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Studying war and filing systems

In the end the new CD cabinet got built -- it took nearly a month, all told -- and fit barely into the space it was meant to occupy, in the far corner of what was once the tanning bed room that now plays host to all my vinyl, posters, ephemera, open reel tapes, stray folk art and assorted junk.

We gave the tanning bed away before we moved in, and were lucky to find it a home.

Anyway, though there are six or seven tubs of mail behind me that I should open I've spent the better part of the last three days trying to put CDs where they belong, instead of the tumbling stacks they typically occupy. This is a matter of self-preservation.

It is a culling process, and I haven't time to listen to everything and decide whether it's worth keeping. An acoustic Jethro Tull compilation? Early Al Stewart records? Dionne Warwick? Ah, man. Tons of early jump blues that I've never even opened. This, I think, is why I'm a little testy occasionally when I've had an afternoon of new and uninteresting music.

And there's now a whole shelf of tribute albums, which may prove a happy casualty of the MP3 boom. If I had time and were clever I'd probably dump the one or two good songs on each of those albums onto a hard drive and have done, but it's easier to build another rack to store them than it is to find time to listen.

None of which is what drove me here just now.

It was a song recorded in the late 1950s by Cowboy Roy Brown, about whom I know nothing that isn't in the spartan liner notes offered by the Delmark reissue I was trying to decide whether to file (it's titled Street Singer), and where. The second track is called "Down By The Riverside," but I know it from a Sweet Honey in the Rock version that styled the song "Ain't Gonna Study War No More." Cowboy Roy Brown was apparently a street singer born in 1875, and I'd no idea the song was old enough to fit his repertoire.

$10-billion a month, that's what we're spending in Iraq. Give or take.

Brown isn't necessarily a major talent, nor would he have been a major rediscovery in the 1950s, I'm guessing (apparently not even significant enough that they can date the recordings). But I'm glad to have made his acquaintance.

And, appending later in the day, I'm glad I opened this Cake B-Sides And Rarities (Upbeat Records) to see who did the artwork (somebody working as aesthetic apparatus, but they're clearly familiar with the work of Art Chantry) and noticed their version of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs." They're not a band I much attended to, and this seems a quirky little atypical collection, but I shall have to keep it for just that reason. Nice take on Kenny Rogers' (well Mel Tillis's, but...) "Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town" as well.

Posted by grant on July 16, 2007 3:34 PM | Permalink