Personal, Hidden, and Interesting
My personal music collection has grown and is dire need of a new home. Trouble is my living room has very limited wall space. I had been thinking about getting some kind of a wall cabinet, but most only hold about 200 or so CD’s. I believe my collection now totals in the neighborhood of 800 or so. So, I’ve been on the lookout for a better type of storage system, but one which is sort of “hidden” so that I can tuck it away in the dining room or a spare bedroom.
Another interesting factoid about my music collection is that I have several friends also housing large CD/DVD collections. I’ve a good friend who has about 1200 CDs. Interesting concept is that, if you combined all of our CDs into one big pile, apart from the fact that you would have one massively big pile, you would notice very little overlap. I believe we both have a somewhat rare Buzzcocks CD and a few other misnomers but there are very few CDs that are contained in both collections. You would think that, if you assembled a pile over 2000 CDs there would be two Brittney Spears, two Abby Roads, two Laylas, two Sticky Fingers, two whatevers. But you’d be wrong. We actually have quite divergent collections. And you would probably never have guessed that we’d have the same Buzzcocks CD. Just wouldn’t calculate, it’s unexpected, but factual.
I used to think that, over time, my music collection would grow and change. I used to hold onto the sentimental notion that music was important in my life and that it would always play a primary role. Lately it seems like most folks find a lack of new, interesting, engaging music. A common complaint we share is that “there’s nothing interesting happening in music.” While I suppose you could say that’s true, there’s also a lot of more underground type stuff that’s not only interesting, different, fresh and new, it’s actually vibrant. What’s happening though is the distribution channels rely on the same old stand-bys. There’s lots of Tori Amos’, Norah Jones’, Josh Grobin’s, etc. out there but the music stores, video channels, and media seems to push the same old Brittney Spears (and the like) crowds. It’s become up to us to find the good stuff. It’s gone back to the days of music fans being like diamond miners; we have to shift through a lot of coal to get to “the good stuff” but it is, indeed, out there somewhere. Kind of like the old X Files motto: the truth is out there. The “good stuff” is out there, we just have to hunt and peck and hope the radio catches on.
With SXSW coming up, I’m certain Austin will bring lots of music that isn’t even on the radar yet. It’s just weighted more on the listener to scratch beneath the surface and seek out the unusual.
Until next time, this is Carol, the Carol in “Carol’s Little World” signing off.
