Revisiting Old Music: Mission Accomplished

Well, it only took me twelve years. I have finally finished my quest to re-listen to my entire CD collection. This really didn’t need to take more than decade, but in the middle of the process I decided to start reviewing each CD individually. After a while the thought of having to type a new review if I listened to a disc would discourage me from continuing. I finally gave up somewhere in compilations. The world doesn’t need to know that each of the eight or so Back from the Grave compilations sounds pretty much like all the other ones. On top of that, there was an excursion into my vinyl collection in which I ripped all my 45s and then started in on my LPs too. Who knew listening to music was such hard work.

My final thoughts are that I like most of the music that I have bought. Who’da thunk it? At the very bottom there a few stinkers which I keep mainly because either they are my wife’s (A Very Special Christmas, Lou Reed) or they have maybe one song that’s worth listening to (Planet P, Lambada, Bob Mould solo crap). I also have a box of freebies that bands have given me and junky Lumpen Media compilations which are mostly crap but I need to keep for archival reasons.

CDs are getting a bad rap these days. Other than a good old fashioned punk rock 45, I still think CD is my preferred format for physical media music. If anyone tells you vinyl sounds better, they are lying. I only wish that instead of jewel cases they were packaged in thinner sleeves. A little known benefit of CDs is that they don’t really appreciate in value which means they are super cheap to buy used. Often cheaper than MP3 albums (Discogs is a great way of building up a killer rare CD collection).