Got Myself A Gun

A3
Originally uploaded by bsglaser.

Artist: A3
Album: Exile on ColdHarbour Lane
Source: Promo

CD #1, and already I feel like I have some explaining to do. This is one of many, many parts of The Beast that I did not pay for - in fact, I never even asked for. It's a promo disc, from my years as a music critic or music writer or whatever it should be called. Suffice to say I wrote things about music, and people (usually) paid me for it. May someone have mercy on my soul.

But show me a rock critic who says he isn't in it for the money, and I'll show you one who's a junkie for the Free Stuff pusher. It's the best part of the gig, really - you get free stuff, and you're already in a better mood before you even start listening and/or writing (more later on writing without much listening). Like the woman you don't really want to date anymore, but the sex is too good to give up, trying to stop writing about music is tough, because you know you're going to have to start paying for your junk again.

You'll also stop getting things like this A3 disc: music you'd never have paid for, but that you kind of dig once you hear it. This is from 1997, just as electronics were making their first serious inroads into slightly south-of-the-mainstream music, and you can hear that it's not quite there yet. But it's fun, catchy and cool - the last part, especially, because I got this in 1997, and a few years later, when The Sopranos hit the air, I instantly recognized the song over the credits: "Woke Up This Morning," which is track #3, and appears in a bunch of remixes on the bonus disc. Not the first (and far from the last) time that I was glad I hung on to something that I only sort of liked, because something in the grooves came in handy later. And by "handy" I mean that I got all excited that I'd heard the song and exactly zero other people cared even a little bit.

Should It Stay or Should It Go? One of my writing teachers in college preached the gospel of "knowing when to kill your children" - the painfull act of cutting out something that means something to you, because it's just not right for the piece. Which is a terribly overdramatic way of saying, if I want to hear "Woke Up This Morning," I can watch The Sopranos; otherwise, there's really no reason to hold onto this disc. I'ts good, but something I pretty much never reach for. First up, first casualty. Bye-bye, A3.