CD Ripping: Done

I have finishedI in no way claim to have done this alone–Dr. Wife did a lot of the ripping on her machine, while I kept one of my work machines more or less in continuous ripping mode in my office. the ridiculous project of ripping all my previously unripped CDs before the move. This has resulted in the addition of exactly 9175 new MP3 files to the collection–a bump of about 1/3 in the overall size. That seems like a lot.

In celebration of that seemingly endless effort being completed allow me to present five tracks that I haven’t heard in a while, since they didn’t, for one reason or another, make the ripping cut previously. I’ve chosen five tracks from the thousands that are all performed by menNo special reason., that tie specifically to particular places or memories for me. These take me at least a decade back, and almost two decades in some cases–it’s pretty amazing the power of music to connect to memory.

Junkhouse – Jet Trash: This one takes me directly back to 1997–I was one year out of university, with an excellently paying job with a flexible schedule, and no responsibilities. That meant I could take in a lot of evening shows, and I can see exactly in my mind what Mrs. Robinson’s looked like on the night Junkhouse came to play there on the Fuzz tour. It was the first time I’d seen Tom Wilson live (although certainly not the last, as I’ve followed him for years since–witness that last post), and one of the first times I’d been to a show in my comfortable little university town where most of the audience looked like they could kick my ass, and wouldn’t think twice about it. It was awesome.

Odds – Oh Sorrow, Oh Shame: This one takes me to a couple of years later, when I’m living with Chef Paul and Mike Ditty. Paul was a huge Odds fan and turned me on to this particular album. I distinctly recall sitting on the deck behind the house, drinking Coronas with Paul–must have been his day off–while he talked about his fascination with the lyric about every town having it’s three-legged cat. After that, that visual was what always came to mind whenever his occasional nickname (“Chia The Cat”) was used around me.

Randy Newman – You Can Leave Your Hat On: I saw 9 1/2 Weeks (with French subtitles) during it’s first release at a midnight showing in a theatre in Lausanne. I was there with a Swiss girl I was totally in (unrequited) lust with. I know that the version in the movie has Joe Cocker singing Randy’s song, but it doesn’t matter–I hear it, and I’m instantly there, and the memory of being a randy (heh) teenager come rushing in. (Amusingly, this did not happen when the Tom Jones version of the song showed up in The Full Monty.)

Roger Waters – Amused To Death: I bought this album the week it came out, in the fall of 1992. I listened to it for the first time on headphones while working in nuclear research facility–about 200 meters from a reactor, which might be kind of amusing, given some of the album’s content–and when I got to this track, the closing track, it utterly hooked me. At first it was this sequence in the lyrics that caught me:

And the children on Melrose
strut their stuff.
Is absolute zero cold enough?
And out in the Valley, warm and clean,
the little ones sit by their TV screens.
No thoughts to think.
No tears to cry.
All sucked dry.
Down to the very last breath.

I thought it was a very piercing condemnation. Over time, though I’ve come to think that bit’s much too easy, and what’s really impressive comes later, in the masterful lyrical “long take” that runs from a cutting sketch of the media/consumer lifestyle, though to a satirical outsider look at how that has to end, from :

We watched the tragedy unfold.
We did as we were told.
We bought and sold.
It was the greatest show on earth.
But then it was over.

through to

But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death

Sure, Waters is bombastic, but tell me that the way he hits “Our last hurrah” in there isn’t perfect. I dare you.

Lou Reed – Cremation (Ashes To Ashes): The album this track is from, Magic and Loss, dates from that same “working at the nuclear lab” period of my life. Like Amused to Death, it was one of about 30 discs I had with me over four months of a situation where my lifestyle was forced to include long periods of being alone in my room in a shared accommodation. I listened to all of those discs a lot. This song doesn’t take me there, though. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it takes me to a funeral; one where the Lou’s perfectly affectless line “Nothing else contained you ever” kept running through my head. I think I probably would have liked what Lou’s done here more in the days when I couldn’t connect to it except abstractly, but I suspect I appreciate it more now.

And on that happy note, let’s call it a post.