
New sounds from out of town
A couple of days ago I ran across a fantastic track with Marvin Pontiac called “Small Car” which I immediately posted on the site. Both the artist and the song was totally unknown for me until then, but I felt the urge to explore more of him. The first thing I noticed then was the difficulty of finding any of his work on vinyl. In what I seemed as an impossible search, I stumbled upon a lot of doubtful information.
According to one of the sites I visited, Marvin was born in the thirties and was the son of a Malian father and a jewish mother from New York. His upbringing was trimmed with an unfortunate string of mishaps and as a musician his disdain and mistrust of the record business was well documented. He signed a record deal with Acorn in 1952, later scoring a major hit with “Pancakes” on the emerging underground scene in Nigeria. After a schism with the label owner he was later approached by a number of different labels, but Marvin simply refused to record with anyone unless the owner of the label came to his home in Sidell, LA and mowed his lawn.
After creating a disturbance on a local International House of Pancakes a few years later he was hospitalized on an Institution. Further down it was told that from 1971 he drifted forever and permanently into insanity. His behaviour lasted until one day in June in 1977 when he tragically died, fatally struck by a bus.
Fine, this is an amazing life destiny and a very tragical story of an eccentric artist, I thought. But there was something in me that found the whole thing to be a bit hard to believe.
When I googled his name again, there was another name appearing; “John Lurie”, which I thought was a bit peculiar. I read this guy’s biography and found out that Lurie is an artist and musician fron New York and that he was the man behind the release of “the Legendary Marvin Pontiac – Greatest Hits” back in 1999, which was purportedly a posthumous collection of Marvins’s work. What made the music and the whole myth of Marvin even more credible was that the album was praised by a large number of well respected artists such as Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and Angelique Kidjo amongst many others.
But finally I found what I’ve had my doubts on from the beginning. This guy “Marvin Pontiac” was just a fictional character all made up by Lurie himself. The music on the record was actually written by Lurie and performed by a bunch of well – known session musicians from New York just a decade ago. The well respected artists Bowie, Cohen, Kidjo who gave this project an alibi were obviously all in on the joke.
I was finally satisfied but shocked for hours by the beauty and genius of this scam. I had been completely taken away by the mythological and interesting character of Pontiac whom I thought were making extraordinary and totally forgotten music and then, to my big surprise, just didn’t exist.
Consequently I’ll take the oppurtunity to post another beautiful track as an tribute to the myth of Marvin Pontiac and to his originator. If you want to know more of him there’s a fictional biography on Allmusic.com. My last wish is that somebody out there (Finders Keepers?) understands this treasure and re-releases “his work” on wax.
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Are we prepared for dealing with the prospect that humanity is not the end of evolution? Will Nano technology, Biogenetics and Robotics catalyst a new transhuman specie? Prepare yourself for the Singularity.
Belöning erhålles för svar – en mix ihopsmält av Kvark
Johan Timman – Hearing (Ocean of Sound)
(Trip Into The Body – Electronic Music/A Digital Audiophile Record, Fleet Benelux 1981)
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Kommande tisdag bjuder Prejka-kollektivet in favoriten Mika Snickars. Spelningen ledsagas av en bokstavligen dagsfärsk Mix, sprungen ur Mikas personliga och fulkomligt ouppnåeliga skivvalv. Mika tycker om att spela i Malmö. Detta på grund av att skåningar har lätt(are) för att dansa.
Vi ses på tisdag!
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Prejka
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Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1960) is a documentary film set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, and filmed and directed by noted commercial and fashion photographer Bert Stern.
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Ved – Evergreens, en film av Henrik Kihlberg till en låt från skivan Gerschwin’s Pipe. Postapokalyptisk öken-boogie för hela slanten. Obs, varning! Det är väldigt episkt!
P.s. Farbror Henrik spelar för övrigt ett av instrumenten i bandet Beast
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Nu är det dags! Ved fullängdsvinyl släpps på lördag den 17nde. Och detta firas med konsert och fest på Babel.
Samtidigt firar skivbutiken Rundgång 6-år. Gratis innan 23, Ved spelar 24 och som en extrabonus spelar det nya stjärnskottet på Psychic Malmös himmel Beast efter Ved!

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PSYKE006 CDr release 2008, illustration by Caroline Andersson. Music by Rasmus Svensson.
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A.R. & Machines – Invitations (excerpt)
(This is the first section of the 20 minutes and 40 seconds long opening track of the album Echo, from 1972)
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Det underbara svenska orgelproggfolkmysbandet Mackaper spelar live på Sommarscen ons 7/7 kl 19.00. Dock inte på Pildamsteatern utan på Sibbarp vid havet och bryggorna. Hoppa på buss 34 på Möllevångstorget så tar den er hela vägen fram till Sibbarps bad. Piece of a cookie!
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Simply beautiful!
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Foto av Maya Hultmann
(Sällskapa Mig Genom Natten, 1981, Slick Records)
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