Where online can I purchase music by the band Marzuki? The band has
only produced two cds: a self-titled LP and an EP called "No one likes
a nervous wreck."

The little information I have about Marzuki is summarized in the
Wikipedia entry for the band. At the moment I'm not even able to find
an mp3 floating around the internet which would allow me to hear a
sample of the band's work.

I'm a huge fan of singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens and am trying to
track down his earlier work. Help is greatly appreciated.

An acceptable answer would include an online merchant
which currently has a copy of either Marzuki's LP or EP. Information
about used music stores which sell Marzuki's recordings but do not
sell online would be of no use to me. (I'm not willing to road-trip!)

I cannot tell you where you can buy a Marzuki album. According to a
post on a forum I stumbled across, the albums you mention were sold
only at the band's shows, never through a distributor.

Thus, in case no one comes up with a cd source for you, I have been
able to hunt down a site where you can download the first of the two
albums, the self-titled "Marzuki" (1996). (You can find the track list
here:  http://allgoodnaysayers.net/music/related-projects/.) In doing
a search, I found a reference to a blogger who had posted the album
late last year, and eventually found another blogger who still had a
live link to the hosting site. Here's how I went about getting the
album, to which I am listening as I write this.

Step 1:
For reference, here's the original live link I found on The Sad Pandas
blog. You do NOT have to go through this step; you can skip straight
to the page in Step 2. But if you wanted to see where the process
began, scroll down on this page to Sunday, November 20, 2005, where
you should find a picture of a kid in a big green hat with a yellow
star. Below that are links to mp3s by The Budgies and the Shout Out
Louds (didn't check to see if these still work), and then--in gold
type--you should find "Marzuki." Click on "Here," and you should
arrive at the URL in Step 2.

http://thesadpandas.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_thesadpandas_archive.html

Step 2:

Clicking on "Here" should take you to the Rapid Share webhosting site.
Or just use the URL posted below this paragraph to go straight there.
Scroll about halfway down to where you should find the message: ?You
want to download Marzuki.rar.? Keeping scrolling down through the
chart and click on ?Free,? on the bottom right hand corner of the
chart. This will take you to another page on the same website. Again
scroll down to just below all the blue ad links, to where it says "You
have requested...." You will have to wait about 15-30 seconds for a
?download ticket.? You will be asked to enter a 3-letter code (à la
Ticketmaster), after which you can click on the button that says
"Download from Mirror Alpha." (From here, it will proceed like a
normal download; you pick the location and the file will start
downloading. It took about 4 minutes on my DSL connection.)

http://rapidshare.de/files/8134840/marzuki.rar.html

Step 3:
Now, if you know what .rar files are you can skip this step, since you
will already know what to do. I didn't, and since I'm normally
suspicious of file extensions that don't look familiar, I did some
research before I downloaded. Apparently, this kind of file is like a
.zip file, although the info I found says that .rar files are more
compressed than .zip files. If you haven't downloaded and opened this
kind of file before, you will need a program to do that. At the URL
below, you can download a trial version of WinRAR 3.6 beta 2. It takes
only seconds, and will very efficiently and quickly extract the
individual files from the .rar file. (There may be a faster, more
efficient way to do this. However, I'm no geek or techie, and I had no
trouble with winRAR; it works basically like winZIP, and has a
similar-looking template. Find the file, click on it, and then click
"Extract.")

http://www.download.com/3001-2250_4-10530598.html?idl=n

(If you want to read a little bit about .rar files before you proceed,
try this page: http://www.techsono.com/faq/rar.html.)

This should get you the full album: 9 mp3s in all.

A few more notes of potential interest. The band was named after
Sufjan Stevens' brother who is a marathoner; you can see a pic of him
finishing 20th overall in the 2006 Boston Marathon on the Asthmatic
Kitty website here:

http://www.asthmatickitty.com/news.php?newsID=58 

Also, Matthew Haseltine, one of the original Marzuki members, is the
brother of Dan Haseltine, the lead singer of a band called Jars of
Clay. And if you'd like to hear more of the lead singer, Shannon
Stephens, Asthmatic Kitty Records carries her recently released
self-titled album. You can hear a full song from the album here:

http://www.asthmatickitty.com/music.php?releaseID=44.

If you end up using this source, I'd like to know if the directions
worked for you. I think I've included all the necessary
steps/information.

Hey, this is perfect. I would actually have been a bit surprised if
finding an album for purchase was straightforward; I'll keep looking
for a hard copy of the album and EP to purchase, but in the meantime
it's nice to have the mp3's to listen to. So you know, the download
went smoothly and the .rar file was not a problem to deal with (I've
worked with the extenstion type before).

The background information you found about the band was excellent; I
didn't realize there was a connection between Marzuki and Jars of
Clay. I guess the world of Christian musicians is a small one after
all...