[UPDATE: Now with all 15 MP3s!]
A great find today on TheHoundBlog, a blog run by ex-WFMU DJ The Hound: A cassette by Hasil Adkins from the mid-90s, finally digitized to MP3 and available for everyone with an Internet connection. Here is what The Hounds writes [direct link to the post with downloads]:
It was around 1994 or 5 that Hasil Adkins gave this 90 minute cassette to Norton Records' honcho Billy Miller to give to me to play on my radio show. [...] So Billy gives me this cassette of Hasil's home recordings, no info, no song titles, nuthin', but every song is great. Some of his best work. Much better than anything on the Fat Possum LP (which captures Hasil on a very uninspired day). As far as I can tell none of this stuff has ever been released, so now it will escape, I being the one to unlock the cage and let it loose on you--the rest of the world. If you're a Hasil fan, fidelity isn't one of your great concerns, this stuff was recorded at Haze's house in the holler somewhere in the country side outside of Madison, West Virginia and transferred to cassette by Hasil himself. I dubbed it to digital using a program called Amadeus Pro (thanks to Brian Redman, for turning me on to this and teaching me how to use it, without Brian there's be no Hound). Some of the song titles I made up since, as I said, there were no titles on the tape box. [...] These fifteen tunes were chosen from a total of twenty three, so there'll be a volume two someday (all sad ballads). The great lost Hasil Adkins album, I think I'll call it Commodity Meat and other delights, or maybe How To Do The Hunch And Influence People.
If you missed the link above, the full post with all the MP3s and more pictures is here. Since the download speed is a bit slow over there, I grabbed them and put them up here, renamed and tagged.
MP3s: Waitin' For The Graveyard, Go Go Go Down The Line (Lookin' Down That Highway), Let Me Talk To You (Moo Moo Moo), Me & Jesus (Got It All Worked Out), Lee-Anne (I Wanna See You Boogie Woogie), Kill 'Em Rock, Keep On Hunchin', Way Before My Time (I Should Have Been Born A Long Time Ago), Somebody I Used To Know (and Chased Away With A Baseball Bat), Madison Boone County Blues, Old Joe, Commodity Meat & Peanut Butter, Ugly Chelsea Clinton Hunch (Feed Her Commodity Meat, Bill), Catch Me A Train, You're Too Young For Me, Reelin' & Rockin'.
I have been to Hasil's shack (it really is or was a shack) where this must have been recorded. My band Enormous Richard had the privilege of gigging with him in Huntington WV in 1993 or 1994. His diet at the time consisted of red meat and white whiskey. He was well on his way out there.
Posted by: Chris King | February 09, 2009 at 12:10 AM
please mirror this download!!!!!!
Posted by: bb | February 09, 2009 at 08:43 AM
Thanks for this! I'm more than happy to mirror as long as the Hound is ok with it!
Posted by: Hbee | February 10, 2009 at 08:44 AM
anybody have a link to where i can get his final disk, "night life" for less that 16$???
Posted by: bb | February 12, 2009 at 12:40 PM
Great stuff thanks for sharing!
One note: the tags on tracks 1 and 2 appear to be switched, at least the ones I downloaded form the links above.
Posted by: danomatika | February 14, 2009 at 12:36 PM