For The Sake Of Completeness

A friend of mine was going through the music in my iPod yesterday, and asked me this question "Why, among all the Rush and Pink Floyd and Dream Theater albums, do you have the Aladdin soundtrack?"

Good question. Here's my answer. For the sake of completeness. That, by itself, is not good enough. I suppose a bit of background would make things clear as mud.

I got the majority of my music from one source, a good friend of mine, whom we shall call Gorf.(Notice that this is frog spelled in reverse. This is of no use to you, but its too late now. You noticed it already.) Gorf had about 120 albums of various artists when I first latched onto him. I had a little more than 60. Through some remarkably astute networking, we managed to bring that up to a cumulative total of about 350 odd albums. Gorf also had 3 computers with CD burners. Yes, 3! And they were all mean machines. So before I left Chennai for Melbourne, I spent several days at his residence, burning music with reckless abandon.

Which brings me to my point. Gorf had a pretty diverse collection of albums. He said his collection was put together to include music from all genres. For the sake of completeness, he had albums from MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Megadeth, Trilok Gurtu (to name a few) and several soundtracks (including Aladdin, a Cirque du Soleil soundtrack and a Tamil Movie soundtrack. From memory, I think it was Kaadhalan.) I took everything, for the sake of completeness, and also because I couldn't be stuffed weeding out unnecessary albums. That's just me being lazy and greedy at the same time. Welcome to my world.

So, somewhere in the dark recesses of my vast CD collection, I have these albums - 'Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em' - MC Hammer, 'Dangerous' and 'Thriller' - Michael Jackson, and a tamil movie soundtrack (blechh!). They have never seen the light of day.

All these albums are in MP3 Cds, in alphabetical order. When I first got my iPod, I was intoxicated with delight. 60 gigs, man! I wanted all my albums in that little black box. For the sake of completeness. So I started off with the A's and put in everything I had. Including Aladdin. By the time I got to E, I realised it was pointless. I would never listen to those albums. More importantly, my thirst for new music is near unquenchable. I was getting new music at a rapid pace. At this rate, the iPod will be overflowing and I'll still have a few CDs left over. So, to save iPod space and my time, I started putting in only the music that I thought I would probably listen to. I happen to have every album of Def Leppard and Mr. Big, but I didnt put it all in, because I knew I was never going to listen to it. Which is why, if you ever were to look at the music in my iPod, you will not find Michael Jackson or MC Hammer, because thankfully, E comes before M. Even more thankfully, Gorf did not have any albums of Britney Spears or Celine Dion. You must understand - this 'completeness' is completely a relative thing.

The iPod is now half-full. At 30 gigs, or around 7000 songs. I still have heaps of albums left to put in. Unfortunately for me, my thirst for music and this quest for the relative completeness will be the death of me. For bands that I like, I want every album they ever made, neatly indexed, including live albums if possible. I'm already there with a lot of bands. With others, I'm not too far off. Someday, that level of completion and perfection shall be reached.

While we're on the subject, I find that having so much of music in one place is good, in the sense that I have so much to choose from. But whats not good is that I almost always listen to the same old favourite albums, which amount to about 25 or 30. That's about the same 300 songs among 7000 (...and counting). Which is why there will always be a few albums that I have never listened to, and never will. Here's an excerpt of the conversation on this subject between the voices in my head.

"So, what shall we listen to today?"

"How about Steely Dan? They're cool!"

"Mmm! Steely Dan! We listened to Steely Dan yesterday. We have so much music we've not listened to!"

"But we likes Steely Dan, my precious. We likes it. And they're funny too. They named themselves after a giant, steam-powered dildo!"

"Mmmm! Dildo! Sex! Sex!"

Several minutes later, after a heated discussion on the topic of sex...

"So, what we listen to today?"

"S-T-E-E-L-Y D-A-N!!"

"What about the Kingston Trio? Or the Byrds? Or Incroyable Jungle Beat?"

"The Kingston Trio can go shag the Byrds to the beat of the Incroyable Jungle. We wants Steely Dan!"

"Ok, since we've made our minds up.."

'While the music played you worked by candlelight
Those San Fransisco nights
You were the best in town'

"Mmmm! Shag.."

"Shut the %#$* up and listen to the song!"

'Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
And you turned it on the world
Thats when you turned the world around'

Well, there you have it. For the record, and for the sake of completeness, let me state that I have never listened to the Aladdin soundtrack.

N.B. - The voices in my head are more or less fictional, and are a not-so-entirely accurate representation of how my mind works.
Steely Dan is really named after a steam-powered dildo. For more info, see Steely Dan Trivia