*heavy weight vinyl housed in a european manufactured old-style/tip-on jacket with j-card style obi.

The Appalachian Trail runs 2175 miles south from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, though there are those who want to stretch it further, into Alabama, because the mountains go there. Why not extend it? Trails are made for that. But there's another Appalachian Trail, too - one that goes through time, extending from unfinished studios in Williamsburg, NY, winding down the grooves of ancient 78's to the 1920's or even earlier, past Stephen Foster's wet dream to a place beyond the compass of change.

If you're hiking on *that* trail, you're likely to run into a lot of post-grad Parsifal’s with inscrutable hair and de-tuned banjos - these days, you can't swing a cat around without hitting one! But if you're lucky, you might stumble across a clearing somewhere south of Lily Dale, where revolutionists stop for orangeade and Dr. Ragtime hangs out with his pals. If you ask him politely, he might offer you a taste of his elixir - made from codeine, sarsaparilla, and goat-gland extract - guaranteed to restore memories that never were. And if you're quiet, he might let you stay and listen to the music: Ethiopian novelties, characteristic marches and parlor favorites - bittersweet slices of Methodist pie, familiar tunes, at least in those sections where the square dance has not yet been supplanted by the fox-trot.

And if you have a couple of dimes to rub together in your pocket, you'll want to purchase his newest, electrically-recorded phonograph recording, entitled "Doctor Ragtime and his Pals." The Doctor, who hitherto has recorded only on his own, is joined here by Micah Blue Smaldone (who has been compared to both Tiny Tim and Kierkegaard), Glenn Jones (of Cul de Sac, last seen around these parts urging college students to contemplate the prospect of their own death on a balmy September evening), Michael Gangloff (late of Pelt and the Black Twig Pickers), Nathan Bowles (also of the Black Twig Pickers as well as the Spiral Joy Band) and the mysterious Harmonica Dan (from Pennsauken, New Jersey by way of ethereal caminos).

-- Charles Fourier, Tequila Sunrise Records