'To Be Played' Stack

1-29-08 To Be Played Stack

So, it’s near the end of January – and I am having fun playing a lot of music that I already own. Can you dig it? OK, so I bought a ton of CD’s in December 2007…and I presently have credit slips for several record stores in L.A. – and more boxes of LP’s & CD’s all ready to trade in. Is it possible to completely stop buying new music titles?

I’d like to think it isn’t. But – it is definitely possible for lots of other stuff to get into your path: I’ve had 2 ‘colds’ lately, and that makes me less likely to go out shopping on the weekends; I’ve also been caring for my elderly mother. To stay entertained, I close my eyes, stick my hand into the vast wall of envelope’d CD’s and pull out a random title and give it a spin – usually while lying in bed and reading (before falling asleep). Heard some great stuff lately, and at the beginning of February, I’ll post a list of all of the full-length titles I have listened to in January 2008. It’s at a rate of ‘more than one title per day’ at this point (as in, some days I hear 3 or 4 titles, other days = nothing). And as January dragged on, I did get more ‘new-to-me’ LP’s & CD’s.

There were times between 1976 – 1999 where I got so much new music – the mind boggles. I have often joked that my music “To Be Played” stack dates back about 20 years – but I discovered lately that I have titles from 1974/5 that I had yet to get around to. Over 30 years, waiting to be discovered! Yikes!

Yes, I can be that slovenly. New stuff comes in, gets stacked in front of stuff that was ‘new’ last week / month…to paraphrase Mr. Zappa, “A week went by, and now it’s July”. The records and CD’s got filed, entered into the big list, bagged & stored. “But how did you know if you liked it for not? You kept it for 30+ years without playing it? Are you nuts?”. Well, not exactly going to ‘give up’ on Bob Dylan – but I didn’t keep up with him, and “The Basement Tapes” took almost 33 years for me to hear / play. It’s fair to say that I often didn’t try and replace my LP of something with a CD if I’d never played the LP. Infinite vistas of possibilities here, folks. But…yes, I can still discover 60’s music that I’ve never heard before (like some of the amazing bonus tracks on the recent Eric Burdon & The Animals re-mastered Japanese kami / paper sleeve CD’s).

So the 30+ years it took me to get to “The Basement Tapes” is my ‘fleshing out the 70’s’ in action. I missed the UK 70’s glam rock first time around, so I have digested dozens of LP’s / CD’s of that kind of music since ’03. Now 60’s/70’s Bob gets his turn in the barrel. I have always been fond of the classic era of mid-60’s Dylan, but…never sought out all the nooks and crannies before now. Also never thought about The Band before December 2007.

Who knows what I will listen to next? Maybe I’ll see something on “Rage” that sends me scrambling to my own collection – or to the internet for some mail-order a-go-go. “Anyway the wind blows…” – like to the sale at Freakbeat Records in Sherman Oaks… what are you listening to?