Musical Memories

I have spent a good amount of my time converting my CD collection into mp3s. I don’t share them. I don’t upload them and I don’t download them from any of the various sites out there. I just got tired of swapping cds out whilst surfing, gaming, or whatever. As I type this I have gone through about 1/3 of my collection and have taken up about 10 gig of my hard drive and stored about 3300 tracks. Wow that’s a lot of music. Some of it is really good, some of it is crap, but all of it is from my life and it all has meaning to me.

As I listen I remember things that I was doing when I heard them for the first time, or when I was doing something that I really enjoyed (wink wink nudge nudge) while they played. Music is great that way.

I generally just put the old player on shuffle and drift off in thought. But what I love the most is when you stumble across some obscure artist from years gone by that had slipped to the back of your mind and comes rushing forward when one of their songs comes up in queue. Had that happen to me just the other day and it caused me to stop the player and narrow my play list to just his albums. This musician’s name is Joshua Kadison. He’s a piano player and storyteller. Not really too mainstream and really relaxing music. I sat there for almost 6 hours just soaking it up. I almost could see the time fall away and carry me back to my youth.

I should say at this point that I am a non-practicing musician. I spent a long time plying my art, but it never came to much and I find that life has taken away the time needed to be any good.

/Sigh.

Oh well, I guess it was this time in the company of artists that I developed an appreciation of musicians who play for music’s sake and not to make a buck. They are few and far between and even those who start out with this altruistic bent eventually cave to the greed (you hearing me Lars?)

He had one or two moderate hits off of his first album and none off of his second. His record label ditched him. Now he has his own label and records his own music and (Are you ready for this?) gives it away. You heard me right. He still puts out cds, but he also has all of his music since his label dropped him available for free on his website.

I respect that and recommend his stuff. If you have a penchant for the genre that is.