Sunday, August 26, 2018

VARIOUS ARTISTS – Reportage: Spela själv (Expo Norr, 1970)

Instrumental
International relevance: -

The liner notes explain it best, so here's a translation: ”Ordinary albums always feature people that are particularly good at playing, performing for other people to listen to. But this album has only people playing just for fun without thinking anyone else would listen to it. So the intention wasn't for the music to be released on an album. But for those who would have loved to participate but couldn't do it for whatever reason, it might be fun to hear what it might sound like when you meet with others and play and sing together.”

As you probably can tell, this documentary album of field recordings is very much a product of its time ('everybody can play'), but unless you'd really like to hear small children playing with their parents, another kid blowing harmonica, an unknown lot of people banging away on whatever they had within reach, street musicians playing drums etc etc etc, you don't need to listen to ”Reportage: Spela själv”. The closest you get to regular music are some unknown folk fiddlers on one track, but you can find better examples of Swedish traditional folk music elsewhere.

Some try to hype it as 'psych', 'kraut' and whatever to drain some cash out of collectors' pockets, but don't believe the baloney. Do like the title says instead: ”play it yourself”. Much cheaper. If interesting at all, it would be only to die-hard Träd Gräs & Stenar collectors would want it as it was recorded and edited by Bo Anders Persson. Bizarrely or perhaps predictably, a bootleg of the album was released in 2010.

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