> At 01:26 PM 7/7/2003 -0600, Not Lame wrote:
>> Like many out there, going to start culling down so many of the thousands of
>> cd's I have and collect the best of the best and dump the rest.
> 
> Every time I see a variant of this sentence, my flesh crawls.

Nothing like making you feel 'alive', mate!  ;-)
> 
> Number one: seriously, am I the *only* person here who has experienced a
> massive catastrophic hard drive loss?  Trusting a music collection that has
> undoubtedly cost me many thousands of dollars to the whims and vagaries of
> a small hunk of metal does not strike me as a good idea.

.

Uh, backup. What's the big deal?  Sure, data can be lost but benefits still
outweight the drawbacks, at least for me.  Businesses do it w/ their data,
why can't music fans do the same an feel confident as long as they due the
due diligence have a plan.   Very simple w/ a Mac 'n Ipod, too.  I think
most who are filling an IPOD w/ 7,000 songs would be well advised to back
up.    Disasters happen, though, of course.  Fires and floods at homes with
folks' collections register as 'just as likely'.  Life happens.  Cup is half
full - we have air in our lungs.

But for many folks,  having many thousands of CD's( or LP's..but I'm not
doing anything w/ vinyl....) and not enough space or time to listen to it
all and a great desire to listen to as much as possible, therefore, being
realistic. And put some extra money into buying more new music or, 'other
things'(perish the thought!)     (in my case, I have no idea how many I have
except I have more than one person should,  it's a totally ridiculous amount
and it's just out of bounds and this is way of exerting a bit of control
over my music addiction, too.)

Another good reason:  through the whole process of going thru so much music,
you re-experience a lot of it again and find things that did not move  yoyu
then, but do now(and the opposite, of course).   more opportunities to hear
songs and releases you have not heard in many, many years.     Imagine the
excitement of going thru thousands of releases to find the best tunes on
them?  Seems like an exploration of new lands and locating old friends to
me.  :-D

> 
> Number two: I just can't be sure that what I think is "the best of the
> best" on July 8, 2003, is what I'm going to think is "the best of the best"
> on July 8, 2013.  The number of times I have either belatedly discovered a
> brilliant song on an album I had previously overlooked or heard something
> new by a band that made me re-evaluate everything else they had ever done
> is already huge; I shudder to think how many albums I'd have to re-buy in
> the ensuing years if I tried to do something like this.

Well, seeing as July 8 was my birthday yesterday(saw The Dead at Red Rocks
for any Dead head folks....was utterly awesome, not seen them since 1980!),
I'm pretty confident that, in my search of trolling thru the many of the
thousands of releases I have at both the Not lame office and home, which
detracts and fills u p space for work and family, respectively, that I'll
miss some gems here and there that may be missed or never heard, if I did
not go thru this exciting process.

And when I do find I dumped a gem or semi-gem?  Well, I'll do *just* what I
did w/ all the vinyl I dumped back   in '89----buy 'em back when experience
the error of my ways.  Not a big deal. Not like I donšt' have anything to
listen to.

Btw, I sold my Mahogany Rush LP"s back in the early 80's......and bought
some again on CD recently.  It was a good feeling.  But the 20  years of not
having them around was perfectly fine.  And then hearing them again, afresh,
made them special again.  Same applies to archiving much of a music
collection onto a hard drive.

NP: Nazareth "Loud 'n Proud"


> 
> Number three: Well, let's just say I agree with the central thesis of
> Nicholson Baker's DOUBLE FOLD.

See note on seeing The Dead above.

Peace,
Bruce @ Not Lame