The True Vine
3544 Hickory Ave.
Baltimore, MD

Telephone: 410 235 4500

open hours:
Tues. to Sat. 12 – 9
Sun. & Mon. 12 – 6

hello,
this is jason speaking.  there’s alot to say & not much time to type it but i’ll give it a shot.

today is wed. oct. 21st 2009 & at some point today jad fair’s brother david will arrive from coldwater, michigan to the true vine with a truck crammed full of vinyl for us to sell. jad called me last week to tell me that he & david have decided to sell both their entire large record collections to this shop. both collections have been in storage for a long time & some of these records were from their first record purchasing days in the 70′s.

if you know some history about half japanese then you could imagine as much as i could that there would be some very interesting music in these boxes. about 20 years ago when i had a record shop in frederick, md, david dropped off a pile of amazing records on my desk for me to borrow.  everything in that stack was amazing & that was the first time i heard jandek. half of those records were jandek lps. the amount of records between the two of them is easily in the thousands & david’s drop off today will be part 1 of two drop offs. the next will be in about 3 months from now.

the true vine cdr series has now tripled in size.  most have been assembled by me & a few have been assembled by owen gardner. owen’s titles are from nigeria, india & morrocco. mine are all over the place. here is a cut up montage of music from the new titles:

peter blasser has just finished a new instrument which is a much smaller sidrassi organ & it sounds amazing. it has two chaos wheels & two pitch wheels on the sides. this is different to the original, which has one of each located on the top. this means that you can manipulate the wheels on the side while playing the top with your thumbs. the sound is more full bodied & the touch sensitivity is higher than the previous sidrassi. he made three prototypes & we have one of them here for sale & hooked up so you can try it out. it’s hooked into a little stereo system which you will see on a glass case to the right when you walk in the door. the prototypes are $595 & at some point in the future when the right manufacturer is discovered
to make the circuit boards, the price will be lower. if you’ve never heard the first inacrnation of the sidrassi organ & you’re interested, here is clip that greg szeto made with me last year, doing a short demonstration:

karl has plans for a new instrument & he will be ready to talk about it in our next update.

two nice receivers & one nice turntable just came in on consignment. call for details if you’re interested.

we now have a newly built record bin in the front window that is full of classical vinyl. this is an experiment, as classical vinyl can be a very slow seller but i want to try it because i’ve heard that a decent selection of classical vinyl in a record store is hard to find. we will see how that works out.

ALSO (owen speaking): look out for the “special” debut performance by brand-new true vine power-trio (jason willett, owen gardner, martin schmidt) opening for nyc’s premier post-classical drum square, so percussion, and appearing alongside balwash new music titans microkingdom and gestures. it’s all happening at the metro gallery at 8pm on wednesday, october 28th for $10 in advance or $12 at the door.

days later (halloween), a spooky spectacular at the golden west featuring dj jason willett. bring your costume!

weeks after that, a very lucky friday the 13th when the pleasant livers play the zodiac with janitor. jason djs afterward.

the very next night, you laugh and cry thanks to heavy head jandek, backed by a variety of local weirdos including our very own jason willett, twig harper, susan alcorn and a drummer yet to be determined. the venue might be 2640 but it might not, so we’ll let you know if we find out otherwise.

on the 20th jason djs a baltimore free school benefit on his birthday (also st. edmund’s feast day). come cheer on the birthday boy while you support a great local institution-to-be. that’ll be $5-$10 and on the 3rd floor of the h&h building.

last but not least, on december 5th come on over to floristree for a very special transmodern fundraiser at which you’ll have the rare pleasure of witnessing a collaboration between dj jason willett and baltimore’s cherished west side marching band. doesn’t that sound awesome?

back to you, jason:

amongst the many recent titles that have come in recently we have:

jason urick’s new full length lp with his head replacing the naked bodies of john lennon & yoko ono on the cover (partially in glow in the dark ink).

thank you’s new 300 limited press lp which is actually thank you being remixed in a non techno way by asa osborne/joe williams, jason urick, & dan deacon.

arrington dionyso’s new “rock” cd on k records which wont be released to the rest of the world until november. we also have two very limited tracks from the record hand lathe cut by arrington onto flexi disc with handmade art inside & out.

new releases on mississippi records.

rare blues, prog, techno, jazz & rock vinyl.

jacques dutronc double vinyl of his early mod cuts & francoise hardy picture sleeve 7″s.

lots of groovy/funky, avant garde, psychedelic & international cds.

on & on & on but no more time to type words so….

goodbye for now.

love,
jason

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