a freecycle load of nothing

Remember how, early in 2012, I got a couple of freecycle batches off CDs in short succession? Those were really successful. Even though they included stuff that I was not interested in and had to pass along, they also had lots of stuff that I was happy to get --especially for free. In fact, truth be told I still haven't finished going through them.

Anyway, I got another batch of CDs. The freecycle entry indicated that many were without the cases. That's OK -- I have extra cases. And in any case, I can buy some. Or take them off the CDs that I'm not interested in from the last batch. This listing also indicated that I'd have to takle everything. That's also no problem. I don't mind going through stuff and picking out what I like.

But this batch was utter garbage. It was mostly homemade CD-Rs without any indication of what was on them. And they were all badly scratched.

You win some, you lose some.

trance

I learned something new today.

Going through the CDs I got on Freecycle, I came across several various artists compilations with the word "Trance" in the title.  Eventually I realized (and my sister-in-law confirmed), that "Trance" is a genre of music. Of course, I am behind the times, having now learned the Trance developed in the 1990s,so it's not exactly new.

At any rate, I don't like it. I find the sound annoying, and vaguely discomforting. Listening to it, I envision a club full of twenty-somethings doing ecstacy. Alternatively, it reminds me of any number of stores I've been in -- record stores, trendy clothing stores, skateboard shops -- that play the music in the background because studies have shown that people listening to it will buy more stuff.

In case anyone reading this (assuming there is someone reading this) isn't familiar with the music, and wants to get an idea, here's a video that should help.

disappointed

OK, I'm disappointed.

Going through the haul of CDs I got on Freecylce, I came across one by a band called "Bumpin' Uglies."

I really really really wanted to like it, since "bumping uglies" is my second-favorite euphemism for sex. But, alas, 'twas not meant to be. The album is boring. I'm talking four-hour-history-lecture boring. Gone, it is.

the cloudy lining

Although I was thrilled to get the free CDs from Freecycle, there is one downside -- going through them all. There's a decent amount of stuff that I like and want to keep. But there's a lot more that I don't. And then there are the CDs that are somewhere in between.

The inbetweens are these discs where I kind of like the music -- or maybe think I should -- but just don't find it interesting. So there may be a riff here or a passage there that I like and that makes me think, ooh, I should hold on to this. But then I realize that I won't really miss it at all if I don't keep it.

A case in point is what I have playing now, an Ella Fitzgerald compilation, as part of a "Priceless Jazz Collection" series. I think I'll keep this one. But there are lots of others. Some are big names that just aren't my thing -- Frank Sinatra, U2, Janet Jackson. Not all, of course.

But the bigger burden is the endless pile of stuff that just doesn't interest me. Of course, I could just not bother to listen to everything, and give away lots of them on sight. But poor ol' anal-retentive me won't do that, since there could be something decent disguised as dreck. And in fact, I have a come across just that a couple of times.

One example of that is The Shoes of the Troubador, a quirky, catchy collection of (mostly) original songs from a Long Island singer named Michael Soloway. I'd like to include a picture of the cover art, but I can't find it on the intertubes, and technical issues are preventing me from providing a scan. At any rate, it has a picture of Soloway, dressed as a court jester (except for his very modern leather shoes), and sporting an Amish-style mustacheless beard. He's playing a lute while sitting at the base of a building that (I suppose) is supposed to look all medievally. I really dreaded putting that on, and was trying to figure how long a listen I had to give it to be fair. But it's actually quite enjoyable. He's no Dave Edmunds, mind you. But he's good.

Anyway, the major point is that I see these boxes of CDs, and I know I should go through them. And there are times when I really just want to listen to stuff I already have on iTunes. Or I just want some Dr. Feelgood.

Yeah, I know I sound like an ungrateful brat. Sorry.

cd annoyance: bad placement of divisions between tracks

I was listening to a CD I got through Freecycle. It's The Bobby Darin Story.

It's generally a good CD. Pretty much what you'd expect -- a compilation of Bobby Darin songs. As near as I can tell (though I'm not bothering to look it up), it was a CD reissue of an old compilation.

But my one big complaint concerns the first track: "Splish Splash." (As an aside, I'll note that for some reason whenever I think of that song I can't help picturing Anson Williams as Potsie Webber singing it at Arnold's.) It's preceded by a spoken introduction in which Darin talks of how he got his career started. Now I assume that the intro is there because it was on the record that was being reissued. What annoys me about it is that they didn't separate the introduction from the song -- it's one track with both.

In terms of ripping this into my iTunes library, there's the complication that I have three options:

1. Take "Splish Splash" from another CD (assuming I have it on another disc -- I think I do, but I'm not sure offhand, and I'm too lazy to check my database);
2. Take "Splish Splash" complete with the introduction. That's not the worst thing in the world, I'll admit. But it offends my sense of aesthetics; or
3. Use software to edit the track and remove the introduction. But my anal-retentive side won't let me do that unless I also create a new CD with the intro-less version and enter that CD in my database.

By the by, this isn't the first time I've had issues with where the track breaks are placed on a CD.

• On the first reissue of Nick Lowe's Pure Pop for Now People the break between "Nutted by Reality" and "36 Inches High" was placed a little to early, so if you listen to music out of the album order (either by shuffling a disc, putting it on a mix disc, or (as I do), by putting an entire iTunes library on shuffle play), "Nutted by Reality" ends abruptly while "36 Inches High" begins with a half-second of echoing guitar.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic's album, Off The Deep End, has a hidden track called "Bite Me." It's a few seconds of cacophony after ten seconds of silence at the end of "You Don't Love Me Anymore," which is the last listed track. The idea is that someone who has the album on may forget to turn off the stereo after the final track. So, ten minutes after the album seemingly ended there is a sudden burst of noise. Of course, this was accomplished by making the final track last about 14 minutes.
• On some reissues of the Monkees album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd. the spoken word "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky" is part of the same track as "Pleasant Valley Sunday," while in other rereleases there's a track break between them.
• Lots of concert albums seem to have incorporated questionable decisions as to where to split tracks. If, for example, between songs X and Y, the singer talks to the audience, and says something along the lines of "Now, we'd like to do a number that has special meaning for me. It's called Y," then it's best to try to get that patter in as the beginning of the track for Y rather than at the end of the track for X. When you're listening on shuffle, it just works better.

Part of my issue with this stuff, I'll admit, has to do with my anal-retentive side and how I keep my CD database. I should probably post about that at some point. The short of it is that my database is relational, and any given track can appear on more than one album. Take, for example, "Tempted" by Squeeze. That track was originally on their East Side Story album. It also appeared on their compilation, Singles, 45's and Under. It's also appeared on other Squeeze compilations, and a bunch of various artists compilations as well. My database identifies these as all the same track. Aside from helping me to know what I have, it also makes it easier to avoid putting more than one copy of a given track into iTunes. Also, of course, it lets me fiddle with music and databases. Assuming, hypothetically, that some other album has an alternate mix of "Tempted," or a live version thereof, those are listed as different tracks. Note that it's not all science. If a remastered version comes out, I don't treat that as a different track if they didn't change the mix. Mea database, mea praecepta.

Now, the issue for me, is that if the mix is the same but there's some issue with track breaks -- the end of the song cut off on one issue (see first bullet), an additional thing that's not part of the song but part of the track on one album (see second bullet), or some other thing like it, that screws me up. It also bugs me with issues of deciding whether a track is what I call "mixworthy" (i.e., worthy of being ripped from my CD collection into my iTunes library.

knitting on the roof

Since getting the boxes and boxes of CDs from Freecycle (see post), I've been going through them to decide what to keep and what to give away. Basically, I keep it if there's anything on it that I like.

One disc I listened to tonight is Knitting on the Roof. KotR is sort of a tribute to the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, with each song from that show reinterpreted by a different avant-garde artist. The name is a play on the fact that it was put out by Knitting Factory Records, the house label of the Manhattan club, the Knitting Factory.

Most of the tracks on this are just jaw-droppingly horrendous. The banjo-base rendition of "Miracle of Miracles" keeps changing tempo seemingly at random. "Do You Love Me?" is reinvented as a phone conversation with. It's got instrumentation in the background, and if you listen carefully you can kind of make out strands of the song's melody. Kind of. When the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars sing "Tradition," they change the words: "At three I started Hebrew school / At ten I smoked some weed / I hear they found a bride for me / I hope she puts out." Very clever, boys. And then there's the Residents' version of "Matchmaker, Matchmaker." I've never liked the Residents. Your mileage may vary. You be the judge:

There are two exceptions. Jill Sobule's rendition of "Sunrise, Sunset" sounds like, well, everything else Jill Sobule does. It's not really bad, but I'm not sure that that baby-doll delivery works well here. The one good track is Magnetic Fields doing "If I Were a Rich Man." Stephen Merritt's monotone is mesmerizing here, in the same way that Johnny Cash was in those final recordings he did with Rick Rubin.

The funny thing is that my wife has been a fan of Magnetic Fields since before I met her. She tells of how she used to go see them play at The Middle East in Cambridge. She'd sit on the stage and he would insult her clothing. I've given a listen here and there, but I never really took to them. This, however, could start me on the road to fandom. And it alone is enough to make me keep the album.