F is for Faith No More

The wait between A to Z posts wasn't because my intern quit (as far as I'm concerned), or because I have thousands of CDs by artists beginning with the letter F (the least of any letter so far).  Nor was it because I've been catching up on missed episodes of Basketball Wives (no comment).  I ran into some unforeseen problems with the importing of my music collection.

Not that I wasn't warned.  The disembodied voice of H.S.P. is still echoing in my mind's caverns: "Be careful with that..."
Dammit, I was careful.  I just didn't get a hard drive fast enough to handle the assembly line rapid-fire style of ripping I demanded from my computer.  Either that or I got screwed over at Costco.  Either way, I picked up a more appropriate external device, and shit's been tin goose ever since.  (knocking sound)

I'd also like to address the complaints I've been getting about the "druggie" references in my last few posts.  Yes, I'm afraid it's true.  I have indeed taken drugs while listening to, discussing, purchasing, mishandling, composing, and recording music on compact discs.  It just so happens that the Cs and Es were on the heavier side of said behavior.  I'll try to keep things a little more on the straight side this time.

[paragraphs about Marianne Faithfull and Faxed Head deleted]

Let's try to think of a weirder band than Faith No More, shall we?  I loved 'em because they made my indie rock friends and rocker friends equally uncomfortable.  Here's a good one: a truly bizarre "game" developed organically whenever we used to hang out at my friend's parents' house involving this band.  One person would perform the piano outro from "Epic" while another would enter the room in a creepy, Frankensteinish kinda way.  The idea was to do something more ridiculous than the last guy, which wasn't always easy, considering the people involved.  No drugs, by the way.

Quickly and pleasantly reminded of how great the Feelies were when I ripped their short and sweet catalog.  I know I had that fourth one, but... jeez I hope I didn't trade that in.  Even if it's the worst of the bunch.

MIAs: Fairground Attraction (debut full-length and import single), couple of Figgs titles, and any Faith No More besides The Real Thing.  I spent a lot of time trying to wrap my brain around Angel Dust, which I'm pretty sure wasn't a total waste of cells.  [drug talk deleted]

Aaaah, Fleetwood Mac.  Take the good stuff from the self-titled, Rumours, Tusk, and the good stuff from Mirage, and you've got one of the best runs in history.  I'm pretty sure the band ruined each of their lives (except Christine McVie), but that's their problem!

Shout out to Flying Saucer Attack, who conned me into buying at least six of their releases on the strength of their brilliant debut.  One time I cranked the shit out of "My Dreaming Hill" with my girlfriend-at-the-time (now ex-wife) sitting in the backseat of my car.  I don't remember ever turning it off or down as she writhed in agony, but...

2011 State Farm Home Run Derby from Chase Field

8:26 - Joining in progress... Gonzo's already clubbing dongs all over the fucking desert.  For a second I thought A.J. Burnett was pitching.

8:29 - Lee Jr. took me a little deeper than I was expecting tonight.  Had to resort to Cat in the Hat Comes Back as an emergency backup, which felt like bringing in Sergio Mitre in the 11th inning on no rest.

8:31 - Wow, they're moving right along!  I'd hardly wiped the drool off my chin and Matt Holliday's already at the plate!  This is a good sign.

8:35 - Some questions:
1) Has a H.R.D. entrant ever been beaned?  Specifically, in the head?  They don't wear helmets, as you know.
2) Have they ever resorted to instant replay to make a call?
3) Have any of the children in the outfield ever been injured?

8:40 - Ahhh, the verbal juggernaut we like to call the Grandy Man.  For real, the future President of the United States, Mr. Curtis Granderson.

8:43 - Cano's cranking 'em out of the Arizona park like illegal immigrants without fake papers like John Daly.  Broadcaster just said "Oh my goodness..." like he just watched Christina Hendricks peel off a wet t-shirt.  As for Chris Berman, he's been grunting and moaning like he's getting boned in the butt by Don Draper himself.  Yeesh.

8:53 - Rickie Weeks seems a bit overmatched here.

9:01 - Bautista took a ton of pitches and then started busting 'em out.  I don't know what he's been on for the past two seasons, but I could sure use a few vials of it.  Hmmm, maybe he's running a bit low on juice tonight.  Or the cops seized his stash?  I'm shutting up now.

9:06 - They're giving "actual distance" and "projected distance" stats for each home run now?  How about meters, kilometers, and "distance it would be on the moon" stats?  Or "distance it would have traveled in 2002" numbers?

9:11 - Now here's a great idea: Fans get to vote in a few guys with no power whatsoever (no pitchers), maybe Felix Pie or Julio Borbon.  They have to keep swinging until they hit one out.  Imagine the hijinks on the sidelines!  Ortiz ambling up there with a towel, cajoling the BP pitcher to keep mixing it up... hilarious!!!

RUNNING LOW ON BATTERIES... WILL REJOIN LATER!

9:26 - Some serious multi-tasking going on here... typing, switching computers, picking up stuff on floor in living room, monitoring kids in bed, ripping CDs in other room, trying to find my copy of Into the Wild, it's nuts!!!

9:29 - You know the box that has all the shitty/oddball toys in it?  The box that always gets dumped out and NEVER picked up by anyone?!  I mean, are any children really going to play with half of a plastic egg?  Jesus, I hope not.

9:31 - Well, this Derby's about as exciting as a fishing derby.  For people not actually holding a fishing rod, that is.  Plus, I'm in the hottest room in the house.  Hold on.

9:35 - This is getting too hectic.  I just galloped in from the dining room, where I'm importing "T.S.R. (Toilet Stool Rap)" by the Biz and trying to charge up my laptop.  This is by far the most I've exerted myself all day, with the possible exception of making my first peanut butter sandwich.  God, I love July.

Los Chicos!!!

9:40 - Oh, thank God.  They just flashed the tiebreaker rules up on the screen.  I mean, me and my buddies have been texting all night trying to piece together viable scenarios here...

9:41 - Wait, they're having a "swing-off" between Ortiz, Fielder, and Matt Holliday!  OK boys, drop yer drawers!!!  Yep, just as we suspected... Holliday's out by about the length of a soda can.

9:47 - So Cano's is the longest so far, eh?  That doesn't surprise me at all.  Robby and Melky used to get more tail than fucking Davy Crockett back in the day.

Lost track of things here for a while... ate some snacks and had a few confusing conversations with my wife.  Kinda shut down the operation.  I did manage to see Cano bomb his way to the top, which was totally awesome.  Overall, a slightly improved but still stupid event.

Yankees 5, Rays 4

Pretty sure I get called an asshole if I don't at least mention today's game.

So I had plans months ago to take my old buddy Kong to today's Yankee game.  He's in town visiting from Texas and a longtime baseball fan, so the game was a no-brainer.  As the date got closer, we started thinking about Jeter's 3000th, of course.

Just wanna say that Kong showed a lot of class today... the guy's a born and bred Red Sox fan, and still rooted like heck for Jete today.  Why?  Because he appreciates greatness, that's why.  On top of that, he even rooted for the Yanks to win (or at least he made me think so) to make the day that much more special.  He got psyched for Mariano to save the game, too.  A classy guy.

Made me think about what I'd do if the tables were turned.  Tough one, because there aren't any guys like Jeter and Rivera left on the Red Sox, or the rest of the Yanks' team, for that matter.  So let's say Kong somehow takes me to Fenway next season to see Manny (who's somehow still on the team and in baseball) with a chance to hit his 600th home run.  Yeah, I'd totally root for Manny to crush one to high heaven and lope around the bases like an idiot.  I really would.  But would I cheer on the team to win the game?  No.

I guess I'm just an asshole after all.

OK, here's two scenarios where I'd root for the Sox:

1) The Boston Red Sox play an exhibition game against a newly-formed team of Neo-Nazi white supremacists from around the world.  I'd also hope for a bench-clearing brawl where David Ortiz is forced to fight his way through a mass of opponents using a series of left jabs.

2) The Bostong Red Sox play an exhibition game against a team of alien invaders, on the condition that Boston must win in order to save the human race and planet Earth herself.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Road Games (remaster)

I was looking through my unpublished drafts the other day, and I exclaimed to myself, "Hey, there's some pretty good stuff here!" One of my summer projects (along with teaching my daughter how to read and teaching my son how to solve linear equations) is to post some of these forgotten chestnuts. In some cases I might add a few sentences, but I promise not to delete anything-- no matter how incoherent it gets.

This one was originally titled "Allan Holdsworth vs. Eddie Van Halen" and was to pit Road Games against Fair Warning in a no-holds-barred battle for supremacy. I believe that Van Halen wins this one in both the rock AND jazz categories, but I quickly found that explaining my argument was much too complex for the English language, especially on two tabs of Ambien. I'm settling for a simple book report on Road Games.

Original date of draft: August 1, 2008

The early 80's were an exciting time for jazz in the music industry. Wait, didn't he mean to say the late 50's, or at least the mid-60's? You totally missed my point-- I said music industry!

Jazz fusion guys were pressing records by Warner Bros. with legitimate budgets, like 1984's Samurai Samba by the Yellowjackets or David Sanborn's Backstreet (1982). We were still years before Pat Metheny's VH-1 cool jazz empire took over with the help of Still Life (Talking) and Geffen Records. Big jazz records were being made, but the music still had an edge. It seemed that fusion could maybe score a hit record without going new age, but by going rock instead!

Enter jazz fusion journeyman Allan Holdsworth. Then bring in too-hot-for-your-road-case guitar phenomenon Eddie Van Halen, who starts citing Holdsworth as a major influence, and calls Allan "the best." Mo Ostin hears the things his label's major breadwinner's been saying, and decides to lets Holdsworth take a crack at a major label record on Warner Bros.

It seems clear that the goal of the project was to bring jazz fusion music to a much larger audience, an audience that simply never had the chance to hear such challenging music. Bring cultured music to the rockers... which is never easy.

Road Games was recorded in early 1983. Van Halen talked Mo Ostin into funding a project with some major talent, but with even more major groundbreaking to be done. Getting Holdsworth, bass phenom Jeff Berlin and Zappa prodigy Chad Wackerman on drums together sounds like a no-brainer: plug'em in and let'em play whatever the hell they want!

But WB wanted a bit more than Elegant Gypsy -- they wanted jazz fusion with rock vocals and song structure (like, verses and choruses). So the boys brought in a few singers to make this happen: Jack Bruce from Cream, and Paul Williams, who sounds a lot like Jack Bruce.

The record actually came out a bit more like an EP (and when this happens, it's always for the best), but it sure as hell came out on Warner Brothers! I remember carrying my Road Games cassette around in my pocket back then... I'd be at a party, and cats would be arguing back and forth about Geddy Lee and Bruce Harris and Billy Sheehan and sounding like jerks in a record store. I'd whip out my A.H. tape (already cued to the end of side one) during a lull in the action, and then unleash a vicious attack of fretless bass playing that made "Run to the Hills" sound like "Jack and Jill." I wasn't always the most popular guy at a party, but I did get really good at spelling "H-o-l-d-s-w-o-r-t-h" for drunk music fans.

Road Games could have made me into a visionary DJ/producer if I had the proper equipment in 1983. Well, Five Towns did have the proper equipment, but I had absolutely no idea how to use or even refer to it. Anyway, I always fantasized about putting the drum break and chorus of "Tokyo Dream" together to make a cool track on their own. I could have beat MF Doom at his own game by a dozen years if I'd understood my own concept and how to apply it. Or maybe I could've talked some of the guys down at the Long Island Drum Center into blessing the mic with some nasty Commack freestyles... we gettin' loose at the C.M.I., where niggas pay by the hour and never stay dry, or something to that effect.

Hey, I'm glad as all get out to have Road Games as a remaster. The recording simultaneously exemplifies the what could, the what is and the what should never be of 80's crossover jazz fusion, in just six songs!

E is for EPMD

My intern Josephina quit a few days ago.  Kind of a misunderstanding... I'll just let her email explain:

See what I mean?! Well, she's a good kid.

So I've been ripping all these damn CDs myself for days!!! What a pain in the ass!!! I'll give her this... she was right about the "20x" importing thing-- it really is a lot faster. When she cools off I'll send her a text.

Speaking of crazy women, it was a real trip to see my copy of The Gasoline Age by East River Pipe again. I first heard this on a cassette my buddy made me when I was going through my divorce way back. Actually, I was going through lots of crazy shit at that point: divorce, major illness, and a bitch of a new job that I was laughably unqualified for. All I ever listened to for a few months was Lucinda's Car Wheels (for the divorce), Murda Musik (for the job), and this cassette, which I guess was for my rapidly deteriorating nervous system.

For some reason, I began to believe that The Gasoline Age starts with "Hell Is An Open Door" and not "Shiny, Shiny Pimpmobile," which actually opens the album. I not only believed this mistruth, but I even went on record declaring "Hell... " to be one of the greatest opening tracks of all time. If you start at track #2 and stop before you get to the awful Atlantic City song, you're looking at an amazing album.

I've chosen to alphabetize "number bands" by their spelling and not their numerical value, so 801 Live belongs in this discussion. You won't find this square peg of a record in many discussions at all, unless you keep very peculiar company. For the unenlightened, 801 was a side project art-prog supergroup featuring Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music), Brian Eno (band name came from one of his songs), Francis Monkman (ex-Curved Air, future founder of Sky), Bill MacCormick (ex-Crimso Ian MacDonald's brother), Lloyd Watson (prog session guitar guy), and Simon Phillips (drums for Jeff Beck, Judas Priest, Pete Townshend, The Who, Asia, Toto, etc.). Like I said, a supergroup.

The record itself is weird as hell. Supposedly it was one of the first live albums primarily recorded "direct" (not mic'ed or off the board) to tape. That explains a few things, but the song selections are the story here: oddball Eno covers, standards by Kinks & Beatles, and wacko prog-fusion instrumentals. You might say that I found this album to be influential on my own career...

The best part of 801 Live, however, is particular to my very own copy of the E'G Records CD. It shouldn't surprise readers to read that I listened to this recording with friends while drinking cough syrup from time to time. One afternoon years ago I woke up to find this beloved treasure completely soaked in Maximum Strength DM-- the jewel box looked like a melted grape Fla-Vor-Ice sheath. Pictured at right is the actual booklet, complete with tussin discolorations.

I already dragged the Eno reissues through the mud a while back, so I won't do it again. On a positive note, I'll nominate side two of Before and After Science as my favorite flip side of all time.

Everybody loves EPMD for reasons that are obvious to those of us blessed with a pair of functional ears and/or legs. It's the morons that judge rap solely on "importance" that miss out on all the fun. Pretty tough to beat Strictly Business on any level, and I'll throw "So What Cha Sayin'" in with the cream too. Nothing we don't already know...

I will volunteer some new theories regarding the other rap giants of the E section, the Gog and Magog of hip hop... Eric B. & Rakim. I once brilliantly outlined a one-to-one correspondence of the catalog of Wyandanch's finest and another LI/NYC crew called the Velvet Underground. Yes, these two hugely influential musical acts followed dual paths, as demonstrated by their pristine recording tetrads. I can't exactly remember the finer points of my case, but I know that "My Melody" and "Venus in Furs" had something to do with it. Or maybe it was "Lyrics of Fury" and "I Heard Her Call My Name"... not sure. Since I've also famously presented the VU and Uncle Tupelo catalogs as analogs, it follows that Eric B. & Rakim and UT should also correspond. I'll leave that one to the listeners.

D is for Dumptruck

First things first... I've settled on a storage system for my orphaned CDs and booklets. The big black Case Logic wallets have served me well for many years, but they don't stack or stow well at all. Since I'll be packing these "fusion frisbees" away long-term, I need something durable, prismic (preferably), and cheap. The winning system is shown at right:

The D-block immediately lifted me out of my musical swamp. Jeez, the Dambuilders were one hell of a live band. My favorite shows of all time were behind the kit opening for these guys, playing my ass off knowing that drummer Kevin was going to kick some majorette butt later on. Not that I had anything close to his chops, but I'd usually bust up a cymbal or two just to make him squirm. Oh yeah, the rest of the 'Builders were really good too.

Josephina left me a hilarious voice mail asking me, "Who the fuck is Das Efx?" and, "How do you have seven of their CDs?" and, "How could you possibly be missing two more?!!" My answers were, "Next question," "I don't know," and "I don't know," respectively. Side one of Dead Serious was as good as things got for a while there. Now, not so sure.

The question she should have been asking is, "How the fuck do you have so many De La Soul CDs?" These guys put more of their 12" singles out on CD than any other band I can think of, and single-handedly kept me feeling "in touch" with hip hop for years. You see, I don't buy vinyl 'cause I refuse to store or maintain it properly. It's a big damn pain in the ass. This makes it tough for one to consider oneself an actual fan of rap music, obviously. Somehow I've made it work, and the Tommy Boy Records marketing department is a big part of that.

The question I was asking was, "Where the hell are my Deee-Lite CDs?!" These hipsters were in heavy rotation for a while there (1990?), along with beer balls of Matt's and lots of acid. In fact, I'm pretty sure World Clique was the soundtrack for the LSD-inspired painting of our living room at the time... a really, really bad idea (lots of swirls and flowers with a hideous black skull in the upper corner of the wall). I remember Deee-Lite completely disappearing as suddenly as they arrived, probably due to the Built to Last Dead tour finally ending, as well as the absurd rumors that Lady Miss Kier was actually a man.

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh... Deicide. Legion is easily top-ten "records you don't ever play at someone else's party" material.
THEM: "What the hell is this??!!!"
US: "It's Deicide!"
THEM: "WHAT??!!!"
US: "It's 'Satan Spawn, the Caco-Daemon!!'"
THEM: "WHAT???!!!!!!!"
US: "It's..."
THEM: "TURN IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!!"

I really wish I knew more about Deicide (the band, not the conceptual act)... any band whose lead singer burns multiple inverted crucifixes onto his forehead, gets a gig canceled when a live bomb is discovered and ultimately detonated on stage, and allows pit bulls to violently mutilate a (fake) body filled with entrails during one of its shows seems worth investigating some more.

I had a Bob Dylan harangue all cued up, but I just don't have it in me right now. I'll end with a CD by Liz Durrett that I picked up on tour about five years ago. It was the one night I actually drank beer after I played, so of course I bought stuff from the girl we played with. I only remember one song she played, which was spectacular; I spent the rest of her set making the songs sound like the one I liked in my head. Mezzanine is pretty good, but the recording doesn't really capture what I heard (or at least what I think I heard) that night in Athens, GA. They never do.

 

C is for Cavedogs

Finally, the third installment of the unabashedly self-indulgent "Lee's CDz from A to Z" series.

The C-section has delivered one bundle of joy after another. I was just getting started when my beloved pre-legal woes Captain America popped off the spindle. Along with Tougher Than Leather, this is one of the few records that actually makes me taste and smell beer whenever I hear it. Amazing. Licensed to Ill is the all-time winner for "beerfeel," but a bit unfair since the CD itself is actually covered with malt liquor and literally smells like beer. Anyway, "Buttermilk" from CA's "Flame On" was a boozy fave back in the day. With lyrics like "buttermilk was on her chin, same color as her white skin," it's no wonder the record was recalled! Also no wonder I was thrown out of their show at Club Babyhead for over-consumption of beer.

I'm getting all kinds of shit 'round the compass about how long this is taking... well excuuuuuuuuse me!! Do the math, Euclid!! Let's say each CD is 45 minutes (conservative estimate!), and I'm well over 500 already... so that's at least 500 hours of ripping time! Add the time it takes to put the discs in and out of the computer, plus typing all the song titles into iTunes, and we're talking about months of work! Josephina was yowling something about "doing it at 20X" the other day, but she usually has no idea what she's talking about anyway. Most of the time she's just looking for ways to bill more hours for her internship...

oh dear god in heaven!

Wowed by The Cars in a big way. What a great fucking record. "Bye Bye Love" is pretty much perfect, and segues seamlessly into another vision of perfection. That would be "Moving in Stereo," aka "the song that makes every guy born between 1960 and 1970 instantly pop a boner."

Once again, missing tons of CDs. Between Josephina's notes and my spotty memory, here's the death toll: 3 Cream, 4 Eric Clapton, a ton of Cure CDs, a few John Cougars, possibly 2 (!) Chi-Lites discs, and God knows how many releases with Crosby and Stills on the spine. It's possible that each of the above titles were mysteriously replaced with Cypress Hill CDs, of which I somehow have eleven. What the heck happened?! And where's my Coolio record? 

About two-thirds of the way through the letter-grouping, I unearthed a piece of plastic that belongs in some sort of museum (or laboratory)-- my Giant Steps CD. This thing found its way into trouble so many times I was sure I chucked it! Nope, still here.A buddy of mine that crashed on my couch in college for at least a full semester had something to do with it. We took acid one night (actually, dozens of nights... but I'm referring to one in particular here) and ended up in a familiar scenario: taking turns playing records for each other. At some point, "Fruitfly" (not his real name) threw the Coltrane on, which I was certainly familiar with but by no means expert. My friend launched into several lectures within 30 seconds, namely (a) an etymology of the title "Giant Steps," (b) a quick discography of Paul Chambers, and (c) something about bungee jumping. At the same time, Fruitfly had unsheathed his bass guitar and was furiously playing along with the song, to my ears, perfectly.

Like many LSD experiences, fascination quickly morphed into terror. Fruit's fingers were moving so quickly that I imagined them as the blade of a circular saw, which made me shrink back about two feet. I stammered out some sort of suggestion about "Giant Eyes" or "Giant Squares" as an alternative title, and made an end run around Fruit over to the CD bookshelf. I considered hanging on for dear life until "Naima," but that was light years down the road at this point. I grabbed a disc off the top of the bookshelf just before 4:30 on the display and made a slick switcheroo. A brilliant transition popped into my throbbing orange brain in the 10 seconds of silence between records. Something like "here's your fucking Coltrane!" slid off my tongue as I skipped to track two of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

Fruitfly cowered in mortal horror as I practically climbed on top of him, with "Bring the Noise" shaking the walls of our building. I regurgitated some jive I'd tried out a few nights before on cough syrup, but fired off my lines about twenty times faster and clearer than the first time. "You're overwhelmed right now!! You're musically and conceptually overwhelmed!! This is politics, lyrics, production, innovation, humor, dance, race, EVERYTHING AT THE SAME TIME!!!"

I don't even think we made it to the end of the track; I felt like a rogue linebacker after breaking a placekicker's neck. It didn't take long for us to settle down and make friends... I think we went outside and watched cars for a while. Pulling a nasty stunt like that takes a lot out of you.

The Giant Steps CD resurfaced years later on Long Island, when I somehow left it in a paper bag with four other titles on a stool at Gunther's Tap Room. Next time I walked into that hole the bartender threw the brown package at me, sneering, "These are yours." The 'Trane was in there, but my brand-new Iron Maiden collection wasn't. I hate that bar.

looks kinda like a fish...

Somewhere along this odyssey, the CD was damaged badly. Who knows where,  who knows how? Regardless, there's a swatch of digitally encoded polycarbonate missing from the disc's underside. The missing data is near the outer edge of the program area, possibly during the alternate take of "Syeeda's Song Flute." I attempted to import this monstrosity a few weeks ago, and nearly destroyed my computer. As the CPU tower started to shake, a sound I immediately compared to running over a putter with a lawnmower filled our apartment, waking up two of the three sleeping children currently residing at Chez Mazzola.

I'm starting to worry about ripping my Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs, if I still have any. I know for a fact that one of my copies of Freaky Styley was submerged in orange juice for at least two hours.

B is for Bad Brains

Not vinyl but bloody brilliant

If the "digitization" of my CD collection were a cross-country trip, the B section would be the first hour of Pennsylvania: a few initial thrills followed by nerve-deadening boredom. I never thought I'd be so thrilled to see David Byrne's The Catherine Wheel emerge from a freaking spindle.

Highlights:Original Émigré pressing of Basehead's Play With Toys ("Not Over You" is a forgotten classic), a copy of Biz' I Need a Haircut with a chainsaw-sized cut-out notch in the booklet, a promo-only single of Bodeans' "Closer to Free" with the Party of Five cast on it, a couple of weird BDP discs, and more Bill Bruford CDs than I'd like to admit. Oh yeah, Lindsey Buckingham's Words and Music too-- a collection interspersed with dorky musings and comments about the songs by LB himself (director's commentary-style).

MIA: nearly all my BÖC, Jeff Beck, Sabbath, and my Last Waltz double disc... no question that these were traded in during the early '90s depression days. Needed a 15-pack of Stroh's? That certainly seemed worth four or five perfectly good classic rock CDs. Now? Not so much. Remarkably, I'm even missing some additional Bruford recordings.

[The fucking Rays just scored five runs in the time it took me to write two paragraphs.]Flat-out missing are Vincebus Eruptum, Power of Pussy, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, Last Splash, and one of my Richard Buckner CDs. Like, I have the booklets but not the actual music. I guess they all might've walked at the same party, but seems a bit fishy.

Funny as hell watching my computer try to import We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'n' Roll... hiccuping and wheezing over the horribly scratched CD like a tubercular pigeon. After multiple attempts and piecewise ripping, only "Sweet Leaf" was declared to be unimportable and omitted.

A is for Audioslave

As I staggered around my living room watching Carmelo Anthony with a Miller Lite in my hand, trying not to step on my daughter's head, I wondered aloud, "What the hell am I doing?" Of course, I knew the Knicks had no chance of beating Boston in a 7-game series, and I actually love Lite beer, so I was searching much deeper. "Why do I have thousands of CDs stored in giant black wallets taking up valuable storage space in our apartment? What the hell am I doing?"

My CD collection's display value has varied inversely with my age, in years, over the last two decades according to the following equation:

da = 20
(let d = display value, in percent)


In other words, my CDs are currently hidden from view and somewhat accessible on demand. In other words, there's gotta be a better way.

Scary good.

I always laugh when people talk about "digitizing their CD collection"-- isn't that like liquifying your urine? Anyway, I bought myself a big old portable hard drive at Costco on 116th and started lettin'er rip!!! We've officially finished the A section, featuring well over 100 pieces of plastic. My new intern, Josephina, is doing a kick-ass job so far, even if she misspelled every one of the twelve Autechre releases she notated in her accompanying Excel file. "Lee, why do I have to type these in? iTunes does it automatically..."

Here's what we've learned so far:

Most of my indie rock CDs seem to be missing: Atari Teenage Riot, Archers of Loaf, Amnesia, etc. These are all on my original Excel file (typed by my old intern, Michelle), but nowhere to be found. Hmmm...

Totally forgot that AZ started out on RCA as "AZ the Visualiza." Wonder why that never caught on?

AC/DC might be the greatest band of all time. Their stretch from 1975 to 1981 is unbeatable. OK, they're the greatest band from 1975 to 1981.

The Bargain Bin

Drawing inspiration from (1) Charles Simone's touching memoir "An Ode to the Record Store," and (2) the Yankees' recent success with scrapheap sensations Bartolo Colón, Freddy Garcia, Andruw Jones, Eric Chavez, Russell Martin (sort of), Kevin Millwood (possibly), etc., I present an homage of my own to diamonds in the musical rough. Each trashcan treasure below spent many months (or years!) in the 99¢ cut-out bins on St. Marks and elsewhere, crying out for savvy shoppers like myself to snatch'em up and share. Props to S.T. for pointing a couple of these out...

Cool Down Time - Dan Zanes (1995, Private Music)
Between the Del Fuegos and his Nick Jr. superstardom, Dan Zanes made a weird pop record with cool production and sticky tunes. I think I bought three copies in Princeton for less than $5.

Thank You - Royal Trux (1995, Virgin)
My wife backed off a bit when I asked her for a formal rec on this one, but we certainly agreed that it was a bonanza in the bins. A cheap, cheap high.

Keep a Secret - The Mysteries of Life (1996, RCA)
An industry buzz-band that sold nada outside of Indiana, whose debut features wonderful pop tunes and superb drums courtesy of Freda Love Boner.

A Series of Sneaks - Spoon (1998, Elektra)
Sure, these guys are huuuuuge now, but nobody outside the record biz had this little old masterpiece back in the day. Happens to be their best album, too.

Dirt Floor - Chris Whitley (1998, Messenger)
Not a major label promo-spawn but still a cellar dweller cut-out tragedy. I used to buy this one every time I saw it for less than five bucks, which was often. Great fucking record, great fucking guitarist... crying shame.