Deleting shit is a good feeling, isn't it? Oh damn I've started by stating the bleedin' obvious. Forgive me, it's 7.46 am on Boxing Day (is it called 'Boxing Day' because by then certain family members feel like going twelve rounds with each other?).
I do sometimes write
...........(wake up!)........
The end of the year is a natural time to go on a deleting spree; it's when we feel ready for a new start and shedding all that stuff that's been clogging up our hard drives seems to lighten the load we'll carry into the next 365 days. Not that we carry the stuff. But it is a weight of some kind. The trouble is that it's weight that's so easy to accumulate. We do so without noticing (unless you're vigilant about checking your hard drive space).
Mind you, gaining weight in the physical sense is just as easy. The burden of excess fat, yes that old problem, is also on a lot of people's minds. Gym memberships are set to soar. The guilt of over-eating must be countered by exercise! So you do it for a few days then more than likely give up. "Bollocks, I'll just eat less and eat better." Oh but the siren song of sugar and fat is so hard to resist! Luckily, I'm don't have too much fat to shed but, you know, by a certain age us chaps do tend towards developing excess folds around the stomach (sit up straight, breath in, there, it looks better).
What about all those excess files? Mmmm....let's see...there's that album I've never played properly because it didn't sound so great on first skip yet everyone else reckons it's brilliant, that one. And here's the album I grabbed with a view to listening properly but never have. Ah, here's the album I thought was great on first listen but time has done it no favours and the exciting, instant buzz beats are now revealed to be just that with no other real substance in the music. Mind you, it's good to exercise to, by which I mean dancing like an idiot around the room, so perhaps I'll keep it.
Then again...what's the point of keeping most of this stuff? Can't I burn it to a disc? Yes, where it will join the mountain of discs, some of which have LP titles scrawled on (no accompanying cards with track listing, nothing that extravagant) and those blank ones. I've burned a lot to disc and most sit there unplayed. I thought that album was important enough to be transferred to the crusty old physical state, but, well...
I don't think 'the kids' keep anything physical (musically), do they? They live a fairy cloud existence of non-material (CD/LP) burden. They don't carry loads of physical weight either, the lucky little sods. Hold on, I'm thinking it's 1970, when fat kids were a rare and much maligned breed therefore targets for abuse. Perhaps only one existed in the whole school - imagine that? You may be old enough to remember it. The reverse is true today, so they say. So are playgrounds full of fat kids poking fun at the slim one? I dunno. It's only what I read about obesity and, to be honest, that's only panic headlines so shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Perhaps we're all bloated on the fat of the land in one way or another. Us kids of the 70s probably do tend more towards hanging on to discs and actually having box sets on our shelves. "Look, granddad's got big boxes full of round shiny things!" "Ask him nicely and he'll turn on the CD player so you can hear them." "What's a CD player?" etc When's the CD revival starting anyway? Next year?
Funny, isn't it, that today's kids are supposedly an obese generation yet carry no excess musical weight, whilst the reverse was true when I was a teenager. Hold on, is it because we were always carrying records around that we kept out weight down? Are DJs fatter today? That should be investigated by the Daily Mail. I thought I was being terribly modern when, towards the end of my DJ career, I played CDs - ha! Today, I hear, DJs just think of tracks and they're transmitted wirelessly through speakers.
I sold some CDs recently - £25 quid's worth. They refused a few because they were scratched - the irony! That new tech invincible disc isn't fooling the buyer, is it? "Nah, that CD is scratched." Eh? The fact that they play perfectly didn't matter. Still, there have been very rare occasions when I've had CDs which jump. They refused the Complete Charlie Parker on Dial box set because it's scratched. I wanted it gone because having to skip the third take of Relaxing At Camarillo became annoying and for that I lose Jazz Cred points because we're all supposed to be enthralled by the variations in Bird's solos, of course. I want to just have the master takes. Two or three versions in a row is too much, even for a fan like me (a lightweight one, obviously).
At least you can delete files and there's no-one to stop you apart from that little man/woman in your head urging you to listen again and reconsider because you might not be able to find that rare German electronic Prog album on the Net again. So I'll carry on deleting. We both know that there's a lot of stuff we'll never properly listen to so hit the button. Less is more. That being relative in the sense that the music we store on file outweighs, time-wise, all we've ever probably heard in our lives so far (gasp!).
New Year's resolution: be more vigilant about what I download. Be stricter.
TTFN
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