I work with a dude who's got a few years on me and had a geographical advantage when he was young, so he's got stories of rolling with SSD, seeing BAD BRAINS in '81, buying Cows And Beer for $2 at Newbury Comics, seeing Terry Bash get stabbed at the Rock Against Maximum Rocknroll show with AGNOSTIC FRONT and THE FUCKUPS in '85...you get the general idea. But then that fool found jazz, and hardcore died (I disagree with this premise, obviously), and he started collecting records. Free jazz is his jam, the weirder the better, and he's turned me on to piles of cool shit (guidance into new worlds of sound is always appreciated) as the two of us nerd out on out respective areas of interest. He's into SUN RA, and recently came into a collection featuring 75+ different SUN RA releases, all with the handmade covers that make early ARKESTRA and related records so unique and desirable...so I always ask him: "where do I start?" Because when an artist has a discography spanning well over 100 individual releases and you know the shit is experimental and all over the place....well, it's hard to know where to start. And I love Pete, but that fool can never give me a straight answer except to say "get the shit with John Gilmore." So I asked my pal Paul, who goes way deep into African Futurism and generally off the punk map shit, I asked him "How much do you fuck with SUN RA?" And he replied "Conceptually: 10; Functionally: 2." and I was right back where I started. Enter the fine folks at Loathed Sound Department (once again) with several SUN RA tapes in their likely unauthorized arsenal, and I figured "why not?" It was the right choice, as this combination of 1974's The Antique Blacks and 1978's Disco 3000 serves as the PERFECT starting point for people who are just starting to learn, generations later, that Space is definitely The Place. My only word of advice to you is that once you open the door, you might never turn back.
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