Eating the Elephant
It all
started before I can remember.
The
story was I was 2 or 3 years old, sick as a dog, Grandma Galupi sitting for the
poor sick child. But as sick as he was, he could not be pulled away from the
record player spinning Mom’s 45 of Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through the
Grapevine.
Everyone
has something that draws their interest. For some people it’s art or
literature. Some people find peace and sense of place in carpentry or welding
or working on cars or mathematics [definitely not mathematics for me]. I have
always had an ear for music, I guess. It seems to run in my mother’s side of
the family. Her grandfather on her mother’s side [i.e. My great grandfather]
played the fiddle and her father [my grandfather] played the guitar. Grandma
Sheets would sing with Grandpap as well, likely old country songs or standards.
There are stories of the family going up to my great grandparents’ house and
they would play on Saturday nights. I don’t know if they called it jamming or a
hoe down or just “this is what we do for entertainment.” So perhaps there is music
in my blood.
I
do remember the very early 70s, 1971, 1972. Paul McCartney’s Uncle
Albert-Admiral Halsey, Deep Purple’s Smoke On the Water coming
over the AM radio. The aforementioned Grandma Galupi usually had a radio on in
the morning before her “stories” [soaps] came on. Grandma Sheets would
sometimes have one on in the kitchen, though I don’t think she grooved along
with Steely Dan’s Do It Again. But who knows. I remember Mom
ironing to the Temptations when we lived in Hampton Court in Indiana, PA. AM
radio was my main exposure to the tunes of the day until we moved to Texas in
1977. AM Top 40 was playing a lot of different things so you’d hear like the
O’Jays, followed by the Spinners, Elton John, Al Green, Grand Funk, Paul
McCartney & Wings, Barry White, Jim Croce and the Carpenters. Even though
this was then ending of the golden age of AM radio, I still recall a lot of
those songs with fondness.
Of
course it helped that my parents were Rockers, too. In their records and 8
tracks, I was still exposed to a wide variety of rock and soul. Everything from
Aretha’s Greatest Hits [Aretha Franklin, the1971 compilation] to
Neil Young’s Harvest. In the singles box I found early Motown like
the Four Tops’ Reach Out I’ll Be There and Jr. Walker’s Come
See About Me [the B-side Sweet Soul is a stone
groove!] up through Joe Cocker’s cover of The Letter [the
STUDIO version is still a favorite, the live version is kinda meh].
My
first two albums arrived in 1974. One was a radio promo copy of the first Bad Company
[aka Bad Co.] album as a radio station was broadcasting from the
McDonald’s dad managed in downtown Charleston, WV. The second was a gift from
our summer babysitter, a copy of the Doobie Brothers’ What Were Once
Vices Are Now Habits. Was an album with such a druggy title a strange thing
to give to a 7 year old? I didn’t get it then but Black Water was
on that record and that was a hot tune that summer.
The
first record I bought with my hard earned quarters and dimes [forgoing the
pleasures of a Batman or Action Comics and bubble gum] was Disco Duck by
Rick Dees and His cast Of Idiots. Had I known I was forever going to be listing
this as the first record I ever bought with my own money I might have chosen
something cooler but it is what it is. I know for a fact that It was NOT the
record I was looking for. I wanted Rubberband Man by the
mighty Spinners, which was the second record I ever bought. Then Gordon
Lightfoot’s Wreck Of the Edmund Fitzgerald. That’s still a spooky
record today.
I
don’t recall the first album I bought with my own money. I know that it was
1978 and my friend Mark had turned me on to Kiss, a favor I repaid by taking
his Kiss Alive II onto the bus to give back to him
and watching in horror as the first album slid out of the jacket and bashed to
the ground cracking off Detroit Rock City-King Of the Nighttime World
on side 1 and Calling Dr. Love and Christine Sixteen on
side 2. All of which leads me to believe that the first Kiss album may have
been the first but it could have been Kiss’ Dressed to Kill.
In
the meantime of course I am enjoying the clean sounds of FM radio now in the
state of Texas. Texas being nice and flat, the FM signal will carry pretty
well. [Knowing now what I did not know then, the AM signal worked better in the
hills and mountains.] Still top 40 for the most part but oh what a top 40!
Cheap Trick’s I Want You To Want Me, Blondie’s One Way Or
Another, Nick Gilder’s Hot Child In the City, the
Cars…annnnnnnd disco. Well, look it was what was on the radio. I was not then
nor am I now a dancer in any way, shape or form. And I find the four on the
floor so even white people can do it boring. And of course there was Bee Gees
burnout. But in the rear view I can see some good stuff out of that era.
Parliament. I have come to really appreciate the Bee Gees harmonies. Barry
White did some great thing. He would layer things in, build things up adding
something every few trips around. Listen to the long album version of It’s
Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me. At 7 minutes it can get a little
repetitive but you can’t deny the groove!
In
1980, there was a house built next to ours in Arlington and a fairly young
couple moved in. From Oshkosh [by gosh!], WI. I don’t recall their name but he
was a traveling salesman, nice guy would come over and play HORSE once in a
while. I don’t recall how we got into it but he loaned me his Beatles albums:
the 1962 – 1966 on red vinyl, the 1967 – 1970 on
blue vinyl and The Beatles [aka “The White Album”] on white
vinyl. So I was really getting into the Beatles when John Lennon’s Double
Fantasy was released [and make no mistake, as much as I like Paul
McCartney’s songs I am most definitely a John guy] and then…. Sigh.
Somewhere
in there the first, single LP of The Doors’ Greatest Hits arrived.
So I was always looking for new things to find even if I had to go backwards to
find them. For a period from about 1982 to 1984 I was in a flashback time warp.
It kicked off with the 2 Who cassettes made for me by David Herring [the year
of their first Last Tour] followed the next summer with 2 Led
Zeppelin and the next with 2 of the Doors. I also discovered more records in my
parents collection I had not realized were pure gold – Santana’s Abraxas,
Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced and a double LP anthology
of the Jefferson Airplane called Flight Log. Oh how I loved
Jefferson Airplane! And the American Graffiti soundtrack. I
was listening to the local oldies station [on AM] which then was playing rock
and roll era 1960s top 40 stuff. Heavy on the British Invasion era [1964] up to
about 1970 or so. I guess then that would have been Golden Age Of AM Radio
stuff. But I would also switch to the FM and dig on the current stuff as well.
One can only take Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter so
many times, right?
I
was able to maintain this balance until about 1996 when I started finding new
music was not for me. Could I appreciate Green Day? I guess, but I didn’t
really care for it. Nirvana never moved me. I did like the first Pearl Jam and
Stone temple Pilots, Alice In Chains’ Dirt and Soundgarden. I
think that was about it. When Soundgarden broke up, my interest in new music
waned. I didn’t get the point of Creed, Korn or Limp Bisquick or whatever it
was.
So
I have always had a connection with music.
Collecting
began when I started earning my own money. Oh sure’ I’d go buy records with
birthday money and such but driving delivering pizzas put hard cash money in my
pocket so the closest Sound Warehouse was always on my radar. And of course
being in the car so much I’d hear a lot if things. To give a timeline, one of
the records bought with that money was Peter Gabriel’s brilliant So.
That came out in May of ’86. In November of ’86 I was hired on at the dream job
working at the Sound Warehouse.
Sound
Warehouse was a record store chain started in Oklahoma City that grew mostly
around Texas and Oklahoma, eventually have 121 stores in 13 states. They were
to Texas what Tower records was to California. [Here is a short history on the rise and fall Sound
Warehouse et al on You Tube.] I was very
acquainted with the customer side of the experience, now my music knowledge was
going to be useful. I am pretty sure that it was my knowledge of the 60’s/70s
music that got me the job – I vaguely remember commenting that I was going to
have to come back to the store where I was interviewed for a Jefferson Airplane
album I did not have.
So
I’m on the inside now. Which leads to promo records and an employee
discount. Plus with a diverse crew manning the turntable / CD player, I
was constantly being exposed to new things - that I had never considered
looking at before. Of course everyone had favorites. One manager was heavily
into Peter Gabriel, Genesis and Prince. The girls like to play Depeche
Mode’s Black Celebration. The guys tended to favor guitar things
like R.E.M. and the Replacements to name two of the bands I had never really
heard before. Rare was a payday week that I wasn’t bringing something new into
the house. But it was glorious being one of the cool kids!
If
you’re into music, you go where music is and you talk to other people about
your likes and dislikes and you take notes. That was the beauty of the record store.
Sometimes you’d be able to say “You like [semi obscure band]? If you like this,
you should check out [similar semi obscure band].” And they would and they’d
come back later and go “Hey man, I dug [semi obscure band # 2], what else do
you have like that?” Eventually this lead me to the conclusion that there is an
audience for everything. It might not always be a big audience but if it’s out
there the right people will find it. It’s not a long jump from R.E.M to my
beloved Long Ryders but R.E.M. got huge and the Long Ryders faded away. Such is
the fickle hand of fate.
I
was only at Sound Warehouse for two years but in those two years I made
friendships that have lasted. And through those friends and the common bond of
music, I have met other similarly minded folks and we’ve fed each other’s
thirst for something we haven’t heard before. [For the record, I would put in
another year and a half in record retail at Forever Young. 20 hours a week. I
had planned to pay off my truck early but I think I’d spend most of that money
on CDs and beer.]
One
other thing about this time was that my “Uncle” [not really related, family
friend] Mike allowed me into his epic collection. Uncle Mike’s closet [yes,
they had a closet built with heavy duty shelving to hold record because they
weigh A TON] was my first “holy SH**” record collection. I mean I probably had
a couple hundred record by now but THIS was what I aspired to. There may have
been 1500 albums in there. And now he was starting to buy CDs to replace those
albums. And I know he never quit. He would buy things when he was out
travelling as part of his job and have to ‘sneak’ them into the collection when
he thought the Mrs. wasn’t looking. [Of course she know. She’d been looking at
the same collection for two month when he was on the road so she kinda knew
what had been there and when something new appeared.] When I was at Mike’s
funeral, I got my last look at the CD part of the Leone Collection – the albums
were in their second home in Pennsylvania needing to be boxed and shipped yet
again. The CDs filled a whole wall of an entertainment center. I would guess,
based on my CD collection that he probably had almost a thousand. Side story:
so we picked out some music to play as we were playing cards downstairs later and
Mike’s daughter’s fiancée asked if he could take one home to listen to it:
AC/DC’s If You Want Blood You’ve Got It live album. I told him
that Michael would have been overjoyed that he wanted to take something to
listen to.
Michael
was a Frank Zappa nut. I said “what is this Frank Zappa thing?” Michael sent me
home that night with four albums that changed me: Zappa In New York,
Rory Gallagher’s Blueprint and Tattoo and Johnny
Winter And… Live. As an aspiring guitarist, Rory and
Johnny made me want to put the instrument down. But as a listener, they
perked my ears right up. “What was that? Wow that is amazing!” Zappa In
New York doesn’t have a lot of Frank’s guitar work on it – the Shut
Up And Play Your Guitar set make up for that – but it’s a good introduction
into Frank’s many styles. I would find many more amazing things in Frank’s
catalog and in Michael’s magic closet.
After
my short record store stint [two years but boy were they fun] I began checking
out more used record stores. I found suggested titles and followed the trails
of who made who into further discoveries. The James Gang Rides Again? This has
Joe Walsh, I like Joe Walsh, I’ll check this out. Debbee says this Ian Hunter
guy is pretty cool. I liked that one Little Feat album, let me check this one
out. So and so says this album was a big influence on them.
All
of which brings me to meeting Tracey Berry.
It
seems that we were destined to cross paths. When Sound Warehouse opened their
Hurst location, two of the managers were taken from my old store in north
Arlington, Scott “Pops” [forgot last name] and Randy “The Point” Johnson.
Tracey was hired at that location. But I actually met him through my high
school friend Oliver’s roommate, Scott Gilbert. Scott had worked with Tracey in
a comic book store and one day this short, stocky red bearded, skullcap wearing
biker looking dude shows up. I wasn’t sure about him until one day two boxes of
CDs show up. [All ready Tracey was piling up the music!] I looked through the
titles, noted some. One day I heard a song on the radio by Steely Dan I was not
familiar with and I had seen several of their CDs in the boxes so I asked
“what’s the song, “You go to Las Vegas, Lost Wages, go to Las Vegas’?” And
of course he reels off Show Biz Kids on the Countdown
To Ecstasy album. “Do you mind if I take that home and tape it?” He
did not and may have even suggested taking Katy Lied as well.
I
found out despite his look, Tracey was generally a pretty easy going guy. He
was quick to laugh and had a big booming laugh that once you heard it a couple
of times did not forget. I would not say that we were great friends but in
hanging around Oliver and his group and eventually becoming Oliver’s roommate
we became friends. And there was always the music in common.
Quite
a few times we’d be sitting around and he would pop something in and I’d go
“What is that?” If you’ve ever heard the great The Who Sell Out,
you know that intro [recorded right off some pirate radio station] and then is
buzzes into Armenia City In the Sky. I almost fell off the floor
when I heard that! “What is this? The Who? Are you kidding me?!?” The
first time I heard Pink Floyd’s More it scared the crap out of
me. [I maaaayyyy have not been totally sober at the time…and I still don’t care
for Atom Heart Mother.] In the Berry collection, I found myself
able to dig deeper into the blues people that the Rolling Stones cited as
influences. I know Tracey liked Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker especially but
also had Lightnin’ Hopkins and Howlin’ Wolf. Of course we disagreed about
things too. I don’t think he was a big Aerosmith fan and he did not like Queen.
I never got into jazz nor as deep into the funk as he did [although I could
appreciate some of it] and my hatred of Yes was as strong as his for Queen. But
we respected each other enough not to be too judgmental.
While
my time as an actual record store person was very short, Tracey managed to do
it for 25 years or maybe a smidge longer. I don’t recall when he went from
Sound Warehouse to Forever Young. I want to say maybe 1992? The greater thing
about Forever young was that they dealt in used media – records, tapes and CDs.
Which meant that you could throw on almost anything at any time. I am sure that
Tracey spent many, many hours talking to people about music, getting and giving
suggestions and generally being a kid in the candy store.
Yes,
it could be boring and work like at times and sometimes the music playing just
becomes a background buzz. But to see some people’s faces light up when you
find them that song or album that has eluded them for so long. Dave would keep
some new release re-issues at the front counter and these black ladies would
come in and see an Al Green or Johnny “Guitar” Watson or Bootsy Collins album
that they had not thought about in years and just gush. Hell, I did the same
thing sometimes. “Whoa, they finally reissued that? Man, we used to jam out to
that.” That was one of the things that made all the re-alphabetizing the used
cassette wall all worth it.
Looking
deep into the Berry CD project, I can see by the age of some of the CDs that
Tracey had a wide variety going back a long time. Early [as in late 80’s]
reissues of Blue Note and Stax records titles. Things I might not have
appreciated then. [I went back into Motown and Stax while I was at Forever
Young after years of denying soul music.] When Tracey moved in with Oliver, I
organized the collective collection. Even after only a decade [+ / -] in the
record business it was a long afternoon alphabetizing and racking them up. But
the variety of titles and artists was amazing. As a music fan, I was awed and
extremely jealous. At the time, there was some sense of self worth ties to both
the size and “coolness” of my record collection, even though no one was driving
all the way out to BFE Burleson just to ooh and aah at my discs and LPs. And
Tracey’s collection made mine look like a lot less impressive.
At
a point in the late 1990s I had a lot of changes going on, not the least of
which was working an out of kilter evening shift [3:330 to midnight, Tuesday
through Saturday]. I lost touch with a lot of people that had been a regular
circle, although I would stop into the store and shop and say hi to Tracey.
Eventually he popped up on Facebook after a few changes of his own. He went
back to school and got his degree and began teaching at the University of Texas
Dallas campus. But we were not really ‘in touch.’
Then
my friend ended his life.
I
will not cover any of that. My mourning statements have been made and though I
am still sad that he is gone I have slowly come to make peace with that. What I
am here to talk about is his CD collection. Another friend acquired Tracey’s
music and a lot of his posters from the family. I didn’t know Mike Bond really
but we met up and he allowed me to look at some things and in the course of
discussion I inquired as to his plans for the collection. At that time, they
were still up in the air, so I asked an indulgence.
Many
years ago, my brother in law and his office had put their music collections on
a hard drive, which they then accessed for some groovy tunes while they were
working. I used a copy of that as the basis for putting my own collection on
hard drives [I have a main and a backup now]. I thought that it would be good
to put Tracey’s CDs on a hard drive for any of his friends to access and retain
all or part of Tracey’s collection.
“Funny
you should say that, I actually have a hard drive of Tracey’s in one of these
boxes,” Mike replied.
I
bought a brand new 1 Gigahertz hard drive and copied the music that Tracey had
on that drive to use as a basis for this project. Knowing how much space my own
collection took up and keeping in mind Mike’s estimate of 2500 – 3000 CDs, I
decided to rip the collection at 256 Kbps [which would be approximately 115
megabytes per CD versus 145 MB for 320
Kbps.]
I
took three or four unorganized boxes of Tracey’s CDs and set off for what I
thought was going to be a large and time consuming project but the upside was
that I could also keep any CDs I wanted and could copy anything else to my own
hard drives. And having some idea what should be in Tracey’s collection, I was
a giddy as a kid set loose in the candy shop. Or a music lover set loose in the
record store.
Little
did I know.
This is how I came to be “Eating
the Elephant.”
When I
say “eating the elephant.” I refer to the daunting size of the project. As in
“How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Mike
suggested that there could be somewhere around 2500 to 3000 CDs. Think about
going through the boxes, organizing them somehow and then physically taking the
CD out, letting it rip and then onto the next one. How long will it take? How
long before your will to complete such a project gives out?
The
condition of the CDs [and the jewel cases or digipacks] ranged from a few
unopened to very good to normal wear and tear to sigh inducing to “oh my god
what the hell.” Some were beyond saving. Neither Tracey nor Oliver were
particular about neatness. The usual method of filing a CD once it was removed
from the player was to add it to a stack on top of the desk / entertainment
center / receiver etc. Apparently when they were packed, these stacks of CDs
were dumped into boxes then the remaining CDs in jewel cases thrown into more
boxes. [From what I was told albums were done much the same way.]
Mike
had already completed herculean task number one and matched CDs up with
corresponding jewel cases [if one was around] or into a jewel case of some
sort. I was also handed a stack of booklets that hadn’t matched up to anything,
most of which never did match to a CD.
But the
thought of going through my friend’s collection and copying the things I wanted
was beyond resisting. I had a good idea of some of the things I would find and
some of those were cross woven into my own life as well. The kid was going to
be set loose in the candy store. Sort of.
The
second benefit was to allow Mike or any of Tracey’s other friends to be able to
access Tracey’s collection and have a piece of records that they had shared.
There’s
was no deadline and not knowing how many CDs there would be I just set out as
best I could handle. I took the first collection of boxes, broke them down into
three sections of the alphabet, organized each box alphabetically and then took
the first box into my computer room. From there I pulled out a handful of CDs,
cleaned the CDs and jewel boxes as best I could and started ripping. While one
ripped I’d clean up the next couple. All down the line.
At
first, I tried to be methodical. As I put in things I was not familiar with,
I’d hit a few seconds to get a feel, make a note of things I wanted to copy to
explore more fully. After the first box, that went out the window. What I found
was that each box would hold between 120 to 140 CDs. If I was going to use that
method this was going to take a long, long time. I thought it would be better
to take notes and digital copies of things to explore further and keep the
project moving. Catalog it [on an excel spreadsheet], rip it and go on to the
next one.
In
just around a year, I have catalogs and ripped 1720 titles. I say titles
because of course there are double [and triple and even a couple of quadruple]
CD sets so I don’t really know how many CDs that is. The hard drive is showing
296 gigs of used space. Since I may be on the actual last box with about 60
titles left to rip, that’s probably not going to change much. I am down to the
elephant’s tail.
I
found some interesting things of course. I say that this is “Tracey still
recommending things from beyond the grave.” I pulled physical copies [with permission]
of some things. Things that give me a smile remembering their connection with
Tracey: Mississippi Fred MacDowell, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Sky Cries
Mary. And I have taken digital copies of all kinds of “Tracey Music”: ambient
things, jazz things, rock things and more soul [mostly various artists comps]
than I could have ever imagined.
But it has
raised a huge question for me. “Do I still need physical media?”
I admit I am an
old school person here. I have [and use] my home phone line - mostly so I don’t
HAVE to have my cell phone attached to me at all waking moments of the day. I
still get the Sunday paper - mostly because the NY Times crossword is not on
the electronic subscription and I hate doing crosswords on line. And in a world
before Wiki-this and instant that, I spent countless hours poring over physical
media - record jackets and liner notes and Rolling Stone - trying to
glean as much about the music and the people who made the music as I could hold
in my head.
But in the new
millennium, I don’t consume my music via the physical media anymore.
I bought a new
turntable last year but after the initial rush of having that new player wore
off rarely do I pick up an LP and put it on. I remembered my old house’s floor
doesn’t have good bracing and my walking across the floor [or a cat skittering
from room to room] sends “booms” through the needle or causes skips when
playing records. The only “CD players” in the house are actually DVD players –
one in the living room that’s not even plugged in and one in the bedroom. But I
still buy CDs. They get ripped to the hard drive on arrival and then are
dutifully filed, rarely to ever leave their place on the shelf ever again
Yet there they
all patiently remain - 600 or so LPs, almost 700 CDs - taking up one whole wall
of me computer and music room.
Tracey’s passing
and this project have me in the mind to clear a lot of this out.
Since Tracey’s
physical collection was locked away in storage, I have to assume that Tracey
was no longer consuming very much music via the physical media at the end. I
don’t know if Tracey had a hard drive of his favorites or if he had gone full
tilt digital, i.e. purchasing via iTunes or Amazon or some streaming like
Spotify. Since he would post things from You Tube to his Facebook, I assume he
didn’t completely cut himself off from music just the physical record or CD.
If you’re only
looking to listen, there’s a lot of stuff out there on the world wide web.
There is a probably lot of more obscure stuff not out there but a lot of it is
and there’s more added every single second. And you can get a lot of it for
free.
If you’re a
person who wants a hard copy – and there are many and thank goodness for them,
they keep ebay, Discogs and the record stores in business! – you can still get
those. And the ol’ interweb even allows you to look for records any time of the
day or night – the online store is always open!
But the thrill
of having a “cool” record collection is long gone. Not that anyone has seen my
record collection in a long while. In truth it probably has been for a long
time.
I have pruned
the collection over the years – I always have at times. It’s usually about
making space so I can bring more in . It’s not about the money because the
money wasn’t there. Still isn’t for CDs but despite the rising popularity and
price of vinyl, I don’t think I have anything ‘valuable,’ just common titles.
Which means I will NOT be funding my retirement with my music collection. It’s
more about allowing someone else the opportunity to check something out. For
example, when I switched to CDs, I sold my Beatles collections many years back
hoping someone who was just getting into music would pick them up and use them
as a starting point the same way I did. A couple years back, I picked out some
vinyl for my friend Tommy’s son Max [and a couple titles for Tommy] since he
was getting into music and vinyl. I handed off a couple dozen titles. Some
classics like my 80s vintage Cars albums, the Police and some things to try
like the first B-52s and Blondie’s Eat To the Beat. And young
Max learned the first lesson as he picked up the tote I had put the records in:
Vinyl is HEAVY!!!!
Or someone is
flipping through the stacks and makes that find that will make their day.
Anyone who has ever gotten into anything like music or books knows that
feeling. You’re getting into a band or a writer and there’s a title you’re
curious about but is seems to be a little hard to come by. The you spot it –
and you grab it! And your heart jumps for joy and a smile hits your face and
you sigh and you’re like “At last I have caught you.” Man do I know that
feeling!
Which brings me
back to my original question: Do I still need the physical media?
For sure in the
days before the internet and instant answers to anything I spent countless
hours poring over books, magazines and liner notes trying to learn all I could
about the people making the magical thing called music. Now I have 30 years of Rolling
Stone magazine on three DVDs. The magazines went to the recycle bin a long
time ago and it feels like it’s time to let go of the record collection.
It takes up a
lot of space and when my spirit leaves this body, it leaves a lot for someone
else to deal with. And I’m to the point where I don’t want to leave that burden
on anyone.
Which is not to
say that I’m going to liquidate everything, but I could certainly cut the
physical collection in half. And a few of the things I do keep will be
mysteries to the persons who do have to deal with what I have left. Because
they won’t know that this was one of the albums Tracey or Michael turned me
onto that I just fell in love with. Or if it was one of those things I found on
my own and now it’s tied to the memories of a time and / or a person that means
a lot to me.
And
I’ll still have the music. Just like I have a lot of it in my head, I will
still have my hard drive and my back up hard drive because stuff happens. And
now I have melded a part of Tracey’s collection into mine, so I have more
titles to explore for [hopefully] a lot of years to come.
And that was the
whole point.
It was a labor
of love and to selfishly to dig through my old friend’s music collection and
harvest some cool stuff. I have almost completed that mission.
I also thought
it would be nice to have Tracey’s catalog in a format where it was accessible.
Not just for myself but for any of Tracey’s friends to share. For the cost of a
hard drive, any of them can own this vast musical catalog. They can delete what
they don’t like, then add their own collection to this miasma and hit random
play!
My
friend Tracey had a lifelong connection to music. Music became one of those
things that connected a whole group of people to Tracey and through our
connection to Tracey many other connections were made. We may see less and less
of each other but for each of us, I am SURE there are songs that press a button
in out head and make us smile and think of our friend.
