Saturday, March 17, 2012

the cloudy lining

Although I was thrilled to get the free CDs from Freecycle, there is one downside -- going through them all. There's a decent amount of stuff that I like and want to keep. But there's a lot more that I don't. And then there are the CDs that are somewhere in between.

The inbetweens are these discs where I kind of like the music -- or maybe think I should -- but just don't find it interesting. So there may be a riff here or a passage there that I like and that makes me think, ooh, I should hold on to this. But then I realize that I won't really miss it at all if I don't keep it.

A case in point is what I have playing now, an Ella Fitzgerald compilation, as part of a "Priceless Jazz Collection" series. I think I'll keep this one. But there are lots of others. Some are big names that just aren't my thing -- Frank Sinatra, U2, Janet Jackson. Not all, of course.

But the bigger burden is the endless pile of stuff that just doesn't interest me. Of course, I could just not bother to listen to everything, and give away lots of them on sight. But poor ol' anal-retentive me won't do that, since there could be something decent disguised as dreck. And in fact, I have a come across just that a couple of times.

One example of that is The Shoes of the Troubador, a quirky, catchy collection of (mostly) original songs from a Long Island singer named Michael Soloway. I'd like to include a picture of the cover art, but I can't find it on the intertubes, and technical issues are preventing me from providing a scan. At any rate, it has a picture of Soloway, dressed as a court jester (except for his very modern leather shoes), and sporting an Amish-style mustacheless beard. He's playing a lute while sitting at the base of a building that (I suppose) is supposed to look all medievally. I really dreaded putting that on, and was trying to figure how long a listen I had to give it to be fair. But it's actually quite enjoyable. He's no Dave Edmunds, mind you. But he's good.

Anyway, the major point is that I see these boxes of CDs, and I know I should go through them. And there are times when I really just want to listen to stuff I already have on iTunes. Or I just want some Dr. Feelgood.

Yeah, I know I sound like an ungrateful brat. Sorry.

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