CD's - what are they good for?

About 5 years ago I threw away a wheelie bin full of CD’s. I had listened to them once and had no intention of listening to any of them again (you know “Eskimos and Egypt” “Spacehog” - shit like that). I needed to slim down my collection as I had moved house and didn’t have as much storage. It turned out to be a painless process and I have never thought “Oohhh where is that ‘Phil Collins Hits’ CD?” only to find it has been binned. I don’t regret anything – so why do I find it so hard to swap to digital music and let go of the rest my CD’s?

I keep a back up drive of my MP3’s as I’m worried that should my hard drive die, I will loose all of my music. Yet, I know I always have the back up of the CD’s. But each of the boxes in my spare room contains around 50 CD’s. There are 27 boxes - so that’s about 1350 CD’s (I have sold/thrown away/given away about as many in recent years too). That’s a lot of weight and storage space for a ‘back up for a back up’. It’s ridiculous.

Increasingly I am realising that the CD’s might be a 'back up' for a lot of my music, but there is an increasing amount  which I only own in digital download format. Sometimes this is because I have no choice and the music is only available as a download, sometimes it is out of choice, but I am becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea that music doesn’t have to come on a black or silver disc. I never play my CD’s or vinyl anymore and only use them as a source to rip. I play music from my phone via Bluetooth in my car and home; I use last.fm on my Xbox and play MP3’s constantly from my PC. Thus, it is totally illogical that I continue to buy music in physical formats.

I am trying hard to give up physical releases and weaning myself off by only buying digital downloads of artists who are new to me (such as Chairlift’s “Something” this week) and sticking to physical releases for artists I love and consider myself a collector of (Pet Shop Boys, Nine Inch Nails etc etc). I hope I can stay on the path to CD sobriety; my spare room is small enough as it is and I really don’t want to have to throw away that Sven Vath CD – oh no, hold on a minute……..

In time?

Until recently I always thought it was pretty easy to play in time with a sequencer. Since acquiring an electric guitar I have realised it is in fact, not that easy. Yet syncopation or just plain ‘playing out of time’ drives me mad.

Nowhere is the difficult nature of playing in time with a sequencer more painfully illustrated than on records made in the late 70’s. Take ‘Beat the clock’ by Sparks – you an almost hear the drummer cursing the producer (the inimitable Giorgio Moroder) as he frantically tries to keep up with the pulsating bass sequence. I always cringe at the timing on Gary Numan / Tubeway Army records such as “Me! I disconnect from you” and especially “We are so fragile” where the poor drummer stands no change until the guitar comes in to cover the millisecond variations in timing which sound so wrong.

 

Of course Mike Oldfield couldn’t stand things being out of time either and even went as far as re-recording “Tubular Bells” so that it was quantized. But would “Replicas” sound as good if it were re-recorded? Well “Tubular Bells 2003” would suggest some bits would sound better and others not.

Personally I would love it if the multi track was stuck in pro-tools and quantized. I can hear some people saying “Oh noooooooo, that’s takes away from its charm and naivety” or “It’s the only human element in an electronic recording and adds something”. Well no, sorry, it just spoils it. And whilst yes, I now appreciate that it’s hard to play along to a click track or sequencer, it doesn’t mean I want to listen to it.