This record forms the other part of a pair in my collection, with the Recommended Records Sampler. Though it also connects with each of the albums over the last five days, as Chris Cutler (a main man at Recommended and editor of the Quarterly) is only one degree of separation from key players in each of them. He was a member of Pere Ubu briefly in the late '80s and '90s. Though not a relation of Ivor Cutler (surely?), he must have collaborated with that album's producers, David Toop and Steve Beresford. Both Cutler and Gavin Bryars played on tracks on the Miniatures
The Rē Records Quarterly was a kind of agit-prop forerunner of the Unknown Public CD-Journal, though the lifespans of the two periodicals overlapped for a few years in the eary- to mid-'90s. Both introduced their subscribers to music so out-of-the-way that they would never have come across it otherwise, and both complemented the music with extensive text, in this case a 44-page magazine. Just like Unknown Public, the RēR Quarterly was anything but quarterly: Cutler's editorial begins with what we now know as the blogger's lament, "sorry I haven't been writing here as much as I meant to." In the case of bloggers, that apology often seems faintly conceited — like you think we care? — but I guess it's different when your subscribers have, you know, subscribed with money.
There's relatively little connecting the RēR magazine with the record. Bill Sharp of Biota contributes notes on the recording of their piece on the album, Early Rest Home, under the Eno-esque title "The Recording Studio as a Compositional Instrument (No.3)." Meanwhile Peter Blegvad contributes both a track to the record (as a member of The Big Guns) and one of his graphic essays, pictured below, to the magazine.
Four years ago I was at the Lyric Hammersmith waiting for a Linda Thompson revue show to start when a very tall man asked me to stand so he and his companion could reach their seats. As he went past, he commented with approval on the copy of Word magazine on my lap. I looked up: it was Peter Blegvad — who has since started contributing similar graphics to Word. His companion was Tracey MacLeod. Now, I've already told you that I only ever stalked anyone on one occasion, so you'll have to believe that it was only coincidence that I overheard enough of their conversation to establish that they were not intimate.
I never subscribed to the Quarterly, and this is the only issue I got — £7.49 from the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, probably the same place I got the Recommended Records Sampler. It's dated January 1986.
I kind of like all the tracks in different ways. I first saw Roger Turner as his manic improv percussion in about 1986, and have always had a soft spot for him. Cutler's own polynational ensemble Cassix takes up most of Side 2, and could be called early post-rock if that weren't such an absurdity, or because it's an absurdity.
| Buy a compilation of tracks from Volume 1 of the Quarterly direct from Recommended |
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