Hey, did you guys hear about those pre-Edison recordings of French folk songs that turned up recently? Did you bother to read the Times article on them all the way through? We sure didn't. But good thing a friend of ours did, because buried near the end of the piece he found this item:
The hunt for this audio holy grail was begun in the fall by Mr. Giovannoni and three associates: Patrick Feaster, an expert in the history of the phonograph who teaches at Indiana University, and Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey, owners of Archeophone Records, a label specializing in early sound recordings. They had collaborated on the Archeophone album “Actionable Offenses,” a collection of obscene 19th-century records that received two Grammy nominations.
Whaaaaaaaaaa? It's true! Filthy stories from the 1890's involving policemen, whores, and "The Virtues of Raw Oysters." Our copy is on the way, and we have to say, if it doesn't turn out to be like the a shock jock version of Gangs of New York, we will be sorely disappointed.
[One beer, coming your way, JS!]