You got lucky

Wednesday Night Music Club: A lot of people wonder why I am the way I am. I certainly am a few standard deviations from the average. I’d like to blame this Tom Petty video for some of this. It’s not something that an eleven year old should be exposed to three times a day for months as this video was always on MTV. I think I’m still scarred by the baby turning into a pig. And why the hell are they eating Alice at the end? Tom Petty looks freaky enough as it is; I didn’t need a psychedelic video to cement that point.

(For as many strange influences I encountered in my youth due to having three older siblings my younger brother had it worse. It’s pretty amazing for me to realize that I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was nine years old. We taught my little brother how to play when he was six. That’s probably a little too young to be discussing enchanted swords and slaughtering kobolds. )

Tom Petty has been on my mind recently. Obviously there was the Super Bowl halftime performance, which brought him more mainstream attention than he has received in a decade. But mainly it is because I listened to Full Moon Fever today because it showed up in the random CD algorithm on Sunday. I think the best way to explain my music collection is discussing why I have Full Moon Fever.

Now I bought my first CD player in 1991; buying my older brother’s old one when he got a new system. I also started college in 1991 and I could guess that Full Moon Fever was in my first batch of CDs purchased. Definitely within the first twenty. Now I have zero problems with the purchase. It is a good album and was massively huge and even the music snob in me has no problems with Tom Petty. I don’t know anyone who bad mouths him. He’s written some great songs, never seemed like a bad guy and would always put on a good show on tour.

But I can say in all honesty that today was the first time that I played that CD since college. It’s just been sitting in my CD collection for more than a decade. Now some people would consider that to be a waste. Obviously at some point I could have sold it for some financial benefit but it is something I would never consider. I mean, it is a good disc after all. Just because I don’t listen to it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have it.

That’s the strange mindset I have with music. Of all my discs there are probably fifty that I listen to regularly. A few others fall into a once a year category. Some discs I keep solely for certain moods: Sonny Landredth when I’m depressed, Howie Day when I’m bored, Paula Cole when I want to remember that I’m an idiot. But there are others that just exist. I don’t have a problem with that. I’m kind of proud of it. That is what a collection is for after all. Even as I work on filling the Zune Full Moon Fever isn’t on the list of discs to burn. But someday I will just so I can have it in another media. And it will probably be another decade before I listen to it.