**2020 repress **Lovely Music presents a reissue of Robert Ashley's Private Parts, originally issued in 1978. This newly mastered CD release is a must-have for aficionados as well as a perfect introductory work to Ashley's oeuvre. Among Lovely Music's first six releases, it came to be known as "the yellow record". No one had ever heard anything like it; Ashley presented an unvarnished exposition of the inner workings of a man's mind. And on the other side, those of a woman. These two episodes were the foundation for Ashley's seven-part opera, Perfect Lives, which was performed by his ensemble throughout the 1980s and was completed for television broadcast by Britain's Channel Four. New arrangements of Perfect Lives, notably Varispeed's site-specific version, continue to intrigue and enchant. Recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, Oakland, California, July 1977, produced by Ashley. Personnel: Robert Ashley - voice; "Blue" Gene Tyranny - keyboards; Kris - tablas.

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"When Private Parts first hit the scene, everyone I knew had 'The Park' memorized within a month and quoted from it constantly. Ashley's series of non-sequitur images, fusing into a picture so lifelike that it never quite added up, brought a mystery into music theater that smashed our previous conceptions of the genre." --Kyle Gann
- "Recommended with enthusiasm as both an important example of recent musical history and as art that, like the work of certain photographers, gazes beyond the ordinary to its everlasting strangeness." --Mike Silverton, Fanfare

- "This is something I often recommend when people are having trouble in their lives. It never fails to find personal connection and bring peace. Like the I Ching, it has a mystical quality that is all-inclusive. This is no new-age, cosmic-bullshit, noodle-fest. It is deep, transcendental art." --Daniel Buckley, Stereophile