The Great CD Import of Spring 2009
About a week into my project of importing all of my music into Apple lossless, this this is how much I have gotten done.
That’s about 200 CDs, which is a bit over 70 GB. The problem is, those are just the random CDs that were stacked next to my desk. I have about 3,000 or so more in storage in my basement.
Setting up a dedicated machine and hard drive to do this has helped. I have the MacBook sitting on the side of my desk, and I’m basically just loading discs into it all day (there is no doubt the disc drive has gotten more work in the past week than during the entire life of the machine). Setting iTunes to automatically start importing when a CD is inserted is a big help. I don’t need to even touch the keyboard. Just pop the disc in and it imports, and them ejects it when it’s done.
Still, 200 down, 3,000 to go. I’m clearly going to need to start being more selective about what I import. The idea is to keep anything that there is a remote chance I may want to listen to or reference at some point in the future, but that should still leave a decent chunk of stuff that doesn’t fall within those perimeters.
The idea is that when it’s all done, the music will live on one drive, and be backed up to the Drobo as well. After that’s all done, at some point I’ll have to tackle how it integrates with my primary iTunes library. Right now it’s separate, and I want to keep it that way for now. Wish me luck, I’m curious if and when I’ll finally finish this all.
Jerry Garcia with an old, black Nikon F2. Grabbed from the fantastic Egypt 1978 release.
Digg Dialog with Trent Reznor. Really impressive and worth watching. Makes me kinda wish I liked NIN music more, but I have never really gotten into it.
Bob Dylan on Barack Obama.
The whole Times UK interview is worth a read.
Music for the morning: Shady Grove
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Grateful Dead fan or not, this is simply an amazing album. Soulful Americana bluegrass banjo mandolin goodness. I can’t believe this came out 12+ years ago. What a release. It’s been far too long since I’ve listened to it. And if for some reason you think of Jerry Garcia only as an old hippie that noodled on his guitar and sang “Truckin’,” well, you should really give this a listen. Beautiful music.
New video from Lily Allen, which I dig. Funny thing is I remember her tweetering photos from the set when it was being shot, and it makes a lot more sense now.
NYT on the Phish reunion
“For people in hard times, we can play long shows of pure physical pleasure,” Mr. Anastasio said. “They come to dance and forget their troubles. It’s like a service commitment.”
Windfall by Son Volt
switching it over to A.M.
searching for a truer sound
can’t recall the call letters
steel guitar and settle down
catching an all night station
somewhere in Louisiana
sounds like 1963
but for now
it sounds like heaven
This song is so good it actually hurts.
“Murder in the City” by Avett Brothers
I was first turned onto this song over on Merlin Mann’s Most Days video site*. I’ve listened to it a bunch and it’s really great. Highly recommended, and the type of song that is making me dig deeper into what these guys are all about. One of those songs that ends and I just want to start over immediately. I love tracks like that.
*most days, except maybe February eh?
cover of the new Soundtrack of Our Lives album. ha ha.
I remember seeing these guys back in ‘01 or ‘02 on a random weeknight at Lupo’s in Providence. They had just played a packed, buzz-filled show in Boston the night before, but there were very few people there the next night. They absolutely ripped it up. They all wore these burlap, monk-like frocks. Ebbot Lundberg walked through the crowd signing and wandering around across the floor as there was so much empty space. Great show. I really wish I had a had a camera with me.
Vinyl find: History of the Soviet Union in Ballad & Song
A few weeks ago I found a great little record shop right around the corner from me. Tucked away in a non-desrcript office park that looked to be full of dentists and accountants, I’m sure I’ve driven by dozens of times without ever knowing it was there.
As soon as I walked in the door I was greeted by a little old Eastern European woman who apologized for the mess, and offered help finding anything I was looking for. There were boxes and stacks of records piled up on every surface in the place. Bins along the outer walls that looked like they may have been in some order at one point, but right then it was just boxes and boxes everywhere you looked.
The old lady asked me if I was looking for anything in particular, which I wasn’t, but I said, “Do you have any Bob Dylan?” “Come with me,” she said, and led me to the back of the store. Towards the back is a small hallway that leads to another room that at one time must have been the office, but was now just filled with boxes of records. She started digging around and moving unlabeled wine cases filled with records, until she found the one she was looking for. “Here,” she said, “Lots of Bob Dylan in here.” She then walked back up to the front of the store, but before she did she told me to take my time and look at anything I liked. There were records stuffed on shelves next the owner’s business papers. There was an old desk, that had long since been used as rack for more boxes of records. It was total chaos, but it was fun to dig.
I ended up pouring through tons and tons of boxes, but really only scratched the surface. And since there was no real order, it was hard to keep track of where you’d looked as other people were constantly moving boxes and stacks of records and covering your tracks. Chaos, enjoyable chaos.
After an hour or so, I’d found a pile of a couple of records that I wanted—some old Stones and Springsteen, some Motown. But digging through one of the many boxes that were stacked back in the old office, I found the coolest record of the day: The History Of The Soviet Union in Ballad & Song. Put out by Folkway Records in 1964. I loved look: the bright red cover with the old hammer & sickle stamps, and the crazy song titles: “Boldly, Comrades, In Step,” “Tortured to Death in Captivity,” and “The Red Army is the Most Powerful of All.” The record seemed like a window into a different time and place. Such a random find, but one that sticks with me more than all of the others.
All that for a buck. Da.
I’m really digging this new Beirut release March of the Zapotec/Holland. It’s actually two separate EPs, with Holland being credited to “Realpeople”, the name under which Zach Condon composed early, more electronic work.
March of the Zapotec was recorded in southern Mexico with a local brass band that played funerals in the area. Whoa—this is the type of information that really perks my ears up.
There’s a couple of reasons why this really grabbed me on the first listen. The first is that I’ve never been to Mexico, yet I have this romantic vision of what parts of it are like (possible exaggerated, possibly not). I don’t have much knowledge of Mexican musical history, but the sounds I hear on this release fall right in with some of the imagery I imagine.
When I was in college, I took a short story creative writing course. We’d have to read the stories aloud to the class. I remember I once wrote a story that, in my mind, I really liked. It took place in a border town, and the music played a central role in the story. I tried to work the feel of the music into the linear piece of fiction and when it was read back it just didn’t work. The experiment failed, and was actual quite embarrassing. Oh well. Looking back I realize that what I was hearing—and imagining in my head—was something that really should have been written for a screenwriting or theater class, and not a fiction course. At least I got a good memory out of it.
The music that I was hearing in my head when I wrote that story could have been parts of March of the Zapotec. That’s the second reason.
Every now and then I’ll happen upon something on YouTube that stops me dead in my tracks. I can’t stop watching this, and it’s hard for me to express the response that resonates.
Yesterday I threw on Morrissey’s You Are The Quarry, which is an album that I liked a lot when it came out, but I haven’t listened to in a while, probably over a year. The first track is “America Is Not The World.” I remember this track getting criticism when it first came out (in 2004, not as far removed from 2001 as we are now) because it criticized the United States. Specifically it contains the line:
America, where the president is never black, female or gay, and until that day, you’ve got nothing to say to me
I always liked the line, and whenever I heard it, I generally thought “well, he makes a true point, etc.”
So I’m trying to remember exactly why I decided to listen to this album yesterday, and I can’t. I queued the album up, and went on to doing something else. It started with “America Is Not The World” and I wasn’t thinking much about it, but when it got to that line it stopped me in my tracks.
