Sorting out CD's

Who put AC/DC in the Manheim Steamroller case? I don't like either of 'em much, but there's no sense in that level of cruelty. Well, that's what I'm trying to nip in the bud with my sorting operation. Hey! It's a rainy day, and I have LOTS of free time! Now being about 3/4 finished, this is a good time to pause and wax incoherent.

Many of these CD's were given to me as gifts. I never realized that before. There's the 12 volume "Classics of Classical Music." I remember when that was bought for me. There's Allmans live at Fillmore & Neil Young's first, with "Cinnamon Girl" on it. Those were both bought for me to go with another gift, my first CD player.

Some of these CD's represent nuanced gifts, and stand out like a ruby in a black man's ear (thanks Joni, and God bless Bud Higgenbottom). There's the Yardbirds double CD, bought for my birthday one year by an angry young man. He thought he was mad at me, but really he's always been mad at himself. Still, he was trying to reach out.

From happier days, there is the "No Direction Home" CD from the Scorcese documentary. Father's Day gift. He was doing the happy dance as I opened it.

Oddly, I picked up an unlabeled CD just now and started listening to it. Who in the world would be so disorganized as to make a CD and not label it? Oh, same person who'd put AC/DC in a Manheim Steamroller case, I reckon. In the first notes of the CD, I got a chill, hearing "My Father's Gun." Who would be so knowledgeable of me, so painstaking as to lovingly make a CD full of songs few know I revere, while throwing in some Bob Marley and Stone Temple Pilots for subversion's sake? WHERE ARE THE LABELS?????

Maybe some are not so disorganized thinkers as to believe everything needs a label. It just is, and even in the worst of times, we still strain against chains of our own forging to find some language with which to speak to those we love. Labels are merely options at times.