Music to Delight the Heart - The Lateral Cut

IT HAS ALWAYS been Dr. Boli’s delight to encourage worthy artistic endeavors, and most especially in the field of music, for which he admits a particular fondness. When a friend of his offered to share some recordings from quite a long time ago, Dr. Boli at once saw the opportunity to give encouragement to old friends like Mr. Victor Herbert, as well as some of these promising young people with their delightful “jazz” music, which so perfectly expresses the spirit of this mechanical age.

Thus today we launch the latest entry in Dr. Boli’s publishing empire, The Lateral Cut, named of course for the process by which sound is etched in a disc for permanent preservation. Beginning with a very modest collection, this new site will gradually build up a library of music rescued from the undeserved oblivion of the decades, much of it recorded by a purely mechanical process whose ingenuity still astonishes Dr. Boli even all these years after his friend Mr. Edison first demonstrated it to him. Think of it as your virtual gramophone on the World-Wide Web.

I was very interested to see Dr. Boli's announcement that his publishing empire is expanding to include music. Knowing the whimsical nature of Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine, I approached The Lateral Cut with curiosity. To my delight I saw that this is a genuine blog about lost music with something about the artists and a link where one can download the music itself. It is an eclectic collection thus far which just makes it more interesting. About the collection, The Lateral Cut blog begins ...

Language speaks to the mind, but music speaks straight to the soul. Yet music, like other arts, is subject to the arbitrary tyrannies of fashion. Much that is thrilling and beautiful has been utterly forgotten. But it lives on in these recordings, which sit neglected in flea markets and junk shops until someone comes along and says, “I’ll give you five dollars for that whole box.”

Check it out.