Today is not a significant day. But then, neither was yesterday - and yet thick-necked fraternity brothers and vacuous sorority sisters everywhere commemorated the non-occasion with three dollar mojitos and unplanned pregnancies. So perhaps the great unwashed might also one day remember this uneventful day. With a massive marketing campaign and a vague (at best) understanding of the flimsy history involved - all supported by the entire weight of a legalized drug industry, natch - we here at hotrod.vox.com think there just might be an outside chance they will. Step three: profit.
Today marks the one week anniversary of the first day we might have posted our inaugural installment of our intended new weekly feature "the vault." And today marks the first deadline we set for ourselves pertaining to said feature that we have missed. We anticipate that it will be the first of many, which is why after considerable deliberation our editorial staff has decided to delay the debut of this much-anticipated column. Astute readers no doubt will have noted a more sporadic than usual posting schedule here at hotrod.vox.com over the past six weeks or so. After careful study of our second quarter projections, we expect this trend to continue into the summer. Things are just way too hectic down at the lab, what with a high-profile study of the University of Maryland's indigenous turtle population occupying most of our time. The last thing we want is to begin a regular feature for which our massive readership awaits weekly with bated breath and then not be able to follow through. So look for "the vault" to resume - or to begin, rather - in July.
Make no mistake - this delay has nothing to do with the record we selected to review in our initial installment. It sucks. Really, really bad. We can't wait to write the review, actually. We just don't have the time.
]]>I have more CD's than ninety-nine percent of America but fewer CD's than forty percent of my friends. Those aren't my words; Chuck Klosterman wrote them in Killing Yourself to Live. And I'm not sure I even identify with them. I mean... except for Soo, I suspect I actually do have more CD's than most of my friends.
I've given discs away, but I have never sold any back to any record store. I find it dishonest, in a way, to purge one's collection. Anyone and everyone can sift through the strata of my collection and formulate any hypothesis they wish about my musical development from the fossil record. My standard response will be that Jesus placed those incriminating discs in my library to test the faith of the believers (or non-believers; I'm not really sure how that concept is supposed to work), but we all know that I - like everyone else - used to listen to some seriously uncool music. As I've grown older, I have found this policy has - perhaps unfortunately - influenced my buying habits. I'm less tolerant now than I used to be of the more flash-in-the-pan bands (See: The Fratellis. See also: everything else to which Dabysan listens.) that come down the pike. But I still have plenty of older material that rarely, if ever, finds its way into my rotation. I can hardly be blamed. Hell, there are records I truly love that I forget about if I go a few weeks without listening.
So with that we begin a musical odyssey, of sorts - an exploration of my back catalog; a re-visitation of those discs which haven't been spun in years. Here's how it works: I pick a CD early in the week and give it four or five serious listens. And then I post a completely objective and unbiased review on a day to be determined by whenever I get around to posting my first installment. Hopefully, that will be Thursday. Thursdays are a good day for a regular feature. I think we'll get things started this week with the Replacements' craptacular debut Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. Like I said, objective and unbiased. Totally.