On music fatigue

Of late I have been thinking about the absence of visible, physical CDs and music on display in people's houses. About 10 years ago it was a natural thing to check out people's CD collections when visiting friend's homes, similar to reading the titles of novels chosen for display in living room bookshelves. Those darker, more 100% Hits orientated pleasures were hidden at the bottom of the pile, leaving room for collections of Massive Attack, Radiohead or whatever else was doing the rounds. Funny thing is, CD collections have become a relic, they also stop somewhere around 2002-2004, somewhere around The White Stripes and The Strokes... the CD collections have stopped in time... Peter Panned into oblivion as file sharing, hard drives and broadband connections rolled into town.

I have no problem with music in digital format, who would? Once you have ascertained your personal moral stance on stealing music becomes conveniently fast to obtain, zero obligation, easy to carry, easy to store and pretty much free (be honest). What I do have an issue with is the volume of music that is available, the result of the hundreds of blogs and online magazines combined with the multitude of (illegal?) torrent sites.

My iPod became my personal CD collection, I filled it with albums I thought should be there. I thumbed over them on a daily basis looking for something amongst the 4500 odd songs that would fit my mood at that exact moment. This is the feeling I am trying to describe... a sort of music fatigue, the realisation that I had everything at my fingertips but still couldn't feel settled. I have recently taken to whittling. Not in that awesome 'knife and wood' way... but more in the way that my (merely) 30 gig iPod was choked with songs I had added over three years ago but never touched. I started to knock off the albums that had never been listened to, all those 'best new music', 'best of year' and 'hot tip' recommendations that had been forwarded through blogs and various friends. I managed to cull a good 20 gigs of music, leaving just a raw bones, classic, essential... five and a half days worth of music.

For a while, in 2005, I returned to a fantastic $10 walkman I'd picked up at a cash convertors. I loved that little fellow, partly for retro chic, partly because the pressure of having to make sure I was maximising my listening benefit (from the 4500 choices available) had been removed. Unfortunately my tape deck failed, as did the walkman itself... 90 minute tapes (with listening options on two sides) had given way to 72 minute CDs (with skip button), then onto mini discs (storing up to four albums) and finally the mighty iPods (now up to 120 gigs).

I love me my music collection, the parts I listen to are fantastic, the other 60% are on standby. I have settled on the idea that fewer choices are better. I've turned my musical filters towards the warm home fires of the known, rather than the new. It is hard work getting comfortable with new friends, harder still trying to generate meaning and purpose for each of the new albums that cross my desk(top).