Tulip Frenzy

In June 2013, we asked a simple question: Is Henry Badowski’s Life Is A Grand THE great lost album of all time? After all, this perfect gem of an Eno-esque solo album, released by IRS Records in 1981, had defied the near universal jukebox reality we have lived in since the dawn of the CD era, when record companies, hot to sell everything a second time, brought virtually all vinyl records into a digital format.  It never came out as a CD.  It couldn’t be found as a legal digital download.  Unless you had the vinyl, or paid up for it, you would have to take the word of people like me: this was about as close to the Holy Grail of record collecting as a modern power-pop fancier could get.

Over the years, a fair number of people have read that post, linked to it, and commented.  Every once in a while, there is some spike in Tulip Frenzy’s traffic and it quite often comes from some diehard finding the piece and linking to it.  Henry Badwoski’s fans may be fairly few, but they are devoted.  As they should be.

I’d like to think that some people have learned about Henry from that piece.  After all, we said “the record is like a mix of Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy and Bowie’s Low –– though it is so endearingly sweet, you have to imagine Bowie on ecstasy, not blow.  It is almost entirely upbeat, and the rhythm section could easily have been the Moxhams from Young Marble Giant — minimalist, spare — underneath Farfisas and simple keyboards.  All we see of Badowski from the album cover is a fey, Bryan Ferry head of hair posed near a hedge on one of those great British country gardens.  And that’s all we’ve seen of him for 30 years or more; he disappeared, at least on this side of the pond.  And the record?  It disappeared too.”  Who wouldn’t want to know more, to track it down, to hear it?  What self-respecting rock’n’roll fan wouldn’t be intrigued?

A few weeks back, someone commented on Tulip Frenzy that they’d found the record as a digital download on this here Internet thing.  And sure enough!  You can download “Life Is A Grand” here!

Now, let us say, we are opposed to artists not getting paid for their work, and have never participated in illegal fire sharing.  But there is no other way to get a digital file of this record.  And we justify posting a link to the site where you can download the record thusly: we bet that, if Henry is not going to be able to get royalties from his 1981 masterpiece, he would want people to listen to it.  To remember him.  To recognize that he produced The Great Lost Album of the post-punk era.

Happily, it’s lost no more.

This entry was posted on May 20, 2017 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Music with tags "Life Is A Grand", Henry Badowski, IRS Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.