Too Much Stuff!

It’s Official!

I have way too many artifacts regarding music in my home. By artifacts, I mean phonograph records, compact discs, mini discs, books, magazines, assorted print etc.

I was intrigued by the idea of the Sony 80MB hard drive stand-alone unit – I know it’s unfeasible, and doesn’t hold all that much music…but I bet it would hold a ton of individual tracks…stuff that I own the LP, single or CD for just one track. A small mountain of discs could go out the door, if I could just find a way to archive them with the greatest possible accuracy – in a way that doesn’t take up much room, and is TOP quality. See why the big Sony hard drive sounded interesting to me?

I am a little leery of keeping music on my computer – as it seems that I change computers with greater frequency than I change automobiles these days. I eventually managed to get almost everything off of my previous computer, onto my new computer…almost everything…but if I stuffed my computer’s hard drive with music files – and something happened to them…ugh, is all I can say.

I have a Manfred Mann (Mk. II) CD that has ONE SONG ("No Better, No Worse") that I would like to keep – otherwise, this CD is totally useless to me, now that I have the full set of Japanese little paper album cover CD’s. One track! Do I get rid of “Chapter Two: The Best of the Fontana Years”? Or do I find a way to save the one unique cut on this disc? (and don’t even get me started on how many CD singles I keep for just one or two cuts – must be HUNDREDS!).

I suppose I could burn a CD-R of tracks of this nature – and back it up with a Sony mini disc (for easy access). Maybe try to keep the discs thematic or something. Man, do I ever have a lot of CD-R’s in my home! Ones I’ve made, ones friends have sent me etc. Same thing goes for DVD-R’s.

I have 40+ cartons of videotape in my living room right now – it’s sitting there waiting for me to decide what to do with it all. Some stuff is easy to throw away – sets of television shows I’ve recorded – hey, maybe they made a proper DVD of this show? Wah hey – two Pee Wee Herman DVD boxed sets seem to take care of several dozen beta (or VHS) tapes. What’s harder is deciding what to do with all those PAL VHS tapes that I have. I don’t just want to throw them away or give them to charity – but I’d hate for them to go to waste, as it were.

Boxes and boxes of 45’s – I just love ‘em – but they take up an awkward amount of space in my music room – I could scan in the sleeves, make MD’s or CD-R’s of ‘em… and ditch the things – hopefully for some good cash (or trade, which is always better). But what am I going to ‘trade’ for? The LP’s I want are invariably expensive and difficult to find – and the CD’s I want are merely expensive…and usually not readily available.

….but….but… I want to get rid of some of my stuff, folks!