I wondered what to title this post for the better part of this morning. I thought of adding something like “My Long Obsession” to the title, or some other such pale attempt to capture grandeur, but in the end I opted with just posting his name. Johnny Cash. If you count yourself a lover of all things music then this is one name that needs no subtitle (even if you do love his moniker The Man in Black) or introduction. Johnny Cash was an extremely prolific songwriter and performer and he deserves a listen on this hot July afternoon.
Recently I’ve been cleaning out a load of boxes that have long stored relics from my past. In one such box I found a journal, rather a diary of sorts, that I was required to keep for a university course on renewable energy sources and the environmental issues interwoven throughout our modern society. I read through some of my old work (got an A in the class if you must know) and found that throughout this old journal, written for a class about natural resources and the like, I often wrote about music. How I got an A I’ll never know, but it was interesting to discover this old journal, this old blog of sorts, that existed long before the spark of TWF ignited within my brain.
So here’s some tracks I love by Mr. Cash and below is the short journal entry that I turned in, for a grade, years ago during my undergrad days. (Note: I’m no longer referring to the track Hurt as a NIN Cover because in my mind Johnny now owns the track. Yes it might have been written by Trent and originally recorded by him, but it now and forever shall be a Johnny Cash song.)
mp3 : Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
mp3 : Johnny Cash – Hurt
The below text is taken from a class journal in 2003.
You wouldn’t know it from a quick survey of the type of music I own but I am a huge, and growing more so with every passing song, fan of the late Johnny Cash. I’m listening to his sprawling post-mortem masterwork 5 CD compilation and it is amazing. To label this man as a country musician, in my mind, is a mistake; he should simply be put on the shelf labeled “Legend,” but that’s another issue altogether.
Cash was recording these songs all the way up until the week he passed away. He was passionate about what he did and it shows in the purity of his work. I think it is this passion, this clarity, that we all long for. No one wants to get into a career, a job, in which all they think about is getting to retirement. We all want to be Johnny Cash in a sense. To touch people, to change and inspire the world, to work so hard at something we do that when we pass on that passion, that love, lives on and is apparent even though we have gone.
+ Johnny Cash @ twf hype elbows site myspace amazonmp3 itunes
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The World Forgot 
My posts will be hit or miss the next few weeks here on TWF. This is partially because I’m busy, but more importantly my 8 year old laptop struggles mightily to run the programs that allow me to post. Hopefully by the end of June or early July I will have a new laptop in hand that can handle all that i need to continue making TWF a place to discover new music.
And just for those who are interested I currently use a Sony Vaio laptop that was bought in 2001. Yes, that’s right, 2001. Which means the laptop and the technology inside of it are almost a decade old. As I type this reply i have to pause after every two or three words because it takes that long for each letter to appear on screen after I’ve hit a key. {Just launching Firefox on this laptop takes around 52 seconds on average… trust me, when it takes that long, you have nothing better to do than time it and find the average}. It’s rocking a Pentium 700Mhz processor {which is roughly 1/5 as powerful as present day mobile phone processors} and I’ve maxed it out with a glorious 512MB of RAM. Oh, I also have only about 1GB free of hard drive space to spare which makes it almost impossible to download new music, rip CDs to mp3, or do anything else that facilitates listening to new artists or new albums.
Basically my current computer setup {flavored slightly by the amount of free time i have} has made it not enjoyable to post about music here. In fact it’s quite literally a pain.
For awhile I was using an extra computer at work to post {this accounted for the quick flurry of posts in April and May}, but this opportunity is now not available {yes, I am still employed, but now I’ve become busier than ever with work and I’ve taken over the website here and, well, life in general seems to be moving fast}.
Long story short I’ll post as much as I can when I can. Thanks for being patient with me…