I Can Feel The Ice Melting
The Parliaments
Revilot Records
1968?
First one thing happens and then another thing happens and the first thing is connected to the second thing and everything after that forms a strange chain.
The first thing is this: I’m in Bristol working with The Letterpress Collective. We’re printing a poem by Will Burns called Country; the print contains a lino cut by myself and type setting by The Collective. It’s a great way to spend a couple days. The smell of the ink, the feel of it, the sound of the presses, the focus, the urgent world of setting type; it’s all great.
Another thing is this: the night before I came to Bristol I saw my friend Rob Ryan. Rob has been, for many years, my fellow traveller in the world of music. Art too and film and Gilbert Gottfried and the Tour De France and William Saroyan and all the things old friends find to talk about. One thing we often discuss is old soul music. He has, over the years, supplied me with records/tapes/CDs/Mixcloud lists of incredible music. One record he told me about, twenty years ago, was ‘I Can Feel The Ice Melting’ by The Parliaments.
What a record! Everything about it brilliant. As fine a slab of vinyl as has ever been produced.
And another thing: when I was younger and smaller and thinner I lived for a few years in New York. I had some very good friends there, people who are still my friends today. And one thing we did was we played baseball in Hoboken every Sunday. Playing baseball in Hoboken was a wonderful thing. There was a gang of us, most of whom lived in Hoboken. My friend Dave Schramm, who asked me to come and play, was a great guitarist and he lived with Fred Brockman, another fine guitarist. Among those who played baseball were George and Ira Kaplan, who, along with Dave Schramm, formed the band Yo La Tengo.
And now the last thing: one of the best things about working at The Letterpress Collective is that Nick Hand plays music all day. You never know what you’re going to get. We heard the soundtrack to The Hired Hand and Thelonius Monk and Nat King Cole and Woody Guthrie. Towards the end of the day he put on a record that I’d never heard and didn’t know anything about. I was cleaning up and thinking about the train ride home. Suddenly a song came on that I recognised. It was played in a different way but it was still ‘I Can Feel The Ice Melting’; I went over to the turntable, looked at the record and hey! It was my old baseball friends Dave Schramm and Yo La Tengo.
First one thing happens and then another thing happens and the first thing is connected to the second thing and everything after that forms a strange chain.
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Here’s Jeb’s website and Twitter account.