this is the start

i bought my first cd in 1996, between the ages of 13 and 14. it was the self-titled alice in chains album*, i had the version with the green case/purple tray (apparently the less rare of the two, what was i thinking!).  i don't think i actually had a cd player at the time, just a computer with a cd-rom. before that i bought cassettes, and occasionally listened to cds that belonged to my older siblings when they happened to be around.

14 years, and 600+ cds later, i do have a cd player, i just never use it. certain cds get pulled out to listen to in the car, but at home i only listen to records and mp3s. yet everytime i move i always dutifully pack them into boxes (in alphabetical order, of course) and cart them to the next apartment.

i've known for a few years now that i don't really need to keep all of these cds around, and have managed to go through and sell a dozen here and there, but i've never seriously considered getting rid of all of them until now.

to mark the occasion, i've decided to trade my otherwise useless music video blog in for a new blog about letting go of my cd collection. partly because i'm a sucker for a good blog name (thanks american analog set), but mostly it's just that i'm a nerd, and it seems like a fun project. (previous fun projects have involved creating not only a word document list of my cd collection, but also a far more detailed excel spreadsheet.)

as you've already figured out, i'm no writer. i haven't even fully decided what form this blog is going to take. sometimes i might have something interesting to say about an album, other times it could be a memory related to said album. still other times i might just post a particular song that i like most from the album. you might even get a guest-post from my girlfriend, who has already started her own cd purge. those will probably be the better posts.

so this is the start, it's june 1, 2010, and i have 601 cds.



*alice in chains, really. what can i say, it was the 90s. while i most certainly learned about excellent bands from my siblings, i didn't fully grasp the excellence of those bands until a few years later. at this point i was picking up albums from friends, and let's face it, dirt was a pretty good album at the time.

this particular interest was short-lived, as on my 14th birthday i was given a punk rock mixtape (i still have it) that more or less shaped my tastes through high school. after high school, a fast network and napster and audiogalaxy took over, but that's a story for another time.