With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness -- Firey Songs (with Tongue in Cheek)

I was at work yesterday and someone noted that the song they were listening to--to be quite honest, I can't recall--was appropriate for our discussion relating to work-things being burnt down (which will have to go without explanation, except to say that this was not a plan any of us had in mind, so the secrecy is to protect the sanctity of the workplace, not its employees plan to end it), and so ensued a discussion of songs with the word "burn" in them, as I groped blindly through my memory for songs after suggesting Nine Inch Nails' "Burn," I found myself pretty lost. I noted that it was hard to think of songs with "burn" in the title without my digital music collection (more specifically: the program I use to deal with it). The use of google was immediately noted, but of course the song is ridiculous common and parsing for multiple conjugations of the verb is not easy. We started assembling an increasingly ridiculous set of songs collectively, eventually dabbling into early rock like Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire" and Elvis Presley's "Burning Love" (written by Otis Blackwell and Dennis Linde respectively, to get credit where due!), after exhausting our memory of other titles.

The words "Fire" eventually got added, which only made the list that much more ridiculous. However, my original goal was to try to incorporate other songs that were referring to the word in its destructive sense (if you didn't click the link, the NIN song gains its title from the refrain of "I'm going to burn this whole world down!" with intense emphases I can't replicate visually without looking ridiculous and thus failing to actually convey it).

I could continue that idea here and do it the justice I intended, or just play with the whole idea and go with songs I think are really good that use the word in their titles. How's that?

She Walks in So Many Ways -- What Else Hides Here?

While I can have a packrat attitude in general, it is often supplemented by a tendency toward organization, even if the rules for this organization are known only to me. As such, I've quietly added a small handful of "resource" pages to this blog for various purposes, such as identifying the places from which I derive my entry titles, which are generally from the artist I'm discussing when I am discussing a single artist, but are sometimes lyrics that come into my head as thematically relevant to the issue or work at hand. I separate them out by month of web-publication for an entry to keep them somewhat easier to digest, though I plan to archive them by year when it gets to that point, in order to keep the volume of links reasonable. So far, this means I've written these basic charts for March, April, May, and June.

I also feed my excessive attention to detail with a selection of the resources I regularly consult for my personal usage in carefully sculpting the flow of my digital music collection. These can be absolutely mind-boggling for people, as they are so utterly devoted to the minutiae of music release that one wonders what on earth possesses people to do it. I've learned to only appreciate this, as so long as someone is always going further than I am, they will include the information I want, and I can just marvel in abject, slack-jawed wonder at who would take the time to scan or photograph a thousand 7"s just for the purposes of simple variations in the printing of 45" record labels. Indeed, though, I was just spending time cataloguing the bonus tracks on my nearly-complete collection of the Byrds' '60s albums, and am currently listening to chronologically arranged tracks included on the original and reissue of Blue Öyster Cult's Tyranny and Mutation.

For the purposes of clarifying my extremely subpar photography skills, I've also compiled a list of the CDs that appear from my own personal collection in the banner that heads the blog. It's subject to change over time as my collection expands, and sometimes unusually shaped or sized releases are pushed out of place to my "Box Sets" shelf. Which I wish I didn't need to separate, but making room for boxes that can hold full-sized 12" LPs is not very spatially efficient.

You can also find a few less focused links, like my last.fm profile page where you can see what artists I've been listening to most on my computer (naturally, vinyl and in-car CD listening is not tracked), as well as what tracks I've last listened to as of the time you visit. The movie reviews I wrote for a few years are also available over on the right, and a link to a gallery of my more unusual vinyl records, and the Facebook page for this blog, which I politely request you "Like" if you get the chance and use the site.

Just to make things easier this once: this title comes from a song by the Jayhawks, and it's actually the title of the song as well as the opening line of its chorus. Here they are performing the song at Ocean Way Studios (I don't know which one, though I'd hazard at guess that it's the Nashville one), and you might be able to see that this is only appropriate as a song to follow a brief mention of the Byrds: