West Eighteenth Street, in the historic Chelsea district of Manhattan, has been heavily traveled by manic record collectors this weekend. Today is the last day of the WFMU Record Fair, most of whose patrons will probably also be stopping at the used-CD and -LP paradise of Academy Records. Yesterday at the fair I squeezed through crowds of pontificating post-punk pundits to browse the bins marked "Strange" or "Odd," where, naturally, the twentieth-century stuff could be found, in and amongst the works of Joe Piscopo. I came away with the Mainstream LP of the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble playing Roldán, Harrison, William Russell, Cowell, and Cage; Ralph Shapey's Praise, on CRI; and Babbitt's Composition for Four Instruments, also on CRI. For better or worse, I passed up the opportunity to plunk down $50 for the Obscure LP that includes John Adams's beautifully bizarre early piece American Standard (a kind soul once burned it for me). At Academy I found a long-sought Melodiya set of Shostakovich orchestral songs sung by Yevgeny Nesterenko. Now I am finally happy, for the moment.
