FREE RECORDS GIVE-AWAY
La Vice and Company
Two Sisters from Bagdad
Jazzman reissue, limited to 1000 numbered copies
Behold one of two or three LPs that I would actually pay more than $1000 for. This thing is deep in Detroit record collecting legend. Stories that folks have sent angry emails to Popsike asking them to remove completed auction listings so as not to obscure how rare it may or may not be. That hundreds of copies were destroyed in a basement flood. That it wasn’t really that good of a record.
The main driver behind the demand and apocrypha behind this record is the unparalleled funk of the track “Thoughs Were the Days” (sic). Featured on Numero Group’s “Good God” A Gospel Funk Hynmal” comp from 2006, that’s clearly how most folks became aware of this disc. But with literally no more than a handful of original copies known out there, even just getting to hear the rest of the album was a task, one even I was unable to accomplish until this straight full reissue landed in my lap.
In the hubbub after the “Freedom at 21” flexi-disc had sold for $4000+ on eBay, I half-jokingly offered up a copy of said flexi as a straight trade for “Two Sisters From Bagdad” on the record nerd site Waxidermy. The response was “A one-tracker for a one-tracker.” Even just last week, a buddy deep and dear to this record said everything on this record except “Thoughs Were the Days” was “soft.”
So with the understated, repetitive opening of “Happy and Blessed” and I couldn’t help but feel frustratingly PISSED that I’d gone so long without hearing this. The variety on the album is wonderfully varied, slightly odd and the EXACT thing I imagine when I cannot sleep at night.
Background: this LP is the soundtrack accompaniment to a play of the same name that ran at Music Hall at Detroit’s Center for the Performing Arts for two weeks in August 1973. The production was a flop and the description below may explain why so few copies sold in the lobby of the performance…
“The play was the story of two sisters who met their earthly demise very early in life and were joined together in Heaven. But there was also a character named Jake, who was an agent from Hell whose job was to recruit people from Heaven because Hell was not getting the people they were used to receiving. Well, Jake got a little frisky with one of the sisters and it appeared that one of the sisters became pregnant and the two were kicked out of Heaven and had to go to Hell. Of course, the Devil took a liking to the other sisters while Jake was wrestling with this thing called LOVE.”
(quote from Ernest Garrison, composer/arranger for the album, brother-in-law to “Bagdad’s” playwright, La Vice Hendricks)
To me, odd, hodgepodge neighborhood productions, something only a couple hundred people ever saw, with no filmed evidence and (seemingly) no extant script…this is what I live for. Such a unique snapshot of a time and place, that no matter how in-depth liner notes may go, no matter how clear they explain the premise of a Hendrick’s “personal commitment to introduce non-racial comedy to a city that has been separated by crime, narcotic and racial differences” highlighted by an all-black ensemble…I will NEVER really know or understand what exactly it was like to witness the performance. It is the absolute definition of ephemeral. And honestly, I feel like the songs legitimately smoke and all those record nerds calling this a “one-tracker” are out of their minds. I STRONGLY urge to give this one a listen, even just to appreciate the industriousness of an endeavor, that while failed during its time, is beautiful and compelling near 45 years after its creation.
Side notes:
- I think the drive behind my appreciation for this record is the same as my newfound and ever-spiraling appreciation for school band and church records. So many unexplored possibilities! So many flops! You’ll never know or find them all…that makes good collecting.
- My mother-in-law and her younger sister were literally “two sisters from Baghdad” (the production got the spelling wrong) living in Detroit in 1973. I oftentimes play fantastical feats of imagination and conspiracy theorist trying to make them the inspiration for this record.
- My grade school put on a production of a play I recall as named “Let’s Put on a Show” in the mid-Nineties. We did similar productions every year. Equal parts musical and spoken dialogue, I am DYING to know who in the hell actually wrote these things? How did they get into the hands of my music teacher? Was this a profitable endeavor for the composer? I believe my brother has a VHS copy of the entire show and I am DYING to see it, to go back and relive the awkwardness (each production had a token “rap” song that always received HUGE laughs from the largely white and moderately suburban parents that, even as a child, felt misguided). We never put on a production of ANYTHING that I’d heard of/seen ANYWHERE else. No “Annie”, no “Godspell”…just some random rinky-dink thing that I’d never hear/see again in my life…AND IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. I’ve gone on here before about the difficultly of a memory that has no outside corroboration…these things PAIN me. Bro is supposedly working on getting a transfer. I will happily upload to YouTube if it happens.
And since you’ve made it this far…FREE RECORDS! It probably slipped past most folks, but TMR did three co-release 7-inch singles with the wonderful folks at Numero Group last year. La Vice and Company’s “Thoughs Were the Days” b/w “Yes I Do” was one of them. Word out there says 200 pressed but it may have been a little more than that. Anyway, I’ve got a stash here. Post a comment, a good one. Maybe it relates to the feelings/thoughts I described above? Maybe it doesn’t. I’ll pick one (or a few) and you’ll get some free, limited edition 7” singles landing in your mail box. How cool is that? And if you’ve got a line on an original…I am listening.
Thanks!
Fun coming home to an unexpected TMR package. Thank you!
What fun! Thank you!
Received <3
WINNERS HAVE BEEN SELECTED! Keep your eyes peeled on your mailbox!
You talk about your “drive” for the record and also the record nerd website guy trading and such, and an apparent sale of an album for 4K? What is this? Anyway just the other day I had a very odd thing happen to me that I’m still having a hard time sleeping on (it’s 4:15 am here in WA) then again it could be a crying baby. So let me start with this: I used to have an insanely cool record collection, living somewhat near subpop headquarters I used to go there every time my family drive 4 hours to Seattle and pick an album out, some neat ones from the 90s and such and also buy tour edition copies from bands they would send east of the cascades like Calvin Harris on K records in Olympia lol, signed with a drawing of a random animal in sharpie. It was cool to me anyway and when I hit college and needed money I got rid of EVERYTHING. Just recently after the birth of my first child and a newly discovered love for the music I used to listen to (I’ve come full circle over 10 years) I decided I should see what Jack White is up to as last time I had bought any record was around 2007. I discover TMR, see some interviews on tv and see the sheer scale and just how cool you guys are doing vinyl and realize I’m missing out now. Fast forward to the other day and I’m driving home from working my desk job as an environmental scientist on the most “contaminated radioactive site in North America” and I remember that we do have ONE record store/comic store thing in town and I’m in “Hanford Traffic” standstill right in front of it. I call them using Siri and ask the guy, George, “do you have any TMR records, I want to start listening to Vinyl again because my 8 month old I’m sure would find our old turntable working very cool” just making conversation keep in mind I’m not getting home any time soon in this traffic. He laughs and says he will have a look in the system. He finds a copy of “Blunderbuss” an apparently very cool looking lighting bolt copy and says that’s all they have “up on the wall right now” so I’m thinking that will be the perfect starting piece to my new collection and commitment to TMRs endeavors. He reads me the price and such and tells me where in the store it is, by this time I’m pulling into a parking spot in the mini mall “Uprown Shopping Center” and I tell him thank you I’ll be in to pick it up in, well I’m here lol. I walk in, there’s George and his ponytail pointing me to their tiny little record room/coffee cart inside and the “vinyl guy” Chris or something in his Pink Floyd t shirt begins a counter full of pins sand patches. I walk up all full of joy and pride that I’m returning to my youth and my wife won’t be pissed I’m buying such a cool looking and great sounding album. I tell the kid I was the guy on the phone “George said you were getting an album down for me? Jack White?” He looks nervous. Says to me “dude so sorry I literally just sold that record 30 seconds ago, guy just walked out with it.” I was just shocked more than the lightning bold on the album that I should be listening to. I run over and ask George what is going on? He says I have no idea it was just there, I ask how long it’s been I store… “2 and a half years or so”. So I’m now just thinking honestly what are the chances I randomly decide to start a collection, decide to call that day, they have the record of the artist I just started listening to again and am going to see in Portland in August, and in 2.5 years at the same second someone named “Eric, who has more records than this store, HUGE collector” says the “vinyl counter” bro… It was like he was in stop motion, my brain was in “does not comput” mode. So shady. Well I just got back in my vehicle and rejoined traffic. I figure the huge collection guy must have heard ol George across the store telling me about the album and bought it that is all I can think of then dissolved because I was in there so fast it makes zero sense. Anyway, I must have done someone wrong that day because I’ve never felt so spun.. So I’ve been buying other records since to try to console myself, but the thought that I could’ve had a cool piece of TMR history I had watched on the interview that I have been missing out on for years is keeping me thinking it is “Such a trick pretending not to be doing what you want to” lol -TricksterRaven, Josh in WA
For some reason this made me think of the play that we put on in 4th grade and that I can’t remember how and I know that it was for Christmas and somehow ET was involved in someone had to make a giant paper mache ET head for one of the boys to wear I didn’t understand then and I’m sure most of the parents in the audience didn’t either and I still don’t how ET fits into a Christmas program. And so because my brain works this way I’ve gone from ET and Christmas and music to Annie and dressing up as Annie in the fourth grade at Halloween it’s so strange how are memories string together and go from one thing to another. A strange question that most people can’t answer that I like to ask is what was the first song or music you remember ever hearing. Strangely enough the first thing I remember vividly as like a two or three-year-old was my dad putting on his vinyl copy of the Chipmunks sing The Beatles
send me the 45", i will display it beside my crying towel.
Happy and blessed the summers be shinning at their best in the desert see two sisters shinning in the capital.
My 2 year old son has a yellow tie similar to yours. He loves music and gets so excited when i crank up the hi-fi system.