Listen To Music

11-17-09 Listen To Music

We all remember different stuff. A large part of my memory is taken up with remembering stuff about record collecting. In the 80’s, I tried to modify this behavior to include music videos – I got pretty far with that idea, generating a list of 22,000+ individual music videos. I moved around a bit in the early 90’s, and lost interest in music videos – so my list sits stagnant for over a decade now.

It even seems like I have hit the glass ceiling with DVD’s. There really aren’t too many I am waiting on these days (that I think ever will eventually exist). So, I don’t worry about it. I have a DVD recorder, but the tuner no longer works. If I want to record anything off of TV onto it, I must use a converter box. It’s an older model with a big hard disk inside, so I can store up to something like 22 hours of top quality video.

I keep a big Excel spread sheet of all of my vinyl and CD’s. It’s from this list that I create discographies that I sometimes post on this blog. My lists are not infallible; there’s plenty I don’t know or have accurate descriptions of! But it mostly suits my needs. I’d like to make a bibliography of my book collection, also probably in Excel – but that would take some time (that I don’t seem to have these days).

So, a bunch of stuff about music and record collecting floats around my memory. Serial numbers, the order an artist released their albums in etc. Useful? Well, if you’re trying to do what I do, it is. I like the idea of having an overview of my experience with music – the how and when / why of my perception of it – with the purpose of telling others, so that they might understand music better / more completely – as I sometimes feel that I have. I want all of you to listen!

So that’s an easy enough directive: Listen to music. What you listen to is up to you, to your experience, your access. But listen… More than once, I feel that listening to music has saved my life – from what, I cannot say. But a life less ordinary, perhaps? What do people who don’t listen to music occupy their minds with? Sporting events? Religion? Well, music / record collecting is my ‘religion’. I definitely worship at record stores – whether they be in Tokyo or Amsterdam or Los Angeles (or a thousand other places). I walk through the doors of a record store and I know I am in a place where “my people” are (just as though each record store was a church). And I sometimes go more often than once a week!

I might not like my surroundings, my job, or any other aspect of my present-day existence…but I still like music. And I like to write about my music “experience”.

If I had a perfect memory, there would no need to listen to stuff again and again, but… it helps me remember what it was I found interesting when I ‘listen again’. Sometimes, if I listen long enough – I will discover something new about the music that I am already familiar with. I can make ‘connections’ that were previously obscured from my attention. That’s when it gets fun!

Last Title Listened To: “You Are What You Eat” (O.S.T.) – ’68 Columbia Records, CD is Sony Japan ’06 DSD Mastering, kami sleeve.