Sometimes its John Coltrane. Sometimes its Son House. And not just old jazz or older blues guys. Sometimes its Wire. Today and yesterday, it’s Skip James. I was cleaning house, the bi-annual check up, and I mean my computer, and while I was transferring files to my external hard drive and deleting shit I’ll never listen to, my iTunes Shuffle ran rampant. I tried to steer it in new directions but my computer was depressed and sluggish so it kept hitting those Elliott Smith and PJ Harvey tunes. The real depressing-want-to-kill-yourself tunes. I’ve never seen such a suicidal computer, and only 1 year old. Well, in the midst of the machine’s depression and my battle to save its life, “Devil Got My Woman” by Skip James came on. That was it. All the other songs were bullshit. That was it, something. Skip James. With one song he made every other song on the planet seem disgusting. Unworthy of existence. All of it cheap trash. I turned Shuffle Off and my computer didn’t put up a fight. I sat back and we listened to the entire Complete Early Recordings of 1930. “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” bested “Devil” and “4 O’Clock Blues” topped ‘em both. When that was through I thought Lightnin’ Hopkins would follow it up nicely, but I thought wrong. Even Lightnin’ Hopkins was killed and nauseated by the great Nehemiah Curtis SKIP James. For now, nothing’s sadder except silence.