to have found an audience wider than that particular seasonal flood-dominated British colonial market and the few émigrés from it who were lucky enough to find themselves in New York City with enough disposable income to buy an LP.

I have developed a love/hate relationship with the Numero Group over these releases.

On the one hand, I appreciate all the work and I admire their stick-to-it-iveness and taste. Much in the same way I admire the one guy with the self-trimmed beard at the used record store who’s laughing about this one thing Question Mark said to him at a wedding last year. This admiration is a mixture of, “Thank God for genuine eccentrics like you, who, in their natural habitat, have occasion to make everybody else’s life more interesting by relating anecdotes about obscure garage band leaders who genuinely believe they’re from another planet,” and, wistfully, “There but for the grace of God go I.” It’s kind of the same admiration us barely sane types have for people that are full on over the edge crazy and somehow still making it work.

Plus, you know, it’s awfully nice of these kind gents to go off into the dustbins of the world and put together these excruciatingly well-documented re-releases of this charmingly flawed music from the nowhere regions of popular music’s consciousness. Especially since nobody asked them to, and they’re really under no compunction to share their results with the rest of us. But, you know, nobody asked them to. They’d have done it regardless. They’re weird like that. And God bless them for it.

On the other hand, the releases themselves, and the music that’s on them, rely a little too heavily on this context. It’s “look at this thing we found, aren’t we clever,” or more specifically, “you should check this out, it’s a soul band that formed out of this weird collective on the South Side that was part brothel and part cult, and they all wore these funny hats, and they only made five copies of this ever, and the other two that still exist are unplayable.” And you’re like “that’s cool, I guess,” and you try to get away from the dude, and he’s like “but wait, it’s really good, listen,” and you’re like, “ok,” but you look at your watch, and then he plays it and he’s freaking out about how great it is but to you it sounds like five people moaning in a basement with a shitty drummer, because it’s five people moaning in a basement with a shitty drummer, and really the only reason anybody would like it is it’s weird and cute, like, “nice try, you moaning basement cult whores.” And “nice try” is either ironic or whimsical or totally honest, but it’s still there.

You kind of want to get out of there, because the whole thing makes you uncomfortable. First it’s offputting that somebody could be so obsessive about something to ignore all social cues that tell them to keep it to themselves. Then there’s the whole bragging about obscurity thing. Then there’s the whole “flattery of gained trust” thing where you’re supposed to feel grateful that he’s playing this thing for you because he thinks you’ll appreciate it as much as he does. Then there’s this whole sad image of the cult whores moaning in a basement 30 years ago, coupled with the perverse enjoyment this guy’s getting out of playing it for you now. And then there’s your complicity. Because, admit it, you were curious.

It’s like the queasy alliance between exhibitionists and voyeurs. Kind of. You’d think it’d be a match made in heaven, until you realize that the exhibitionist has the virgin/whore fantasy of making regular people into voyeurs due to the undeniably alluring nature of what they’re exhibiting (or else, on the opposite end of the spectrum, they just want to freak everybody out), and it’s a bit of a downer when the person’s just really into the process of being a voyeur in a way that has nothing to do with what you’re exhibiting. It makes the exhibitor a little less special. Same with the voyeur, who wants to discover something he’s not supposed to on his own. Both are perverts, but when they meet both are going, “Ugh, I can’t quite get off to this because you’re clearly getting off to this and that’s grossing me out.”

Well that’s essentially the interaction you’re signing up for every time you spend money on a Numero Group release. Even if the music’s unbelievably great, and it is sometimes but more often isn’t, there’s still a twinge of “Ugh, you’re really getting off to this.”

Left out in the cold are those moaning cult whores in the basement. They’re just the medium, not the message of this exhibitionist/voyeur transaction. No matter how well-researched or well-compensated they might be for their contributions, which is a matter open for some debate (but not a particularly interesting one).

So why am I even bothering to write about this? Cultural imperialism is a pretty well-documented phenomenon, and so is crusty weird dudes who like obscure records. Where do I fit in?

Well, I’m kind of an aspirational eccentric. I’m not fully crazy about all this stuff. At least that’s what I tell myself. So I kind of pretend to be by telling people things like “listening to music is a hobby of mine.” It’s just music. I know that. And I’m going to die one day, whether I have a promo copy of The Beau Brummel’s out-of-print “Bradley’s Barn” album or not. I don’t know what in the hell I expect ownership of such an artifact is supposed to do for me. Elevate me into some more righteously boastful class of music fanatics? It’s a nice record. Really nice. I like listening to it. I think that’s all I’m supposed to get out of it. But it’s hard to fight the urge of entitlement that comes with owning something slightly rare like that. I have to admit, I get a kick out of it. And in the case of this copy of “Bradley’s Barn,” it’s not a vicarious kick, like the Numero Group releases are. I found a copy of it. I bought a copy of it. It’s not a reissue that some opportunistic label put out. It’s an old realdeal copy of the record that opportunistic me suckered myself into purchasing from a store that opportunistically bought it from probably like a dude or something.

But who gives a shit?

Right. Who gives a shit. Other than me, I expect maybe there are some self-trimmed beardwearers out there who’d be moderately impressed. My record collection is slowly filling out. And I’m doing it for my inner music freak. I guess. I don’t know. I can’t imagine anybody who would admit to giving a shit about who-has-what is a person who’s priorities are in proper order. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking obscure pop music or wooden yachts.

That’s why I’ve got a bee so far in my bonnet about these Numero Group guys. Through their devotion to a highly specialized and arguably noble labor of love, they’re making me feel like a real grade-A asshole. They point out what I don’t like about myself. I don’t even care that I don’t like the music they put out all that much. I mean, I like it all well enough, but I rarely love a whole release of theirs from start to finish. It’s usually 2-5 tracks per release. Sometimes I enjoy as few as zero. Rarely it’s all but a couple.

But I can’t stop myself. That’s the problem. I recently talked myself into the conundrum of media, and about how mp3’s are the regenerative next great singles medium, where every track is torn asunder from its intended sequencing and judged on its own merits alone. I said “well, maybe I should just be downloading the ones I like and not bother with the whole package. Except they don’t let you do that because they’re geniuses. There has to be another solution. I keep getting stuff with all this obscure-for-good-reason chaff they keep shoveling out. It’s a lot of effort and money in exchange for a couple of fantastic tracks per release. I feel like I, the music fan, am being taken for a ride, which is a tradition as old as recorded music.

I should say that of the few tracks off of each Numero Group release that I do like, I really really really like them. This is how I get with music. I find one thing that I like, a song, a moment in a song, and then I delve so deeply into it I can’t get out for months. It’s a lot like a chemical dependency, except I’m talking about obscure XTC deep tracks instead of a coke binge. Just so you know that all of this quandary-over-the-delivery medium crap isn’t always in my head, or that I’m not getting anything out of this music. Quite the contrary. I love it enough to care about it. Hence the love/hate relationship with these fuckers.

Certain Numero Group standouts are so fantastic as to almost make up for the whole plunge into self-doubt over why I’m sometimes neurotic, antisocial, and fetishistic about music. For a little while there listening to my favorites of the collection, whether they’re dramatic psychedelic soul flourishes under a child’s crying over his lost mama, or a gospel group’s drummer going totally apeshit over Jesus, it’s almost to forget the whole sordid process by which these songs came to my ear, not to mention everything else that’s bugging me that day. And that’s why I can’t stop, because that’s the feeling all music fans are listening for.

The problem is loving the good stuff that much makes me feel entitled to my disappointment in the stuff that doesn’t measure up. It’s a real lesson in involvement. So I talked myself into the mp3 format internal discussion. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t enjoying the full backlog of lesser Numero tracks I have. Maybe they just don’t work as well filtered into a shuffling iPod as they might on a turntable, where their esoteric nature is more vital. Is what I was telling myself. So I bought a vinyl subscription to their 2009 releases for a hundred dollars. Of course I did.

I’m holding out hope that this won’t be a totally awful decision. One of the things about mp3’s is they’re so easily compilable. They add up exponentially, until you have more music than you could possibly really listen to, and then the whole goal becomes having the music rather than just listening to it. Vinyl is a step further in that direction because of the elaborate and immediately physical processes involved in playing an LP. It’s almost ritualistic. So I’m getting more and more chronic, I guess. Maybe that’s a good thing. I do have that part of me that wants to be a chronic weirdo who used to roadie for Sonic Youth and who won’t shut up about some Phillipino pop girl group he’s somewhat creepily really into these days. I guess that dude is having his way with me recently.

Part of my problem is I have a rickety belief system ruled more or less by a rigidly constructed belief system imposed by that inner weirdo. One total foolhearty belief is: you can read but not listen before you buy. The idea here is that if I know what I’m talking about (I want to believe I do, but I don’t), I will purchase great music sight unseen based on what I’ve heard and what my suspicions are. It’s a total drag a lot of the time because I’m constantly wrong, but when I get something good, I feel like it’s all based on my intuitive beardedguy smarts, and it’s rewarding on both a “hey this is really great” level and a “aren’t I so smart” level. This is only possible for somebody with endless patience for music. I listen to a lot of mediocre bullshit. A LOT. And I’m prone to exaggerating the rewards. So I guess I can’t really blame the Numero guys for taking me for a little ride every once in a while. I’ll take myself on the same ride whether they’re involved or not, and it’s not like they asked me to go along with them.

I guess that’s what I mean when I say “listening to music is a hobby of mine.” Nobody has that as a hobby. Music’s on, you listen to it. That’s called normal human being. No, I guess my hobby, shameful as it is to admit, is having music to the degree that I get to pretend that I’m a part of it. The plain, painful truth is: for somebody who considers listening to music a hobby, I really don’t listen to music all that much more than anybody else. I just work a little harder to get it.

Fine and dandy. I’m a fetishist, I guess. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I honestly though I was past this. But it looks like I’ve got kryptonite, and kryptonite, thy name is Numero Group. I wish I could quit you.

p.s. If you’re still reading, I’m shocked. Just totally shocked. I promise a real Guide about non-nerd things tomorrow.