Time to organize those CDs…

So I decided to tackle my CD col­lec­tion last night. I real­ize I’m liv­ing in the past by even tak­ing the time to orga­nize my CDs. I should be shuf­fling my MP3s into nice tidy playlists…but no…sorry…I can’t let go of tan­gi­ble medi­ums of music. I’ll save my love for vinyl for another blog…wax cylin­ders? Okay…too old skool, if that’s possible.

The great chal­lenge is decid­ing how to orga­nize one’s col­lec­tion. Well, hon­estly, for me orga­niz­ing nearly any­thing is a daunt­ing task. I’ve always loved the scene in High Fidelity when Dick asks Rob (John Cusack) how his vast record col­lec­tion is orga­nized, and he replies, “auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal.” I’ve used the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sys­tem for years myself. My girl­friend asked me how I could ever begin to find things. I didn’t have a great answer. I don’t know, but I could nearly always tell you the story sur­round­ing that par­tic­u­lar album; what else I was lis­ten­ing to, what I was dri­ving, who I was dat­ing, where I was living…all that. Maybe I get a lit­tle nos­tal­gic for these things, and wor­ried that a whole gen­er­a­tion of down­load­ers will miss out on that impor­tant aspect of music lov­ing and listening.

Anyway…I went with a genre based sys­tem of orga­ni­za­tion for the CDs. Alpha­bet­i­cal is very com­mend­able, and would have been cool…I just couldn’t find the strength to go down that road. I guess it’s still auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, though; moved into a new place, dug the CDs out of the box, well orga­nized girl­friend moves in…and the story con­tin­ues on…now by genre, of course.