Meet someone who's been on a wild, nine-year ride with The Sleepless One. She and I go way back to my early, early college days and she's seen many stretches of good and bad road with me since. That is to say, she's that one friend everyone has who knows where the bodies are buried . . .
She also has a unique approach toward traversing her iTunes library's twisting, vine-choked aural jungle.
So be good to the Diner's server of top-flight tunes, TigerCubGirl!)
A to Z #1: Mr. Monk Has Nothing On Me
A friend of mine once said that he believed that we all had a little bit of OCD in all of us. Not necessarily pathological, but a little tiny part of our personality has a weird need for order, or cleanliness, or rituals, or all of the above.
Ok, “all of the above” would probably put someone in the same category as Adrian Monk, but you all know what I mean.
Anyway, I believe that my friend’s theory is definitely true, as I have had a weird thing for order my whole life. I love saving the best for last. If I’m reading a stack of books, I like to read my least favorite first and my absolute favorite last. If the stack is new, I start with the one that appeals to me the least, and work my way up.
The same goes for my music. I listen to my least favorite first, and save the album I’ve been dying to get for months as the very last album I listen to in my continually growing music collection. I love the feeling of anticipation as I listen to music that I like, yet knowing that I’m going to be listening to music that I will absolutely love and will be putting on repeat for hundreds of times. This type of behavior is quirky enough for someone to raise an eyebrow at, but not so weird and creepy that I’d need 500 mg of Efexor 4 times a day.
Yet as much as I practice this ritual with my physical CD collection, I use a different approach whenever I listen to my iTunes: Alphabetically.
Being both a computer and music junkie, I get much pleasure out of listening to music on my desktop, regardless if it’s out of order concerning my favorite albums. With my CD collection, that type of thing would normally bother me. However, it’s not a problem with the digital stuff. Perhaps, it’s because the music is already automatically sorted into some order, even if it’s not the system I usually use. Whatever the reason, I’ve been listening to my iTunes in alphabetical order for the past several months, and that’s not going to change until I get to the end of my library. And, starting next week, I will give you all a taste of what I like.
Each week, I will review an album in my library in alphabetical order. One album from each letter. And it will not necessarily be new stuff. It will be any freaking thing I want. One week, I could give you all ABBA, the next week it could be Bon Iver. One week it could be Cake, the next it could be Dean Martin.
Of course, I should mention that alphabetical order in the iTunes world means that with solo artists, they are sorted according to their first name instead of heir last name. So Ani Difranco, who I will be reviewing next week, is a legitimate artist to go first instead of fourth for the letter D.
So kids, I present to you iAnne: A-Z. Next weeks review for the letter A….Ani Difranco’s Not A Pretty Girl.
Until next time…..long live OCD-type quirks.
No comments:
Post a Comment