the corner office

Unbelievable. I mentioned earlier this week that I was ripping my CDs, and was using a tool called cdparanoia. Well, cdparanoia finished off reading a single CD track last night, that has taken days (literally) to read. Good sense said I should have cancelled the process, but I was curious to see what the end product would sound like, and also because this is a CD that I really was heartbroken to see damaged.

The outcome is amazing. Playing this CD normally was a bit like listening to a scratched vinyl - jumping, and non-stop scratching and clicking noises. After days of whirring up and down, I now have a nearly perfect-sounding digital copy of the track I was ripping. It'll probably take more than a month of non-stop ripping to get the rest of the CD, but I'll do it when the rest of my CDs are done.

What CD am I so desperate to preserve? It's the Abelarde Sanction's Best of 2000 compilation CD. The deterioration isn't surprising - it was only ever a home-burned, supremely limited edition affair. And why am I so desperate to preserve it? Because it's the only CD that has me on it!

Way back in 2000, friends of mine had an electro-punk-ish band called Atmosphere Control Unit. They were between guitarists at the time, and I offered to jam with them until they found a "real" guitarist. I was (and am) an utterly unaccomplished guitar player, but my ham-fisted noise-making seemed to work and I ended up playing with the guys for well over a year... got to play a good few gigs, and we recorded one track at the time, a badly mastered version of which made it onto the Abelarde compilation. Playing in a band was an awesome experience and I was always grateful for the chance to do it.

I realised after the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2004, that this CD is the only copy I have of that recording, and so, it is... precious to me...

In addition to that, this compilation just takes me back to the "live music" days before Ronwen and I became complete hermits... amazing bands, amazing music, amazing experiences. Many of the bands, the venues and the people have moved on, so this CD is a once-off, small piece of history and a happy reminder of what it was all about.