for their loving packaging and informative liner notes as they are for the superb music they contain. They’ve done French pop, rare funk and soul, outsider folk, groovy jazz, roots reggae, psychedelic bubblegum, etc. Occasionally they leave off the reissues and get behind a new band. . . But how are all these varied records united, what exactly is LITA’s operating vision? Matt explains what they’re after. “Our catalogue seems like eclectic insanity, but yes there’s some kind of unity there behind all that we do, although after eight years I’mstill having trouble defining what it is. I would get burnt out just listening to the same genre all the time. We have a wide spectrum of tastes, but all the different records we do speak to us in some way. These records become like they’re your children.
“What we ask ourselves is, can we bring something to this project that this record has never had? Sometimes it’s that we’re giving a record a first CD reissue, other times like with Serge Gainsbourg’s Melody Nelson album which has been reissued on CD in other parts of the world, we’re bringing it out on CD in the States for the first time. There are others that never got a good remastering before, or never had much in the way of liner notes. We want our releases to be the definitive article of that release, like Criterion does with films. We love The 13th Floor Elevators but I don’t know that we’d ever reissue any of their stuff, cause it’s all been released so many times and I don’t know that there’s anything unique we could do with it.”
But can this go on forever? Won’t there eventually be an end to the lost treasures LITA can unearth? Don’t try telling that to Matt. “I plan to do this until the day I die. There are few things I like more than waking up in the morning and seeing what’s in the email and what’s in the mailbox. And there’s always this sense of ‘what will we discover today?’”
Brightest Lights: LIGHT IN THE ATTIC’s Most Illuminating
Rodriguez Cold Fact World-weary street poetry set to a funk-laced folk backing, from Detroit’s seedy underdog troubadour. Originally released in 1970, it’s enjoyed cult status in South Africa for decades but reached much wider audiences thanks to LITA’s earth-shattering 2008 reissue.
Serge Gainsbourg Historie De Melody Nelson
First US release of the Gitane-puffing punk’s strange but brilliant concept album dedicated to his great love Jane Birkin. A ’71 interview that ran in Rock & Folk Magazine at the time of the record’s original release is reprinted as part of LITA’s reissue.
The Free Design Kites Are Fun
1967 debut by New York’s answer to The Sandpipers and Spanky & Our Gang. The psych bubblegum classic was one of LITA’s first discs and set the tone for the kind of brilliantly esoteric material they would start unleashing regularly.
Jim Sullivan U.F.O.
Gentle giant and reluctant showman Sullivan recorded this minor masterpiece of cosmic, blues-infused folk roughly a handful of years before he literally vanished from the planet in ’75. LITA has brought Sullivan’s sublime music and bizarre, fascinating personal story the attention it deserves.
Various Artists Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-75
The subtitle tells you what you need to know. A funk and soul crate digger’s wet dream. The whole set is raw as fuck, like a bunch of Pacific Northwest versions of The Meters, Ohio Players or Bar-Kays, if they’d only ever used pawn shop purchased instruments to play raunchy house parties at dens of iniquity.
Karen Dalton In My Own Time
Dalton, a NY folk revivalist with a golden voice that is some kind of otherworldly combination of Bonnie Bramlett and Nina Simone, strangely was shy of being recorded. She only made two albums and this one – the second, from ’71 – is the more cohesive set.
The Monks Black Monk Time
One of the most outlandish – and fantastic – titles in all of cult music history. This is high energy, high insanity pre-punk from ’66, by a bunch of whacked-out American GIs stationed in Germany. LITA’s reissue boasts several bonus tracks and a booklet to treasure.
The Black Angels Passover
A LITA original, the 2006 full-length debut from Austin, TX’s neo-psych act is too immediate to be called stoner-rock. Equal parts White Light/White Heat Velvet Underground, Perfect Prescription Spacemen 3, Monster Movie Can and LA Woman Doors.
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