Dear friends, 

Greetings and love from Mississippi in the depths of winter. 

This month we’re bringing you an interview with Bodikhuu, our favorite Mongolian hip-hop producer (plus a short documentary on Mongolian music), a comprehensive article on the Song-Poem craze, and the second Mississippi Records Songwriting Competition. The winner will be unveiled at a film screening and concert at the Hollywood Theatre on February 23. 

My favorite Bob Dylan quote of all time reads, “You gotta serve somebody.” Indeed, it’s the best we can do. I recommend taking some time to be conscious of who / what you’re serving and making sure it’s the right master. This is a good time to take stock as the winter sets in and we slow to a crawl. 

Watch out! The world’s behind you,

Mississippi

Next month, Mississippi teams up with Farsi Records to release TOKYO by the producer BODIKHUU, one of the first Mongolian hip-hop records on vinyl and a follow up to the 2019 cult classic Rio/Bodianova.

Cyrus Moussavi interviewed the artist to hear the latest from Mongolia’s capital…

It was 2015 when I first met Bodikhuu at a rooftop bar in Ulaanbaatar. The crowd was mostly young Mongolian businessmen and their girlfriends, drunk and heavily invested in off-kilter karaoke and 90s American pop hits. Bodikhuu’s deep, heady instrumental hip-hop set, played through an old-school MPC-1000, was a true anomaly in the sea of slicked back hair and giant Huaweis.

We talked later, his friend Emar translating. A shy, quiet guy in a Denver Nuggets fitted, hoodie, and prayer beads, Bodikhuu told me about his love of Damu the Fudgemunk and other sound collage visionaries of Philly and New York. I couldn’t believe the depth of his knowledge, so far geographically and culturally from the epicenters of which he spoke. He told me about his dreams of travel, and a series of records he’d been envisioning in which he journeys the world through music from different countries. 

On the album Rio, and now Tokyo, Bodi conjures up imagined cities through sound. Tokyo evokes the neon, sweat, traffic, exhaust, gloaming towers and “monotonous lonely lives” of the sprawling megalopolis Bodikhuu has never seen, all through its music. The album is a rich collage of cast-off sounds and razor sharp interpolations of city pop, obscure Japanese jazz, and 80s J-pop.  You can hear the first few tracks from Tokyo here.

CM: What gave you the idea of traveling through sound? 

BODIKHUU: I was born in the Uvs province of [far western] Mongolia. And at the time I'd never been anywhere else. Even coming to Ulaanbaatar was very different. That's why my only means of traveling was through music. I was studying landscape architecture and was bored all the time as I was not interested in the subject at all. I wanted to escape to a different country. While I was working cranes on a construction site I used to bring my laptop with me and just make music on top of the crane. Rio was my first destination. Then I went on to travel to Moscow & now Tokyo.

Why Tokyo? 

A friend of mine suggested that my next country should be Japan. And the first thing that came to my mind was the '80s j-pop & city pop music. I guess I could've sampled traditional Japanese music, folk maybe, but for me, the first thing I thought of was the city vibes of the 1980s & '90s Tokyo.

Next I wanna travel to a country with very unique sounds which are very specific to them such as China, India, and some African countries, or maybe Brazil again.

Tell me about what you've been up to since Rio / Bodianova. I saw you were playing in Europe? How did people respond? 

Since Rio/Bodianova I released 8 albums. The fall of 2019 was the first time I ever traveled to a foreign country. I think what you saw was me performing at TodaysArt Festival which was held in Netherlands Den Haag. I participated with a sound art project so I didn't have a chance to share my music.

What's the scene like in Mongolia these days? How do people respond to your music? Is this kind of music getting more popular at all? 

The Mongolian music scene is changing for sure. More people are appreciating my music. But it's hard to say that this kind of music is getting more popular here. Most music producers are making mostly electronic or trap music.

Who do you want to collaborate with? 

I wouldn't say collaborate but these people give me inspiration: Damu the Fudgemunk, Kan Kick, Ras G.

You use the MPC for your production. Why do you choose this instead of going digital? 

 Before I used to make music on AKAI mpc1000, now I'm making music on Native Instruments Maschine. I feel like making music on hardware lets you release more human emotions much better than with a mouse with no movement or a keyboard.

Finally, I wanna say thank you to all the people who support me, my family, and my friends, and a big thanks to the Farsi Records team.

Tokyo drops March 17, 2023. Photos by Jacob Russell.

ONE WEEK ONLY:

Watch UPTOWN IS COVERED IN MUD, a short documentary about music in Mongolia featuring Bodikhuu, produced by Raw Music International: 

Most of the best art forms  in the world are hard to describe. Case in point - the American Song Poem recording. Bare with me as I break it down - 

Starting in the early 1900's small ads in popular magazines, comic books, tabloids, men's adventure journals and similar publications started appearing with headline's like "Send in Your Poems - Songwriters Make Thousands of Dollars - Free Evaluation". if a customer bit the bait and sent in some words and cash, they would receive some arbitrary printed sheet music with their poem printed above the musical notes. The songs never generated "thousands of dollars" for anyone, but customers were just happy to have sheet music with their name on the cover and their words inside. 

This practice was also known as "song sharking" and was looked upon disparagingly by the mainstream music industry. While it was technically a predatory practice taking advantage of naive folks who thought their songs were actually being shopped around the music biz, the joy of receiving published music as a keepsake in and of itself may have been worth the money invested. 

 By the 1940's the song sharking industry moved from sending clients sheet music to sending actual records with their song poems performed. These records were marketed to folks as "publishers demos" that would be shopped around to record companies (and never were). Still, if you sent in a song poem and a fee, you would receive an actual record with your song performed by musicians!  A  minor miracle. 

The companies employed a team of hard boiled session musicians who could crank out songs fast. They would spend 10 to 12 hours in the studio at a time, recording up to 140 songs in a day. Gene Merlino, a gun for hire musician for song poem companies, claims to have sung over 10,000 song poems in his career. 

The material people sent in to be recorded was 80% pedestrian religious, love and patriotic songs, but stranger stuff did make its way through. John Trubee decided to test the limits of the song poem performer's tolerance by sending in lyrics for his classic "Peace And Love (Blind Man's Penis)". The lyrics read (partially) as follows -

I got high last night on LSD

My mind was beautiful, and I was free

Warts loved my nipples because they are pink

Vomit on me, baby, yeah yeah yeah

Let's make love under the stars and watch for UFOs

And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs

You can fuck them, yeah yeah yeah

The zebra spilled its plastinia on Venus

And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles

Ramona's titties died in hell

And the Nazis want to kill, to kill everyone

The studio musicians hired to crank out over 100 songs a day barely blinked and just layed down this song like any other, interpreting it as a country waltz. They did the same with songs like "Non Violent Taekwondo Troopers", "I'm A Ginseng Digger", "Be My Shark" and many other unusual entries. All songwriters received a record with very straight performances of their song no matter how weird. Enclosed with the record was an encouraging letter telling them. "Your song was great! You have genuine talent! Please send more songs and we'll shop them around to publishers and musicians on your behalf."

An exceptional performer of song poems was Rod Keith. Rod made genuinely psychedelic recordings out of the lyrics folks sent in. He employed the mellotron, melodica, moog and other oddball instruments. Some of Rod’s recordings are truly moving, such as his version of "Sing My Death Note", a suicide note someone sent for him to enterpret into a record. The writer of the lyrics left Rod’s recorded version in place of a handwritten note after he ended his life. 

Rod also recorded the endearing classic "Little Rug Bug."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDFNDW1RfXo&ab_channel=SordidSenses

Weirdly, some song poem companies started producing LP records to send to clients featuring multiple songs, usually on a theme such as Patriotism, American Presidents, God, Rodeos, Christmas and so on. These compilations would feature bio's of the songwriters on the back. 

Some examples of artists bios from these records -

 I started collecting these compilation records in the 1990's and was shocked at how many I could find in thrift stores for a buck or two. Most of the records were truly awful, but once in a while I'd find a classic song like "Jimmy Carter Says Yes", "The Human Breakdown Of Absurdity" or "We Are Going To Rollerskate." 

In a capitalist world, you gotta look between the cracks for beauty. While the song poem industry was technically exploitative, the musicians and songwriters involved found a way to make genuine art out of the whole mess. In the end, the song poem industry is not that different from the mainstream music industry that damned it. Both are instruments of exploitation, yet both somehow still manage to help facilitate good art here and there. 

As the man says - There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

We hope you can attend and hope you are inspired to send us some song poems for consideration! 

BUY TICKETS HERE!

Bands playing are -

Roman Norfleet And Be Present Art Group

Lavender Flu featuring Lilly

LOX

The Grand Style Orchestra

Cruise Control.

   - Each performing one song poem. A celebrity panel of judges will  pick a winner. 

This is Mississippi Records second Song Poem contest. The winner last time had just been out of prison for a week when he spied our ad for the competition at an unemployment office. While he had never done any creative writing, he decided to give it a go because he could use the prize money. After he won, he proclaimed, "I now know who I am. I am a poet." Hearing these words was perhaps the most moving moment of my life.

 See you on February 23rd! 

Mississippi Records Website
Visit the site to get our label's records and tapes direct from us - we are constantly rotating our selection of mixtapes, new records from labels we distribute, and discounted out-of-print records, so be sure to check in often!
www.mississippirecords.net

Mississippi Records Portland Store
We are open EVERY DAY from 12 to 7 PM!
(our stereo repair and retail shop is open Friday - Sunday, 1 to 6 PM).
WE ARE EXCITED TO BUY YOUR RECORD COLLECTIONS!
Please drop by anytime to sell stuff. We always have a buyer on duty and you do not need an appointment. Paying out 50 - 60% of our retail price (NOT - dumb internet prices though....Mississippi store prices)
Email mississippierici@gmail.com if you have any questions about the shop.

Mississippi Records CSR
Our Community Supported Records program directly supports the label. Get each Mississippi LP at a discount as it's released, no matter how limited, plus special schwag and gifts on occasion. Limited to 300 spots. The CSR contributions help us pay for record pressings and generally stay afloat.
More details here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mississippicsr/

Mississippi Records Special Products Division
Alice Coltrane For President and Mississippi Wreckers T shirts and tote bags! Post cards! Posters! Coozies! Oddities! Check us out weekly for new additions.
www.mississippiwreckers.com

Mississippi Records Bandcamp
There are hours and hours worth of albums available for free listening, and a whole lot of the releases are "pay what you want" if you want to download em. Check it out -
https://mississippirecords.bandcamp.com/

Toody Cole / Junkstore Cowboy
Toody Cole has shuttered her Junkstore Cowboy Shop in our basement, but that does not mean you can't get your Dead Moon / Pierced Arrows / Rats / Range Rats / Tombstone schwag and records still from her badass online store.
https://www.deadmoonusa.com/

Humboldt Neighborhood Association
The neighborhood association for the zone the Mississippi shop rests in recently got taken over by some social activists who are working on mutual aid projects, youth programs, anti gentrification / tenants rights activities, and a community child care circle. If you are in the neighborhood and want to get involved, our first general membership meeting takes place on November 23rd. Check in with the website for a link! We got some work to do....
https://humboldtneighborhood.org/

Red Hook Mutual Aid
We’re proud to have a little office in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, which hosts one of the most active mutual aid groups in the city. Recently, hundreds of migrants were forcibly evicted from a hotel in Manhattan and forced to move into a “barracks like” shelter at the Red Hook cruise terminal. The neighborhood has stepped up, opening a community center with clothes donations, language classes, and other resources. Learn more about the organizing activity here.