The Latest News from Neptune - a Sun Ra thread

This showed up in my Spotify suggestions tonight when I went to check out this week's new music.

[Progressive House with Sun Ra vocals]
 
So, I'm reasonably certain this was a typo that worked in my favour. The same seller has a couple other books from this series listed at $125.80, but I managed to snag this one for $12.80! Until I got my shipping notice I didn't believe they were going to honor it, but here we are!

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Oh fantastic, great find!

I believe these are pretty scarce now, I had a look online for one a few months ago and soon found that they just dont pop up for sale that often. Great stuff!

It was a bit spendy but I have a project I'm hoping to undertake over the next year or two for which this ought to prove invaluable, so I was able to justify it to myself as a bit of an investment!
 
It was a bit spendy but I have a project I'm hoping to undertake over the next year or two for which this ought to prove invaluable, so I was able to justify it to myself as a bit of an investment!
Ooooh that sounds exciting. Plus its always nice to treat yourself every now and again, especially on something that you are passionate about.
 
Thrilled to be adding this one to the shelf:

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RLC, Trent and Moudry deserve a great deal of credit for using the Saturn listserv to put this incredible discography together. Then the CD reissues came from Evidence. Before that, it was a confusing mess of underground tape trades, confused matrix numbers, rumors, guessed band members.
 
Another one I'd been coveting a while and watching get more expensive until I happened to catch a halfway decent deal...

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40th anniversary edition book/DVD/CD soundtrack. DVD features the original and uncut versions of the film.

Honestly, I was expecting a hardcover CD-sized book so this has exceeded my expectations in all ways.

Also, with the chaos of a new baby arriving and spending most of the week in hospital, I had actually completely forgotten I ordered this! So a sweet surprise for myself, from me. 🤣

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The Fall issue of Oxford american has a great article about poet and sun ra associate Henry Dumas with some references to sun ra

Here are some of his (Henry Dumas') poems as well
 
The Fall issue of Oxford american has a great article about poet and sun ra associate Henry Dumas with some references to sun ra

Here are some of his (Henry Dumas') poems as well

A really fantastic read. Thanks for posting!
 
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"The film, tentatively called “Magic City: Birmingham According to Sun Ra,” is expected to be released in early 2024. It will center on Sonny Blount‘s youth in Birmingham before he moved to Chicago as a young musician, and his return to his hometown as famous musician Sun Ra in the late 1980s."
 

"The documentary will combine archival footage and performances with new interviews from Ra’s surviving collaborators, including longtime Ra collaborator Marshall Belford Allen, 98, who currently leads Sun Ra’s Arkestra, as well as modern-day Afrofuturist artists and scholars."
 
Looks like it's documentary season in the Omniverse!

I'm excited for both, but especially for Nelson's Sun Ra and the Roots of Afrofuturism.

“Without Sun Ra it is hard to understand George Clinton, Erykah Badu, Janelle Monae, Ras G, Kamasi Washington, Shabaka Hutchings, Moor Mother, Black Panther, Lovecraft Country and Afrofuturism itself,” Nelson said in a statement. “Ra was part mystic, genius, showman and possibly alien. He was one of the most prolific, creative and visionary musicians the world has ever known.”
 
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A fitting follow-up to Mitchell's recently released Dancing Shadows, also featuring Marshall Allen:

 
Here's an unconventional cover for you.

ANTiSEEN is a self described "destructo-rock" band that's big into professional wrestling and white trash punk. The fact that they even covered a Sun Ra thing is weird all on it's own, but also illustrates how much they thought out of the box. The album this is from, 'Hell", is all covers that literally run the gamut from jazz to hillbilly country to new wave. It's fun.

Joe Young, the guitarist here, was a relative of mine. He was the only guitarist in the band, didn't play a lot of solos but preferred dirty chords and had a pretty distinctive buzzsaw guitar tone. He died suddenly of a heart attack at 54 back in 2014. I haven't paid a lot of attention to or seen the band live since.

Here's the Sun Ra cover as well as one of the most surreal TV appearances I've ever seen - ANTiSEEN on what appears to be a Chicago public access Sesame Street type music show. I'm at a loss for words...




 
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Looks like the cat's finally stepping out of the bag...

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While STRUT has yet to make their official announcement about this release, which is the logical conclusion to the path they've been charting with 2020's Egypt 1971 box set and last year's Egypt Strut from Salah Ragab & The Cairo Jazz Band, a pre-order for it has popped up over at Elusive Disc for an April 8th release!

The folks at STRUT were originally hoping to get this one out before the end of last year, but the Great Vinyl Backlog of now until who knows when delayed things until this spring. I'm super excited for this one!
 
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