I Writing Very Good the Music, Please!

11/12/06 

I have of late noticed that I have more music than ever before. This has always been the case as when an album is bought that will automatically increase a collection of albums by one. That’s not what I mean though. The problem is that there is so much music out there right now that I just don’t know what to do with it all. I have great queues of the stuff waiting to be played right now, not to mention new albums from the past few months that are yet to reach double figures for listens. What can I do???

Thing is, I used to get to listen to less music much more and therefore I knew it better. As an English teacher, you may wish to dredge up a line from Shakespeare and await my response with the appropriate reference as opposed to a muttered reply of “Not really my bag”; whereas give me pretty much any Smiths lyric and I’ll complete the song (the same applies for dialogue from Withnail and I). Nowadays, I just don’t get the time for lyrics other than maybe picking up on and laughing at bad ones.

What is it that I’m trying to communicate? Hard to say, I don’t even download and that’s most people’s excuse – sure, I receive plenty of downloaded CDs but at times they seem like appendices to the…errr…pancreas that is newly bought material. Are there any answers? Is my behaviour normal or does it reveal a repressed emotional inability to deal with the death of John Peel by inflicting a similar listening lifestyle onto myself?

By the time that this year ends I will have picked up around 200 new albums in total. This is clearly irrational behaviour although it does  seem perfectly possible to get into around 4 albums per week just so long as I don’t listen to anything else during the week. I have to ask myself where has the pleasure gone? Where is the spontaneity? And where do I keep all this crap???

Thankfully the pleasure is still present. Albums just take longer to settle in my craw and duff ones are more readily dismissed. However, 2007 must see a change in behaviour otherwise I will simply have to give up working in order to listen full time and, as of yet, I cannot find anyone to pay me to do that.

Finally, no I cannot explain why I chose the title. I must be going Bananas.

by Fielding Melisch