Last of My Kind

I had an interesting experience this morning. Went out to my garage and when I opened the door I discovered that my garage was a lot brighter than it usually is. Which meant that I forgot to close the garage door the night before, leaving my car wide open for anyone who wanted to take a shot at it. This is the second time that I’ve done this since moving here, which is either a good statistic or a sign of senility, I’m not sure. It is interesting to note that no one bothered to try to take my CDs because, well, they probably looked at them and had no idea who they were by.

That did make me think about the current status of the random CD project. Started last year, this is my attempt to listen to every CD in my collection by randomly selecting five of them on a weekly basis and never repeating. The current stats are as follows: I have made it through 43% of my collection for a grand total of 280 CDs. I still believe that Excel’s random number generator is a piece of crap because of the 21 CDs that I have by the Cowboy Junkies and Cowboy Mouth I have listened to a grand total of two of them and both of those came in December. And yes, my life has reached the point where I will argue about the accuracy of random numbers.

Still, this puts me on track to finish the project sometime in 2008. I can’t give an exact date since my collection is continually growing so for all I know it might end up being 2009 before I listen to every single note. It is a really interesting task, mainly because I end up listening to discs that I haven’t picked up in over a decade. I know that there are people who will ask why I own music that I don’t listen to and I can only say that it is the collector in me. A lot of the time I feel that it is important to own every disc a band has made, even though no one in their right mind would play U2’s “October” on a regular basis.

Then there is the ego boost I get from the collection, which really shouldn’t be discounted. I’m sorry that I’m breaking the deadly sin of pride but it is really cool to look at all of these discs and go “All of this is mine.” I don’t think that you can get that same thrill from an iPod. It’s not just a music collection for me, it’s a decorating statement. Plus, as I’ve always said, I can guarantee that anyone visiting my place will look and go “I can’t believe you own this disc” twice, once in excited approval and once in utter disgust.

I know that the fact that I still buy CDs goes against my high tech image but what can I say, I grew up on the album and the full length recording. I’ve attended midnight releases where I waited to be the first person to buy the disc. I’ve probably spent months of my life scouring the shelves of stores trying to find that rarity to complete my collection. There is an enjoyment to all of that and even though I know I could do the exact same thing in five minutes online it just takes some of the fun out of it. Infinite choice isn’t always a good thing. It tends to make you incapable of making a decision. So I’ll be the last person in a record store, much like the dinosaurs that are still holding on to vinyl. Hell, might as well start growing that gray ponytail.

That’s it for the week. Bear down, Chicago Bears…