A foxy poster.

The photograph in this poster was in one of the first posts on this blog. The poster was for the stillborn CD release of “The Complete Oblivion…” and even though we never released the box set or printed the poster, seeing it again is going to make me frame one up for my office. (You should too, just follow this link and you’ll get a file that’s print worthy.)

Jeez, I love the photograph in this poster.

It reminds me that Oblivion was more than just a wannabe fantasy of some suburban boys (though it sometimes felt that way at the time). It’s American roots music come alive, an urban woman playing music from the country, filtered through a college radio station and an independent label that took its passions seriously. Like I said in the original post, “Is this picture the blues or what?”

Get “The Complete Oblivion Records.” Free.

Get “The Complete Oblivion Records 1971-1975” for free. by just shifting your mouse to the right hand column of this blog and clicking on the record covers.

“Free?! 55 tracks —plus outtakes— worth more than $75 for nothing? Really?! How come?”

Well, there are a few reasons, some will make some sense to you, some not:

1. We like our catalog, and some 30 years after recording them, we’d still like people to hear it.
2. The people buying CDs are mostly over 30 years old, and it’s usually young people who like to discover music.
3. A physical release would probably lose money, so why not easily share the music with the entire world?

In 2004, five years after my Oblivion partner Tom Pomposello passed away, his son Travis and I talked about re-releasing the complete catalog, maybe as a box set. All the music was special, each was important in its own way in both blues and jazz genres, and though it hadn’t all been successful it seemed like it all had a place in the 21st century.

Sample covers for “The Complete Oblivion Records on MP3”

A box set seemed like it would never sell since the audience for each record was often different. I thought we could create a “revoltutionary” format and put all six album on one reasonably priced CD in an all MP3 format (MP3s were at their peak of making record companies crazy). Since the most active audience for music, people under 30, weren’t buying too many CDs anyway, why not go all the way and speak in a contemporary language? I even comped up a few covers and a poster. Then my day job got way busy and the whole idea was dropped.

As the music business the way we knew it continued to implode over the next few years it looked like MySpace was introducing more music to people and I set up an Oblivion site, but I wasn’t the right guy to work it. Eventually, it occurred to be that the costs of finally putting out the CDs, and tallying up the work it would take to get them distributed, would probably wouldn’t do anything but lose me money, and besides, not that many CDs would actually sell. So, in the end, there wouldn’t actually be too many people listening to the music anyway.

But by starting this blog to chronicle my recollections of the history of the label, encoding the music as MP3s, and posting all six records on my music blog, the audience for the Oblivion catalog would be the largest it could possibly be.

So, take the music for free. Enjoy it, play it for your friends, expose it on your radio shows. It’s yours.

The complete “Friends” LP. Again.

‘Anonymous’ commented on the first ‘complete Friends’ post: “…my god this should be rereleased on cd, it’s simply incredible!”

So, I decided to re-post the tracks in “Total O! (for Oblivion) Quality” —CD quality— sound with the highest MP3 rip rate, 320kbps. Effectively, you’d have to take the post as the actual “Friends” LP reissue. Enjoy, and at some point I’ll go into why I’ve done it this way rather than a traditional release (Update @ January 1, 2012: Well, now there’s a “traditional” release, digital though it is. If you’re so inclined, Friends is available at your favorite digital store at streaming site.)

The complete “Friends” LP.

I finally got a chance to post the complete original “Friends” LP, one of the first albums to mash up jazz improvisation with a rock sensibility. With the rise of The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever the music unfortunately became known as “fusion.”

“Friends” was actually alto saxophonist’s Marc Cohen’s project*, but at the last minute he added in his friend, guitarist John Abercrombie, to the mix and insisted it be credited as a collective album.

Check out session photos, album graphics, and reviews. There are some really interesting bonus tracks and outtakes coming as I can get them digitized.

*Marc now performs on piano as Marc Copeland.