I'm writing my next newsletter at the moment. Currently writing about "The Association - Greatest Hits" which my entire teenage & adult life I couldn't imagine being without.

Fact is there are ONLY 4 songs I like on this, & I consider it a "must own"?

I am sick, very sick.........................

(I also think those 4 songs are going on a drive as flacs..................)

There's probably close to 1,000 cd's in my collection I have similar feelings about. WTF have I been doing??!

Geff, we change as we move thru the years. Heck, I have some albums that only ONE track is the reason I keep it.

Example, for the opening track "Faith Healer", absolutely killer.
(by the way, a new copy on Amazon is selling for $811.48 - now that's SICK).

But I don't play much of that album anymore but I won't part with it. There are many others like that in my collection if I look.

The point is that this can be said about almost anything, TV show, clothing styles, food and even some of the girls I dated when I was young. Whoa...

Anyway it's a journey man. If you think back, you got your rocks off on it initially. Not everything stays the same and that's the way it is (and suppose to be).

Let the original memory be a lasting one, this will fulfill us in the last of our years.

Rick A.

Geff: Could be worse...could be me.

Point................

Ironically, i went upstairs to pull the cd out of my collection, & I'm not as sick as I thought i was! I apparently had the same thoughts at some time in the past!

Most of us here are "sick" in one way or another, and I for one never want to be "cured." I still get just as excited about discovering new (or new-to-me) music, and it doesn't bother me when something I used to love no longer excites me. It takes a lot for me to decide a CD or LP is no longer worthy of being in my collection.

Listed at $811.48 not selling at that-those nutcases never sell their stuff. It probably really goes for $50-$200 which is still great.

I look at my CD's as artifacts--many of them have a personal story above and beyond the music contained on them. I'm moving (again) this week, and some of these discs have been packed up and moved as many as ten times in 20+ years.

I've got to do something before I move, between cd's & dvd's I have well over 10,0000 discs; + my business (another 5,000+??).

I may have found a place tonight; IF for once Craig's List doesn't block my email as spam.

Whereas I agree with what you say the live SAHB is not one such release. IMO there is not a bad tune in the bunch.
There are certainly releases where I only like one or two tunes. Every now and again I try to give that release another chance - sometimes they sound better than remembered sometimes like Pet Sounds - it just hasn't caught my ear yet...there is always hope however.

I remind myself that there are worse habits - smoking, drinking and drugging where you have nothing but damage to your body to show for it. There are other vices that can hurt members of your family. At least by collecting music - except for possible hearing loss - what's the danger? In the end it could be sold - usually for pennies on the dollar but it never was intended to be an investment.

It's not a bad album at all Robert, it's that the first track is such a knockout I usually use that as a jump start to something else.

Rick A.

The only problem with the habit is the amount of stuff you collect. I love listening to music and watching movies but at some point all the stuff gets unwieldy. When does it end? Do you see a point that you will stop? Like Geff says, you start having CDs that you hold onto for one song. I must have thousands like that.

Agreed. Even my old techno-rave CDs from the my 90s youth still remain. I know I'll never listen to them again but the memories of those days (nights, really)...I just can't dump them.

I did a "spring cleaning" of my albums twice, once in the early 1980s & once in the mid 1990s. Sold a couple hundred albums each time that I was convinced I'd never want to play again. Ended up buying a couple dozen back over the years & received most of the others back when friends gave me their collection. A few of the albums in those collections were the same albums I had sold to the record stores years before! So I gave up trying to streamline my collection of any album.

But at least these days it's easier to know what you're buying ahead of time & picking up fewer albums with fewer songs you like.

I agree (having quit all 3 of the above in the late 80's & 90's); the problem is they're filling up my 1500 square foot house that I'm about to lose! I also might have had more $'s for house payments if I hadn't spent $50k (guess) on music & movies over the years!

If it comes down to absolutely having to purge a large number of CDs or your house will collapse, you need to take the approach they force on hoarders: Separate everything into a few piles land make sure one of those piles is "things I can live without." It helps if you've got the audio saved on a hard drive, and if you don't need the packaging consider letting it go. I've purged dozens of CDs a couple of times but I'm not sure I could do hundreds unless it was a necessity. This is all easier said than done, but remember that if you get rid of something & change your mind down the road, you should be able to get another copy at a reasonable price. Good luck, Geff, and keep posting here for moral support. We're here for you.

I need to find the time for the hd idea for cd .......... & I don't see it working for DVD without a massive recode to something like h264.

I'm hoping to find a cheap 1200 foot+ mobile home to buy. There are a few out there, but I have nothing but trouble with Craig's list email forwarder labeling all my email accounts as spam & 99% of these idiots don't post any direct contact information.

Kinda like what Robert said above about worse habits. Lots of people go to lots of movies, at $10+ a pop these days. I only go to a few movies a year, those that really interest me.

I prefer to look at CD purchases as an alternative to movies, but with a bonus, you get to keep the CD after the initial experience.

So we're all not really sick, we just get to hold on to all those initial experiences, and replay them whenever we want.

The problem is shelf space...

Life is short. If money spent has brought you pleasure, you've won.

Shelf space.........................

I keep asking my wife if we can afford a sub-basement for additional storage. So far the answer is "no."

Yep that's what I've said.....I don't regret all the CDs and DVDs I own but managing them is almost impossible now. I'm trying to build a better shelving unit for the basement and make some sense of the collection but I also hate that stuff has to be in the basement.