RECORD STORE TALES #940: My Friend of Misery
“You insist that the weight of the world,
Should be on your shoulders,
There’s much more to life than what you see,
My friend of misery.”
James Hetfield may as well have been talking about me. But it’s not that simple. I don’t insist the weight of the world should be on my shoulders. I’d give anything to take some of the weight off. But I have a lot of responsibility.
Having somebody’s dirty bathwater leaking all over my floor and carpet the last two weeks has pushed me to the breaking point.
“These times are sent to try men’s souls,
But something’s wrong with all you see,
You, you’ll take it on all yourself,
Remember, misery loves company.”
Trying to be proactive about my health, I took a hiatus from writing. We now have the plumbing fixed. There’s plenty of damage to repair and lots of stress. But I think maybe it’ll be OK dipping my toe back into writing. A little bit. Cross fingers, knock wood that nothing else gets fucked up.
Metallica has been a soothing remedy. I haven’t listened to old Metallica in a long time. This 14 CD / 6 DVD / 6 LP box set is something else. I’ve played all the LPs and now I’m into the CDs. James’ riffs tapes range from startling to suck! The initial “Sad But True” riff is painfully badly recorded. But a 22 second snippet of a punk rock “Unforgiven” is a truly cool moment. There’s a lot to go through here. Metallica have been taking my mind off things.
I did discover something interesting about my car stereo. It seems to be able to read files that have been deleted. When you “delete” something off a hard drive, it doesn’t necessarily go away unless you overwrite it. My car appears to be able to read tracks like this. This weekend I ripped the massive Metallica box set, and replaced the old album on my hard drive with the newly remastered one. I also took the time to rip all my Load, Reload and Garage Inc. CD singles to the hard drive. A complete set of singles, I might add. Up until St. Anger, the only Metallica release I was only missing was The 6½ Year Anniversary 12″ EP and a “Neckbrace” remix of “Whiplash” (still need both).
On to the car. The easiest way for me to clean up the car’s hard drive was to completely delete the Metallica folder and then copy over a new one. What I discovered when I jumped in the fire…I mean car…was that the car drive now had two copies of Kill ‘Em All, Master of Puppets, etc. My original rip of the Metallica CD was still there, even though I deleted it. So it seems my car can read deleted files, at least until they are eventually overwritten.
The annoying thing about this is that because of the way the car reads the ID3 tags, each song gets played twice in a row. So when I play Kill ‘Em All, I get “Hit the Lights”, then “Hit the Lights”, “The Four Horsemen”, “The Four Horsemen”, and so on. I can fix this but it’s annoying.
So much to fix. And I haven’t touched on the family health challenges of late. Some things should stay private.
So let’s try a little writing again. Because I want to give this Metallica box set a good solid listen, and I’m only about 1/6th of the way through, I won’t be writing up reviews for a little while. Instead I’ll be focusing on Record Store Tales, a real WTF of a comment, and a new feature. Now that I’m not trying to constantly keep my floors dry, I can try to be creative again.
I can try. Yoda says “Do, or do not, there is no try.”
I say “Fucked, you must get, Yoda.” I’m doing the best I can here!
mikeladano.com 
Power of Music helping ya through a funk and 24 hours of Metallica rock proves to be part of the fix. It is a great set of stuff and its good to see they included everything. Props for that.
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Power of music man, it’s an amazing thing!
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Music can get you through anything! I think that is why I like it so much. Some of those Metallica disc sounds a little like what you get on the Vault. Some scatting and non-sense singing, but all the recordings did sound decent though.
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Yes anyone familiar with Metallica demos know they are all seemingly about some guy named “Wa Na Na Nay”. It gets funny after a while! I polished off two discs of riff tapes, rough tracks and demos last night. Started disc three of that stuff today.
The live stuff though, woah baby.
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I am sure the live stuff is killer! I still love the demos even with the scatting…to a point.
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Our friend Thor who comments here sometimes says that the Russia show is in his top 3 Metallica shows of all time! Not coincidentally, that’s the vinyl-only one in the box set! And he’s right. James is just on fire.
The more I listen to this, the more I miss Jason Newsted. I liked his backup vocals (sometimes lead!) and his five-string style. Robert is obviously a very different bassist from Jason. I guess if I had to pick I’d be a Jason guy. Good thing I don’t have to pick!
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writing is also an outlet. you know you’re a writer because you have to write. I don’t see the hiatus lasting too long!
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I’m going to try and ease back in. Hopefully nothing else goes sideways.
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The power of music indeed – and glad to hear the floors are dry too!
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Dirty but dry. What a mess!
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I haven’t purchased the box set but Spotify has most of the music stuff up and I’m digging those riff tapes. Stay well and be creative.
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Whatever helps you to stay sane Mike. Take care of yourself.
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Man, you’ve been through a ton, of late. Metallica is here to save the day! Also: your car has a hard drive? WTF. Also: a punk rock Unforgiven? WTF. Also: a new feature? BRING IT ON!
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OK one by one:
YES! My car has a hard drive. But it’s just a 2 gig external that I plug into a USB port. But it’s a hard drive that’s always in my car, so, YES!
A punk rock Unforgiven? YES! Only 22 seconds worth but it gives you an idea!
A new feature? YES! I’m still figuring it out but hope to work on it this weekend.
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I winder if my lovely wife’s new car could take an external like that. Is the USB in a car enough to support a drive like that? Incredible!
Yeah I’d need more than 22 seconds. How about the whole song!
From hiatus to new feature in record (pun intended) time!
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Is the USB in the car enough to support a drive like that? BARELY. It takes about 10 minutes in the mornings to read and load the data.
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Oh, then nevermind. I had visions of loading up an external for my lovely wife and then she’d be all set. But she finds even a 16GB thumb drive too much to scroll through when she’s trying to drive, so that’s that lol.
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Oh the scrolling is MAD. The Metallica folder is now officially insane.
But I can also use a nice simple small drive that boots up immediately.
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That’s the way! How small is small? Are you still talking external drive like a 500GB or something? Or a thumb drive?
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Your plumbing problems are finally fixed? If yes, congrats! I overlooked “My Friend of Misery” for a bit; it wasn’t until I bought a physical copy of the Black album that I realized how relatable the lyrics are.
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No more leaks! But our kitchen and bathroom are wrecked and now we need repairs :(
I am about 7 discs into my Black album!
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Oh no! When will the plumbing problems end?!?!
I think you’ve got a long way to go.
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I’m afraid you’re right :(
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