Whoa!  Alright.  First off, Hi, my name is Ilya.  You might’ve seen me commenting around these parts frequently and infrequently.

Today eMusic receives a good chunk of Jackie Wilson’s stellar discography from the seminal Brunswick label.  If you’re new to Jackie’s passionate wailing and heart-wrenching performances it’s always best to start with this collection.

Otherwise, here are the gems:

Body and Soul — offers up some of the more soulful and minimal production you’ll find in his catalog.  Sounds best after 2AM.

Higher and Higher — Here Jackie’s backing studio band steps into a groove that lasts up to his last recordings in the 70s.

At The Copa — Jackie was known as a consummate performer, temperamental and entertaining.  This set offers a Jackie who croons and swings with the rough Detroit R&B on the light side but it’s still a classic.

This Love Is Real — As his career came to a close his later releases seemed to get darker and better, much better even.  This is probably my fave.  If you’ve been kickin’ it to that new Charles Bradley, check out “Don’t Leave Me”.

Chime in!  Favorites? Who’s Jackie Wilson, anyway?  Hearing hip-hop samples everywhere? Me too!

Though he’s occasionally broken through to achieve a level of national consciousness (like, for example, that 2003 Grammy win), Raphael Saadiq has mostly avoided the limelight since his early years in Tony! Toni! Toné!, instead racking up a string of impressive collaborators while going about the business of making consistently impressive, smoky throwback R&B records — the kind of music that would fall squarely in line with the stellar Daptone roster, or that John Legend & the Roots record. In 2009 he released the excellent The Way I See It, the leadoff track of which, “Sure Hope You Mean It,” is the best Smokey Robinson & the Miracles song we’ve heard in quite some time.

In March, he’ll release his fifth record, Still Rollin’, and if its first single, “Good Man” is any indication, he’s not changing direction any time soon. Boasting simmering strings, aching female backing vocals and Saadiq’s own gorgeous tenor, the song is a slow-smoldering ode to love done wrong, and how the good guys are generally the first to get burned. You can hear it, and a few others from the new record, on Saadiq’s Facebook Page today. And while we’re generally unenthused about sending out readers to Facebook widgets to hear music (because, you know, it’s not 1987), in this case, it’s worth it.

We’ve got to be coming close to the point where the term “soul revival” gets filed alongside “electronica” and “alternative rock” as silly inadequate genre tags that might have worked for a few minutes but got stale the instant it became clear the styles they were describing weren’t just passing fancies. Flawless label Daptone has been around for nearly a decade (its predecessor, Desco, dates back even further). The tag implies that the genre died at a certain point but, by all appearances, soul music is still alive and well.

Case in point: Kings Go Forth, the latest in a long line of — ok, sure — soul revivalists mining the sound of the mid 60s for brash, exuberant music. Their record, The Outsiders Are Back arrived quietly on the site earlier in the week, and it’s a monster: a fantastic, raucous slab of simmering R&B that’s in the same league as the Spinners and the Delfonics. They nail the four-part male harmonies, and the actual recording sounds like it hails from a bygone era. It’s a wonder.

That they can nail such a particular style so effectively is no surprise: the group was founded by record store owner Andy Noble, and his knowledge of ’60s and ’70s soul is clear in the group’s simmering sound. But if Noble is the heart of the operation, vocalist Black Wolf is the soul. At a volcanic show at New York’s Mercury Lounge last night, Wolf spun, sashayed, and shook, his high, keening voice soaring up Mayfield-like over the group’s thundering rhythm section. Noble is an astonishing bassist — some of his popcorn fills probably would have given James Jamerson pause — and while he and a pair of percussionists provide a solid bottom end, Wolf pours his heart out over top. They take off like a shot, a rush of sound, a blast of horns, and then liftoff. It’s no mere revival: it’s a sustained, hollered shout.

While there’s not a whole lot that qualifies as “new” today, we do have a pretty solid variety of catalog titles perfect for summer listening!

Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career: New Camera Obscura finally arrives on eMusic. Some of you may have heard this already but for those who haven’t — it’s fantastic. I’ve been iffy on them in the past, but this one won my heart. It’s got the same kind of smoky soulfulness as Dusty in Memphis, and if “Swans” is not a summer jam, I don’t know what is. Highly recommended.

Blue Roses, Blue Roses: Also highly recommended. Lush and lovely, folky, eerie — reminds me at times of eMusic’s good friend Olof Arnalds. Fans of pastoral folk with butterfly-light female vocals will enjoy.

YACHT, See Mystery Lights: New one from DFA duo YACHT, with whom we conducted a pretty funny Jukebox Jury. Our Andrew Parks says this about the record:

Seriously subversive stuff which goes down perfectly with the pair’s pastiche approach to pop and dance music. Take “Summer Song,” for instance. While it was originally intended as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to LCD Soundsystem — the disco-indebted band fronted by YACHT’s new label boss, James Murphy — the track’s clanging cowbells, steady bass throb and icy vocals (something you’d never hear on a Blow record) make it one of the best DFA singles in recent memory. And it’s not the only one on here; most of See Mystery Lights is hard-wired with massive hooks, from the sputtering loops and delirious choruses of “I’m In Love With a Ripper” to the sun-stroked riffs and pass-the-mic pleasantries of “Psychic City (Voodoo City).”

Wu-Tang Clan, Wu-Tang Forever: There’s an old industry adage that goes like this: any time an artist titles an album Forever, you can guarantee that artist’s career is over. Do a little research and you’ll find it’s alarmingly true. By the time Wu released Forever, the brand had diversified into so many different sub-units that their once unstoppable clout was already showing signs of weakening. There are two different schools of thought about this record: one holds that it’s bloated and overlong, the other that it’s an underrated classic. Even now, it’s easy to see how it would have been so polarizing: RZA mostly abandoned the grimy-soul production he had trademarked with the Wu’s perfect debut, opting instead to craft the music himself using both synths and organic instruments. This makes for a weird, sinister-sounding record, one that I personally like a lot while conceding that it could have been lighter by 5 or 6 tracks (nominations for cuts? Let’s start with “Dog Shit”). At any rate, the arrival of Forever means we finally have the full Wu discography on eMusic, a fact that makes me pretty amped.

Michael Knott, Hearts of Care: Michael Knott is a California singer/songwriter that never really got his due. He made a string of harrowing/terrifying records in the early 90s, both solo and with his band LSU, but for the last few years he’s focused more on folkie/troubadour style songwriting. That’s worked to a greater or lesser degree. Hearts of Care is a mixed bag, but fans of, say, Josh Ritter or M. Ward might enjoy. My track picks? The gorgeous and creepy “Wasting Time,” “Waiting for Your Turn to Smile,” “Of My Love” and “Nothing is Roses.” Really, the last half of the record. The first half is kind of garbage.

Cush, Cush: Cush is the band Knott fronted, backed by members of the Lassie Foundation and the Prayer Chain. I know people who swear by this record — it’s shoegazy and kinda stoney and swirly — but I just never really connected with it. Fans of dreampop may enjoy.

James & Bobby Purify, Shake a Tail Feather: Truly fantastic, classic R&B, gritty and soulful — their version of “You Left the Water Running” is a must. The rest of this is great, too, though, and will win the hearts of classic soul fans. Need more convincing? It’s 28 tracks for 12 credits. Why would you not take this?

The Features, Some Kind of Salvation: I don’t know much about the Features, but the samples I listened to sounded decent: spry indie rock with a weirdly pained and occasionally soulful vibe. Worth a quick spin through.

The Lassie Foundation, Face Your Fun: A lot of people I know love this band. Sweet, sugary vocals and grinding, grimy guitars — a little bit dreampoppy, a little bit power-poppy — big hooks and lots of atmospherics. We got a whole haul of records from Northern today, so if you’re a fan of this label (and I know for a fact that this label means a lot to a very particular kind of person), chime in with some recommendations? I was disappointed that the Luxury record didn’t sound a thing like their early stuff, so any help is appreciated!

Odetta, Odetta Sings Dylan: Late, legendary blues vocalist applies her soulful pipes to Dylan classics.

Various Artists, Masked and Anonymous Soundtrack: On a similar note — a collection of Dylan covers from the weird movie starring Dylan from a few years back. I remember thinking this was underrated when I saw it in the theaters, then I saw it on cable a year or so ago and felt it was rated just fine.

Various Albums from the End: A host of great metal records from The End label today (though, inexplicably, not the Nadja covers record). The Darkthrone titles are where to start — punishing Norwegian black metal perfect to play while you’re shaking your fist at the infernal sun. I’m also interested to check out the two Jarboe records here — I loved Swans, but never listened to Jarboe’s solo stuff. I am looking forward to it. We also got Sigh’s Tribute to Venom, which sounds as totally fucking awesome as you might guess.

Various Artists, The Ze Records Story: Compilation from (rightfully) legendary NY New Wave label. Some classic, weirdo jams (sorry) on this one, with the tracks from Cristina and James Chance being of special note. Fans of the Ze sound are advised to check out the fantastic Ze Records Dozen we ran a while ago, along with Douglas Wolk’s History of the Same

Miles Davis, Star People: Early 80s Miles record that is as free-form and fragmented as you might expect. Shocking revelation: I am just now starting to get into Miles Davis. The samples here sound promising — any Miles fans out there who can contextualize this?

Janis Joplin, Box of Pearls: Full disclosure: I really don’t care for Janis Joplin. This 5-Disc set gathers up everything Joplin recorded, along with some raritites. The original was apparently limited edition, making its arrival here noteworthy.

Pink Floyd, Pulse: I’m not much of a Pink Floyd fan, but this 2-disc live set looks pretty complete for fans. I remember when the physical version of this came out, there was a blinking red light on the spine, which I always thought would be annoying as hell when you were trying to go to sleep at night. I should like this band more than I do, but. Shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Optimo, In Order to Edit: New Optimo remix/edit collection. Where’s Todd when you need him?

Singles:
Arctic Monkeys, “Crying Lightning”: First single off the new Arctic Monkeys record. I will confess to some indifference about the Monkeys in the past, but I like this track a lot. It’s darker and stormier than their previous work, and seems to abandon their early punk impishness for a kind of bleak reading of Britpop that I find 150% agreeable. Even if you think you’re not a fan, this track is worth checking out.

The Champagne Socialists, “Blue Genes”: New Slumberland single — great, trashy, C-86y. I like!

Rakim, “Holy Are You”: Man, I wanted this to be better. So badly. I heart Rakim until the end of time, and I’ve been looking forward to this record for years. But, man, he sounds so stiff on this, and his trademark lyrical dexterity has apparently dried up. He just kind of sleepwalks across a tired gospel sample. Rakim, what happened? Are you sweating the technique? Come back, please!

So… any good new releases today?

Obviously, today is Sony day, which sees a slew of popular — and not-so-popular — titles hit the site. There is a kind of giddy rush that comes from seeing, say, Bitches Brew or the first Stone Roses record turn up, and I’m already figuring my personal Save for Later list is going to grow exponentially in the days to come.

I don’t want to dwell too long on specific titles. Instead, I thought I’d point out a few of the broader features we assigned as a part of this label rollout.

Our coverage of the Sony catalog breaks out a couple of different ways. First, there’s our Six Degrees series, which explores the often unlikely connections between popular records and indie favorites.

The first batch of eMusic Six Degrees includes:

The Clash, London Calling
Sly & the Family Stone, There’s a Riot Goin’ On
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska
Glenn Gould, The Goldberg Variations
Arcade Fire, Funeral
Carole King, Tapestry
Jeff Buckley, Grace
Miles Davis, Nefertiti
Kings of Leon, Aha Shake Heartbreak
Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors
Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Nas, Illmatic
Panda Bear, Person Pitch
Michael Jackson, Off the Wall

We’ve also launched a series called eMusic Icons — guided, curated discographies of musical giants. On this tip, I have to make special mention of Douglas Wolk’s exhaustive, unblinking look at the career of Bob Dylan. Douglas reviewed every Bob Dylan album — the good, the bad and the embarrassing — and broke the catalog out into a guide sure to be valuable to Dylan newcomers and long-timers alike.

Kevin Whitehead gives similar insight to the Miles Davis catalog — records I, for one, have long wanted to check out but have been stymied on where to start. In the coming weeks, you’ll be seeing Icon hubs from longtime favorites like Pavement and the Pixies. Our Icon series right now is as follows:

Bob Dylan
The Clash
Miles Davis
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Bernstein
A Tribe Called Quest
Bruce Springsteen
Michael Jackson
Simon & Garfunkel
Elvis Presley
Harry Nilsson

Just yesterday afternoon, all of us here in the editorial department were talking about Michael Jackson’s upcoming shows at the O2 Arena in London. The tone of the conversation skewed exactly as you may have guessed — rife with skepticism that the shows would actually come off, or wondering what they might look like if they did.

Just a few short hours later came the news from LA that Jackson — undeniably one of the only pop stars of the last 20 years as big, if not bigger, than the Beatles — had died. It’s weird, head-splitting news, and every media outlet in the world is scrambling to come up with a different spin on Jackson’s life and legacy.

While we don’t want to add to the torrent, we do want to take a minute to give you an advance look at something we had assigned as part of our upcoming Sony coverage: NY Daily News pop critic Jim Farber’s guide to the music of Michael Jackson — both the successes and the missteps. Bear in mind that he wrote this before Michael’s passing, so some of the language will be changed before it appears next week. But it seemed appropriate to post it now, and to take a look back on Jackson’s music and legacy.

Also, on a personal note, I’ve been kind of marveling all over again at the pop majesty of songs like “Billie Jean” or the lovely, haunting “Human Nature.” I’ve listened to both over the last 24 hours, and both still stand to me as masterpieces of pop construction, every tiny piece perfectly in-place.

Hope you enjoy Jim’s piece.

The Music of Michael Jackson

Before the trials and the tabloids, Michael Jackson made music more worthy of chatter and awe than all of his scandals put combined. The music Jackson recorded as an adult – starting with his first, grown-up solo effort on 1979’s “Off The Wall” – made him the most beloved, visionary and musically comprehensive African-American pop idol of the last half-century. At his peak – during the 1982-4 juggernaut of Thriller – he enjoyed a popularity, and cultural impact, exceeded only by Elvis and The Beatles.

Unlike The Beatles, however, Jackson didn’t sustain an untarnished record of musical excellence. More like Elvis, he has swung wildly from genius to punchline and back again – sometimes over the course of the same CD. For that reason, it’s especially important to rate Jackson’s solo output from “most essential” to “least.” But to do so, one has to navigating the swells and dips of his talent with a surfer’s care. Ultimately, following the story of Jackson’s musical works reads as a cautionary tale, with most of his greatest efforts arriving at the start.

“Off The Wall” (1979)

Jackson’s Off The Wall had the brashness of the truest debut. Released at the close of the ‘70s when he was just 21 years old, “Wall” not only established Jackson as a man – instead of the boy he’d been with his brothers – it set the bar high for all of his solo albums to come.

Though the album arrived at the pinnacle of disco — and so incorporated its swirling strings and club-driven beats — the sound Jackson and producer Quincy Jones devised seems in no way tied to its time. Opening cut, “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough,” sets the tone, starting with Jackson lost to his passion in a half-stuttered speech that spews over a bass line punching with funk. From there, strings swing in, a guitar begins its sexy sway and the bass takes flight, Jackson topping them with an orgasmic cry.

There’s a low-down quality to the needs expressed here, tempered by an elegance in both Jones’ production and Jackson’s fleet falsetto. It’s forceful and beautiful at once, a balance that enlivened all ten tracks on “Wall.” Jones brought a jazz sophistication to the arrangements, especially in the liquid keyboards of “I Can’t Help It” and the sneaky tune of “Rock With You.”

Given the album’s rare unification of pop, jazz, funk and disco, it’s no wonder it sold over 5 million copies and nabbed an armload of Grammys. It also established the pattern and style most observers felt Jackson perfected on Thriller. To me, however, the freshness of the sound, and the surprise of its maturity, makes “Wall” even more cherishable than the deservedly worshipped work that followed.

“Thriller” (1982)

Buoyed by the mega-success of Off The Wall, Jackson and producer Jones sought to up the stakes in every way with “Thriller.” The songs stretched on longer, the beats hit harder, and the melodies swung for the rafters.

While all those elements may have aligned in perfect harmony, there’s no way Thriller would have had the history-altering impact it had without a host of other factors, chief among them Jackson’s groundbreaking videos for “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,” along with Jackson’s performance of the moonwalk on the Motown 25th Anniversary Special — a feat that made him seem not only to defy gravity but to transcend the bounds of humanity.

Just as “Don’t Stop” did for “Off The Wall,” the new disc’s “Wanna Be Starting Something” kicked things off decisively, declaring its fortitude and durability right in its title. The bass line’s rhythm had both dance-floor resonance and pop panache. But for an album with just ten tracks, there’s a bit of filler here as well. “The Girl Is Mine” repeats the trick on “Wall” of bringing Paul McCartney in to contribute to a track (as well as to bolster Jackson’s attempt to equate himself with a Beatle). And while the title track may be propulsive, the use of Vincent Price as a narrator smacks of kitsch.

Still, not since the Stones scored a one/two punch with the singles “Bitch” and “Brown Sugar” in 1971 has a pop act had the back-to-back brilliance of “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.” The former boasted rhythms and hooks like nothing else, while “Beat It” brought rock ‘n roll into Jackson’s realm with an organic power he has never equaled. Popularity isn’t necessarily a measure of excellence (I call to the stand “Frampton Comes Alive”), but in the case of Thriller, the disc’s commercial dominance equals its role as peerless pop.

“Bad” (1987)

Michael Jackson had already started to look strikingly different in a video for the song “Bad” that preceded the album’s release. His nose had been thinned to achieve a regal refinement, his chin seemed more chiseled and his eyes widened into a scared, doe-in-the-headlights stare. But if all those alterations signaled the start of a long, and increasingly alarming, series of self-mutilations, those acts had yet to seriously mar his art. Perhaps hobbled by the impossibility of following up Thriller, Jackson and producer Jones did choke on the opening of Bad. It begins awkwardly, with the repetitive title track. But the quality of the melodies ticks up sharply from there; Jackson stressed melodic pop this time over the more daring dance rhythms or jazzier twists of the disc’s predecessors. There’s a lighter sound to songs like “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Liberian Girl,” or the sweet ballad “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.”

On the other hand, “Another Part of Me” hits the dance floor hard and recalls the more undulating parts of Off The Wall, while “Smooth Criminal” expands on the dynamics and tension of “Billie Jean” with a riffing texture all its own.

Still, one song (“Man in the Mirror”) indicates the megalomania to come. Like many compositions that aim to shed light on the travails of the world, the song in fact amounts to an overheated reach for “importance,” a needy bid for the star to be seen as both a “serious artist” and a “good person.” The lyrics also seem ironic in the extreme, given Jackson’s new look: at this point, the star wasn’t trying to spiritually elevate what he saw in the mirror, but to physically erase it. But, at least for now, he still had a hold on his creative soul.

“Dangerous” (1991)

Jackson made one truly dangerous move on this album: He broke with collaborator Quincy Jones to hook up with “new jack swing” producer-of-that moment Teddy Riley. No wonder many sounds on the CD seem stuck in their time – especially those on the percussive end, including the ‘90s slapping rhythm of “Why You Wanna Trip On Me,” or the hollow, popping beat of “In The Closet.” What saves the albums are the melodic hooks in its more fluid tracks. “Remember The Time” has the swank of the hits off Wall, along with a bass line that demands movement.

Unfortunately, by this time in Jackson’s career we have to deal with too many songs about saving humanity (“Jam,” “Planet Earth” or “Heal The World”), not to mention a racial harmony number (“Black And White”) so over-stated, even the subtext of Jackson’s own crossover career can’t lend it nuance. Worse still is the tear-jerker “Gone Too Soon” which, if played at a funeral, would more likely inspire eye-rolls than tears.

Even with some of the album being unlistenable, Dangerous shows Jackson’s continued brio as a singer, not to mention his power as a rhythmic force – one that deserves better than Riley’s gimmicky beats.

“Blood on the Dance Floor” (1997)

Michael Jackson made an interesting move one year after looking back on his HIStory hits-and-more-set: He decided to let a group of star DJs have their way with six of his less celebrated songs, lending them each a trace of hip. Deconstruction specialists like Tony Moran, David Morales, Todd Terry and Wyclef Jean fiddled with with fairly recent Jackson tracks like “This Time Around,” “Stranger In Moscow” and “Earth Song.” It wasn’t his best material, but the added rhythms gave them at least a bit more verve. “Money” gets a spacey new sheen from Farley and Heller. Terry goosed “Stranger In Moscow” with a deep house beat. And even the icky “Earth Song” gained something from Hani’s trance-like new beat. To this, Jackson added five fresh songs, all of which only show a further ebbing of his originality.

“HIStory: Past Present & Future” (1995)

Michael Jackson didn’t do himself any favors by configuring HIStory as a double CD. Its first disc unfurls a hugely impressive collection of greatest hits. The second offers 15 new songs that don’t fare at all well by comparison. Jackson produced a lot of the new work himself, and since self-awareness and self-criticism have never been his strong points, it’s small wonder many tracks stumble into self-indulgence.

The new music’s main draw came in “Scream,” a tete-a-tete between Michael and sister Janet (then a bigger, and far hipper, star). Unfortunately, their union sounded shrill and overblown, even as produced by Janet’s normally on-point sonic sculptors, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. From there, things go downhill fast. Much of the music plays either to Jackson’s cornier or more self-righteous sides. For the former, we have “Earth Song” (a condescending environmentalist tome). For the latter, there’s “Tabloid Junkie” (about his problems, not ours), plus a swipe at an old business manager who allegedly did him wrong: “D.S.”

The cover of “Come Together” once again represents a strained attempt for Jackson to sell himself as a one man Fab Four, while “You Are Not Alone” (penned by R. Kelly) and “Childhood” (from the movie “Free Willie”) break the bank on kitsch. It all skids to a sad close in “Smile,” a cover of the song associated with Charlie Chaplin. Jackson cries through the piece in a way so self-pitying and solipsistic he seems almost entirely lost to us by now.

“Invincible” (2001)

Quick: name one song from this album. Even the most ardent pop fans would have trouble – and for good reason. Nothing on Invincible sticks. One sign of trouble from the start: You’ll find the most crowded songwriting credits on any Jackson disc of his adult career, indicating its over-thought, over-worked nature. The beats on the disc – many of which were created by Rodney Jerkins – seem even more mechanical than the ones Teddy Riley devised for Dangerous. On top of that, the songs that Jerkins and so many others penned seem like flat re-workings of pieces we’ve heard from the star before. At one point, (the finale, “Threatened”) Jackson drags in an old Rod Serling voice-over to try and revive the commercial ka-ching of Vincent Price’s turn on “Thriller.”

Even Jackson’s voice seems to have diminished. He sounds uncomfortably pinched, perhaps as a result of his apparent nose and facial work. The result brings to mind an actress who has pulled her face so tight she’s incapable of her greatest and most necessary asset: expression.

Big day at eMusic, as classic albums from the Reverend Al Green hit the site. Do I even need to say how timeless and essential these are? Most people will go for the Greatest Hits, and I get that, but the full albums here are just as rich and rewarding.

We’ve assembled all of Al’s albums, curated by Green aficionado Andy Beta, into a hub here. If you ask me, though, your first stops should be — in order! — The Belle Album, then I’m Still in Love With You, then Let’s Stay Together. Then go hog wild on the rest.

And if classic soul is not to your taste (and I’m working hard to suspend judgment if that is the case), may we humbly recommend the following:

Maria Taylor, Ladyluck: Half of Azure Ray returns with a warm and stirring record of folk-pop. I love this record, honestly and truly. The songs practically gleam and the finale, “Cartoons and Forever Plans,” is a heartwarmer if ever I’ve heard one. Maybe too mainstream for some tastes, but this is one of my early faves of 09. But, then again, I’m kind of a wuss.

Gomez, A New Tide. Hey! It’s Gomez! eMusic’s Wayne Robins sez:

Eleven years since winning Britain’s prestigious Mercury Awards for their debut album Bring It On, Gomez surprises by not being surprising — and that’s a beautiful thing. The original quintet is still together (though they have dispersed from their spawning ground, a coastal town near Liverpool), still building songs that sound improvised until a sense of permanence is attained.

Great Lake Swimmers, Lost Channels: New one from Great Lake Swimmers, a band I do not know much about, but that I know people like. Anyone wanna jump in in the comments?

I (happily!) handled duties on this week’s EVR show. I decided to steer clear of the metal this week, instead focusing on an hour of indie rock and an hour of R&B. What I played below, the cut. Full show here.

Harvest Ministers, “Cleaning out the Store”
Jetenderpaul, “Hudson Bay Drive”
Kleenex Girl Wonder, “What Does She Know”
Dead Heart Bloom, “Chelsea Song #2″
Benoit Pioulard, “Ahm”
Ribbons, “Inclusion”
U2, “Stories for Boys”
Frightened Rabbit, “I Feel Better”
Orange Juice, “Falling and Laughing”
Hatcham Social, “Postcard in Colours”
Headlights, “TV”
The Killers, “Spaceman”
Blank Dogs, “Blaring Speeches”
Girls Against Boys, “Raindrops”
Baby Charles, “Step On”
Sabrina Starke, “Foolish”
Linda Lyndell, “What A Man”
Joy Denalane, “Caught Up”
Erykah Badu, “Twinkle”
Algebra Blesset, “Halfway”
Mariah Carey ft. Method Man & Redman, “The Roof (Kryptomix)”
The Foreign Exchange, “Kick Off the Blues”
“Construction,” Muhsinah
“You’re the One For Me,” Marvin Gaye
“Needle in a Haystack,” The Velvelettes
“I Lost You,” The Holidays
“What Is This?” Bobby Womack
“In Remembrance,” Blu & Exile
“Inglewood,” New Jack Hustle
“Get it With the Fitted,” Short Bus Alumni
“Safe,” Scarface
“Fat Pockets,” Showbiz & AG
“She Can Be So Cold,” PaceWon & Mr. Green

Because words fail.

About three weeks ago, I took a drive down to DC to spend some time with someone I’d been secretly idolizing for about three years now: Mingering Mike. I’ve already talked about this a bit on here already, so I won’t bore you with repetition. Suffice it to say, Mike was a warm, wonderful person and it’s easy to see that personality in both his art and his music — the latter of which we are honored to debut today as part of eMusic Selects.

For every eMusic Selects artist, we’ve been posting an interview in order to give you a bit of insight into their process and personalities. For Mike, we decided to blow it out a bit. Mike’s story is full of hundreds of crucial little details, and I didn’t want to compromise any of them. It took me a few weeks between meeting with Mike and actually starting the feature. It probably looked to everyone else like classic procrastination, but the truth is that I was terrified. This was Mike’s whole life — I wanted to write a piece worthy of him.

And so, here it is. I fully acknowledge that it is very, very long. And I know that kind of thing tends not to work well online. The more I went over it, though, the tougher it was for me to find anything to cut. So, basically, I ask for your patience. But I hope that you find Mike’s story as riveting and heartwarming as I do. The full feature after the jump.

UPDATE: You can now download hi-res art here. And don’t forget to visit the official Mingering Mike homepage for more of Mike’s incredible art.

eMusic Selects Feature: Mingering Mike
by J. Edward Keyes

Mingering Mike is late.

I probably should have expected it. Mike is an R&B superstar with nearly 40 years in the business. He’s racked up a string of #1 hits (among them the astonishing “But All I Can Do Is Cry”) and played venues in cities as far away as Paris. He has a bevy of celebrity admirers and a book that details his rise, fall and rise again. A little tardiness comes with the territory.

He’s asked that we meet at Marvin, a hip, bustling restaurant near the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC named after soul legend and local favorite son Marvin Gaye. There’s an enormous painting of Marvin on the rear wall, and a steady stream of ’60s classics — Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, Isaac Hayes — filters through the air.

They have a lot in common, Mike and Marvin. Both of them grew up on the hardscrabble streets of DC, two quiet kids born into atypical families and harrowing social upheaval. They both scored their first hits early in life — Mike at 18, Marvin at 23, and both of them first became famous for a series of duets — Marvin with Tami Terrell, Mike with the Big “D.” Both of them sold out DC’s legendary Howard Theater, running through their respective golden greats for an ecstatic and adoring public.

But it’s there that their careers diverge. Marvin recorded 24 studio albums during his lifetime, but Mike has released nearly twice that number. Marvin recorded mostly for Motown, but Mike put out records on countless regional imprints: Decision, Ming/War, Mother Goose and Nation’s Capitol, to name just a few. In 1972, Marvin Gaye released one LP. Mingering Mike released 15. In terms of productivity, dedication and sheer drive, Mike bests Marvin every time.

Oh, there’s one more key difference between Mike’s career and Marvin’s: Mike’s is completely imaginary.





There are so many entry points to the story of Mingering Mike it’s difficult to know which one to choose. You could start with Dori and Frank, the two crate diggers who fortuitously stumbled upon boxes of Mike’s homemade cardboard records at a flea market while in search of rare funk 45s. You could start with the internet — specifically, the SoulStrut message board — where Mike’s legend slowly grew to epic proportions. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the best place to start is with Mike himself.

Mike — that’s as much of a name as he’ll give, and as much as I’m willing to push for — grew up in DC in the 1960s, raised by his sisters, first Cathy and then Ladosca, at the peak of the soul music explosion.

“It was fantastic,” he beams. “It just seemed like everything that was pouring out of the radio was great.”

We’re sitting at a table in the back of Marvin, directly across from the enormous, imposing portrait of The Man himself. Mike, when all was said and done, was only 30 minutes late, a delay due not to prima donna posturing, but the inability to find parking.

As is often the case during interviews and public appearances, Mike is accompanied by Dori Hadar, who is as warm and affable as Mike is shy and gentle. Mike’s current popularity is largely because of Hadar, and, in what could be read as a combination payback/apology, Hadar acts as a kind of publicist and agent. Call him the Mingering Manager. The two of them have a rare and natural chemistry. Any time Mike starts to talk about his life, Hadar leans in close. He’s surely heard Mike’s story countless times over the last four years, but his rapt attention and frequent questions make each telling seem like the first. It’s easy to understand his enthusiasm; hearing Mike speak is like heaving open a huge window across decades. Peering through offers a view of five-and-tens with plate glass windows, old green Fords coughing exhaust and blaring Motown, and legendary soul venues with lines around the block.

“My brother used to work at the Howard Theater,” Mike recalls. His voice is rich and low, a slight drawl seeping into slow-to-come words. “I was about 15 at the time, and I saw James Brown there, I saw Junior Walker there. At every show, they’d have local acts open up for the stars.” When Mike wasn’t using his family connections to score an audience with the King of Soul, he was spending his spare quarters on 45s. “I was the 45 king back then!” he says. “Because of the way the economy was, it was better for me to buy the 45s instead of the LPs. There used to be a bargain store that sold 45s for 25-cents apiece, so pretty soon I had stacks and stacks of them.”

In what will come as no surprise to any avid record collector, as a teenager Mike was a bit of a loner. He often refers to himself as the “Silent Observer,” and even now, listening to him talk, it’s easy to hear the tentative tones of a quiet little kid, the kind who went to soul shows alone and who would soon begin to construct an elaborate career of his own. As Mike puts it, “Sometimes you reach a certain point in life where you think, ‘Well, I could do that.’”

For Mike, that point arrived at age 16.

“I had a small reel-to-reel player,” he explains, “and I would just record by myself. I wasn’t satisfied with the beat, I couldn’t do that too well, so I just concentrated on the lyrics and tunes. When I met up with the Big “D” and found out that he had the same interest, we started getting together and doing stuff. It seemed like that took it to a higher level.”

The Big “D” is Mike’s second cousin, and the two whiled away whole weekends pouring homemade soul songs onto reel-to-reel tapes, using their voices, an afro comb and a telephone book to create their own variations on the 45s Mike was so enthusiastically amassing.

“A couple of songs that we did, it was just me and him,” Mike says, “but it sounds like a group. Later on, other family members got interested, and they tagged along, too. They would just resemble the music. One of them would be a trumpet, some kind of horn. Big “D” would make the percussion with either his hands or an afro comb. We always recorded in the bathroom, because of the acoustics. We just threw a sign on the door that said: ‘Recording.’”





The products of these sessions are raucous and bursting with joy, stomping combinations of rhythm and blues, field hollers and gospel shouts. “Coffee Cake” is a delirious funk jam, Mike and “D” chanting the name of the titular treat over and over, creating a kind of jug-band thump. “Hey You” is a simple soul ballad, Mike coyly asking, “Hey you — how ’bout a date?” with an unaffected sweetness that would make Marvin himself proud. The tracks that comprise Super Gold Greatest Hits are the original artifacts — the songs Mike and “D” recorded in the bathroom in the late ’60s. And while they’re undeniably unpolished (most of them consist of little beyond some tape hiss, Mike’s soulful singing and “D” mimicking various instruments), they are also undeniably songs, songs with clear, hooky choruses, sturdy structures and passionate lyrics. To listen to “Sunny” once is to have its “guitar” line stuck in your head for weeks.

“I started out with the songs and tunes,” Mike says. “It wasn’t until two or three years later that I started developing the albums.”

Mike’s tunes are winning but primitive, but his albums are his masterpieces. For each batch of songs, Mike constructed covers out of cardboard, decorating them with magic marker illustrations that look alarmingly similar to the soul albums of the era. The cover of Do I Love You depicts Mike and D wooing a confused woman with flowers and a box of candy. His imagination didn’t end with the artwork: Mike slid some of the covers inside cellophane shrink wrap, affixing price tags and creating labels that boasted, “Free 45 in this one only,” and “Contains the Hit Single ‘Eat Myself Silly.’” On the flipsides, in addition to the tracklisting, Mike scrawled elaborate, often hilarious, liner notes. The back of Minger’s Gold: Supersonic Greatest Hits boasts, “Mingering Mike has shown you millions and millions of times of his capabilities as a successful songwriter, composer and, last but not least, singer. A true artist in every sense of the word.” When Mike noticed his empty covers wilting when he stood them upright, he cut out cardboard LPs, spraying them with a black lacquer paint to replicate the shiny look of vinyl. Each individual LP was properly labeled, the tracks perfectly timed to fit on one side of an actual vinyl record. Each cardboard LP has the passion and poetry of a love letter, the product of a person who cherished, studied, revered and often disappeared inside pop music. As Mike matter-of-factly puts it, “It was just something that had to come out. I used to go to the local drug store. I just bought color cardboard sheets. It’s an overwhelming thing, so sometimes I’d buy the material in advance, in case I thought of something later on.”

The covers, which can be viewed at the Mingering Mike website or, better still, in Hadar’s book Mingering Mike: The Imaginary Career of an Amazing Soul Superstar are spectacular, meticulously designed and expertly drawn. Mike issued “albums” on countless imprints — Decision Records, Fake Records, Mother Goose Records. Each record had its own catalog number, and each label boasted a roster of dozens, all of them based loosely on Mike’s friends and family. In addition to Mingering Mike & the Big “D,” there was Ramblin’ Ralph, whose debut album In My Corner features such hits as “Think I’m Going to Have to Pawn My Set or Eat My Pet.” There was Joseph War, whose debut album proudly proclaims, “Joseph War stands for peas and hominy.” And there was On the Beach with the Sexorcist, the cover of which featured two teenagers cavorting behind a giant beach ball. Mike’s imaginary success wasn’t just a local phenomenon. The back of Can Minger Mike Stevens Really Sing? (which, collectors will want to know, was issued on Fake Records in 1969, catalog number 5-2158) contains a testimonial: “With a look of success, singing and dancing, boy he’s a mess.” The quote is signed, “James Brown.”

That the records are made of cardboard are almost beside the point; Mike’s covers are an artifact from a time when a record’s lineage and presentation was just as important — if not more so — as what was etched in the grooves. Ditto Mike’s stage name, which came to him when he saw a street sign that read “Merging Traffic” and fiddled with the first word a bit; it’s perfect, the kind of near-sense non-word that conveys heaps of implied meaning without an iota of the literal kind.

Viewing Mike’s records chronologically offers a kind of History of Soul in miniature. Early Mingering Mike platters, loaded with love songs like “There’s Nothing Wrong With You Baby,” slowly give way to records that are spiritually searching and socially-conscious. The cover of Mercy the World by the Outsiders shows Earth slowly being submerged in boiling water. The cover of Joseph War’s Ghetto Prince is ornamented with ominous needles and pills. A drawing of an enormous skull adorns the inner sleeve of The Drug Store; across its cranium, Mike scrawled a poem. It opens with the line, “More death’s in the neighborhood.” (When I ask him what inspired him to make so many records about drug abuse, Mike laughs and replies, “The 1970s!”)





“That work is instantly recognizable to any of us who have imagined ourselves as singers with a great band but haven’t quite got all the pieces in place yet,” David Byrne says when I ask him about it a few weeks later. “Mike instinctively knew that the cover art, the song titles and the narrative that is revealed as one record historically follows another are in some ways maybe not equal to, but at least parallel to, the actual songs.”

“If you go through them all one by one, you can see a person grow,” Hadar says. “It tells the story of the city I grew up in at a time I wish I’d grown up in.” The covers are so intricately detailed, it’s difficult to believe Mike ever spent time doing anything else.

“I never worked on them at work,” Mike explains, “because I needed to keep things separate. I didn’t really tell anyone about them till the ’80s.”

“What did they think?” Hadar asks.

“They liked ‘em,” Mike slowly responds. “They thought they were kinda strange, but they liked the artwork. But this mainly was something I just did for personal satisfaction.”

This seems as good a place as any for a brief clarification. When an artist produces this much singular work in such a short period of time for an audience of less-than-five, a temptation arises to label their work “outsider art.” This appellation, besides being condescending and cruel, generally implies some kind of deep emotional disturbance. In fact, to a man, almost every person I’ve told about Mingering Mike, almost immediately asks if he’s “like Daniel Johnston.” The short answer to that question is “no.” Mike is not mentally or emotionally handicapped. He doesn’t break out into fits, he doesn’t swear compulsively or drift off into some private, unreachable space. He is warm, soft-spoken and a little shy, preferring to display his enthusiasm — as he says again and again — “on the inside.” Hadar has described him as “one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.” It takes all of three minutes to agree with his assessment.

Which makes the fact that, in 1968, Mike was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War that much more ironic. Even now, 40 years later, Mike still seems blindsided.

“I was super sad,” he recalls softly. “Super sad. In fact, I recorded the song ‘But All I Can Do Is Cry’ on the very last day before I shipped out.”

The song is as primitive as it is affecting. Against a dry, shuffling rhythm track Mike — his voice cracked and wounded — sings, “Oh, it hurts so to say goodbye/ When you see the tears falling from my eyes/ I never like saying goodbye/ But the man told me to come on and to take a ride/ Kiss your family and friends goodbye/ …So all I can do is cry.” It’s haunting, a kind of R&B last will and testament, pure gospel soul poured out from the depths of a broken heart. “When I came back, Big “D” told me, ‘That song was really sad, but really nice. I really liked it,’” Mike recalls. “It turned out that I’d left the reels in the recorder, and he heard it after I shipped out.”





In Hadar’s book, there is a picture of Mike in the barracks during the early part of basic training. His face says it all: he looks dazed and distant, trying to smile but inside shriveled and throbbing with hurt. “There’s a line in the song that goes, ‘I might die.’ That’s exactly what I was thinking: I might die. They have you in basic training, and there’s bullets flying over your head and you’re crawling on your belly — I just knew that wasn’t for me.”

So Mike did the only thing an imaginary soul superstar can do when they’re faced with a situation that threatens to damage both their art and personal well-being: he went AWOL. But returning home, too, turned out to be a nightmare. “Every night on the news the Army would announce who they were looking for,” he said. “And one of my family members told me they saw my name. My cousin Ralph, he used to come by the house and bang on the door real hard, and I’d jump out of my skin.”

Holed up in his house, unable to work outside of small, off-the-book gigs at a cousin’s gas station, Mike took comfort in his life’s one constant: his albums. The records he drew during those years are a combination of passionate protests and heartfelt pleas for peace. The cover of The Two Sides of Mingering Mike displays a pair of profiles. Facing left is Mike the soul singer, eyes wide, mouth open. Facing right is Mike the soldier, green hat pulled down low over his brow, eyes narrowed in anger. Similar is the soundtrack to Mike’s imaginary film You Only Know What They Tell You. The cover depicts an American soldier, strung up like a marionette, kicking a Vietnamese soldier in the chest. The image Mike drew on the flipside is even more chilling: that same puppet soldier, deflated and helpless, his pained face colored in a rainbow of red, yellow, black and white.

Mike created a new imprint to house these more political works: Decision Records. “If you look at the logo, there are two hands,” Mike explains. “One is reaching for a rifle, the other is reaching for a microphone. The caption beneath says, ‘Which would you choose?’” For Mike, the decision was obvious. “I wanted these records to have a message — like they were for the whole world. I was using them to communicate silently.”

In 1977, Mike received a pardon from President Jimmy Carter, but those years still loom large. Later in the afternoon, during a photo shoot in front of the White House, Mike refused to get too close to the building. “They’re going to see me,” he protests. “I know some of those Secret Service guys, and they’re going to recognize me.” At first, it seems paranoid, the kind of overreaction that can fuel those “outsider artist” speculations. After a bit of thought, though, I realize it’s actually a perfectly natural reaction from a man whose government once tried to kill him.





Dori Hadar is a criminal investigator. He works for a firm of defense attorneys, a career he says he “fell into” after moving back to DC from Seattle. More importantly, though, he’s a record enthusiast, a hobby that found him at flea markets and thrift stores at odd hours, flipping through endless towers of vinyl in search of the odd rare treasure.

“I had to go to the jail really early one morning to talk to a witness,” Hadar recalls. “I got out at like 4 am. There’s a flea market about two blocks away, so I thought, ‘Well, I could go home and sleep for a couple of hours, or I could go down to the flea market.’”

The flea market was a regular haunt for Hadar, and his timing turned out to be fortuitous. A delivery truck packed with crates from local auctions had just arrived and, as the driver told Hadar, “I got records.”

Hadar set about rifling through the stacks, astonished by what he was finding. “It was a fantastic collection,” he says. “It was all stuff I’d been looking for, and all of it in great condition. I was just happily like, ‘Oh my God!’”

It was near the end of his search, when the sun was creeping up outside and other diggers had begun to filter into the stacks, that Hadar made his most valuable discovery.

“The last box I looked in — and it just happened to be the last box I looked in — contained all these albums.” Tucked in at the end of a long row of record crates sat the full Mingering Mike discography.

How Mike’s records ended up in a flea market at four in the morning is itself a tiny tragedy. After he moved out of his sister Ladosca’s house Mike had been keeping his records in a storage locker in downtown DC. He’d made friends with the owners of the facility, and they never minded if he was a few days late in making his payments. Over the years, though, the facility changed hands, and the new owners did not take as kindly to Mike’s periodic payment lapses.

“I went to go make a payment one day, and they were closed for the Christmas holiday,” Mike says. “I called them when they re-opened, and they told me they’d had an auction and sold it all. I was so upset. Every time somebody brought it up I’d just fly off about it. I would have looked for them myself, but I had no idea where to go.”

The rediscovery of the records is so fortuitous it’s almost unbelievable; they could have turned up in some podunk thrift store or been trashed as valueless by a cynical store clerk. Instead, they ended up in the hands of a record enthusiast who just happened to be a private investigator.

“I was completely puzzled over what these things were,” Hadar explains. “Mingering Mike? What’s a Mingering Mike? Why have I never heard of Mingering Mike? Why are these records made out of cardboard?” Hadar asked the other crate diggers in the store, but none of them seemed to share his fascination. Flummoxed, he posted pictures of the albums on the record enthusiast website SoulStrut — and that’s when the legend of Mingering Mike took root. The thread quickly became the message board’s most-viewed, racking up thousands of pageviews and generating both rabid enthusiasm and curiosity.

“Someone made the suggestion, ‘go back to the flea market and just buy the whole lot.’ So I went back and I bought the reels and some paperwork — bills, stuff like that — and using the addresses I found there along with some resources at work, I was able to find Mike.”





Hadar and Frank Beylotte, another digger who had also discovered some of Mike’s cardboard records, turned up on Mike’s doorstep, tentative and apprehensive.

“He was very calm and collected,” Hadar remembers, “and very hard to read.” Mike offers an explanation:


“When they knocked on my door, the first thing I thought was, ‘Uh-oh! More bill collectors!’”

Their first meeting was pleasant but stilted, but a few weeks later Hadar and Beylotte sat down with Mike and his cousin, Joseph War, and explained the situation.

“What I wanted to convey was, ‘People really, really love this,’” Hadar says. “‘People are moved by this. They’ve never met you, but they look at these albums and they love you.’”

What followed was a rocket ride to regional stardom. Stories appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Washington Post. A small record label called the Vanguard Squad, owned and operated by Soul Strutters, contacted Hadar, interested in issuing a limited edition Mingering Mike 45. And DC’s Hemphill Fine Arts Gallery organized a show for Mike, putting a decade of painstaking work before the public at last.

“The albums were displayed chronologically,” Hadar says, “and so people would just stop and read them. Just watching these people who’d never seen these before — or who didn’t know what they were — just the expressions on their faces. They were totally drawn in.”

“There was another exhibit downstairs, but all the people were coming upstairs to look at my work,” Mike beams.

“And every single person had a smile on their face,” Hadar finishes.

“I never thought too much about it when I did it. It was just something that had to come out,” Mike said. “But seeing they’ve been out for a little bit and seeing that people love them — that’s just overwhelming.”

“They’re records you really wish were real,” Hadar added. “You look at the song titles and the liner notes, and you just want to hear those songs.”

“I was nervous at first because they were so personal,” Mike admits. “But people were coming up to me and saying, ‘It reminds me of my childhood!’ That really made me feel good. So I said to myself, ‘Man, I’m bringing joy to people — out of my misery, out of my loneliness. Well, that’s OK.’”





“Loew’s Palace used to be right there, where that bank is.”

Dori and Mike and I are in central DC, taking a slow drive through the quiet Sunday city as Mike points out his childhood hangouts. “York’s Haberdashers was over there, and further up was Lynn’s Music.” I’m starting to get used to the past tense. Earlier in the afternoon we’d driven by the Howard Theater, where Mike spent so many teenage nights. In its heyday it was proud and glorious, but now it’s sadly crumbling. The marquee had rusted over, the windows were either blown out or boarded over and the walls have faded to a sickly shade of orange. I’d wanted to photograph Mike standing in front of the building, but the large barbed-wire fence and the building’s embarrassing disrepair immediately make it clear that this is a terrible idea. It becomes a kind of afternoon trend: the drug store where Mike bought his supplies, even the flea market where Hadar first found Mike’s cardboard chart-toppers, are all lost but to memory.

“When was the last time you were in Loew’s Palace?” I ask as we roll slowly past.

“That would have been to see James Brown.”

“Did your brothers go with you?”

“No, I mostly went by myself. They were older than me, so they liked different music.”

“How much did that show cost you?” I ask.

“It was expensive!” Mike exclaimed — he cranes his neck around and smiles. “Five dollars and fifty cents.”

“There’s a toy manufacturer that had expressed some interest in doing a Mingering Mike doll,” Hadar says.

“How would you feel,” I ask, “having a doll of yourself?” Mike was typically reserved. “It’s alright,” he allows.

“Has it been hard, balancing your personality as Mingering Mike with your day-to-day life?”

“I seem to be balancing the two pretty well,” Mike says. “Only the people I’ve told know, and they’re keeping it rather secret.” He chuckled. “It’s funny. I used to sit back and observe — but now I’m the observed!”

“That’s the price of being a soul superstar,” I say.

“It was bound to happen!” Mike laughs. “I should have known!”

Some forty years after his first cardboard release, Mike’s made-up catalog numbers now correspond to a bona fide album. Songs that, until now, were just thin wisps of cellophane and etchings on an invented album cover are now actual, playable, hearable songs, the first tentative steps in transforming an imaginary soul star into a real one. “Who knew that he actually made recordings of the songs that were to fill the vinyl in that universe?” Byrne wondered during our correspondence. “Alright, there still ain’t no band, but we’ve all done this at some point, yes? I myself used to walk home from school humming guitar solos that I imagined would put Clapton to shame. Mike did one better, and actually wrote lyrics and melodies to flesh out his young fantasies. It turns out Planet Mike is more complete than one would have thought.”

But as thrilled as I am to be working with Mike, it seems like a bitter irony that his first record is being released in a format that can’t be held in the hands, whose artwork can’t be pored over, whose liner notes can’t be studied and learned and recited. I feel strangely complicit, for the first time, in a kind of bait-and-switch — like a guy who sells 3×5 postcards of Starry Night. As we drive away from downtown DC, a city Mike remembers as tiny record stores and packed soul venues but which I see now only as steel and concrete and Coldstone Creameries and H&R Blocks, I’m struck by an exchange Mike and I had at Marvin a few hours earlier.

“Are you going to make any more records?” I asked him. Mike nodded.

“Well, right now I’ve got the foundation for The Return of the Magnificent Mingering,” he said, “but I only have it as a blueprint, so I can finish it when I have the time.”

“So will you still make the covers look like vinyl LPs, or will you switch to CD?”

“I’ll do both,” he said. My brow furrowed. He continued. “The reason I’ll do both is so you can see how it used to look — a big, full-sized record — and you see how it is now with a CD.”

Then he leaned a little bit closer, brown eyes twinkling, smile creeping across his face. “Now,” he said, “you tell me: Which one would you want?”

end