High Resolution

This may sound like a peculiar statement, given what most of you know about me, but I'm making a pledge to listen to more music in 2011.

OK. Maybe that needs some clarification.

It's Xmas (merry xcetera, btw), and since I find myself at home in Fredericton for the holiday for, I think, the first time (?), I've been spending the morning cleaning and organizing. Don't ask me why, but holidays make me want to do anything but relax... which is what I do the rest of the time, I suppose. Of the elements needing organization in my life the most constant is my music. Besides the fairly well stored already sorted collection there are always stacks and stacks (and stacks) of CDs that have come in since the last mass alphabetization. Usually I try to keep these intervals down to a month or two at most, but 2010 has been a year of fairly constant crisis and/or minor distraction. As a result there are approximately 200-300 CDs that have accumulated in piles both minor and major all over the house.

Here is a break down of the stacks and their specific species designation.

(1) CDs that I bought and/or got as play copies at the store. [these need only to be inserted into the collection]

(2a) CDs that I received from Exclaim! to review [as yet unreviewed]
(2b) CDs that I received from Exclaim! to review [reviewed and vetted to keep]
(2c) CDs that I received from Exclaim! to review [reviewed and vetted to dispose of either through sales at the store or some other manner]
(2d) CDs that I received from Exclaim! to review [not reviewed and past deadline, but still need listening to determine whether they are keepers or not]

(3) CDs that I received from labels and/or services for the Surgery podcast. These are not usually divided into subsets as quickly, but are currently in need of a good purge of the titles that likely won't get any further listens.

(4) The big pile on the hallway bureau that is a weird combination of all the other types and sits gathering accusatory energy beneath my mittens and toques.

These stacks have been built and dismantled and scattered and recombined multiple times since late Spring. And now I'm taking another run at it. Today. Xmas day. Simultaneously I am compiling my top 50 for 2010 in preparation for both the Backstreet Blog and the NYE party next week. Other than a co-mingled sense of pride, accomplishment, shame and panic it occurs to me that of these few hundred CDs I've not really given even half of them more than a cursory perusal. So the question I ask (and have asked previously in truth) is "what's the point?"

So I come back around to the resolution: to make next year a time to listen... actually listen... like for pleasure rather than critical evaluation or utility... to more music.

Right now I'm listening to John Fahey's The Yellow Princess... a CD that I purchased to put into my collection sometime back in July, I think. It's a good sunny December day album (Xmas music is not my thing). What's up next? We... shall see.