The weekend involved a lot of unusual things.
I didn't get one hell of a lot of sleep last night for reasons we won't go into too much right now. There are two reasons; one was phone calls I never complain about recieving, the other was my night-working housemate, who is developing a penchant for cooking complicated, noisy, smelly meals upon his regular 4.30am return to the house.
I went to see the cricket match between the West Indies and South Africa on Saturday, with D and Mr. Sevitz.com. It was enjoyable, if lacking in actual cricket due to the rain and the incredibly long but traditional rigmarole involved in preparing the pitch for play after rain, which took so long that the passing clouds had time to muster another effort before the players got back into position.
Anyway. This weekend, I sorted out my music. That is more of a task than it sounds. For months and months I have slowly but surely taken all of my music out of the carrying wallets and listened to them without putting them back afterwards. The result was about fifty small piles of CDs in interesting places all over my room...and I didn't just have to sort and tidy it.
I had to decide which I would take, and which I would not take with me to New York.
British Airways are, it has to be said, shaping up to be pretty fucking marvellous. Their baggage allowance is insanely large, leading me to the tempting thought that I might be able to get away without shipping anything or paying for surplus baggage. Can you get this - I can take 64kg of baggage for the hold in two pieces, and a total of 18kg for the cabin, in two pieces. If I make some decisions on books and music, I can do that, no sweat.
...but the music.
The music.
I have two 200-slot carry-wallet case things. When I was a DJ at my Student Union, one was predominantly for my personally preferred music, the other for more DJ-friendly stuff. Since then the lines have become...blurred, but the way was clear. I would make the cut and take only one carry wallet case jobby thing.
I was forced to make decisions I wouldn't wish on anyone else, and not just with what not to take - the cases had to go too.
The beautiful card sleeves from the Lemon Jelly albums - ABANDONED!
The second and third Third Eye Blind albums (nowhere near as good as the first one) - CAST ASIDE!
The Sleeper albums - SURVIVE!
The first Oasis album (which to be honest I could live with never hearing again) - to be LEFT BEHIND!
The Summer Burn CDs and other compilations from Autoblography readers - COMING TO AMERICA!
The seemingly infinite number of 'The Best {insert 60s/70s/80s music fad here} Album in the World....Ever!' compilations - STAYING HOME!
Understand that it's not the personal attachment to a lot of the music, it is the sheer unavoidable NOT HAVING IT which is traumatising.
About twenty CDs that were free on the covers of magazines and only have about one half-decent song apiece - JETTISONED!
The crop of great CD-Rs which suffered terrible flaking in the later tracks after some twat dropped a pint of water onto the stage one evening - Off The Wall, The Colour and The Shape, The Best of Boney M....GONE!
As I was sorting a number of piles developed...CDs I knew there was a case for somewhere...CD-less cases...CDs with little to recommend them...blank unmarked CD-Rs...utter bilge...CDs to include if there was room at the end...best-ofs which might supplant groups of individual albums...and of course there was a playlist. Stuff I hadn't listened to recently (or, to my shame in some cases, at all) and was undecided about whether to include, and the unmarked CD-Rs.
Bizarrely, there was also a duplicates pile. How on earth I managed to end up with two copies of Sgt. Pepper's, or Travis' The Man Who is completely beyond me.
By about 4pm yesterday the task was complete. Both cases were full. One to take, full of great albums, compilations and a few singles with sentimental value (the first ever Stereophonics single, Local Boy in The Photograph which semi-flopped and was released as a fractionally softer version after some of the other singles charted well, and, believe it or not, a Sugababes single, Soul Sound which made the cut because I was in the room when the bonus tracks were recorded...sorry this is a very long bracket), the other full of distilled DJing cheese, CDs my parents gave me from the Mail On Sunday, Mixmag CDs and some old PC games.
I really hope I pack the right one.
The weekend has left me with the odd aftertaste of a Khyber Special Biriani, and the lingering and disconcerting feeling that maybe I should have copied all of the début Nelly Furtado album when I had the chance.
Ouch, pruning back the CDs... very painful. Be careful what you leave behind, you might not be able to find it in New York.
Hah. What am I on about! :-)
Or you could just rip them all to hard disk and take that with you - thats what I'm going to do.
I had this conversation with Adrian at the weekend. My PC is jiggered, the CD-ROM drives don't work, and popping 250+ CDs onto it is more work than I can be bothered with.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a mp3 Luddite in the slightest, it's just that I like my CDs.
Ego in Acerbia sum?
I'd prefer Ad Acerbia Per Aspera, thank you.
Oh.
I thought it was quite good, actually.
This is just like Sophie's Choice.
I applaud your decision to retain the works of Ms Wener and her pals. Musically overlooked in my opinion (if not exactly challenging), and that whole turn-your-head-to-the-left-while-sliding-your-big-Disney-eyes-to-the-right thing was, at the time, pretty damn cute.
Third Eye Blind - Blue would like to have angry words with you.
Jeepers. I couldn't do it. Depends on the situation I guess..
"I'm sorry Sir, it's either your CDs or your wife"
"Ohh crap... ohh well"
...
"Bye dear."
My brother just went through this (moved to Qatar a month ago) and I hear the same pain ;-0)
There's a site somewhere which stores every cd cover known to man from which you can download and print - I can't find it right now but I'll keep looking.
As for letting books go, I read a book called Clear your clutter by Karen Kingston and she writes that if you pass books on, those books that you are meant to read again will come back to you. Harrumph, I said. Well, since getting rid of 500+ books three years ago I can confirm that she is right. Second hand book stores, car boot sales, other people's bookshelves, they're everywhere!
If I go to a car boot sale I'll spot Lynn Reid Banks' The L Shaped Room or the other day I was in the Oxfam bookstore in Cirencester, there was the Nevil Shute book I just recently wanted to re-read.
And just think of the fun you'll have stocking up at those fab NY bookstores. I'm quite green with envy.
Whaaa??? No Pet Shop Boys??
There is some Pet Shop Boys in there, Wendy, I just didn't want to list everything I'm taking!
I *wondered* where my copy of The Man Who got to...
Is there any Pet Shop??