The Dow Is Up!

Okay, so my last post was probably a bit dry. It was basically about all the music I've liked over the years. Who cares, right?

Well, my point is that my iPod has really changed how I listen to music and downloading and has changed which music I listen to.

I currently have 6520 songs on my iPod. That's probably between 400 and 600 CDs. That's just plain insane. Nobody needs that many CDs. Even I'm willing to admit this. But what's great about the iPod is that I can listen to any and all of those songs whenever I want. If I'm in the mood for Fugazi (and who isn't!), then I can put them on. If I want to hear the Beach Boys, no problem.

In fact, part of the fun of the iPod is the hours and hours I've spent cataloging my songs, rating them, and making playlists. I feel like my own private DJ. For someone as anal retentive as me, this has been both a blessing and a curse. It's not enough to throw 100 songs into a playlist. I have to throw the perfect 100 on there, depending on my mood. And they have to be in the right order so that the transition from one song to another is seemless.

Downloading has only made this problem worse. I pay a nominal monthly fee to download all the songs I want. So I do. By my estimate, I've downloaded at least 2000 songs. What's great about this is that it allows me to take risks and find some hidden gems. (For example, I never would have bought Chuck Berry's box set, but I downloaded it, found some great songs, and tossed the rest.)

But I find myself looking for new ways to improve upon my listening experience. For example, I downloaded all the popular songs of the 90s, which is over well over 400 songs. (In all fairness, I probably owned about half of those.) Now that that list is almost complete, I'm probably going to tackle the 80s. (My brother-in-law made a rather detailed collection of all the Billboard Top 100 songs for each year, so I'll probably just start there.) I'll probably keep working backwards from there until I get to the very first gramaphone recordings. Isn't it great being borderline obsessive/compulsive?

So what's the point of all this? I really do hate having a point, but I suppose I must if I'm going to write this much. I'm going to try to use this blog as a resource for all the music I love. Whenever possible, I'll write reviews of random albums, whether new or not. Some of these reviews might just be a summary of my life at the time the album came out. So be warned.

I've also added a Now Playing section and a list of recent downloads so you can track what I'm listening to. Eventually I'll probably add something similar with movies. But don't worry, this won't stop me from writing stupid things about my life. (As if this doesn't count....)