Help! Music overload

Subject: Help! Music overload
From: greg stephens
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 05:12 AM

Well there seem to shelves of CDs filling the house un-listened to. Last months alone seem tobe substantially more than my entire batch of treasured 78s, EPs and a handful of LPs that saw me through the 50's and early 60's, bought infrequently and with much thought from miserable amounts of pocket money.I Blind Lemonjefferson 78, all of Lonnie Donegan singles,handful of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly,Rambling Jack Elliot, 2 Bob Dylans, the Teddy Bears Picnic and the Bluebell Polka,Louis Armstrong Hot 5 EP,one Josh White and Never do a Tango with an Eskimo. What do I actrually need all this new stuff for?

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: fat B****rd
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 05:18 AM

Because, if you never buy a new CD or listen to anything new again you may never feel that feeling that made you keep the older things in the first place. Oh I know what I mean !!

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: greg stephens
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 05:28 AM

Oh I know what you mean too! Actually I have gotsome brilliant and inspiring new stuff which lifts my spirits just as much as Edmundo Ros used to. But it's finding time to listen to it all.....

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 10:47 AM

I know of anudder Mudder who bought a nifty, table-top "juke box" CD player; I think it's by Sony. It holds all of their CDs and is programmable. They never have to put them back in the cases, nor take them out. Just like a real juke box, they sit there, ready to be selected as the Mudcatter chooses for playing or for random selection. So...it can run for literally hours and one could presumably get through a whole collection, well....maybe...:-)

kat

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 11:17 AM

Hi, Greg:

That's an interesting problem. I have friends of mine who somewhere along the line were transformed from listeners to acquirers. When they talk about their collection and say that they have 7,000 albums, 4,000 videos and counting on CDs, I say to them, "If all you did for the rest of your life was to eat and sleep and listen to music and watch videos, you couldn't get halfway through your collection." They recognize that, being intelligent friends. I have a different approach. I have set aside as much space as I'm willing to give to my music collection (which is still pretty substantial) and when I get something new, I give something away. It works fine for me. What it means is that through time, the QUALITY of my collection has improved dramatically, I haven't used any more space, and I've passed on a lot of music that I would probably have never listened to again to someone who got a lot of enjoyment out of it. If they didn't, I encouraged them to keep passing it on until it ended up in the hands of someone who would really treasure having it. Seems to me that I have the best of all worlds. I don't have to climb over my collection to get to the bathroom, I bring a lot of pleasure to other people, and my collection keeps getting better and better.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: greg stephens
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 10:09 PM

Great solution Jerry. trouble is, you do that, and then you read "Lyr Req: The Crab in the Midden" and youre just going to be really helpful, and cocky cos you know the song, and then you think"Oh shit I gave the CD away to a deserving beggar last week".

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 10:28 PM

Funny thing is, Greg, I can't recall a single tape, record or CD that I've given away that I really regretted not having. Reminds me when I finished graduate school. I was living in New York in a crummy little one room apartment, and had to make room. I had an old foot locker filled with all of my painstakingly created notes from all of my college classes, and I figured I'd never use them. So, I put the footlocker full of college notes out on the sidewalk, and this being New York City, people immediately started rummaging through it. When they say that it was just filled with useless papers, they threw them on the ground and it being a windy day, when I went out later, my whole college career of notes were scattered far down the street. And Man, did that feel good!!!!! Never regretted it for a moment.

The only records I regretted losing were those that I left at home when I came to New York, and my older sisters "borrowed" them without asking, and they all disappeared. It's taken me some time to get some of the favorite records back.

I know that I'm not the only one who does this. Art Thieme and I have done it with each other for years. There was also a long stretch of years when I kept packaging up boxes of videos and Cassettes to someone I knew ho had been nursing his wife at home for 16 or 17 years. She was paralyzed and couldn't walk, but she'd aks her husband to play some of the old rhythm and blues they used to dance to, and he'd lift her out of her wheel chair and put her feet on top of his shoes and hold her as the danced around the room to Earth Angel or the Great Pretender. I see there's a song there.

Best get to work..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: GUEST,greg stephens
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 10:32 PM

Well I dont remember ever regretting giving away an LP, so maybe youre right. But I sure as hell regret the one's I've lost and I cant remember which bastard I lent them to!!

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: Hrothgar
Date: 22 Jun 02 - 11:40 PM

Nobody will take the ones I want to give away!!

Subject: RE: Help! Music overload
From: Kaleea
Date: 23 Jun 02 - 01:06 AM

Seems the latest thing is listening to the old stuff, and finding the 33 1/3's, & 78's, buying up old record players at "antique" shops! My 31 yr old nephew had me go with him recently to a sale where he found about a ton of records, to pick out some of the 78's I thought would be worth $$. My old music history prof had a mono record player. Yes, Mono. He had the walls covered in his house with records, many were 78's. I was sometimes invited over with another student or 2 (very few ever entered the inner sanctum!) to listen to some of his incredible collection. He had everything from Castrati singing Latin (a giant subject in & of itself!) to the greatest interpretations of the classics by giants like Pablo Cassals & the great Maestro Leopold himself which we may never hear again unless we happen across the old records in ...gulp (I'm not really THAT old!) an antique shop. And yes, I have CD's I don't listen to much. Please! don't shoot me, I find myself listening to my aol radio when I'm online alot. Otherwise I'm out playing Irish & Bluegrass & Traditional American music. What would my Prof think of that you ask? He taught me that Bluegrass had the same roots as Gospel & various genres of jazz, and as far as I'm concerned, teriffic instrumental bluegrass is a form of Jazz! That's my opinion as a musicoligist aka a student of music history who is always learning. And yes, there IS a banjo player in my band! OK, let's get all those banjo jokes out of our system. Not to mention the Bodhran jokes--yes, I play it also!