It's been a while, sadly enough, but if you have followed the erratic course of this website over the years, it probably didn't come as a surprise at all. Real life just has a way of continually getting in the way all the time, especially if you have both a stressing day job and an extended family rife with illnesses and diseases. We're all not getting younger and, boy, ain't that the truth. What I used to pile onto my desk for a night's worth of work today takes me a week and my energy line seems to have someone leeching off it continuously. At the moment, when I seem to have the time to sit down and write or update this or that, I'm just too tired, throw on some mindless BluRay disc ... and pass out before the studio's logo has had enough time to pop up on the screen.
I haven't even had time to sample more than a tenth of the music I bought these past months and I haven't given up hope that there will be that one weekend coming up on which I can sit down and do one of those monster 62-hour sessions interrupted by only the most basic sleep to be up and running again. I used to love those kinds of weekends, but they are few and far between. Actually, they have become extinct.
I did spend a little time programming something to help me avoid wasting money once and for all: I've started putting my CD collection online in form of an alphabetical A-Z text list. I've only done letter "A" and am almost finished with "B", but I'm not going to post a link here. Yes, it's time taken away from my other online activities, like this site, but I discovered - while rearranging my shelves once again - that I did have too many duplicate copies of certain recordings. Not different masterings, mind you; the same damn CD three, four or even five times. Like I said: I'm getting old.
This extremely simple list has several purposes:
Many years ago, I had to sell several key sections of my collection to raise a serious amount of cash ( today I would say that one-third of what I had, the nitty-gritty, was offered up on the altar of necessity). Out went the audiophile (gold) CDs, 98% of my heavy metal collection (surprisingly enough, collectors of 80s "hair bands" often pay more of a premium for some obscure release when compared to the Blue Note nutcases who do the same for some rare vinyl) and quite a few rare boxed sets that crazed eBay shoppers shelled out tons of money for. Looking at it from today's vantage point, I was glad I had those kinds of items that pushed me over a 5-digit dollar sum, which I desperately needed, but it also hurt, badly. So, in a way, I wanted to see what's left. Unfortunately, many cheap reissues and not as many high spots as I would have liked. Still, enough to last me that short time span I have left in this very universe.
Of course, I didn't take the easy road ... as usual. I simply take out each CD, type up an entry which looks more like a typesetter gone berserk, and I use a magnifying glass (yep, I'm virtually blind) to decipher some of that font-size 1 text so common to many reissues today. An entry might look like these two (single, "simple" CD versus more "complex" boxed set):
Adams, Pepper. Pepper Adamas Quintet. Mode Records / V.S.O.P. , 1957/1987. [1 CD | 5 tracks | jewel case | V.S.O.P. #5 CD | Mode 112 | 7 22937 00052 5 | Stereo digital mastering, engineer: Dayton Howe.]
Beatles, The. The Beatles (Stereo Box Set). Apple Corps Ltd. / EMI, 1962-1970/2009. [16 CDs | boxed set (hard black glossy lift top with magnet clasp | slipcase | CDs packaged in three panel digipak with digital mini documentaries) | Remastered by Paul Hicks, Steve Rooke and Guy Massey | Note: All 13 Studio remasters plus "Past Masters" | Albums: Please Please Me (1963) | With the Beatles (1963) | A Hard Day's Night (1964) | Beatles for Sale (1964) | Help! (1965) | Rubber Soul (1965) | Revolver (1966) | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) | Magical Mystery Tour (1967) | The Beatles (1968) | Yellow Submarine (1969) | Abbey Road (1969) | Let It Be (1970) | Past Masters (1962–1970); Note: contains every song not included on 12 original UK Beatles albums or the Magical Mystery Tour LP that was commercially released by EMI from 1962 to 1970. The majority of the album consists of the A- and B-sides of the band's singles (including single versions of songs that appeared differently on albums), plus the full contents of the UK-only Long Tall Sally EP, two German language recordings, a song recorded for the American market and a track used on a charity compilation complete the collection | The Beatles: The Mini Documentaries (2009); Note: DVD of all 13 mini-documentaries (Running time: 40 minutes).]
Secondly, I noticed that every single CD shop I frequented these past 10 years has an Internet connection, usually a PC somewhere close to wherte the cash register is. These fall holidays I spent a few days frequenting my old haunts in Copenhagen and Odense, Denmark, and I stood in those shops like a three-hundred pound monkey who couldn't remember his own name. I spotted rare issues and simply didn't have the foggiest notion if a) I had them, b) I once had them and c) needed them. I hated that feeling and actually picked up three CDs I already had, but you know how we collectors think: Better safe than sorry (besides, I can "unload" them onto my dad, who has a very similar taste in jazz, at least).
Thirdly, once typed up, it might be a basis for another website that goes into more detail with each single item. Wishful thinking, as I can't even handle the sites I have, but I'm me ... and that's that. Thank you very much.
So, if you, yourself and you would like to have a link to this (extremely) slowly growing site, use the contact form on this site, tell me who you are/have been and I might send you a link. :).
I don't think I'll ever integrate that list into this site. I do tend to think it might be an incentive for drug-crazed maniacs to raid my place for stuff they can sell to finance their various addictions but, on the other hand, I've already posted so much info here that I might as well be upfront about the rest as well.
No idea.
A good Dutch online friend, who has gotten totally lost in the din that is the Internet, once took me to task for starting too many things and never finishing them. I can only shout out a resounding "Yes!" to that accusation, but not all hope's lost. The Mosaic discography project will continue next week (not that it really needs to because it's already reached close to 30.000 downloads (!) and is eating server bandwidth like crazy!), and posting will pick up here again once the family-related issues are resolved, but do remember one thing: This site is for me, myself and I. It has always been that and will always be that.
As Martin Luther King once said so poignantly: "I have a dream!" Yes, I'd love to expand, have lots of ideas, etc., but these past three days, I worked 19 hours each and every day. Nuts, I know, but I also enjoy that. At the moment it's both push and shove and when the calm sets in again, this site will pick up.
I have often thought that I would turn this site into a full-day job once I won some 50-million lottery, but, alas, it won't come to pass as I have never invested a single cent into any gambling of any kind. I preferred to buy a new Dave Brubeck CD, which I already had three times.
:)
No Responses to “Observations 10-2009” Leave a reply ›