2007: ANUSTART

Because GIS tragically bricked with regards to the real prize, which I swear on my life I've actually seen

Polmo Polpo, "Kiss Me Again And Again"
Dinosaur L, "Kiss Me Again" (version) (ripped at 320kbps)
Dinosaur L, "Kiss Me Again" (ripped at 320kbps)

As far as I can see it, vinyl only serves two functions in the age of digital music. The first is pretty obvious: there's simply a ton of music only available on vinyl, most commonly either really old stuff which has lapsed out of print or really (like, oppressively) new stuff taking advantage of the medium's cost-effectiveness. The other is probably just as obvious, but, courtesy of the legions of vinyl acolytes, almost certainly for the wrong reasons: vinyl gives you access to more of a song than a MP3 might otherwise make available to you. I know, I know: this is typically the point where I should start rambling on about records' "warmth" and "presence" and all sorts of other codewords for "I still live with my parents", but I happen to be of the opinion that that shit's for the birds - not that it's not true, of course, but I'm just not one of those people who thinks that the way a song sounds on vinyl is necessarily the way it's supposed to sound. It would be different, of course, if listening to digital music didn't involve any acknowledgement of those kinds of characteristics, but I just can't get past the idea that asking just where the hell those virtues are on a MP3 still entails enteracting with them in the first place; the image that always pops up in my mind is the bit from 24 Hour Party People (which I assume you've all watched twenty or thirty times like me) where Tony Wilson drags Joy Division out to the car to hear what "She's Lost Control" sounds like over crappy car speakers. In other words, just because an ideal way to hear something exists doesn't necessarily mean you're entitled to it; hell, in the long run a lot of non-ideal ways end up getting canonized as aesthetic strategies rather than songs hitting the walls of their limitations. I mean, back when I was growing up, sounding brittle and faux like an 80s synthpop song was to be rigorously avoided; now we've got both Panic! At The Disco and She Wants Revenge stacking bundles off of it. Okay, bad example.

But that doesn't mean vinyl doesn't give you access to more. When I bought my turntable, I knew in my bones that it was just a matter of time before I gave into the urge to buy a good copy of "Kiss Me Again"; by this point I can't really list my five favorite songs without it popping up, and no matter how many times I play it I never seem to come close to getting sick of it, and luckily for me I seem to be repellent to women so I've got nothing but money to play around with (well, repellent up until I wrote everything after "so", anyway). More pressingly, there's a b-side to "Kiss Me Again" (the "version" listed above) which I'd never knowingly heard (I decided to pass on Optimo's Psyche Out before investigating more fully, although it did lead me to this song so I can't bring myself to talk too much shit); buying the vinyl would finally let me hear it (not to mention provide me with some tempting bait for the legions of recent Arthur Russell converts, of whose number I happily count myself).

But most importantly, the only format I've ever heard "Kiss Me Again" in is 192kbps MP3 format, which is adequate in the same sense that would empower someone to claim familiarity with War & Peace after listening to an unabridged audiobook read by Gilbert Gottfried. Obviously it was good enough; "Kiss Me Again" is such an absurdly nuanced work of art that you've got to make an effort to miss out on its pandemic of organic little pleasures. But if I learned anything from the edicts the Shit Robot mix of Dondolo's "Dragon" started effecting in my head the instant I got ahold of a high quality rip, it's that vinyl, especially 12" singles with the way the grooves sprawl out like they're at home on the couch, affords disco music a unique license when it comes to filling sonic space. And that's not a small consideration; dance music tends to be more self-aware than it's typically given credit for being, and filling the airwaves with compelling stuff is one of its most reliable tricks for distracting you from the fact that a lot of it really is pretty meh in terms of melody or composition or what-have-you. Hell, even "Kiss Me Again" could be tarred with that brush - by retarded folks, yes, because anyone who'd laugh at that hypnotically spiraling stone groove can't be called anything else, but "Kiss Me Again" kinda is undeniably just the one thing done over and over and over for thirteen minutes.

And then my copy showed up in the mail, and then I ripped it at 320kbps, and then I smoked a lot of weed in preparation for the joyous occasion so close at hand, and then I double-clicked in Windows Explorer, and here we are now. I don't want to act like the experience was some revelation - even in crippled 192k form, the real revelation was encountering "Kiss Me Again" in the first place - but unfortunately that word sums up the experience way too adroitly to use anything else; anyone who's heard both versions (a group encompassing at least everyone I know who's let me push a minimum of three songs on them) will probably find themselves knocked the motherfuck out (to use the scientific term) by how much crazy shit's going on here that simply doesn't exist on its retarded little cousin. It's such a transformative difference that "Kiss Me Again" and its less refined, hornier (tee hee) b-side have been towering over pretty much everything else in my iTunes since I ripped 'em, and that includes both a new Clipse mixtape and another grip of singles from Rough Trade; the simple act of listening to this stuff is just too much fun.

Thus, my post for today is basically my attempt to make as much of that experience available to You, My Loyal Army Of Dorks, as possible. Obviously you get both the a-side and the b-side of "Kiss Me Again" (only because it's been out of print longer than I've been alive, a situation whose rectifiction I wholeheartedly endorse); I'm also including Polmo Polpo's extended take on the "Kiss Me Again" groove; it's called "Kiss Me Again And Again" because it's basically a bunch of Canadian art dudes refusing to stop recording until they've had all the fun with the actual playing of the music. But really, that's basically the point of all three takes on the song - just to cram as much musical stuff into the running time as the organizing artist can possibly dream up, and when you're talking about something like forty-seven aggregate minutes worth of running time, that's a lot of stuff. And, critically, it's still not the ideal platform to experience the song; even setting aside the fact that "Kiss Me Again" was built explicitly from the ground floor up to be heard in the Paradise Garage, there's issues of cartridges and lines-in and the necessary shittiness of connecting your turntable to your computer through the USB port and so on. It's just a hell of a lot closer than you've ever gotten before, and given how far out "Kiss Me Again" can take a motherfucker in the first place, it's absolutely worth mentioning.

(Click here to buy a copy of "Kiss Me Again" from a GEMM merchant)
(Click here to buy a copy of the Kiss Me Again And Again EP from Juno.co.uk)