The last few weeks have seen me on a major iTunes-reorganizing kick, segregating and categorizing and shuffling files around for hours at a time. I’ve now got playlists buried down even to a fourth level of folders and thank god at least I know where they are because once finished they’d never see the light of day otherwise. My total iTunes library is something like 54 gigs and 9000 songs – there should be more songs at that gig count, but I have a thing for really long trance-like dance and groove world pieces (see: Transglobal Underground, Nation Records, DJ Cheb I Sabbah etc.) – which is why I’m nowhere near the end of the project after several weeks. It beats looking for a new job, I’ll say that much.
Putting music into categories helps me realize how deficient my collection is in most areas that aren’t world-groove, classic punk or modern indie pop. To that end I’m currently ransacking the Austin Public Library for the folk-rock or just plain radio-rock I grew up with. Already I’ve added Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Joni Mitchell’s Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira, Steely Dan’s Countdown to Ecstasy, the Zep's Physical Graffiti (which I somehow got to 48 without once hearing all the way through), Tull's Stand Up and Benefit, Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy, the Floyd's Wish You Were Here, and Elton John’s Honky Chateau and Tumbleweed Connection, with more to come as I can find 'em and get the holds available. The APL only lets you put 10 items at a time on hold – can you believe it?
Also: the Ramones’ first album. Because I can’t believe I ever let that bugger go.
Yet there are still glaring omissions, big honking gaps you can drive a flower-painted microbus through. I’m not sure how it happened that my collection includes absolutely no:
- Hendrix
- Dylan
- Moody Blues (staple of my middle-school years)
- Allman Brothers (ditto)
- Grateful Dead (OK, I've got a few select tracks from Deadicated, and the Dead generally made shitty studio albums anyway, but still. I thought enough of them to see them play live something like five times, y'know)
- Clapton (although: fuck Cream [except Disraeli Gears and maybe Goodbye], fuck Blind Faith, fuck Derek and the Dominoes [yes, I know that includes Duane Allman], and fuck Clapton's whole spineless mumbling solo career. The guy is massively overrated)
- Tom Petty
just to name a few. Give it time and the grace of the APL, I guess.
Slightly more bothersome are all the bands that had one or three moderate-size hits on Philadelphia radio in the years right before New Wave that nobody but me and the DJ will remember. Detective, featuring Michael Des Barres and Tony Kaye (“Grim Reaper,” “Recognition”). Charlie (“No Second Chance,” “Watching TV,” “Johnny Hold Back” – from England, weren’t they?). Racing Cars (“Downtown Tonight”), Skyhooks (“Crazy Heart”), Sad Café (“Run Home Girl”), Metro (“Black Laced Shoulder”), Backstreet Crawler ("Stone Cold Sober"). Bands that barely had a chance on the radio then but would have none at all in this ultra-tight formatted era.
Except maybe Detective, since Jimmy Page produced both their albums. They always got a little extra push on the Philly 'waves. One long-ago day I remember a WMMR jock concluding a spin of “Grim Reaper” in all its slashing-opener-riff glory with, “Man. That just sounded so good… the only thing to do here is play it again.” And he did. Right then. When was the last time you heard a DJ who wasn’t left of the dial abuse his/her privilege like that?
I wouldn’t know how to go about locating all those songs. Not sure I want to, since some of them were as much out-and-out shite as, say, Rock of the Westies. But just like everything from that album, it would be good to get them out of my head where they’ve been stuck since 1977. Believe it.
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