Exactly what i didn't want to happen has happened - or - throwback thursday bullshittin'
posted on 23 Oct 2014 under category Meta
So, a few months ago, I thought I would jump-start getting back into this music thing by moving on many fronts - updating my websites, migrating and consolidating my blogs, pruning my social media and email accounts, and finding the right software and process to get back to writing music again, filling in the time in between with writing history and current blog posts to fill this place up.
A month ago I finished most of the above, except for website updates. And, of course, any writing of any sort, song or blog or otherwise.
So, while this ‘I’m not dead’ post may really be just some kind of filler, I’m not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s been one day short of a month since my last post, so I’ll just bullshit a bit, if you don’t mind. Also, since I’ll probably post this today, and since today is Thursday, consider this a paean to Throwback Thursday.
One of those many projects I glossed over above was getting my music catalog organized. While my collection has slipped some since I ran the shop, I still have somewhere north of 800 CDs that I’ve never properly catalogued or ripped and organized. I’m about 80% done with that now, but doing that left me with a conundrum - what to do with my UHR Collection? See, a few years ago I became afraid of CDR-Rot and so decided I should organize digital archives of everything UHR has released - high-quality FLACs and 300 or 600 dpi tiffs or bmps or photoshop files, so that I have a perfect digital recreation of everything we’ve released. Since those sound files are too unwieldy for most mp3 players, though, I slacked off at getting proper mp3 rips for my daily commutes and workouts and just driving around town.
Well, obviously I should rip those too, but do they get organized along with everything else? Do I keep them separate? I also wanted to preserve release dates and catalog numbers in the filenaming scheme, which is not how I stored the rest of my mp3 collection. Silly questions, ultimately, but still, I didn’t want to have to re-do things, so I pondered in my little free-time bits about how to do it.
Then, about two weeks ago, I just said ‘fuck it’ and ripped ‘em out, basically replicating the FLAC storage scheme I had in a separate mp3 folder.
And I’m going back and listening to all of that stuff now. You know, I released some pretty good stuff. And lest it be taken as self-fellatio, I’m NOT referring to anything I had a hand in. I forgot about the Misfits-like rollick of The Von Frankenstein’s with Ramrod at the guitar helm. I forgot about Gortician’s sick, twisted sense of humor and the Ugly Police Incident. I forgot about the swampy, fevered dark underbelly of Americana that is in the old Black Moon Rising material. I also forgot how much I dig Chemikiller. It may be blasphemy to say it, but I think Hellrockin’ Demos 2 has quite a few superior moments to what ended up on the Evilspeak album. And while nobody could really forget Megiddo, I’d burned the proper albums into my brain so far that it was a bit jarring to re-remember those demos - and listening to them again brought to mind me mastering them and burning them on those silver discs, hand-numbering and cutting each disc and insert set, all in the little cramped room of the first Bloody Leg Studios.
Sorry it’s not more profound. When I reminisce I could just go on forever. Maybe I live too much in the past - but, I’ve been fortunate enough to know enough good musicians that it’s a past worth revisiting now and then. And maybe I’ll re-find that spark that helped me contribute my own creations to the virtual scene that UHR forged way back when.
I hope so, anyway.