1/2 the work.
¶ by Rob FrieselFunny how the mind back-tracks on itself sometimes. A couple of weeks ago, I remembed I had these two CD-Rs of MP3s that I’d burned down to disc back when A and I were still living in B’more. I remember that I was concerned that I spent anywhere from $5-$15 on any given 12″ single and that while I enjoyed them immensely in their raw vinyl form, and no matter what painstaking care I took of them, one invariably seemed to develop a skip each month. That in mind, I put myself on to this (still unfinished) project to record each one to my PC so that I would at least have the music. Let’s call it an archive or a back-up.
Anyway, I’ve had these two discs kicking around amongst my personal effects for these past two years and hadn’t really paid much (as in any) attention to them. However, as A and I have recently grown addicted to the MP3 phenomenon (a little late…?) we have been hitting iTunes pretty hard these days. So I popped in those two discs and dragged them into my Library.
And in my iTunes Library they stayed for a while, their meta-data inadequate and lame. So I’ve been going through them a little bit at a time this weekend. Fill in the artist name here, look up the remix title there, drop “Electronica/Dance” into the genre category until I have time to stumble upon the track again and stick a label like “Progressive House, Trance” on it. But the best part has been the flood of memories that has come with it.
The titles alone are all it takes sometimes. I hit upon Ben Shaw’s “So Strong” (the Sander K. remix) and remember all those mornings in B’more spent mixing — trying to nail that track (something about the main effect in it just messed with my head too much). Or “Skydive” by Freefall and being his with this flashbulb of a Trueschler party — Ian Stephenson poking his head into the DJ booth (*ahem* “kitchen”) and giving me props on the way I mixed it out of the PvD remix of “Binary Finary”. All those 12″ singls that I bought b/c I heard them on GU mixes. And then all those B-sides that I couldn’t help but cane on the second Saturday of a given month (didn’t it usually work out to be the 2nd Saturday?). The half-dozen that came back from London with me (including, but not limited Mara’s “Lateral Horizon”, Oliver Lieb’s “Subraumstimulation”, and that “Cream” track that I never really liked in the first place).
So now I have this overwhelming sensation like I better just bite the bullet and drop the $30 (or whatever it is) on the iMic and dump all the tech house to digital before I discover skips in them, too…
Leave a Reply