A Musical Dilemma Part 1

I think the first time I can recall being physically moved by a song, having a strong gut reaction to the music was The Crystals "And Then He Kissed Me". The opening guitar line, followed in succession by the famous (though at the I time didn't know it) "wall of sound", and then topped off with some of the most powerful female vocals in pop music history. It was after hearing this song that it became apparent to me that music was going to be a very big deal for me. My father had a respectable sized music collection for someone with seven kids to raise. Unfortunately it wasn't the greatest collection. There was an awful lot of terrible music in there, but there were also a lot of gems to be heard. Mixed in amongst all the Peaches & Herb, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, and Kansas, there was some Blondie, the Ventures, Queen, and Black Sabbath. As well as some choice Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Bill Cosby albums. I had to have just about worn out some of those albums, and I couldn't wait to get my own collection of LP's.

Growing up in the time that I did, technology has been a somewhat fluidly evolving arena. I am not under the illusion that this is somehow different from any other time period. That said, I am amazed at the constant rate of change. Let me put this a bit of perspective as far as the forms of music consumption. From about 1920 to the late 1960's records were the primary form of music consumption. Then came the wonderful 8-Track. What a truly awful jump in technology. That didn't kill the LP. No that was left to the audio cassette during the 70's and 80's. Just as cassette tapes were booming, compact disc came into power. CD's have been at the top ever since. That is until the digital age came into it's own with the dawn of the dreaded MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (or as non nerds knows it - mp3).However all of this couldn't kill the record. LP's are still made in mass, and they have taken on the role of weapon of choice for the music snobs. During 2008 over 2 million actual records were sold. My point is that in just the past 30 years, music went through some very drastic changes, as opposed to the first seventy years of the 1900's. That is a very drastic upturn in format changes, and it seems that the industry has somewhat settled on a format. Not really though, as the industry had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point.

As I had to pay for everything I wanted that was a non necessity after the age of 12, my music collection was a struggle. On top of having little money, I lived in a town, where Walmart was my pretty much my only means of finding music. So I usually saved up till I could go to a real record store. I can remember being so impressed when I finally reached the magic number 10. 10 whole CD's! Where would I ever find the time to listen to all of it? Due to recent moving I had to move my collection. I decided to document the collection with the photo seen here.



My Last count was somewhere around the 900 mark, and that's physical copies alone. I'm sure if I counted my mp3 albums, it would push me well into the thousand mark. And herein lies the dilemma. Where do I go from here?

I take pride in my album collection. I can't quite explain why, but I do. I like to look at it, and marvel at how long it's taken me to get this far. It's not a "crass consumerism" as some would like to say. It's far more than that. My collection is somehow an extension of myself. Stay with me here. I can look at an album on my shelf, and I am transported back to the moment I first laid eyes on it. The excitement that built inside just at the mere touch of long sought after jewel. The book "High Fidelity" (and later movie) stated it pretty accurately when it compared the act of music collection as a kind of fetish. At any given time, I have between 20 and 30 albums that are on my list to acquire. Think of that. It's a never ending quest, and it does feel like a quest. There are times when it feels like someday I will have the complete collection. The fantasy is that someday, when I'm old, I'll look at my album collection, and everything I have ever wanted to own will be there to look at. As of late it's beginning to look more and more like an unattainable goal. Due to my obsession with music, there's rarely a day that goes by that I don't find something new to listen to. That is at once the most fantastic and most frustrating thing about music. And life in general for that matter, but that's a whole different article. As I was saying, my collection is an extension of myself, in that memories are wrapped up inside these acquisitions. So many record hunting excursions, lazy Saturdays spent crawling over the used section at whatever record store I ended up in that day. Looking for new stores to pillage and walking away discouraged when I didn't find anything I was looking for. Even today if a store has any kind of CD's I am compelled to look through them. Mainly because I learned long ago, that amazing finds are lurking in places you never expect to see them.

All this and I haven't even gotten to the act of listening, and I'm not going to really. I think it's suffice to say that listening to music is one of the greatest treasures on earth. It has always terrified me (and always will) that I will lose my hearing. I can think of few things worse then not being able to hear Bach, the Beatles, Miles Davis, David Bowie, Eleni Mandell, Sparks, Tom Waits, and on and on the list goes. Yet when having to hear Toby Keith, Jimmy Buffet, Led Zeppelin, Limp Bizkit, I have thought how wonderful it would be not to have ears at all. I have also treated my ears rather badly. Going to undesirably loud shows, and perhaps worst of all, blasting my ears with all the wonderful music of the world. Straying off topic yet again, my main point is there are many different ways to listen to music. By yourself, with friends, with total strangers, laying in bed at night waiting for sleep to come, etc. My favorite way to listen to an album is to sit back, put it on, and read along with the liner notes. Taking in the artwork, reading the lyrics, reading who did what and where, trying to piece it all together. That initial listen is just fantastic, and it brings me to my dilemma. What exactly am I going to do about music? How do I go forth from here? How do I reconcile the mp3 format with the physical form I am used to? In short, how am I going to continue to collect music?