Newish Old Music

Over the last day or so, I’ve been on an MP3-ripping rampage–I think I’ve done about 120 CDs in the last day or two. I’ve got a goal to get the rest of the CDs I’ve never got around to ripping (about 1000 or so) digitized before the end of the month, so that I can box them up and put them into storageI can’t get rid of them yet–not until I rip them all losslessly, and I won’t do that until enough players support lossless formats without hackery, and with full tags.. I won’t hit that, but it’s a goal anyway. I’ve actually moved up a supplemental computer so that I can keep it ripping all day, while I work on my main computer.

One consequence of all this activity is, obviously, exposure to a lot of stuff I haven’t heard in a few years–it’s been more than a few years now since I used a CD player to listen to music. I think I spent three working hours today listening to William Burroughs spoken word. I was definitely feeling a bit off by the end of that.

In celebration of all this new old music, here’s a selection of stuff hot off the old EAC, for your listening pleasure, with some notes following:

• Cats Laughing – Draw The Curtain: I was really surprised to find I hadn’t ripped this. I listened to the shit out of this album back in the day–a crazy decision to drive halfway across the continent to see a Cats Laughing show made a pretty big change in my life, and resulted in me becoming friends with a lot of very interesting people.
• Deep Blue Something – Breakfast At Tiffany’s: This one makes a lot more sense–it’s the only song on the CD I like, and so motivation to rip would have been low. I do quite like it though–it’s a catchy little pop tune, and it brings Audrey to mindI have been told, on more than one occasion, that I am way too into Audrey Hepburn for a straight dude. Whatever.. The book was better, of course, but it didn’t have Audrey.
• Greg Brown – Lord, I Have Made You A Place In My Heart: Damn near perfect song-writing, I’d say.
• Hoagie Carmichael – I Get Along Without You Very Well: I’ve liked Hoagie since the first time I saw To Have And Have Not, and in my mind he’s tied up with the young Lauren Baccall. I need to be in a certain mood to listen to music from this era, and I guess it doesn’t come along often–but when it does I know this to be good stuff.
• Johnny Cash – The Wall: Apparently I’ve really only been listening to the American albums for the last couple of years. It’s nice to get some older stuff into the rotation, especially this bleak monster of a song. This might be my favourite of Johnny’s tunes, and this recording is certainly my favourite performance of it, just for the laugh and ad lib in the middle.
• Louis Armstrong – The Gypsy: Louis and Ella made the regular playlist, but apparently Louis on his own has been languishing. It’s nice to have him back around as well, although like Hoagie there needs to be a certain mood.
• Syd Barrett – Clowns & Jugglers (Octopus): If I’ve barely listened to my Pink Floyd tunes in the last few years (which I have–and I used to listen to the Waters era albums a lot back in the day), it should come as no surprise that I haven’t had time for Syd’s solo stuff either. Still, there are a few tunes that it’s nice to have back as options–particularly including this one.
• Dave Brubeck – Take Five: And let’s close with some Brubeck. I have a lot of his stuff in the regular rota, but for some reason not this album. Problem corrected, and what a great way to take out a list