keith

In the last month, in addition to figuring out my favorite albums of the year, I've also been deleting shit like crazy. In my old age I'm starting to become more honest with myself, determining what I actually like instead of what I want to like. What I really listen to and what I skip every time, even if I know it's supposedly a peerless classic etc, etc.

Some of what I've deleted this month:

All my Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Joni Mitchell, Mink Deville, a half dozen Bruce Springsteen albums (Lucky Town, Human Touch, Devils & Dust, etc), Hawkwind, Willie Nelson, Buck Owen, Otis Redding, Frank Sinatra, Pegboy, FEAR, all my Bjork except Vespertine, the United States of America, Elvis Costello's When I Was Cruel, Tom Petty, The Fall*, Manic Street Preachers, and all my metal except Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, High on Fire, and Mastodon. There were a lot more, but I can't remember them now.

It was actually the process of deleting The Fall just now that prompted this post. There's a band that I wanted to like really, really badly, that I owned four albums by and listened to repeatedly in an attempt to "get it". I knew that they were the late, great John Peel's favorite band of all time, and so I just knew that there had to be something wrong with my ears if I didn't get it. Oh well, maybe there is, but I'm not going to waste my time anymore trying to force myself to enjoy anything.

All the albums I mentioned above are pretty much "great" albums, for somebody. But there isn't enough time in one lifetime to hear everything I would love to hear, so I don't want to spend any of it listening to anything just for "historical" purposes. I've also realized that I'm the opposite of a completist. I don't even want to hear a great artist's sub-par tracks. Skip me straight to the good stuff, that's all I want.