Hold the front page! David Mitchell only has two albums?!?
Sitting here, faced with my ever expanding iTunes folder, I have to admit this is a completely alien concept. Sure, I remember the time when my CD collection was well into the single figures. In fact I still remember saving up my paper money for a whole month to buy my very first album from my local record store, Barneys, which, quite literally, had CD and vinyl from across the musical spectrum stacked from floor to ceiling. (Unfortunately it became all to obvious a couple of years ago that the CDs were, in fact, holding the ceiling up and Barney’s was forced to close – to be replaced instead by a posh wine sellers which is perpetually empty!)
Anyways, the crux of the editorial isn’t actually about his complete lack of a music collection, but his frank revelation did make me take a second look at the overflowing drawers where the majority of my CDs are stashed.
Now, I am currently spending rather a lot of time in front of my computer as I send off application after application for entry level positions in journalism. Consequently, I have music playing pretty much 24/7 and having a wide selection from the sweet, angel-like choristers Libera to the screaming rockers The Ghost of a Thousand and Mägo de Oz, means I normally have something to match my mood. And if not, there’s always Spotify, LastFM and MySpace for instant streaming!
But to quantify, according to iTunes I have 30.93GB of Music stored on my computer. Played back to back it would take 18.7 days to get through the 515 albums from 285 artists spanning 37 genres. Ok, I know that at least 15 of those ‘albums’ are CDs to accompany the various Hugo language courses I bought to help me through my undergrad degree and several are single tracks I have downloaded, but still!
It’s even worse when looked at in context,
The average number of music albums owned by each man in the UK is 292, while the average amount owned by each woman is 221.
In my first ever post for Review Artists, I fully admitted that I am happy to bankrupt myself for music & given my most recent 500 mile round trip for a gig, I’m probably well on my way to fulfilling this goal. Yes, I’ll admit, my iTunes folder is obscenely obese and there are certain tracks that I don’t listen to anymore, but it tells a story of my life. The myriad of genres, reflect the people I have been in order to become the person I am now. And if only for that, David Mitchell, I am happy to stand here in defiance to your cynical views on the “tribal, neo-religious purchases” we make to bolster our standing within our chosen social group.
I’ll finish this post with the first single to be taken from the first ever album I bought (The Man Who by Travis)
In the next couple of weeks I am going to push myself to make more of this blog post in the new year, so keep an eye out for interviews with some up and coming bands and hopefully, if I can swing it, some bigger ones too.
But what about you, do you agree with David Mitchell or is your music collection as overweight as mine?Please, let me know.
Post by Mary Stokes - Meet Me
Located in the UK, music has been part of my life for a long time. I'm a classically trained violinist but have a wide range musical knowledge.
