music

Everything Must Go!

Not real­ly. I’m final­ly get­ting around to doing some­thing I threat­ened to do ages ago: rip the CDs I real­ly want to keep and sell the rest.

Now I’m get­ting seri­ous and I’ve begun in earnest. Sure, I’ll keep some hard copies as back­up, but the bulk of it is going in a box and is head­ed for A.K.A. Music.

Wish me luck.

A Lesson in Accumulation

Remem­ber when you used to eval­u­ate prospec­tive friends by the books they read, the movies they watched and the music they lis­tened to? Feels like a long time ago, right?

Less than 10 years ago I would still scur­ry to book­stores and record shops, or spend beyond my means on DVD sales online. Then that sud­den­ly stopped.

Now, as I try to make sense of my home with­out being over­run by my tod­dler’s toys, I find myself wish­ing I’d made bet­ter use of the library. Where’d all this stuff come from? When did I ever think I’d read all the books I bought on whims, or watch all the DVDs I hoard­ed. Let’s not even talk about the music that accret­ed in my apart­ments over the years.

Since things start­ed going dig­i­tal in one form or oth­er I’ve been reluc­tant to go all in. For those of us who’ve had phys­i­cal media all our lives, a hard copy is a reas­sur­ing thing. Now I wish I’d tak­en the plunge sooner.

This is all to say I’m purg­ing vast swaths of my cul­tur­al col­lec­tions. If you’re some­one who still likes these things, be in touch. You get dibs.

The New Desert Island Disc Dilemma

I’ve been par­ing down my CD col­lec­tion in recent weeks and it’s giv­en me occa­sion to reflect on my behav­ior in rough­ly a decade or so of heavy music consumption.

What have I learned? Who was that guy? I remem­ber spend­ing many a night at Mon­do Kim’s or AKA or pret­ty much any record store, fiend­ing in the used bin for any­thing note­wor­thy. Now I’m reap­ing the whirlwind.

There are discs that I’ve owned for ages that remain unopened, yet they still have sen­ti­men­tal val­ue sim­ply because I can remem­ber buy­ing them and then car­ry­ing them from dorm to apart­ment to dorm to apart­ment to house. Yet I can’t part with them.

I’ve come to the decid­ed­ly rock­ist con­clu­sion that the endgame of this purge is to select those artists whose work has ongo­ing mean­ing in my life and hold them fast and shake the rest out. Anoth­er way of say­ing this is that I’m apply­ing the auteur the­o­ry in the most vul­gar man­ner pos­si­ble to reduce the num­ber of total CDs in my col­lec­tion, those that I won’t just rip and for­get for all eternity.

For those of us cling­ing to phys­i­cal media in a dig­i­tal media world, it’s a game of “desert island discs” renewed, with a twist. What CDs would you keep to avoid your favorite tunes van­ish­ing into the ether after your hard­drive crashed?

Port St. Willow at Miner St. Studio

Spe­cial thanks to Bri­an McTear and Weath­er­vane Music for a love­ly evening of great music, food and friends at Min­er St. Stu­dios, right around the cor­ner in Fish­town. Port St. Wil­low’s music was per­fect in that inti­mate set­ting. What a great way to start the Pri­vate Con­cert Series!

This is an amaz­ing project that deserves more (and your) atten­tion. See what Weath­er­vane Music is up to here!

In Praise of Ex.fm

Remem­ber when music start-ups were such a source of frus­tra­tion for me? Now I real­ly enjoy some of them! Chief among them is ex.fm, which my friend Mark showed me just the oth­er day. Pos­si­bly the most use­ful Google Chrome exten­sion that does­n’t involve a Google product.

What does it do? It sniffs out all the mp3s on a page and stores them tem­porar­i­ly in the exten­sion, which allows you to browse away from their source while you lis­ten via a sleek play­er. I’ve been play­ing Mark’s blog like a mix­tape thanks to it, as well as blogs like Songs from Treme and more.

Now if it could just trav­el back in time to 2003…