Taking a Trip Through My (ab)CDs

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Between my husband and me, we have quite a few CDs, mostly of music from the 90s and before.  Some of them were purchased to replace old LPs.  Some are his, most are mine.  When we got married, we discovered some duplicates (Tom Petty’s “Full Moon Fever” springs to mind) which I took to a local store and traded for others, or sold on eBay. I still buy some CDs, but they're mostly older stuff.  I'm not the most adventurous of listeners, and my tastes are pretty middle-of-the-road.  I'm also trying to challenge and shake that up some.  I’ve mostly been listening to public radio in my car for a time, but this year’s political coverage has become more than I can take.  I do often listen to the public adult alternative station for music, but with a recent move, I’ve become even more painfully aware of all the stuff I have that I don’t use. “Why did I buy that?  Where did this come from? How much of this crap do I really need, or want?” 

I think about the music we own that I don’t listen to and I feel minor pangs of guilt over the money spent and the space they take up. The money is not a huge thing, until you take into consideration the fact that there are many CDs that were probably only listened to all the way through once. At least the price of music seemed to hit a peak a couple of decades back, and then dropped to a more manageable amount.  The space is also not so bad when you compare CDs to LPs.  Buying CDs has never been as satisfying open the cellophane around an LP, pulling out the disk, and…but that’s a topic for another time.  I can’t listen to LPs in the car, and I haven’t taken the time to digitize most of mine, so we’ll leave that alone for now.

To avoid feeling wasteful, I’ve decided to listen to some of our CDs on my way to and from work, as I have a longer commute now. 

•  I’m just listening to one CD per artist, in alphabetical order, although some of the cases do contain double albums, so I may or may not listen to both.
•  If there are artists whose CDs I could sing through in my sleep, I do not have to listen to every song, but if I haven’t listened in years or don’t know the album at all, I will listen to every cut.  My game, my rules.
• This is car listening, so it is not a place I can concentrate on every word, nuance and note of an arrangement.  That’s not really the point, unless there's something that just demands to be heard.  I just want to know why I have this stuff.  Plus, my car stereo isn’t the best, and the speakers Garland bought me for Christmas several years ago are still uninstalled and in their original box, so I’m listening through fairly cruddy factory speakers.  I’ll still get the gist.
• My music is divided into sections.  The overwhelming majority is pop/rock, but there's a country portion, a few contemporary Christian (which actually aren't very contemporary--mostly 90s to 2008 or so), some standard/show stuff, and some classical.  My current activity just involves the pop/rock.

I started this exercise several weeks ago and wasn’t recording my thoughts until I got to Jimmy Buffett, but I’ll backtrack and jot something down. I’ve just realized that our box sets are stored in a different area right now, so I need to bring them and get them in the mix in so no one is left out.

5/2/16

Jimmy Buffett – “Fruitcakes” (1994)

Background:

My husband is(was?) a Parrot Head.  He used to be in the fan club, and has been to several concerts.  I surprised him with tickets once when we were dating in the mid-90s, and we also went to a show with friends after we got married.  I like Jimmy fine, but all the CDs, albums, posters, books, mugs, etc. in the house are definitely Garland’s.

CD thoughts: Listening to Jimmy Buffett on the way to work might not be the best way to start a Monday morning.  I have no immediate prospects of a tropical vacation.  We don’t have a swimming pool.  We haven’t even figured out how to operate, maintain or repair the hot tub that came with the house where we moved two and a half months ago.  The first 2 songs on this CD are 15 minutes combined, and the fun feels a bit forced.  The ballads fare somewhat better. I found the start of one song nice, and then realized it was a cover of “Uncle John’s Band.” It all sounds fine and relaxed, and as you’d expect, there’s a bounty of clever lyrics and breezy singing.  The female backup singers are irritating on some of the tracks.  A couple of years ago I finally realized what I want to be when I grow up.  I want to be a session singer in the 1970s.  This CD is from the 90s, and I would’ve been sad to sing these outdated arrangements. One cut is an annoyingly highjacked cover of the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" in which he includes a Parrot Heads reference.  There is an even more annoying cover of "He's Got You."  Jimmy sings "the only ting different, the only ting new," to show just how Caribbean he is, and also throws in some "I don't know"s from "Volcano"  in the mix.  The final song has the cloying title of "Apocalypso", but it's actually decent.

Takeaway: Steel drums, pan flutes (I think it was a pan flute), and conga drums probably feel better around Thursday lunchtime and later in the week, unless you’re in the Caribbean, in which case let the Jimmy flow.  Just probably an earlier album.