Backed Up.

Posted at 7:31 PM on 8 May 2005

Well, yet another month seems to have whistled past with a rapidity to which I am still completely unaccustomed. I really should post here more, and probably change the bit that only renders one main post on the homepage, relegating previous entries back into the archive.

Oh well.

Looking back, quite a lot has happened over the past month. Not that there is necessarily anything terribly interesting mixed in with that, but for the first time in a long while I'm feeling energised and enthusiastic about "stuff". Hurray!

Anyway. There's been an election. (I voted). I have a new programme at the gym that has refreshed my enthusiasm for going (not that I was shirking my gymly duties of course, but I was beginning to get into a rut). I installed a new version of my favourite operating system, thus satisfying my inner-geek. And I'm slowly working through a backlog of stuff that has managed to pile up to the point of implausibility.

All go, then.

Other stuff is either less or more interesting and as such I'm not posting it here. And even more endearingly vague, I'm sure. :-)

I'm listening to lots of new music, and rediscovering stuff I've not listened to in years, much to my surprise and delight. Prior to that I was having a real moribund time. Looking back, I think the loss of 90% of my mp3 collection last year hit me harder than I thought at the time; the prospect of re-ripping all my old CDs filled me with ambivalence. After all, there was more music available for free on the Internet than I could listen to in a lifetime! Masses of new stuff to discover! And that's pretty much what I did. But the trouble with doing that (at least for me) was that listening to all the chaff started to grind me down. Yes, there's a lot of music, but finding the good stuff (and even recognising it when you hear it) was simply proving to much.

A case in point, The Dresden Dolls last year. Lots of buzz at the time, listened to the tracks I downloaded, thought they were OK, moved on, not a second thought. Completely failing to appreciate their awe-inspiring magnificence. Fortunately, my friend Steve enthusiastically put me back onto them again. In fact, whilst I knew I'd heard of them, I'd completely forgotten it wasn't actually my first exposure to them.

Because I had no old-favourites to fall back on, and because there was all kinds of new stuff to listen to, I wasn't spending enough time on anything to allow it much of an impact. Does that even make sense? Nothing to ground me, to bring me back to somewhere I knew.

So I've been re-ripping and listening to old stuff. And whilst "the old stuff" isn't something I want to gorge myself on all the time, it's fantastic to be taken back to another, familiar place, and be reminded of its brilliance (or alternatively, "what was I THINKING?"), and it's really made me appreciate good new stuff for what it is.

Anyway. Here's one for your diaries: 23rd May. Art Brut, "Bang, Bang, Rock & Roll". I actually saw them live almost a year ago and thought "They're OK" before moving on to the next thing. They're great. Buy their album.

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