Lewis Baloue - L'Amour (1983), Romantic Times (1985)

 

Since we recently mentioned him, we really should include his work... Here are the two highly sought-after LPs from Lewis Baloue, aka Randall A. Wulff. It was fun to see Calgary (and the dear, departed Weird Canada) at the heart of the story of the discovery of these LPs almost a decade ago. And, no, the CCPS doesn't have originals - just the excellent reissues by Light in the Attic Records. 

It feels weird to run down the story so long after it all broke - in 2014, Light in the Attic reissued his first LP on an unsuspecting public, torching off a massive curiosity about the man behind the records. The stories about Lewis that emerged - especially his larger-than-his-bank-account lifestyle - were delightful and just added to the mystique. Lewis was tracked down that summer thanks to sleuthy internet folks, but had no interest in stepping back into the spotlight. And this is where our memory of the timing of things breaks down - we can't remember if it was before or after Lewis was found... but in rapid succession, a friend found a copy of Lewis' previously-unheard second LP in the back of Recordland and ran around the store whooping with joy, with Recordland putting that copy on eBay just as Light in the Attic announced the release of that second LP. 

Weird times, and there's a question that's always been at the back of our heads - is the story of these records better than the actual recordings? We find L'Amour quite listenable with its soft piano, synths, and Lewis' cooing vocals.. but Romantic Times maybe feels a bit too samey. And we certainly can't blame the engineer - the legendary Danny Lowe was at the control board for that one.

We dream of one day finding a copy of either of these in a random box of records - until that happy day, though, you can stream these over on Sportify.