It’s one thing for a live album to attempt to build or add to an artist’s hero status; that is almost always part of what it’s about; but what are we to make of Hai!, released by a barely-known band with virtually no public profile? It takes on a sort of evil glow: this is a recording of something that, if left unrecorded, would have vanished completely into the warm all-destroying ocean of history. There is a voyeuristic appeal to it. There are hardly any credits in the liner, as was the norm with CV records; there are certainly no lyrics, since the whole point of the singing on CV records is for there to be a few words and phrases leaping out from a distorted, muddy eruption of speech, and for those few words and phrases to float around on and skim the surface of the songs like leaves on a pond, carrying no particular meaning beyond the momentary associations that the listener makes. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [next]