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[crazyrabbits]

The account of the album's recording is wild:

http://www.mojo4music.com/15608/lewis-lamour/

Tony Mederos still remembers the morning in 1983 when a man called Lewis arrived at the Music Lab Studios in Los Angeles.

“We were the cheapest studios in town,” explains Mederos, “$25 an hour. [LA punk producer] Spot Lockett would be in Studio B overnight with Black Flag, Meat Puppets… our clients arrived in mini-vans. Then this guy pulls up in some kind of expensive looking white car, with his girlfriend. This was not your typical $25-an-hour guy.”

As general manager of Music Lab, Mederos showed Lewis around the studios. “He was very quiet, observant, always with his girlfriend. He said he was into the fashion scene. He described a little bit of his music. He said, ‘Well, it’s atmospheric and very ethereal.’

“No one could find him,” says Jack Fleischer, who wrote the linernotes for L’Amour’s reissue. “The music is like a mirage, a dream. That’s totally appropriate. I did that drive he did. From the Beverly Hills hotel to Silverlake, along Sunset Boulevard. What a delusion. He was dreaming. There’s a lot of sadness there.”

A private investigator hired by Light In The Attic tracked down Wulff’s family, but the last anyone had seen of Randall was seven years ago, in Vancouver.

“There were issues,” says Fleischer. “A new pseudonym… some ugly stuff. I’m not sure what’s real and what’s not. I don’t think he’s dead. I don’t think he’s homeless. He’s just not in Canada any more.”

 

[shuri]

So this guy remembers this very specific guy who came in 30 years ago?

 

[crazyrabbits]

At this point, I'm not sure what is or isn't real. All I know is that I need to hear Romantic Times in full, stat. Those samples on the last page are amazing.

 

[kaiju]

You saw it in record store bins, yet nobody know what it was until like three months ago? Still guessing its some kind of marketing ploy.

Do you know how many records exist today that have never been transferred to any other format let alone have been discovered by this generation (other than collectors and audiophiles)?

Spoiler

Thousands.

I'll eat crow if this comes up as fake but I know I saw that first Lewis LP way before it's current popularity.

Maybe he's a time traveler?

I definitely have never seen the 2nd LP Romantic Times before. Can't wait to hear it!

 

[ShineALight]

Some more possible insight into whom Lewis might really be: http://dereksmusicblog.wordpress.co...rapped-in-a-mystery-wrapped-inside-an-enigma/

Not long after I posted my review of L’Amour, I was contacted by Lewis’ ex-girlfrind, Donna. The story she told me was very different.

“I met Randall Aldon Wulff in the summer of 1975 or 1976 on the Oregon coast. He was on a motorcycle trip and I was on a beach camping trip with my sister. He was a Canadian, the son of Gladys and Earl Wulff of Calgary, Alberta. In the winter of 1976, Randy and I lived with Gladys and Earl in their home while we did painting jobs around Calgary trying to get enough money to get to Hawaii. His mother, Gladys Wulff was a clerk in the Hudson Bay Dept store in Calgary, and his father, Earl, was a building contractor, who had recently been disabled by a stroke. I believe Randy was about 23, at the time and I was about 30 yrs old. We went to Maui, Hawaii for about a month, ran out of money, and my father paid for our transport back to Calgary. We soon left Calgary and moved to Victoria, BC Canada, where we lived on St Ann Street i,n a rented house in Oak Bay. Then after 6 months to a year, we moved to a rental house on Hollywood Crescent in the Fairfield neighbourhood of Victoria.

Much more at the link.

 

[Staccat0]

My brother...

 

[sixteen-bit]

no word on whether this is a hoax or not?

 

[MrCunningham]

Reminds me of Paul Dano

He reminds me of the blonde guy from that imitation Ghost Busters cartoon from the 80's.

 

[Screaming Meat]

These are the best rock albums btw

These are all correct.

 

[s_mirage]

Intriguing, although my money's on this all being an elaborate hoax.

 

[AlexMogil]

He's back

From Light in the Attic:



Thanks, Dwayne and Cosmic Bus

Hey guys look at this 80's stuff. It's the 80's. See the 80's?

 

[MasterOfPuppets]

It seems he recorded a second record.

http://www.discogs.com/Lewis-Baloue-Romantic-Times/release/5903986

EDIT: Looked for title of album, didn't find it but it was already mentioned.

 

[DiscoJon]

Lewis

Romantic Times

http://lightintheattic.net/releases/1396-romantic-times

"Earlier this year, we released the mysterious, bewitching L’Amour, a 1983 private press record thought to be the only release by one of music’s true lost talents: Lewis.

So lost, in fact, was Lewis, he eluded every effort to track him down. Scant details were known: just a series of possibly apocryphal stories about a sports car-driving Canadian with a model on his arm and a habit of skipping town when there were bills to be paid.

Deciding that Lewis’ spider web-delicate songs demanded to be heard, we put the album out anyway, offering to present the due royalties to anyone who could prove they were Lewis.

One sure thing was this: Lewis was a man of many names: Randall A. Wulff among them. Now we have either found another alias – or perhaps even his real name – on the sleeve of a completely unknown album.

Sourced soon after the re-release of L’Amour, Romantic Times is the 1985 follow-up to L’Amour – and it’s released as Lewis Baloue. The name may be slightly different, but this is absolutely our man: a familiar blond posing on the sleeve, a familiar, tortured voice pouring his heart out over languid synths and synthetic waltz beats.

Remastered from a sealed, vinyl copy of the ultra-rare album, the album was discovered in the vaults of DJ and collector Kevin “Sipreano” Howes in Vancouver, BC. It’s so rare that what is, at present, the only other known copy – found in the same Calgary store where Aaron Levin discovered a batch of sealed copies of L’Amour – is presently soaring into quadruple digits on eBay.

Even engineer Dan Lowe, credited for working on the album at Calgary’s Thunder Road Studios, remembered little about the session other than that Lewis seemed to be “under the influence”. Yet the music is utterly captivating.

The album further fleshes out the Lewis myth – we see him pictured in that white suit with his famous white Mercedes and a private jet too; we hear him focussing more intently on matters of the heart, and appearing to unravel in the process. “I felt like I was witnessing a full-blown exorcism of a phantom clad in the finest linen,” writes filmmaker and historian Jack D. Fleischer in his brand new liner notes. “This record went further [than L’Amour ]. It was a personal plea, of sorts. Something had gone wrong. Nerves were clearly exposed.”

It paints Lewis, then, as being more like a David Lynch character than even his debut did, exposing the darkness beneath the sheen. The album is presently being readied for release to the throng of new fans Lewis has found, willingly or not. The man himself remains a total enigma.

First ever LP reissue, first time on CD & Digital

All tracks newly re-mastered

LP housed in deluxe Stoughton “Tip-On” gatefold jacket

Liner notes by Jack D. Fleischer

All CD & LP Pre-orders include immediate MP3 download of the full album

LP includes download card for MP3 of the full album

Color vinyl editions:
200 on “Malibu Blue” wax (LITA Vinyl Subscriber exclusive)
500 on “Pastel Pink” wax (LITA.net pre-orders exclusive, limit 2 per customer)"

 

[ShineALight]

Hey guys look at this 80's stuff. It's the 80's. See the 80's?

If you're suggesting that this is a hoax, I think the uncovering of this copyright pretty much ended that theory: http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...JSq0OrL0yTbHwJHb1cLn&SEQ=20140721150038&SID=1

Unless the copyright office is willing to collude with small-time labels/artists to deceive a handful of overly-enthusiastic music fans.

Aspects of this story seem a bit fantastic, but perhaps most fantastic of all is that the strongest evidence points toward it being true. Either way, can't wait to get my order in for Romantic Times and give it a listen.

 

[MattKeil]

Aspects of this story seem a bit fantastic, but perhaps most fantastic of all is that the strongest evidence points toward it being true.

I have little trouble believing it to be true as someone who grew up pre-internet. I feel like some younger people who have always known a world with internet might not understand how much easier it was to essentially disappear back then. There's nothing particularly implausible about any of this story.

 

[AlexMogil]

If you're suggesting that this is a hoax, I think the uncovering of this copyright pretty much ended that theory: http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pw...JSq0OrL0yTbHwJHb1cLn&SEQ=20140721150038&SID=1

Unless the copyright office is willing to collude with small-time labels/artists to deceive a handful of overly-enthusiastic music fans.

You bring the facts. I just bring noise.

 

[ShineALight]

http://blog.lightintheattic.net/?p=28161

Randall Wulff is alive. Living and breathing and content, simply playing his music in the comfort of his own home, with a girlfriend and some kittens by his side.

More at the link.

 

[amnesiac]

Hahaha yesss

 

[Bobs Big Boy]

It is perfect, love that he's just out there doing his thing, playing music only for himself, it's just as imagined.

 

[PaulExcellent]

That dude is straight-up radical.

 

[teruterubozu]

This really is one incredible story.

 

[Chance Hale]

Wow, was really expecting this to be some kind of involved publicity stunt where a young Louis would appear and use the publicity to start a career. Great stuff!

 

[Slowdive]

Wow, I'm not really into his music but it's cool that they found him.

 

[GPsych]

Amazing. I love how he just said "nice" when shown the CDs. This guy is on some other level of human experience/existence.

 

[DiscoJon]

 

[tensuke]

Hahaha this is great. I can't believe they found him.

 

[block tower]

best 80's album.

 

[kasane]

He shouldnt have revealed himself

Fuck

 

[DiscoJon]

He shouldnt have revealed himself

Fuck

Sounds like he didn't.

 

[Cosmic Bus]

Love that proof against the doubters continues to pile up.

The original '83 pressing had a sticker on the sleeve that I imagine most of us figured was a little tongue-in-cheek dedication:

But now the actual Christie Brinkley tweeted about the album, making it pretty obvious she had some sort of involvement with ol' Lew back in the day. Awesome.

 

[Nealand Liquor]

I listened to two songs and sure it is "soothing", but holy shit nothing ever happens in the songs. Every 10 seconds I could skip 40 seconds and never ever notice. I felt like I kept waiting for the intro to end.

 

[JJDinomite]

Somehow remembered this thread and decided to listen to L'Amour on a whim... holy shit is it amazing. I cannot recommend it enough.

 

[Helmholtz]

This album is pretty good. Gives me a Mark Hollis self titled vibe a bit (which is another album people need to check out if they haven't).

 

[Nether!]

Really cool story.
Bought the album as well, great stuff.

 

[Cosmic Bus]

Dude's skeezy producer from the '90s is selling a bunch of demos and half-finished songs Lewis was doing under the 'Randy Duke' pseudonym. Some interesting spots, but mostly mediocre (partly due to the weird/shoddy production). Much more listenable via headphones, fwiw.

http://www.fiascobros.com/lewis_randy_duke.html