I long thought of this as my favourite album by the Orchestra. Listening to Union Cafe last year called that into question. But who really cares, eh? If there were 100 albums in my top 50, wouldn't that be a cause to celebrate, rather than to argue about which should be excluded? (I guess the other option would be to berate me for my lack of numeracy… but hold your fire as there aren't 100 yet.)
Different strands of the album have drawn me to it at different times over the past quarter century. At first it was the catchiness of Walk, Don't Run (long before I knew of The Ventures) and Ecstasy of Dancing Fleas, "dancing fleas" being what "ukulele" means in Hawaiian (Wikipedia says "jumping flea", but let's allow some poetic licence).
For a long time I didn't really get Numbers 1-4, which, Orchestra leader Simon Jeffes would explain in live performance, could also be called Numbers 1, 2, 4 — one of his many quasi-Pythagorean mathematical-musicological constructions, which I'll probably never get. But somewhere in the last couple of decades, I realised that, never mind the details of its construction, this is one of the most sublime pieces of music I've ever heard. I listened on headphones at the weekend, and, amazingly/delightfully, heard things going on there that I don't remember noticing before. There's a little chuckle just before it starts. Such things — coughs, yelps of delight and of being caught unawares by the music — are rife on the album. But another thing too: a repetitive gentle sound that runs more or less throughout in the background, like a breath or the breaking of waves on a shingly shore, but with slightly faster temp than either.
Elsewhere I think the Orchestra's sense of playful dada fun is more evident here than on any of their other albums. I suppose Telephone and Rubber Band is one example of that. Many accusations could be levelled at the performance of Salty Bean Fumble, but that of over-rehearsal would not be one. Fumble by name, fumble by nature. A healthy lack of respect for the idea of recording as inscribing a 'definitive' version.
Not so long ago I got a CD of the remastered version, but there's little wrong with my LP, apart from some small brown marks on the cover, a bit like liver spots, which I assume are the result of a little moisture over a long period. Have you got any tips for how to avoid or remove these? All I've found is these restoration tips, which don't seem to deal with exactly this problem. And the solutions are things like putting your cover in a microwave oven. Our microwave couldn't take anything much larger than a 7" single.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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