A few years back I popped into an estate sale in my East Nashville neighborhood. Looked like whomever had lived in the house had also died in it. Upstairs I was primed to find the sad remnants of an unsuccessful attempt at releasing records.

Hundreds (thousands?) of 45s, some CDs too...I sifted through it all and found three different vinyl titles. Unsure of what they sounded like, I bought one 25-count box of each. Probably ran me $10 total. I'm damn-near certain everything I left behind got chucked into a dumpster.

Upon closer inspection, the address on the label was that of a house where my dear friend Ben Swank lived, momentarily, also in that neighborhood (but not the house where the sale was). I was even more intrigued that one of the singles was titled "The Ballad of O.J. Simpson" and appeared to be done as a "ripped from the headlines" cash-in kinda thing.

Cut at NRP, pressed at URP, both of those actions happening a mere 1.3 miles from where I sit right now on the 32nd anniversary of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman seems like as good a time as ever to let the modern world know...that this exists. And it's likely that the 25 count box on my desk is the only real world tangible evidence of such at this point. I can't imagine there were too many other (any?) OJ-related 45's getting waxed back in '94...so this feels like a weird artifact caught between two eras.

Used to be a common occurrence with a big news event...sinking of the Titanic, Kennedy assassination, the death of Elvis...that a flood of songs wouldn't be written and released in an effort to capitalize on the attention and fascination with the matter.

Even more so intriguing is that despite my decent attempts to divine otherwise, someone will probably need to be throwing out stacks of thousands of pieces of unsold vinyl that still sit in my basement, twenty some years on at this point, sheer shouting distance from where I purchased these three boxes for a total of 75 records.

Yes, I am aware of the conflicting nature of these two behaviors, that someone else's unsold records feel far more mysterious and ripe for re-discovery than mine. That the unknown is more primed for mythologizing than the one that I personally felt coulda been a contender.

Write a comment that has something to do with whatever I just wrote...OJ, cash-in records, things that fall at the unique moment between two eras, estate sales, throwing records in the trash, sitting on a record for like 3 years before you actually listen to it, Killer Records and the holes in their Discogs database, the things you keep knowing someone else will throw away and what you pile on top of them...and I will probably just give all of these things away because that seems like a great way to give presents on my birthday. Get your comments in by midnight Central time on Thursday June 18th to be considered.

(lyrics I personally transcribed)