Various - 'The Deer Hunter'

I'm pretty sure that this is one of a few records I bought in a thrift store in Brooklyn, when I lived there in the early 1990s. I was sharing an apartment in a brownstone on South Portland Avenue, and had walked to the Silver Spoon on Flatbush for breakfast and a spot of bargain hunting. The walk over took in a fair number of run-down and vacant lots,a sort of urban wasteland. It was OK in the daytime, but you wouldn't want to be there at night. The discarded crack vials made that quite clear.

It's a nice-enough record, although a bit of a mish-mash - it doesn't really make sense without knowing the film. Strings, acapella folk, acoustic guitars, then a bit of polka, then some helicopters and machine guns. It's evocative, but it's hard to say of what - a forgotten America, maybe?

The helicopters sounded great sampled and played back as part of a track when we played a Speakerfreaks gig at The Warehouse in Leeds, late 90s, probably at 'It's Obvious'. I drew the line at machine guns - the KLF had a monopoly on that.

Did I really bring a load of second-hand vinyl home on a plane from New York? Madness.

Catalogue Number: SOO-11940

Tracklist: Cavatina. Praise in the Name of the Lord. Troika. Katyusha. Struggling Ahead. Sarabande. Waiting His Turn. Memory Eternal. God Bless America. Cavatina (Reprise)