Where Should Sun Ra Be Filed?

[rcarlberg]

I had a friend who filed his albums in order of purchase going back 20 years.

Archie Patterson used to file his LP collection by the number of releases: all bands with a single album in one spot, then all bands with two albums, then three, etc.

Whatever works for you.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

I file alphabetically only if I have more than one album by an artist. If I only have one then the artist either gets filed according to country they are from or by parent band if they were in a band that I have more than one album. My system sometimes confuses even me!

Sun Ra is like Jethro Tull
file under S

[Garden Dreamer]

PS

File under ‘popular’

I was going to say "File Under Reasonably Popular" and steal a little joke from a Horslips album.

[rcarlberg]

I file alphabetically only if I have more than one album by an artist. If I only have one then the artist either gets filed according to country they are from or by parent band if they were in a band that I have more than one album. My system sometimes confuses even me!

As well it should.

Sun Ra is like Jethro Tull

But not much!

[GuitarGeek]

I file alphabetically only if I have more than one album by an artist. If I only have one then the artist either gets filed according to country they are from or by parent band if they were in a band that I have more than one album. My system sometimes confuses even me!

As I said, in the case of Ra, I've got so many CD's, his work fills an entire box by itself, so there's a box marked "Sun Ra", and that's the end of it.

Most other things are...a bit more convoluted. I file related groups together. So, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Whitesnake, MSG, Gary Moore, Alcatrazz, Rainbow, and Vandenberg are all in one double sized case. I've debated whether Quiet Riot or Night Ranger belong in that case as well, since both bands have people who were in Ozzy's solo band (and in the case QR, also Whitesnake).

Similarly, Gong, Steve Hillage solo, Daevid Allen solo, Mother Gong, etc are all in one case. I'm not sure if A Flock Of Seagulls or Berlin belong in that case (they were both produced by Gong bassist Mike Howlett).

Soft Machine, Caravan, Hatfield And The North, and solo albums by Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt are in one place.

Also, I have King Crimson, Stickmen, and solo albums by Levin, Belew, Fripp, etc in one case. I think that's where the Fripp & Sylvian album is. But...

Japan, I've actually put in my "Guitar-rorist" box, because of Mick Karn's 90's era association with David Torn. I don't really have enough of the solo work from the various members of Japan to make up it's own box, so for the time being, I thought that was a good place to the Japan related stuff, along side Torn's solo records, and recordings by the likes of Henry Kaiser, Derek Bailey, Hans Reichel, etc.

Come to think of, maybe I need to get a double wide box, so I can combine all Crimson related, Japan related, and Porcupine Tree stuff into one place. But then where do I put things like Lonely Universe (Torn, Karn, and drummer Michael Lambert and trumpeter Michael White) and Polyton (Karn, Torn, and Terry Bozzio).

Man, this stuff is confusing!

[rcarlberg]

Man, this stuff is confusing!

It'll quickly get confusing, with that kind of system, if artists fail to "stay in their lane." Since the stuff I like best is the stuff that falls under "uncharacterizable" your system would not work at all for me.

[GuitarGeek]

It'll quickly get confusing, with that kind of system, if artists fail to "stay in their lane." Since the stuff I like best is the stuff that falls under "uncharacterizable" your system would not work at all for me.

Well, it's less about being "characterizable" or whatever, so much as the fact that I've got this thing about grouping musicians who've worked together in one area. TO me whether or not Deep Purple and WHitesnake are the same genre, so much as the fact that three of the guys in the early lineup of the latter were all in the former. And two of the guys from Whitesnake were in Gary Moore's band. And Gary Moore was in Thin Lizzy, and so was John Sykes, who later was in Blue Murder and Whitesnake...wait a minute, I'm going around in circles here!

Likewise, to me Eric Dolphy and Archie Shepp belong in the same box as Coltrane, because Dolphy and Shepp played on some of Coltrane's records. Coltrane was in Miles' band, so maybe they go into the same box, along with Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, and Mahavishnu Orchestra (all of which are connected to Miles.

Alternately, Mahavishnu Orchestra could go in the hard rock box, due to their connections to Tommy Bolin and Jeff Beck. And since Jan Hammer is in there, you might throw in the Schon & Hammer records (actually, I don't have those on CD, only vinyl), Journey, Santana...

Charles Mingus goes into the same box as Duke Ellington because of Money Jungle. Tal Farlow goes into that box, too, along with the Red Norvo Trio CD I have which has both Mingus and Farlow on it.


But I could theoretically take any record that Arthur Barrow, George Duke, or Peter Wolf was involved in, and put them in the same box as Frank Zappa. Apart from Berlin, though, I don't have any of them (though I probably should have that Phillip Oakey record that Moroder produced...I always dug Together In Electric Dreams).

[Dana5140]

Ra never had any children. Fact: to the best of anyone's knowledge he never had sex. John Szwed makes this point in his biography of Ra. Might have been due to an undescended testicle. The bio is superb, BTW.

I file him under S, and I have maybe 100 or so discs and CDs, including some real collector stuffy- LPs on El Saturn and Thoth, a 45rpm of "Gonne Unmask the Batman." Only saw Ra twice, once at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival and once at a small bar outside Lansing, MI (The Stables), where he asked me to go to Saturn with him. Showed early and met many of the band members that night. June Tyson!

[rcarlberg]

Fact: to the best of anyone's knowledge he never had sex.

Mmmm, that explains a lot.

Interesting. You say you file him under 'S' yet you refer to him as "Ra."

[aith01]

Mmmm, that explains a lot.

[FrippWire]

I file him in the "R's" for Ra. I do this only because years ago I read an article and the writer made a point of saying that if you looked, Sun Ra could be found in the Philly phone book under "Ra, Sun". That stuck with me all these years.

[profusion]

I think I file him under S, but I'd have to look.

There are a few anomalies in my collection. I file Heaven & Hell's "The Devil You Know" in my Black Sabbath section, because that's what it really is.

Filing classical albums can be a pain. I prefer to file by composer rather than artist, but so many CDs have multiple composers--I tend to file by the composer of the piece that I bought the album for. For example, Yitzhak Perlman's classic album with Paganini's first concerto and Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy gets filed for Paganini (even though the Sarasate is probably the more enjoyable of the two works).

[GuitarGeek]

Filing classical albums can be a pain. I prefer to file by composer rather than artist, but so many CDs have multiple composers--I tend to file by the composer of the piece that I bought the album for. For example, Yitzhak Perlman's classic album with Paganini's first concerto and Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy gets filed for Paganini (even though the Sarasate is probably the more enjoyable of the two works).

I hae a couple different things I do with classical music:

1. I mostly file by composer, except

2. If there's a series of reissues centered around a given performer, e.g. assorted Sony Classical reissues I have centered around Bernstein, Gould, Boulez, etc. So all the Bernstein CD's are together, all the Gould CD's are together (though the ones I have are all Bach anyway), and so on.

But most of my classical CD's are filed alphabetically by composer.

[Jerjo]

My rock section and blues section is pretty much alphabetical. Jazz and classical sections are quite a bit smaller and extremely haphazard due to the size of some box sets and the intrusion of my wife's ambient stuff into that rack. What I really need is another big CD rack to open up some space but that won't happen until next year. Then my wife will say, "so I suppose you're going to fill this up?" She knows the answer.

[3LockBox]

Put one on your display shelf next to your copies of Bitches Brew and Trout Mask Replica to show people how sophisticated and complex your taste in music is.

[aith01]

Put one on your display shelf next to your copies of Bitches Brew and Trout Mask Replica to show people how sophisticated and complex your taste in music is.

But what if I don’t have room? I’ve already got Cradle of Filth, The Bee Gees, and Foxygen up there to show how eclectic my musical taste is. What should I do?!

(Note: I actually do own some Foxygen LPs, and they’re killer. None of the other two though.)

[daoubourg]

Space Jazz at its best.



As somebody already said, file under S

[mogrooves]

Space Jazz

/exotica

[Dana5140]

Nope nope nope.

Here is Space Jazz at its best:

[rcarlberg]

Beefheart files right next to Beethoven. Strange bedfellows.

Faust is between Fat Mattress and Steve Feigenbaum.

Guru Guru next to Arlo Guthrie.

Etron Fou Leloublan next to Roy Etzel.

[Mister Triscuits]

Beefheart files right next to Beethoven. Strange bedfellows.

I have him between Capability Brown and Caravan.

But Sun Ra is between Julian Priester (related!) and Vasaint Rai.

[rcarlberg]

I have him between Capability Brown and Caravan.

I may have mentioned before, I decided to draw a distinction between "a stage name" and "a band name." Therefore Jethro Tull is under 'J' but Captain Beefheart is under 'B'. Elton John (if I had any) would be under 'J' but Capability Brown (if I had any) would be under 'C.' Bob Dylan is not under 'Z' while Z.Z. Top is.

[Camelogue]

File under suspicious element.

[Steve F.]

Faust is between Fat Mattress and Steve Feigenbaum.

My work here is done....

[Gizmotron]

Reverb.com's take On Sun Ra (per today's promo email):

https://lp.reverb.com/articles/5-gat...MarketingCloud