Spin Spotlights The Numero Group

Take a trip down South with our friends from the Numero Group.

The Numero Group has become the world's greatest reissue label by tirelessly chasing dead-ends, following every detour, and ringing doorbells at their own risk. DAVID PEISNER trails the label's founders through Louisiana as they sniff mold, rifle through trash, and maybe expose a few lost geniuses.

This is what it's come to. When a man isn't listed in the phone book, when he doesn't respond to emails or letters, when nobody seems to know how to find him, sometimes you just have to roll up to his last known address and holler at him. Literally.

"Mr. Gibson! Mr. Gibson!"

It's 11 o'clock on a Thursday morning and Ken Shipley is standing on the sidewalk outside a tidy, one-story brick house in the Carrollton section of New Orleans. Hands cupped around the sides of his mouth, he's trying to summon Joe Gibson from what may or may not be his home. Shipley surely would've preferred knocking on the door or ringing the bell, but the small home is separated from the street by not one, but two, locking wrought-iron gates.

"Mr. Gibson! Anyone home?"

In the early 1970s, Gibson wrote and produced two 45s by a group called the Soul Emotions, which featured his three young daughters. Not many copies of either record were pressed, not many were sold, and by the time Gibson's eldest daughter was a junior in high school, the Soul Emotions had quit performing. The records quickly went out of print and just about disappeared from the Earth entirely.

But one made it into the hands of Rob Sevier, a partner of Shipley's at the Chicago-based reissue label, the Numero Group. Sevier thought one song — a charming pop-soul nugget called "It's Time for Love" — would fit perfectly on a compilation calledThe ABCs of Kid Soul, which documented the post-Jackson 5 explosion of such groups. So he tried to find Gibson. That was more than five years ago. The ABCscame out in 2007, but now Numero has decided to do a second album, The 123s of Kid Soul. Which is what has brought them here to the doorstep of this mini-Fort Knox in Carrollton.

Read the full article at Spin.com

Top 10 of SXSW

After 6 days at SXSW, it took me a couple days to comprehend the madness that encompassed Austin last week. So, now that I'm back to reality, here is my list of top ten moments that made the trip worth while...

10. My signature drink for the week — Shiner Bock — great taste, miserable hang-over.
9. Last minute Spin party that kept us up just long enough to get no sleep before our trip to the airport. Where's the party?
8. Issac trying to convince me that, with Brook's contacts, I could get Dinosaur Jr. to remix an Odawas song.
7. Running into at least 5 people I knew, and meeting at least 5 people I hope to run into again.
6. The TX sunshine, the heat, an escape from the windy city and a desire to return to Austin, preferably when SXSW is not invading.
5. After 4 years of attending panels on the same topics, I finally found some that were interesting, and not a reiteration of everything I have heard before.
4. The Dutch—whether or not everyone considers them the happiest people on Earth, they surely are a joy to be around.
3. Eating everything from migas, to BBQ, to peach cobbler to a chicken fried steak and my favorite — the breakfast taco — another reason why I should have started eating bfast years ago.
2. My iPhone survived being submerged in a stale beer, soggy pizza crust and roach infested puddle. See picture below...

1. I easily attended 20 shows in 4 days, from a vast collection of artists. In a somewhat sequencial order, the ones I remember: Honkey, Anathallo, The Shaky Hands, Justin Townes Earle, Janelle Monae, Ladyhawk, Heartless Bastards, The Avett Brothers, The Decemberists, Cold War Kids, Afterhours, Dinosaur Jr., Guy Sebastian, Aqualung, O+S, Sebastian Grainger, Cursive, Circle Jerk, PJ Harvey, The Handsome Family, Daniel Johnston, And You'll Know Us By The Trail of Dead