Reason 2,472 that I love Amoeba: I wake up, I read the paper (online, of course) and always find some neato thing!
Today, this is the patch of online journalism that jolts me - somewhere between a good cup of coffee and shock-paddles de resuscitare, I find this description of a man shopping at Amoeba Music, the one on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California:
from the calendar section of the LA Times:
'... These [albums] were not of mere musical interest to Boyd. He produced them. And throughout the store there's plenty more of his handiwork: influential albums by innovative English folk-rock group
Fairport Convention and its most famous alums,
Richard Thompson and the late
Sandy Denny; the idiosyncratic work of Scottish psychedelic-folk avatars the
Incredible String Band; and the singular sounds from the too-brief life of singer-songwriter
Nick Drake.
Although that music stands on its own merits, the value is even more evident in the presence here of many younger acts claiming influence from Boyd's catalog, from R.E.M. (which recruited him to produce the 1985
"Fables of the Reconstruction" album) to the currently acclaimed crop of "freak-folk" figures such as
Devendra Banhart and (seen to your left)
Joanna Newsom, who talk of music associated with Boyd in hushed, reverent tones."
... so, ,maybe
Miss Ess, purveyor of music lit world-wide, can blog to us all one day and tell us what she thought of this man's new book:
"White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s."