Collection of 39 Issues of Feel the Music, Sound Effects and Other Mail Order Catalog Zines
Item #4669
8vo, each issue xeroxed in black and white and saddle-stapled. Eight of the
issues addressed on the back cover to original members of the mailing list and
postmarked. Some post-its with various notes left in for posterity.
In 1978 Paul Major moved to NYC, and became a member of cult proto speed
metal project The Sorcerers. Major was deep into obscure and private press
records, and as his expertise in obscure collecting grew, Paul began a mail-order
LP business. His catalogs soon became must-reads for their mixture of hard-won
crate-digging knowledge and witty, one-of-a-kind music writing—holy texts for
psychedelic lifers the world over. This is a substantial collection of the ephemeral
zines, which are an endless source of obscurity, minutiae, humor and wonder.
Paul Major is probably my favorite music writer of the 1980s. I grew up reading
all of them: Gerard Cosloy (still great), Byron Coley and Steve Albini (meh),
Lester Bangs (great writer, bad taste), Richard Meltzer (truly great) and Tesco
Vee (sublime) - and as I re-visit the zines and catalogs that informed my taste
and obsessions while I was in my teens and twenties, and return to these writers
decades later, I can with a straight face state that if what one craves is the kind
of writing about music that sends you off on a wave of enthusiasm, with an
almost deranged desire to hear the sounds described, then Paul Major is your
man. Paul was never published in magazines or fanzines, the frst time he was
interviewed was (I think) by Jello Biafra in the Incredibly Strange Music book, but
he was widely read and quoted by the couple of hundred record collectors lucky
enough to receive his absolutely amazing catalogs through the mail. This is the
best collection I know of these catalogs, as they constitute the research archive
for the ‘Paul Major - Feel the Music’ book that was published by Anthology
Editions.
Item-level inventory available upon request.
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