Collecting

The music collection is building up.  Rather later than much of the rest of the population, I have also now tried acquiring some more songs via iTunes.

Recently I read a music journalist talking about converting his prized collection into digital format.  Having it all neatly amassed, and no longer vinyl, or CD, to hold in his hands, he suddenly felt like the process of collecting was no longer what it had been.

What happens when it’s suddenly easy to find the items you want – even the obscure ones?  Does the thrill of the chase diminish?  What does it mean to collect when you just find and pay for tracks in a bundle, separated from their original ‘packaging’ as part of an album?

Others have written about the loss of the homemade tape as an initial sign of intent from a boy to a girl.  We may not put together a ‘mix‘ in our own way, but on the other hand, we can keep mixing and remixing our sets of favoured songs.  And we can avoid buying the whole album for the sake of the one track we’re actually bothered about.

Another shift is removal of the need to do your own cataloguing.  A feature of my childhood was my dad’s homemade logs of music, films and so on – the indication of careful collecting.  Now the programmes for buying and assembling collections do that for you.

It does save the writings and transcribings, the noting down of tracks and times and even dates you made the recording.  Perhaps some of the ‘romance’ is lost, setting out and staking down your own musical territory.  But the gains of arranging and rearranging playlists, and above all, listening again to treasures that were forgotten, seem to outweigh the changes.

 

80s revival moment

The tide has been stemmed.  I no longer have to walk into a branch of, say, Accessorize, and feel like I’m back in my first school disco just because they’re playing Aha.

Nor have I been frequenting 80s revival discos to get a fix of high energy pop.  Truth be told, I haven’t been frequenting any discos.  I don’t think I was very frequent about them in the first place.

But in the comfort of your own home, it’s quite fun to look up some music from your school days.  You can still have that whole ‘do you remember where you were when you heard…?’.  (And then, if you’re so inclined, you can email your 80s friends on Facebook, and see if they do too.)

Part of the fun of it is also who different songs evoke.  For whatever reasons, you’ll have a particular friend who liked track X, and someone else who liked something completely different.  It’s like a school roll call in musical form, moving from person to person.

But another part of the fun comes from that devilishly clever Amazon-style ‘if you liked this, you’ll like…’ Or equally, ‘people who listened to the track you just picked also listened to…’

I am back onto eMusic, a service a friend told me about around Christmas time.  I have already used up my free credits in a big rush, and now I am paying for my musical indulgences.  They operate in this ‘recommending’ way, and so as soon as you select one thing, you get to see a few more options that are seen to be similar.

I guess it’s the online equivalent of flipping through albums in a bargain section, and suddenly having a ‘gosh I’d forgotten all about them!’ moment.  In terms of the musical roll call, it’s a bit like having the class surround you, turning round in a circle blindfolded, and suddenly pointing at one of them.  Then doing it again a few more times.  (No, thankfully my school discos, while scary, were not that scary.)

Kindly, the service will also tell you which are the popular tracks.  So if you only want the one-hit wonder, you don’t have to remember which album they are on.  And of course, it helps you spend your credits that bit faster.

Fug

The wintry onslaught continues across Britain.  Alison considers a writing career for the weather section of the Beeb…but wait!  There are signs of an alternative weather front looming…

Never mind fog (although many do, of course, particularly those driving).  What we want at the weekend is fug.

Fug is one of those words that suggests it’s a bit hot and stuffy, but we like it that way.  It’s just what we need indoors when outdoors, we and our possessions are likely to be blown away in all directions.

Now that smoking is banned in public places all across the UK, fug is less of an option for pubs, which used to be a potential locator when there was lots of smoke.  You can tell that those who described it as fug in pubs rather liked it after all.

Next option is cafes that fill up when it’s raining.  A great example of a cafe that had the right level of fug is one a little below Snowdon.  I once attempted to climb Snowdon with someone I knew from my gap year, plus a couple of friends of hers.  We didn’t get very far up when really driving rain set in, and by the time we were back down, we were all completely soaked.

Thankfully, the cafe was just the place for having a huge pot of tea and full fry ups all round. No doubt we added to the fug by steaming gently as we dried out.  By the time we had drained the tea pot, we were even mostly dry. A very happy outcome – I might even suggest happier than having reached the summit, although I’m sure that’s not really the spirit.

Meanwhile, the home fug is settling in nicely – probably my favourite sort.  A little light soup making (though the soup itself will probably be reasonably ribsticking), a batch of sauce, some veg to add to the oven in a sec.  In a while, I can add to the fug by bringing out a roast chicken, making gravy, that kind of thing.

You could describe it as steam.  Even condensation.  But that defeats the point.  It’s happy steam.  It suggests that the world is, for a little while at least, set to rights.

Sensible mid-life crisis

Maybe it’s another birthday.  Or maybe it’s just Facebook.  Here are all the ways to try out new cars, pose, acquire a car that suggests there’s a crisis of some kind, or just enjoy beating other people…

It probably doesn’t sound terribly healthy.  But the Facebook option – aka Petrolhead – does mean that you have a few big advantages to trying to do these things in real life:

a) no cost of car – in any way

b) change your mind and switch to another car in the same kind of group – apparently at whim, but certainly with no car dealer involved

c) no petrol, no pollution, no driver tiredness either, as you’re only allowed ten races every day

d) you can’t cut out road rage and general obnoxiousness in driving, but at least you are not personally directing it at others.  Perhaps the fact that many people race their peers makes it easier to be good.  (Or maybe not.  Competition can be sweeter when you know who you’re beating.)

e) yes, your car choice still says something about you.  But it can be a more interesting car, or one you would never hope to own, but like the look of.  I was quite chuffed to ‘drive’ the Morgan Aero, new car in the Morgan range, having previously lived up the road from the Morgan factory.

(If you don’t know about Morgans, look them up.  You may need to get on the waiting list now.  There’s another six years to wait meanwhile, but that’s plenty of time to get your Facebook rankings up.)

Sensible mid-life crisis is in fact one of the categories of car, as you make your way up.  I’ve moved on from sensible, but am not in the flagrant ‘couldn’t care less’ category of the Millionaires Club, which Dan has reached.

Meanwhile Eric is racing happily too – in as yellow a vehicle as he can find each time.  Happy days.

Party aftermath

Eat leftover cake at as many meal times as is decent.

Continue enjoying high quality bread made by friend: olive, seed, walnut etc.  Yum!

Leave book boxes and toy boxes accessible for a while longer.

Enjoy sitting room in new format; lack energy to put things back as they were.

Sit at dining table and admire birthday tulips – and feel that spring might even be somewhere at hand.

Has anyone got an extra weekend I could tack on to the start of this week??