Legendary, much sought after and barely in print when first released on the obscure International Artist label, both the original mono and stereo versions of Roky Erickson’s psychedelic scream and surf fest fetch big bucks.

Memories can play nasty tricks on the mind. Events long since past that once seemed sublime can turn out to be anything but when the time machine slides them into the present.

Reminiscent of what Carl Jefferson was doing at Concord back in the 1970’s, this reissue of a French Black and Blue release recorded March of 1978, keeps alive the straight ahead tradition that seemed to be passing into jazz history back then.

In the nervous, jumpy, wiry world of guitar-driven late ‘70’s-early ‘80’s post-rock intellectual punk, popularized by bands like Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, early XTC and (more broodingly) Wire, Mission of Burma was America’s premier practitioners. They probably accrued more legend than record sales, though.

What’s not to love about Goin’ Home, the all-star tribute to New Orleans’ own Antoine “Fats” Domino, sweet-voiced and rhythmically inspired proponent of the Crescent City’s great R&B tradition?

Legendary photographer Jim Marshall recently said that of all the magazine spreads that have used his images over the years, the one appearing in The Tracking Angle issue 13 was one of a “handful” of the finest ever.

>(Editor's note: back in 1985, with the release of Richard Thompson's Across A Crowded Room and Linda Thompson's One Clear Moment, the two were in Los Angeles at the same time and I got to interview them, both on the same day.

The assignment brought back still-raw memories of the legendary June, 1982 Roxy appearances by Richard and Linda Thompson in support of their final collaboration, the masterpiece Shoot Out the Lights, recently reissued on 180g vinyl by 4 Men With Beards.

Everyone knew the couple had broken up and this would be the last chance to see them live. To add personal insult to musical injury, I called my ex-girlfriend who'd left me four months earlier, and with whom I was still in love, and asked her if she'd like to attend the show. She said yes, and so there we were sitting once again across from each other as we'd done so many times at concerts and clubs for the previous four plus years. Whatever was going on in our heads (or at least mine) played out that evening on stage. Here's the piece written in the aftermath of the two interviews—M.F.)

Part II

Portrait of the Artist as a Man at Work

The second CD of the set, especially, functions as a kind of artist’s notebook, providing us discarded and unfinished versions of now-classic recordings from the pre-motorcycle-crash trilogy. From “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” (track five) through “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” (track nine), we are offered works-in-progress—a glance inside the artist’s creative process—with rhythmic variations, language refinements, and even wholly discarded or completely revised lines present in the working versions of songs that have become part of the canon.

The famous motorcycle accident in 1966 that disabled a rising music star—then mired in a now long-forgotten controversy of folk-versus-pop—setting the stage for an extended period of seclusion and retreat. It’s an episode that continues to intrigue tellers of the star’s story (a recent article in American Heritage magazine, for example, can’t help introducing it as “The Bob Dylan Motorcycle-Crash Mystery”).

And for many chroniclers, it remains the central event in the Legend of Bob Dylan, the before-and-after moment, the durable frame for the-young-and-the-old, the-rise-and-the-fall, the Icarus-inflected storyline of the-burning-meteor-and-the-fallen-angel cautionary tale.