ACCOZZAGLIA

because sparkle_vixen is out of town, i’m able to organise my music library for the first time in over three years. for the last twelve months, the CD library has been stored in stacked corrugated boxes. and for at least seven years before that, they were indexed on the floor, against the wall.

mind you, i haven’t bought any new music on CD — exception granted to a gift certificate that i spent on two new discs back in April, including Stephen Duffy and the Kings of Convenience (not to be confused with the Kitchens of Distinction) — since sometime in 2001 or 2002, maybe.

so, i made out stacks on the floor tonight comprising of each letter. C and S are the tallest stacks, with B, D, M, P and T being runners up. i’ll alphabetize and re-pack later tomorrow.

but as i sifted through the familiar-to-me titles that i hadn’t really seen in a long time, i realised just how ancient and dated my library appears to be in the light of today. seriously. i’m not ashamed of it, really, and yeah, while it’d be nice to someday put together stuff from current material to balance things out a bit, it’s also apparent to me that much of what i have is literally and (in some cases) virtually irreplacable, money be damned.

i mean, some of this stuff only appeared once in the last fifteen years of my dogged, avid searches through every place that sold CDs, and i’ll never see such items again if i let them go. in 1996, i let go the replacable copies of content for food. i sold about 25 percent of my library, or about 250 discs then. and it wasn’t much money in the slightest. i took a huge loss, if one were to look as it like an investment (which i do not).

but today? if ever i let go of a few discs, then the whole library will have to go as a grouped lot, cos the only people who’d want this bizarre pop library [n.b, owning the odd, obscure discs from seminal groups and musicians, not the discs that people ordinarily have in their collection, for example] would be people as crazy as i am about super-obscure weirdness. and not Dr. Demento weirdness, mind you.

it’s weirdness along the lines of owning The Fixx’s Shuttered Room, where most people might own The Greatest Hits or Reach the Beach. or 3″ CD singles of Steve Winwood’s “Holding On” (though i own none of his albums) right next to a Ryuichi Sakamoto Japanese 3″ CD single of “Sayonara” (which to this day isn’t registered in CDDB, and i’m not about to oblige, cos i’m a total bitch). and then, add these to, oh, the heart-shaped limited edition 3″ of Frazier Chorus’ “Sloppy Heart” (lots of Frazier Chorus goodness abounds) next to the little-known fourth and last single from the Tears for Fears’ 1989 album, The Seeds of Love: “Famous Last Words” (a strictly limited edition of 5,000 copies, mine numbered 621). or maybe that Secession A Dark Enchantment CD on Virgin UK’s Siren Records from 1987, which in some circles, has gone for hundreds of dollars on eBay and elsewhere. and how about the Kome Kome Club, Third Eye [NOT "blind"], Ephraim Lewis (R.I.P.), Talk Talk’s “History Mix” UK promo, Fortran 5′s “Love Baby” (remember them, anyone?), The Creeps’ Blue Tomato, the Japanese white velvet and gold-embossed pressing of Pet Shop Boys’s Behaviour (with a booklet with lyrics in English and Japanese, beautiful photos and a bonus 3″ CD single), the rare CDV of Hothouse Flowers’ “Don’t Go” or even Stakka Bo’s “Here We Go”.

seriously. after about 1996, this library trails off big time after Poe and Tracy Bonham and is pretty much supplanted by the efforts of friends and colleagues who released their own music afterwards, like LMP, The Hundred Flowers, Blue Period, DJ Noise, NASA (the third NASA out there) and so on.

god. my back aches. i’ve so gotten old. i’m dated and outta style. i need sleep. ni.