friday refrains · mysterious vinyl
Friday 26 October 2007 | I like a cookie
The other day in the thrift shop across the street (one good thing about this godforsaken town in which we live), I found the Brujo hooting over a record I in fact remember very well from my childhood: Janny’s Covenant Woman. Later images of Janny make it look as if she’s a big lesbo and doing a kind of Cris Williamson/Holly Near/Ferron women’s music thing—only for Sparrow, a decidedly Xian record label; but disappointingly, her current website refers pointedly and repeatedly to her husband of many years. Of course my mom and I had the exact same haircut/style, a ginormous fearsome Jesus-fro that caused me no end of pain and suffering when I was about 13, already particularly fragile age at which to be subjected to a perm. I’ll never forget the kindness of a random girl at Bible camp who offered to straighten it with her curling iron. I remember looking in the mirror afterward and wailing with gratitude, “I look like myself again!” It took that damn perm three years to grow out, and my self-image was never the same.
Then today Ms. Librarian emailed me a link from Vinyl Mysteries, over which I’ve literally giggled until I’ve cried, wiping away tears and typing this post all at once. Dave N’ Jan’s Born Twice! Hitler’s Inferno Vol 2., Marches, Songs, Speeches of Nazi Germany! Florence Foster Jenkins’ The Glory (????) of the Human Voice (check out her Wiki entry)! Creepy Marcy Sings To Children! And perhaps my favorite album cover, the deceptively straightforward Mexican Folk Songs, with our nameless curator’s bemused commentary: “Just what every white suburban pre-teen wants, Mexican folk songs that they can sing along with. There’s something almost disturbing about how much fun these kids seem to be having. Maybe the photo was cropped just enough to hide the bottle of tequila they’ve been sharing throughout side 1.” Make haste to study these mysteries! The mystery being, how these records ever got printed in the first place.
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