Touch and Go Records Make My Month

The Black Heart Procession are one of my favorite bands. I discovered them after a glowing review of their 1999 sophomore album, 2, was printed in an independent local paper, and fell in love with the recording’s haunting lo-fi sound, the band’s unique instrumentation (the third track on 2, “A Light So Dim,” lists drums, guitar, saw, SH-1000, waterphone, noises, piano, organ, and toy piano), and the sense of lovelorn desperation running through the lyrics:

There are no trains that leave from the maze
Your only chance was a ship to escape
You’ll be the lighthouse in the storm
I’ll be the ship with a thousand dead souls
But how long will they believe in a light so dim?
Down in the gallows the darkness glows
But it’s hard to see in the hearts of them
If you see a light, call down below
I’ll be moving and sorting out our fears
But how long will we believe in a light so dim?
Time is all we have, so take the time
Time is all we have, so take the time to make the time
Throw down the line, I’ll see to climb
If it’s held close it may just work
If you are the lighthouse in the storm
I’ll be the ship filled with a thousand dead souls
Time is all we have, so take the time
Time is all we have, so take the time
Time is all we have, so take the time to make the time

BHP released another album soon thereafter, which I relished at least as much. But that’s where my collecting stopped. When their fourth album dropped, I was locked away in a prison cell with no music but what came through a portable Panasonic tape player that got intermittent, fuzzy radio reception.

A friend hosted a weekly punk show on KKFI, an independent Kansas City public radio station, and sometimes she’d break up sets of Crass, the Misfits, and Nashville Pussy to dedicate a song to me, off one of the CDs from my at-home collection. Thanks to Madeline’s (now long gone) show and Sonic Spectrum, with Robert Moore, a much-respected local dejay, I got my occasional fix of Black Heart Procession music and was able to keep up with sporadic bits of their later work. Some I captured on cassette tapes, which I then played over and over and over again, heedless as always to the dangers of nostalgia, but genuinely happy.

The prison eventually allowed its inmate population to buy CD players and to mail order discs from approved vendors, which was nice, but by then I’d compiled a little bestiary of mix tapes I was loath to part with. A few things I’d recorded were irreplaceable — live in-studio or onstage sets — giving me at least one solid reason not to make the switch to digital. Quantity was another. The rules cap inmates’ collections at twenty cassettes or CDs, so switching meant ditching my ninety-minute recordings for a format that averaged just over half that playing time. However, new releases weren’t available on tape. As wave after wave of unfamiliar sounds washed over my bulwarks like the songs of sirens, my resolve crumbled. It was only a matter of time before I surrendered and dived in.

Compact discs were already on their way out by then, surpassed in popularity by compressed-bitrate convenience, and the few vendors that still did business with the incarcerated, via certified checks and postal delivery — Union Supply Direct, Music by Mail, Walkenhorst’s, Pack Central — carried only a smattering of CDs by the Billboard-uncharted bands and artists I most enjoy. My Deserted Island Collection is comprised of some great stuff today, all of it from the aforementioned companies, but there’s not much else they stock that I’m itching for. To get that, I had to change how I scratched.

“Dear Touch and Go Records,” I wrote a couple of months ago, explaining as concisely as I could, to whomever happened to check the company’s mailbox, how profoundly I love the Black Heart Procession’s music, how 2 was the band’s only album I’d been able to track down and order, and how my unfortunate circumstances made buying from an amply stocked online vendor, such as Amazon, impossible. “Can you help me?” I practically begged.

With an enclosed self-addressed, stamped envelope I suspected might never get used, I dropped my letter in the box. A reply came soon. It was handwritten on tan stationary with the Touch and Go logo in red at the top of the page. At the bottom, in the same red, was printed, “the nice label”:

Hi Byron,

Thanks for writing, and thanks for your interest in the Black Heart Procession! We haven’t had a mail order division in around five years, so we looked around for a store/vendor who could fulfill your request. Somewhat surprisingly, we couldn’t find one... The Internet has made ordering music by mail go the way of the dinosaur. So... we decided to make a one-time exception in this case and ship an order to you directly.

The writer went on to list all three albums I wanted that the Black Heart Procession put out through Touch and Go — Three, Amore del Tropico, and The Spell — with prices and shipping costs.

Here’s the thing: I realize that Touch and Go Records is a business, meaning their clear and obvious goal is to make money, and that, in the interest of money-making, collecting about forty dollars on the sale of some older merchandise that wasn’t moving makes good sense. But there were so many reasons for them to have ignored my letter — that its return address was a prison; that indulging my unorthodox request would be a hassle; that the payoff, even for a struggling indie label, would amount to chump change.... “The nice label,” indeed. It’s a gesture that makes me smile, just thinking about it.

My package of BHP CDs should be arriving any day now. A friend with his own copy of Three, when I mentioned this serendipitous tidbit to him, suggested we throw a listening party (“musically group our consciousness with a great album,” he elaborated) once my order gets here. At a prearranged date and time, we’ll cue it up simultaneously and revel in the melodies. Music like a talisman joining faraway friends. If it’s held close, it may just work.

My Prison Possessions

Everything I own has to fit inside a metal footlocker that sits along one wall of my small two-man cell, so stuff is kept to a minimum. But what stuff does this refer to, exactly? Aside from an inordinate amount of paperwork, impeccably organized in folders and a huge accordion file, and without the assorted hygeine items and foodstuffs from the Crossroads canteen I keep on hand, the list that follows encompasses everything that Byron C. Case has to his name. May your voyeuristic curiosities be sated at last.

* * * * *

This is my Old Faithful — the machine on which I've written everything for the past six years, from blog posts to book manuscripts. It's my life support system. That said, I'd prefer a laptop in my cell (even an Apple product, at this point).

The aging TV that sits on the shelf in my cell is missing a button, shows reds as magentas on one area of the screen, and, on the average day, gets an hour and a half of use. The canteen sells flat screen TVs now, but The Walking Dead, The Americans, American Horror Story, and an occasional movie don't justify the exorbitant upgrade cost.  

The canteen stopped selling boomboxes in 2004. Mine was one of the last few. Its analog tuner isn't great, but the external antenna means I get good enough reception within my concrete-and-steel box to listen to the two radio stations that, for a few hours a week, play music I like.

Oh, the Precioussssss! We loves the Precious, yes we does. We needs its singing in our headses, to get away from the nasty sounds. We hates the sounds. CDs makes us happy, makes us happy, makes us happy. Musics makes us forget the walls and the evil sounds.

Historically I've hated how best-of compilations are put together. Crackle, by Bauhaus, is an exception, featuring the heartbeat-quickening drums of "In The Flat Field", the morose bat-cave hit "Bela Lugosi's Dead", and the twinkling, uplifting "Spirit". This album is the perfect cure for days when ennui starts creeping on: a "Kick in the Eye" usually does the trick.

This is beautiful, melancholy lo-fi rock from one of the best bands to debut in the '90s. 2 is the Black Heart Procession's second album, and makes the ideal soundtrack to solo wintertime walks around the snowy prison yard.

I like to put this album of Black Tape for a Blue Girl's atmospheric synths, swooning strings, and dramatic vocals on whenever I need to transport myself elsewhere, far away from my harsh confines.

One of my friends, a fellow Depeche Mode fan, has a hard time understanding why I like the grunge- and gospel-kissed Songs of Faith and Devotion as much as the synth-pop pioneers' prior hit album (the dark masterpiece Violator). I guess it's the exultant vocals and full sonic palette that have made this record so personally relevant, all these years.

Captivating vocals by Dave Gahan, strong songwriting by Martin Gore, and a studio crammed with vintage synths and drum machines make Depeche Mode's 2009 release, Sounds of the Universe, an invigorating, inspiring listen.

On these cabaret punks' first single, Amanda Palmer sings, "This bridge was written / to make you feel smitten / with my sad picture of girl getting bitter". And it worked. I've been in love with the quirky music of the Dresden Dolls ever since this 2003 debut album.

No, Virginia... is easily the best collection of outtakes I've heard by any band or artist. True to form, this final (?) album from the duo of Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione (together, the Dresden Dolls) alternately tugs and tears listeners' heart strings: "Night Reconnaisance" is a song about stealing lawn ornaments; a double amputee finds love online, in "Ultima Espiranza"; and the smoldering "Boston" pins down the terrible, temporary transcendence of romantic love.

From the liner notes that accompany The Best of Joy Division: "because we all live in dream worlds // because we remember when we were young // because the helpless dead tend to be visited by the sentimental, and not necessarily profitless, exertions of the living".

I remember nicking Pretty Hate Machine from my father's massive music collection when I was twelve, then skulking off to listen to it in my room, heavy curtains drawn. Even back then, I recognized the dark dance-floor magic at work on Trent Reznor's first Nine Inch Nails recording.

I wasn't even two years old when Telekon  — the last good Gary Numan album until the '90s — came out. Still, its themes of alienation and emotional confusion, set to Numan's synthesizer-driven arrangements, became the soundtrack to my young adult life. The single "We Are Glass" gives me chills every time I hear it.

With production by a small army of big names in synth-pop, EBM, and industrial music, Gary Numan's two-disc Hybrid Sessions features newly recorded favorites, both recent and vintage, by the godfather of electronic music. These fresh variations of "Cars", "Down in the Park", and "Are 'Friends' Electric?" make me wish I could take a compact sports-tuned import out for a midday zoom. For me, this is feel-good music.

Amanda Palmer's first solo album, recorded after the Dresden Dolls were mothballed. Ben Folds produced, and among the guest artists to appear are St. Vincent and former Dead Kennedys guitarist, East Bay Ray. It's piano rock to make Elton John blush, Billy Joel flee in terror, and Regina Spektor break into tears.

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Brooklyn, a young cellist formed a band with two other fetching cello-players. They called this band Rasputina. The music they played together was very loud indeed, and it was often full of snark and obscure historial references to make the townspeople smirk and titter into their cuffs and nosegays. And so did the traveling minstrels bring much joy to the land, and, in particular, to one pale lad locked deep in a dungeon in a distant kingdom....

The first Siouxsie & the Banshees album I ever owned was the ornate, poppy Superstition, but the deeper I delved into their post-punk back catalog, the more I found to like. When the jagged sound of Juju was being set down at Surrey Sound, in England, I was just two years old, but the recording's smart, irreverent, drum-heavy tracks (such as "Into the Light" and "Arabian Nights") make that chronological tidbit meaningless.

Peepshow marked what I consider the band's full embrace of the dark pop sound that brought Siouxsie & the Banshees their almost-mainstream status, here in the US. The album's big single, "Peek-a-Boo", still gets radio play today, but the track I'm most enamored with here is "Ornaments of Gold".

Various Failures. The title alone makes it easy for me to overlook my usual dislike of compilation albums. This two-disc set includes almost all of my favorite Swans songs from the 1988-1992 period, including "The Other Side of the World", "Love Will Save You", "Blind", and "Please Remember Me". Melancholy? Sure, sometimes. Misanthropic? Almost comically so. Masterful? Without a doubt.

If I were only allowed to listen to one album for the rest of my life, it would be Replicas. The lonely-android rock that typified Gary Numan's early songwriting was never better than it was on songs like "Me! I Disconnect from You" and "We Have a Technical". And the futuristic angst of "Down in the Park" will probably haunt modern synth-pop acts for decades still to come.

I discovered the neo-goth dance music of Nika Roza Danilova (who records as Zola Jesus) through a magazine review, which led me to her delectable 2010 Valusia EP. She immediately leapt to the top of my list of  noteworthy recent artists after I listened to the retro-tinged "Hikikomori" and the simple lamentations of piano and her soulful voice on "Skin", both from this debut LP, Conatus.

I prefer my New Oxford American Dictionary because of its Oxford pedigree and because it's not fusty, like American Heritage, or seemingly dumbed down, like Merriam Webster. This third edition gets referenced many times a day, in my writing hours, and almost never leaves me without a sold answer to my queries.

For when that perfect word eludes me. A thesaurus will just as easily lead a writer astray as point her to a worthy synonym, but the organization of this particular Roget's by category, rather than by alphabetical word listings, comes in handy when I want to find, say, a list of phobias by subject (fear of worms = vermiphobia), or of the events in a triathlon (100-meter dash, high jump, shot put). 

A fan. Because otherwise summers would mean slow-roasting in my allegedly climate-controlled cell. Why is the housing clear? Presumably so prisoners with more furtive intentions than I do can't stash contraband inside.

I really do wish my Casio wristwatch had an alarm, but it's better than nothing. You're probably asking yourself, "Why does someone in prison need to know what time it is?" If you have to ask, you'll never know.