When you're addicted to pop culture, you sometimes find yourself, like many addicts, sucked into a sleazy underbelly, a world of terror and amazement and bizarre things such as most of the world probably never imagines. You might find yourself up 'til all hours watching some movie so strange and shocking that it would drive a clinically insane person right back into the arms of sweet, sweet Mama "Sanity". You might pick up and read (with delight) some book which, were you not a pop culture addict, you would fling across the room in disgust.
And sometimes...yes, sometimes, my friends, you get sucked into the world of outsider music and "rare audio". Everything from vanity recordings (where someone actually bought studio time so they could release an album) to old answering machine tapes and hours and hours of unfunny prank phone calls. Yes, this is the kind of stuff some of us live for.
Radio station WFMU has twice now (once in 2003, once in 2007) done something they call the 365 days project. Basically, every day for one year, someone posts a strange, rare, bizarre, or just funny recording to the project, and the files are left up for download indefinitely (barring an artist request that they be removed).
I didn't discover the little gem I want to tell you about on the 365 project, but that's how I managed to actually hear the amazing LP that is Esther Lee's "Where Glory Began". First, as a little taste, I'll let you soak up the cover art of this amazing recording.
