This morning I took a trip to my old hometown of Rochester and made my routine pilgrimage to my favorite record store - The Bop Shop. The owner, Tom put a record in my hands and told me that I had to own it.
Tom has always been a wonderful source for musique concrete, minimalist works, early experimental electronic recordings and other lovely treasures of the avant-garde. Many of my favorite LPs are original pressings from his personal collection.
The LP he held was John Cage • Christian Wolff, a 1963 album featuring Cage's side-long "Cartridge Music" - one of Cage’s earliest attempts to produce live electronic music by manipulating turntable cartridges. I've known Tom for years and he has never steered me wrong and this latest LP is no exception. Wonderful stuff!
I also spotted a box set in his shop which I snatched up without hesitation. Readers may recall my copy of Cyril Ritchard reading Alice in Wonderland which included a facsimile clothbound hardcover copy of the 1865 first edition with all of the original illustrations. Today in store, I discovered that Ritchard had produced a reading of Through the Looking Glass as well! And it too included a copy of the 1872 hardcover. How could I pass it up?
Upon returning home I was struck by a recollection that a Kickstarter project had been initiated for a first-ever "Earthling Edition" of the historic Voyager Golden Record, (our message to the stars). As the Kickstarter page describes:
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The Voyager Golden Record contains the story of Earth expressed in sounds, images, and science: Earth's greatest music from myriad cultures and eras, from Bach and Beethoven to Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry, Senegalese percussion to Solomon Island panpipes. Dozens of natural sounds of our planet -- birds, a train, a baby's cry -- are collaged into a lovely audio poem called Sounds of Earth. There are spoken greetings in 55 human languages, and one whale language, and more than one hundred images encoded in analog that depict who, and what, we are.
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The closest I'd come to the Voyager disc was the limited edition
"A Glorious Dawn" single from Third Man Records. The single was composed and performed by Symphony of Science and credited to an auto-tuned Carl Sagan singing about the magnificence of the universe. And etched upon the second side of the disc is the image of the Golden Record.
As a tremendous fan of Carl Sagan's work and his legacy, and as a "cultural curator" of historically significant recordings, this anniversary Voyager project was something I knew I had to support, and to claim a copy for my library if at all possible.
The beautiful box set is being remastered by Timothy Ferris - the original producer of the Golden Record, and will include:
- A cloth-covered box with gold foil inlay
- Three translucent gold, heavyweight vinyl LPs in poly-lined paper sleeves
- Three old-style tip-on jackets, black ink and gold foil
- A hardback book showcasing the photographs and art featured on the original disc
- A lithograph of Voyager Golden Record cover diagram, gold metallic ink on archival paper
- A full-color plastic digital download card for all audio of the record in MP3 or FLAC
What a wonderful way to celebrate our message to space!
And it turned out that my hunch was aptly timed, as I found there were only five days remaining in the Kickstarter campaign, and pledging to the project is the only way to claim a copy of this special release! I pledged immediately and look forward to the album's launch in 2017.
Check out the short official video for the project and pledge while you still can!